In 331 BC, a great emperor of the West officially launched the Battle of the Eastern Expedition, and his target was the weakening Persian Empire.
Greece and Persia, like China and Japan in the East, were two countries that had long influenced each other and were hostile to each other, and at the height of the Persian Empire, Xerxes I crossed the Bosphorus with a vast army to attack Greece, and won the famous "Battle of Thermos Pass" with the Spartan city-state, conquering Athens, but ultimately due to the stubborn resistance of the Greeks.
Now that the mighty Greece had launched a counter-offensive, their leader was none other than the famous Alexander the Great, a young man who had taken the throne at the age of twenty, with an iron fist far beyond the reach of ordinary people, and when the contradictions in the country were cleared one by one, he quickly turned his strategic vision farther to the neighboring Persian Empire.
As the first of the four major military commanders in Western history and one of the most outstanding military and statesmen in the ancient history of the world, Alexander, who inherited Aristotle, conquered the whole of Persia in just over a year.
But when Persia was conquered, Alexander captured more than ten thousand Persian noblewomen, and for a monarch like him, beauty was obviously secondary, so how did he treat these women? This actually contains his great vision, and everything begins with his life.
Alexander came from a prominent background, his father was the king of Macedonia at that time, so he received an excellent education from an early age, studied with the famous philosopher and scientist Aristotle, and at the same time he also loved Homer's poetry, and his idol was Hercules in Greek mythology and legend, hoping to become a hero like him.
However, Heaven gave him amazing talent as he wished, and at the age of 16, Alexander began to rule Macedonia in place of his father, and personally led troops to suppress the rebellion in the north.
Later, the two city-states of Athens and Thebes allied against Alexander's father Philip II, and the two sides finally launched a decisive battle, the Battle of Caronia, in which the young Alexander had served as the commander-in-chief of the left wing of the army, and he led the team deep into the gap between the enemy forces with amazing eyes, slammed the coalition forces from behind, and completely annihilated the army of the City-state of Thebes in one fell swoop, laying the victory for the battle.
This was the true military genius, after all, the Macedonian general was only eighteen years old at this time.
Philip II was later assassinated by his personal bodyguard, and Alexander ascended the throne with the help of his military minister Antipat, and the assassination was pointed out to be the work of the Persian king, which was also the name he used to launch his later attack on Persia.
Alexander immediately executed a large number of political enemies on the excellent charge of participating in the assassination, and at the same time won the strong support of the army and the people by reducing taxes.
But Athens and Thebes, where Wang Wei changed, revealed an air of instability and privately connected to overthrow Macedonian rule.
Unfortunately, the 20-year-old Alexander was already a battle-hardened general, and his army began to suppress rebellions throughout Greece, and soon the rebellion was either directly quelled or surrendered by Alexander's troops.
So in 336 BC, Alexander held a Greek alliance conference in the city-state of Corinth, almost all of which sent representatives to the meeting, at which Alexander said that he was about to lead an army to Persia to avenge the Greek-Persian war many years ago, and the representatives naturally gave him the position of commander of the "anti-Persian alliance" without question.
However, Alexander was not in a hurry to attack, because Greece was not stable enough at this time, and there were many tribes in the north and west that were out of his rule, which was the first goal he had to clean up.
When it comes to Alexander, we have to mention the Macedonian phalanx, which is a battle formation organized by the army, as recorded in the history books:
It consisted of thousands of infantry with different functions, some with shields and some with spears, 64 armored soldiers in a platoon, 128 into a company, 256 into a battalion, 1024 into a regiment, and 4096 into a division. Before the battle began, the lightly armed spearmen lined up in a horizontal line of about 8 people in depth behind the phalanx, while others, such as the servicemen, lined up in a scattered line in front of the phalanx, with cavalry on both wings and a certain number of lightly armed spearmen.
This phalanx was modified from the classical Greek phalanx, to be more aggressive, but the disadvantages are also very obvious, that is, bulky, and the flanks are relatively weak, before Alexander this phalanx has been created, he is not the inventor, but this kind of battle array in his hands is invincible, invincible.
He went to destroy the Thracians and Dotlibalys in Greece with his elite corps and solid phalanx, and he used tactics flexibly, calming the west and north with little effort, and his own losses were also very small.
