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Alexander the Great

© Dennis Morehouse

Reruns must be a good thing; we're always seeing them on TV. A book that I recently read made me think that I should do a 'rerun' on my article from last July; "Grading Generals."

One line in that article got a fair amount of response. "If we ignore personality and focus on the actual business of making war; the 'best' general will be the one who achieves his goals in the shortest possible time; at the least possible cost in lives and treasure; and with the smallest possible loss on the enemy's side, also. The last stipulation; 'smallest possible cost to the enemy' received the most attention; and rightly so, because sparing the enemy is not usually one of the specified or implied tasks of any military operation.

Sparing the enemy IS usually one of the implied tasks from the political point of view in most conflicts, although most modern politicians don't seem to realize it. If you destroy him, and eradication isn't your actual goal, you end up spending money, time and energy rebuilding him. You also create festering hatreds that come back to haunt you.

The book that convinced me that I was on the right track is "The Genius of Alexander the Great" by N.G.L. Hammond, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Although I enjoy history, and remember reading a little of Alexander when I was (much) younger; I really didn't know much about him. Most people apparently have the same problem, which is apparently caused by the fact that Alexander lived so long ago that there are few reliable records about his campaigns.

Alexander grew up in Macedonia, the son of King Philip, who was slowly bringing his kingdom out of dissension and forging it into a unified state that could, and did, eventually take on the city-states of Greece.

Alexander's first battles were fought under the command of his father, during a period when King Philip was campaigning to pull together the city states of Greece into a 'Greek Community' whose members would "swear to keep the peace among themselves, maintain existing Constitutions and permit change only by constitutional methods, and combine in action against any violator of the Common Peace....." Prior to this campaign, the city states had suffered from continual 'stasis', or revolution; and fighting among themselves. Philip's campaign built the base of a united Greece that allowed Alexander's later expeditions.

Alexander learned military arts from his father, but he also learned diplomacy; in a period when true diplomacy was little known. (Much like today.) Honorable enemies were treated well, while enemies who had broken oaths or allegiances were treated harshly. Alexander took his lessons with him into Asia, and made good use of them.

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