Got some Mania for Subjugation questions
Heya all,
I just finished the latest Mania for Subjugation and for the last two I've had some lingering thoughts and questions that are just bothering me. I hope some of you can discuss them with me or have more info for me.
I loved the beginning of the series and really hoped to get an idea of why Alexander was this great General, but as we move to the war against the Persians I'm more and more lost. I know that there's a lot of historical material on this will all kinds of biases, the ancients authors who'll say there's like a million Persians but they're all cowards, to more modern authors trying to fix this, but with the Persian battles I still feel I don't get a view of the Persian side. Like this wasn't an incompetent dying empire, nor were the Greeks/Macedonians some kind of surprise to the Persians, nor were the Persians unused to war; And yet I feel very little analysis about why they're losing so badly.
There's two specific things I've noticed and keep milling over, and I'm curious if people who read along with the sources (I don't) know more about this, I'm just so confused as to why these two things don't get any mentions:
One The battle of the Granicus
There's repeated (repeated very often, which is part of why this keeps bothering me) mentions of just not understanding why the Persians would keep back their infantry. Except this seems quite clear to me? If you're the Persians you know Alexander has high quantities of high quality heavy infantry. Heavy infantry that can out-fight the Greek heavy infantry that Persians specifically hire for their skills as heavy infantry.
You also know that once an infantry line engages in battle it can't really disengage, it has to rout the enemy or be routed.
You also know that Alexanders strategy in the past has just been to smash the heavy infantry line into the enemy and win.
So... You deny him that ability. Cavalry can disengage. Persians have more cavalry and no real reason to assume Greek cavalry is that much better than theirs. You force their army to deploy in line and then harass them all the way to the infantry line where you can surround them with cavalry on 3 sides.
The way the battle was explained the only reason this tactic didn't work is because Alexander cut his way through the enemy and killed many leaders. It shouldn't really have been possible to rout a cavalry army with a much smaller cavalry force, cavalry is used to disengaging and turning around and they don't have to throw away their weapons when running away.
So why this mystery as to why the battle was fought that way? That's how I'd fight Alexander if I was a Persian general!
This bring me to question 2:
Two In both the battle of the Granicus as the battle of Issus it seems like the Persians are doing fine, or even winning, until Alexander and the Companion cavalry personally start slaughtering enemy leaders, sometimes if I hear the story correctly, penetration deep into and behind enemy lines.
In both victories these seem to me to be the distinct tactics, not the 16 foot spears, not the location, not the defenses, not the makeup or positioning of both armies. I also don't know of any other (I'm not in any way well read on this) battles where explicitly taking huge risk to kill the enemy leaders is such an important part, like it happens in the Illiad but in other fights even though the leaders lead from the front and risk death it doesn't feel like there's just a specific unit with the sole job of cutting their way to them and killing them.
Am I wrong and is this just normal and therefore not mentioned? Because I can't even get over the how, we'll spend hours on these battles and then its just "Yeah the companion cavalry slaughtered their way through a force twice their size and killed the leaders" without discussing why the companion cavalry seems to be an almost godlike assassin unit. Nowhere in the series have I heard any debate or explanation on why the Companion cavalry would so outclass their Persian counterparts that it's a valid tactic to just send them straight at the enemy leader, without any mention of the very real risk of them getting surrounded and killed by a numerically superior foe.
At the battle of Issus it sounds like that behind the cavalry there's infantry units turning around and moving back to save other infantry units that are getting flanked. At that point you're losing, going full force ahead at a single point of the line with just cavalry is a huge risk! But it's hardly mentioned.
Why are we even discussing these battles for hours if eventually the sole thing that's happening is the cavalry will cut their way to the leader, kill or rout them, and the battle is over. Or, why aren't we talking about that bit more!
I guess both these things have me missing some Persian side of things. The Persians weren't stupid, they were rich and established, they'd have experienced generals who'd have gotten the order to set up an army, and develop a tactic, specifically to defeat Alexander. They would know how Alexander's army looked, they'd know how they'd fight. They weren't underestimating Alexander as this is apparently the first time in 150 years the royal army is sent to the field. They were used to fighting Greeks, and did in fact hire Greeks, this isn't a situation like the Mongol army hitting European armies who didn't have a clue what's going on.
And yet both battles are treated like the Persians were this bumbling bunch who just showed up with the wrong units, set up weirdly, and never expected the tactic of "Running towards us really fast with spears" when that's pretty much what Alexander and his father did every time.
I'm probably not explaining it right and this must be a slog to read through, thanks if you did, I'm just hoping someone can explain a bit or give me some perspective so this doesn't bother me the entire 5th and following episodes :)