When he fought the Dortribali, rumors spread from the Greek rear that Alexander had died on the Danube battlefield, and the city-state of Thebes immediately rebelled before it was confirmed, and several other city-states also participated, but they all maintained a wait-and-see attitude, and as a result, when Alexander received the news, he had ended the battle on the front line, and then it took only 14 days to lead his troops to kill the city of Tibis, directly destroying the entire city and dividing the territory equally.
After this slaughter of the city, the rebellious city-states were silent, and Alexander was relieved to officially prepare for the expedition to Persia.
Long ago, many of the city-states in Asia Minor belonged to Greece, but were later forcibly annexed in the expansion of the Persian Empire, so this became the first stop for Alexander to conquer, because the treasury left by his father was empty, and many of the city-states in the rear of Greece were still in a hurry, Alexander left most of his army in Macedonia, with only thirty days' share of supplies and about thirty thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry and 160 warships across the Strait of Hilipa to Asia Minor.
At this time, the Persian mercenary corps also arrived at the front, and the two sides engaged in the first head-to-head confrontation on the banks of the Granicus River, and the Persian side first occupied the high ground on the right bank of the river, and brought twenty thousand infantry and twenty thousand cavalry, occupying an absolute advantage, while Alexander's troops were not only numerically inferior, but also very tired after a long journey.
So Alexander led his guards to cross the river first, the first soldiers rushed into the enemy position, the soldiers for his spirit, but also bravely forward, in the fierce battle, Alexander's own helmet was cut off by one of the other governor, but the Greek army still defeated the Persian legion with a large number of enemies, captured more than 2,000 thousand people, and killed two governors of the other side.
After this battle, although the Persians were defeated, their naval strength was still far superior to that of Greece, so they began to harass the logistical supply lines of Alexander's army at sea, which caused him a lot of trouble, so he decided to attack the port directly from land, thus containing the Persian navy.
In this way, the Greek coalition marched all the way from Turkey, through Syria and Palestine to Egypt, and because Alexander implemented an enlightened policy of tax exemption and allowing local autonomy, the city-states along the way submitted almost without resistance, and soon the entire region of Asia Minor was completely retaken.
In 333 BC, the then Persian king Darius III led the army to begin the imperial conquest, he skillfully carried out a strategic detour, around the rear of the Greek army to prepare to cut off their supply line, Alexander, who heard the news, rushed back to reinforcements, and the two sides finally met head-on near the city of Issus.
The situation facing Alexander was actually very bad, not to mention that he himself contracted the wind and cold on the way, and the army brought by Darius III was not as exaggerated as the legendary six hundred thousand, but there were almost 100,000 people in general, which was undoubtedly an overwhelming advantage for the Greek coalition of only thirty thousand people.
Moreover, the Persian army was located behind Alexander, and they arrived ahead of time on the plains of the Pinarus Valley, and set up a solid formation, and Darius sat in the center of the Persian front in a magnificent chariot made of gold, which was completely a posture of waiting for work.
But Alexander soon saw through the only weakness of this formation on the left flank, and he decisively turned his two thousand heavy cavalry around, hid behind the infantry phalanx, and then led the phalanx of gunners to face the enemy's locust arrow rain, charged straight from the Chinese army and the left wing, and launched a close-quarters hand-to-hand combat with the other side with great tenacity.
This charge quickly tore through the left flank of the Persian legions, and the cavalry on the right flank of Persia also charged the left flank of the Greek coalition at the same time, but at this time, the two thousand heavy cavalry arranged in advance by Alexander immediately launched a counter-charge, destroying the other side's formation in one fell swoop, and the two sides entered a frenzied battle without tactics, and the number of casualties rose sharply.
On the surface, this situation seemed to be extremely unfavorable to Alexander, but this was his means of victory: because the main force of the Persian infantry was held back by the Macedonian phalanx, the left and middle armies were very critical, but the right flank led by Alexander himself was superior, he sent his guards infantry and guards cavalry to attack left and right, and the Persian army in the rear quickly collapsed, and then he led the soldiers to launch a charge and rushed to Darius's guards cavalry in one breath.
After both sides had paid a terrible price, the Greek coalition army was still constantly breaking through the guards' defenses, and seeing the crisis approaching, the Persian king Darius III actually began to flee directly, he took off his royal robe and jumped on a war horse, and fled with the Guards army with a thousand people behind him.
