Behind the big battles

I would be lying to you if I said I enjoyed history in school. It was another subject to pass, and the process of remembering the dates,writing the lengthy essays & more mugging up followed. unsurprisingly, I don't remember most of what i have studied in school.

The first time I enjoyed reading history is when I read "Freedom at Midnight". It truly fascinated me. That's the first time I realized that history can be interesting. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to know about the Indian partition days.

Anyway, this column is not about my interest in history, and honestly that's not a story of significance either. This is about my thoughts on how the ancient battles were won.

Here's one for the sample, The battle of Gaugemela. 100,000 Persians against 47,000 Macedonians. The result, A Macedonian victory. causalities, 40,000 Persians and 4000 Macedonians. (there are no fixed numbers in ancient history, I am just choosing the highest numbers on the Macedonian causalities). Victory to the great Alexander.

Wait a minute !. If my math is correct, each Macedonian has to fight 2 Persians and more surprisingly, for each Macedonian killed, there is roughly 12 Persians dead on the other side. On a plain field face to face battle, how can this happen?. when you consider that 40,000 of Alexanders men were on foot, it becomes more difficult to imagine. On foot, face to face with no terrain or weapon advantage, how can you fight with two people at once?. and how can you kill 12 people before one person from your side is killed?.

it is impossible. If you take boxing as a civilized form of war, how often do you see a knock-out?. Can you imagine even the best boxer in the world winning against two boxers at once?. No. So however gallantly the Macedonians fought, I don't believe they were like the matrix hero's killing 4 or 5 people without getting injured. Then, how on earth did the macedonians win it?. and more importantly, how did they kill so many Persians?.

To understand it, we need to understand how the ancient battles worked. Two things were immensely important in old battles. The discipline & ability to strike fear. If the size of the armies are same, the battle will be a stalemate unless one of the armies begin to retreat. Once an army runs out of fear, the carnage begins. For the outnumbered armies, it's important that they strike fear into the other soldiers as early as possible to avoid getting encircled and eventually massacred. And the easiest method to strike fear into an army?, Kill their leader.

Alexander knew too well that on a face to face confrontation, the Persians can not be beaten. so he went for one of the boldest moves in military history, to kill Darius, the king of Persia to win this war. Darius stood behind a thick wall of Persian soldiers. To reach him, Alexander devised a strategy. he drew to the left of Persian fleet with a small number of soldiers and as he expected, Darius sent a large fleet of Persians to encircle and kill him. This created a gap in the Persian line and Alexander in a sudden strategic turn lead his army through this weak link to reach near Darius and attack him. fearing for his life, Darius Fled. And with him the Persian Army.

Once an army is showing it's back and is running for life, chasing them and cutting them down is much easier and they always made sure that they killed as many as they can so as to reduce the strength of the opponent.A lot of the soldiers surrendered to save their life but were eventually beheaded.

So, when you read or hear about another great epic war, do remember that they are not won like they show in the movie "300". They are won by strategies of course, but also by cutting down the men in fear running for their life and the surrenders.