The Mutiny of Alexander's Army in India
The Limits of Alexander the Great's Empire
Sep 25, 2009 Grant Sebastian Nell
The Empire of Alexander
His men were exhausted. Some of Alexander's veterans had campaigned with him in Europe before shipping out to Asia: they had covered, on foot or horseback, over the course of a decade, as much as 20,870 miles. They had crossed deserts, mighty rivers, and towering mountain ranges. They had seen sights that few could have dreamt of. They had fought in great battles and sieges.
Mutiny at the Hyphasis River
The most recent battle, where Alexander crushed an Indian King named Porus at the Hydaspes river, had been especially taxing. Alexander was keen to push on into the Ganges River valley, but his men had had enough. We can gather something of their exhaustion from the words of one Coenus, son of Polemocrates:
'We stand almost at the ends of the earth, and you are preparing to enter another world . . . that is a mission appropriate to your spirit, but not to ours.'
Alexander made a lengthy appeal to his assembled men before storming off to his tent in a sulk. The following day, he declared his intention of resuming his campaign: but it was now abundantly clear that the army was not prepared to follow. Alexander had little alternative: relations between commander and men were soothed, and Alexander made his preparations for the homeward journey.
Some modern historians believe that Alexander deliberately allowed reports of dangerous beasts and enemies to reach the ears of his tired veterans, knowing it would demoralize them still further. Perhaps Alexander ( who made a point of enduring the same hardships and danger as his men) was himself weary of conquest but did not wish to lose face by suggesting that the army turn back. Alexander was a consummate leader who implicitly understood the men he commanded. And his ego was massive.
He ordered a vast camp to be constructed, including abnormally large couches and 12 sacrificial altars. All of this was deliberately left behind, perhaps in an attempt to fool any who gazed upon it that the army of Alexander was superhuman, above such considerations as weariness and exhaustion, and that their decision to return home was a mere whim.
Alexander's return to Susa
Alexander accordingly marched his army southward, following the Indus River system, with the intention of reaching the ocean and sailing back to Persia. En route, he suffered a near-fatal wound at a siege against the Mallians. He was the first to scale the walls of their city and recieved an arrow in the chest for his efforts.
Upon arriving on the shores of the Indian Ocean, he took half of his forces westward through the Gedrosian desert, whilst the other half, under the command of Nearchus, sailed along the coast up the Persian Gulf. This march was to cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and camp followers.
Finally, in 325 BC, Alexander returned to Susa. But the hostility between the Europeans and Asians in his army was to return in another mutiny in 324, at Opis, on the Tigris River. Apart from the fact that many soldiers were almost crippled with fatigue and old wounds, discontentent was further exacerbated by Alexander's policies regarding the conscription of 'barbarians' ( the term for non-Greeks) into his army. This had become necessary due to the attrition of long campaigns and the sheer distances that reinforcements from Europe had to traverse.
But many Greeks and Macedonians felt that they were being discarded in favour of Asiatics. To them, this was intolerable: the former Persian Empire and all her multitudinous peoples were the hereditary enemies of ancient Greece. Tensions were heightened further by Alexander's unpopular practice of forcing his officers to take Persian wives. Alexander had the ringleaders bound in chains and drowned.
Alexander the Great died in 323 BC. Many Persians who had joined the army were murdered, and the majority of his former officers repudiated their Asian wives. With his empire torn apart by the wars of the Successors, most of his veterans never realised their dreams of returning home.
Sources:
Alexander the Great at War Edited by Ruth Sheppard, Osprey 2008
More in History
Latest Articles