With this departure, the entire Persian army, which was still struggling, suddenly collapsed completely, and was slaughtered in a chaotic retreat, only a few people successfully withdrew from the battlefield, and Darius's mother, wife and daughter were taken prisoner.
Alexander once again achieved a fruitful victory with few victories with his astonishing military ability, and this victory also caused the Persians to suffer heavy setbacks, and almost all the cities on the Mediterranean coast were taken over by the Greeks, during which Darius also sent emissaries to make peace with Alexander, offering generous conditions for ceding the territory west of the Euphrates River, paying 10,000 Tarrants, and marrying one of his daughters to Alexander.
But these conditions were finally rejected, and alexander, although he was still not in his twenties, had begun to look forward to the world in his eyes, and this reward was by no means enough for him to stop the conquest.
Two years later, Alexander, who had easily conquered Egypt, re-sent his troops, this time to take all of the Persian Empire, and the Persian king Darius had no choice but to reconvene the persian armies to meet the terrible conqueror for the second time on the Gaugamela plain.
Even though the army was still superior in numbers and equipment, the difference in commanders still made the outcome of this battle unsettling, the first round of Persian chariot charge was completely avoided by Alexander's pre-arranged change of position, followed by a salvo of archers in the rear, and then Alexander led the light cavalry to hit the left flank of the Persian army, the opposing formation quickly collapsed, Darius fled again.
After the Battle of Gaugamela, although the Persian monarch had not yet died, the entire Persian land had been almost completely occupied by Alexander.
In the capital Susa, the Greeks carried out a victorious plunder, taking away countless gold and silver treasures and slaves, in retaliation for the Persian king Xerxes I who set fire to the holy city of Athens in Greece, and after looting Susa, they also set a fire in the palace.
Darius III, who fled to the Medes, was killed by a self-reliant Persian governor, Besus, who, after capturing Him, was convicted of rebellion and buried in accordance with the king's etiquette.
Such a move was part of Alexander's grand plan, which was large and wanted more than simple conquest, and when he saw the life of his old enemy, the Persians, during the expedition, his mentality changed from his initial revenge to the idea of bringing about national integration.
In the past, Greece always claimed to be the origin of civilization and regarded other countries and peoples as uncivilized peoples, but Alexander felt that it was not, and he wanted to end this long-term mutual attack, and the best way to achieve this result was to let the Greeks, Persians, Macedonians and other peoples communicate with each other and achieve equal coexistence.
This was no small matter, and he naturally had other options than to treat the dead King of Persia with courtesy.
After the victory of the war, the Greek coalition naturally obtained countless booty, including gold and silver treasures, materials, land, and naturally women.
At that time, Europe was still under the cover of slavery, and ordinary slaves were not treated as people at all, so the women mentioned here basically referred to Persian noblewomen, that is, upper-class women with status and status, or women in the royal palace.
After the execution of Bessus and the burial of King Darius, Alexander held a grand joint banquet, not only to celebrate, but during the meeting he made a major decision to announce that Alexander himself would marry the eldest daughter of Darius III, and that his other daughter would be promised to Alexander's close friend Heffistion.
In addition, the Greek army captured more than 10,000 women from Persian aristocratic families, who were sure to escape their tragic fate, but who were now assigned to the generals and nobles in the army and were official wives.
The purpose of this action is to promote national integration, and at the same time, the maintenance of kinship can also allow him to further and more stable rule over this vast land, and his ultimate purpose, in his own words, is to become the "Lord of the World".
After conquering Persia, his desires were not satisfied at all, and he continued to lead his troops to Central Asia without stopping, so much so that he occupied northwestern India.
But Alexander was never able to escape the limitations of the times, his eagerness to achieve made him and the internal contradictions between him and the army deeper and deeper, and the expeditionary force was already exhausted after countless battles, and the soldiers almost mutinied, so that he could only stay here.
Soon after, in 323 BC, Alexander the Great, who was only 33 years old, suddenly fell ill with falciparum malaria and died because of it, and many people held the view of poisoning, but in any case, his life did end, and after his death, the entire Alexander Empire was divided up by the generals in an instant, and the whole of Greece fell into endless wars.
When the Persian king Xerxes I was about to cross the sea to attack Greece, looking at the vast army behind him, he suddenly burst into tears, he lamented how short life is, and now these countless elite soldiers will not be alive in a hundred years.
Maybe the same was true for Alexander.