Battle of Gaugamela

Background

Alexander of Macedon crossed into Asia in 334 BC with an army of Macedonians and allied Greeks, beat the Persian satraps at the Granicus, and in 333 BC defeated the Great King, Darius III, at Issus, where Darius fled the field and left his family in Alexander's hands. Alexander then spent two years taking the coast of the Levant and Egypt, while Darius rebuilt his army from every province of the empire east of the Euphrates. When Alexander finally marched inland in 331, Darius waited for him on a broad plain near the village of Gaugamela, east of the Tigris, where he had the ground leveled so that his scythed chariots could charge.

The Battle

Darius's army was much larger than Alexander's roughly 47,000 men; ancient writers give absurd figures, and modern estimates vary widely. It included Persian and Bactrian cavalry, Greek mercenaries, 15 elephants, some 200 scythed chariots, and the Great King's household guard, whose elite thousand carried spears with golden apples on the butt and are usually identified with the Persian Immortals. Knowing he would be outflanked, Alexander formed his army in depth with a second line ready to face about. He then led his right wing obliquely to the right, off the leveled ground. The Persian left followed to stop him, and a gap opened in the Persian line. The scythed chariots charged and were destroyed by javelin men and archers who opened lanes and struck the drivers. Alexander then formed his Companion cavalry and the hypaspists into a wedge and drove through the gap toward Darius himself. Darius fled, as he had at Issus. On the Macedonian left Parmenion was hard pressed by Mazaeus's cavalry, and Alexander broke off his pursuit to relieve him, but by nightfall the Persian army had dissolved.

Weapons

The Macedonian phalanx fought with the Macedonian Sarissa, a pike of up to 18 feet held in both hands, which presented a hedge of points the Persian infantry could not reach through. It was the anvil; the Companion cavalry, armed with a lance and the curved Greek Kopis, was the hammer. Macedonian armor included the Linothorax shown on Alexander in the famous mosaic from Pompeii. The Persians fought with the bow, the spear and the Persian Akinakes, and relied on their numbers and cavalry.

Aftermath

Darius escaped to the east, where he was murdered in 330 BC by his own satrap Bessus. Babylon surrendered to Alexander without a fight, and he took Susa and the treasury of Persepolis, where he burned the royal palace. Gaugamela ended the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which had ruled the Near East for two centuries, and made Alexander master of an empire that stretched to India. It is still studied as a model of how a smaller army can use maneuver and a decisive strike at the enemy's commander to defeat a larger one.