Alexander the Great

If Alexander the Great's soldiers never slacked behind and ultimately demanded to go back to macedon.

Would he have conquered the Indian and Chinese empires? Would have reached Japan?

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>If this army was made up of indestructible super soldiers would they have taken over everything?

I wonder

It's an old question, there's probably heaps of actually good insight into it.

My pleb opinion: I think India would have exhausted the army in the end because they employed different tactics or tactics to different degrees (ie far more elephants). Alexander's army was sort of designed in 3 generations to be effective against Greek or Persian armies and it would need another generation to adapt to Indians, by which point the Indians would have been given their own chance to adapt and Alexander would probably be dead.

Secondly, his empire would have fallen apart. He wasn't administering it, he was losing touch with reality and he probably got poisoned so treachery was rife.

counter to the first point:

Alexander was extremely good at adapting his army to new terrain and challenges, and was always updating it and incorporating new peoples and fighting styles into his army. I think too many people give credit to Philip for forming the army and then simply assume that Alexander did nothing to further develop it.

Second point is what probably would have been his undoing. While Alexander was making greater use of oriental (especially Indian) troops during his Indian conquests, he still relied heavily on the arrival of the new macedonian recruits raised annually. It was simply getting harder and harder for his resources in Macedon (which was still very much his power base outside of the army itself) to reach and reinforce him. The fact that after returning to Babylon Alexander had to "replace" many of the Satraps that were administering the Empire demonstrates just how precarious his supply lines where. Having said all that, it's like the Nanda Empire was some shiny, well oiled machine at that point. It was even more decrepit than the Persian empire

>and incorporating new peoples and fighting styles into his army.
Can you give examples of this? I'd love to hear about it.

Breh, he had problems with a *single* Indian kingdom alone.

Besides there was no Indian or Chinese empire at the time. Both places were home to multiple states of culturally similar yet diverse people. China resembled medieval Europe during this point in time for example. Maybe in India since Northern India was under the Hegemony of one big Kingdom.

You know what, you're right.

I do remember he had a battle against some steppe nomads and he fucked them up pretty well using catapults IIRC.

I have appended a shitlink
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jaxartes

Yes.

India was a completely different environment and while his troops had unique advantages likewise the Indians were alien to the Macedonians. Warfare with them would have been more chaotic and he would have taken too many losses trying to push all the way to the mouth of the Ganges.

In the end Chandragupta adopted the innovations introduced by the Hellenic world and would unify India.

They'd have all died from disease. The one region of India they did enter nearly fucked them shut.

they'd have gotten salmonella or something and shat themselves to death while running their men dry on armies several times larger than their own, given india even then had a huge population (and at the time, the wealth and power to make it useful)

You answered your own question lol. The answer is no they would eventually have to turn back.

>Chinese
>Middle
>Kingdom

There wasn't one at the time. Though the rhetoric of "Central State" arose during the Zhou, which was less of a Chinese unified empire and more of a Chinese version of the holy roman empire.

Hence when the ruling Jin clan declined, the subject states & cultures of the Zhou empire fell into fighting.

>he had problems with a *single* Indian kingdom alone
He actually conquered a couple Indian kingdoms before it, notably Taxilia. The Battle of Hydaspes wasn't even bad, it was by all accounts just a small fraction of his forces that were lost (no more than 1/50th), which was due to confusion with the crossing of the river and it being night, and his contingents not being in proper communication. This was also the Indus region--which was likely the more populated regions of India.

>several times larger than their own

Yes that's why Alexander the great lost at the battle of Issus and battle of Gaugamela.

kek

That's actually pretty good insight.

I could see Alexander joining a Chinese dynasty if he got that far and helping them take over the rest of China as a puppet state for his empire.

Which warring states dynasty was the most open to foreigners?

iirc, Alexander was very open to the idea of allying with other nations. He probably would have even studied confucianism and legalism and brought those ideas over to the west early on.

> Would he have conquered the Indian and Chinese empires?

India perhaps, but he would probably stop there, going through Burma and Indokina at that time with an army was pure fuckery, not even the Chinese dynasties or even the Mongols pulled it out, doubt the Greeks would be willing.

To the point, Alexanders conquest of India could have happened if his subordinate Indians did not revolt, if he actually continued into India it is a good chance that king Porus and the other kings would be forced to join him, that is already another 20-30 000 Indian troops with elephants on the side of the Greeks, about 70-90 000 troops in total, not something anyone would want to fuck with.

Not to mention that Indians had basically no counter to the Greek phalanx apart from the elephants, if Alexander Scipio'd the elephants, the Indians would have basically nothing of use to throw at the enormous pike lines.

>The Battle of Hydaspes wasn't even bad, it was by all accounts just a small fraction of his forces that were lost
But it was absolutely the most exhausting battle for them in all their sieges (according to Greek historians). This player a large in turning them back.

>(Catapults have a longer range than bows.)
ay

>Which warring states dynasty was the most open to foreigners?
The (then) Duchy of Qin.

That is: they are open to foreigners if you submit to Qin.

Some examples of the top of my head

Alexander included the Agrianians into the military as extremely skilled light infantry.

During his campaign in Sogdia he began raising units of horse archers after his experience campaigning against Spitamenes

According to Arrian (who I believe was citing Nearchus) Alexander had incorporated a huge number Indian troops into his army by the end of the his Indian campaigns, and was interested in using Elephants

He apparently was looking at creating mixed formations of Macedonian Phalangites with Persian Archers.

He hired incredible engineers for his sieges and was hugely innovative with siege weapons, actually using field artillery.

Much like the Romans, he knew the drawbacks of using the Phalanx in mountainous terrain, and as such the Macedonians apparently abandoned the Sarissa for their Indian campaigns, and would not use them again until Alexander returned to Babylon


Got most of my information from Robin Lane Fox's Alexander the Great and Robin Waterfield's Dividing the Spoils. Plus, there's no substitute for actually reading the main secondary sources like Plutarch or Arrian

>the most exhausting battle for them in all their sieges
It wasn't really a siege. He did stand-off with him across the river for a month or so (IIRC) for the weather to improve, but his forces weren't in combat or making any effort to cross it, but merely waiting for spring to come. The actual battle only lasted for a night, and was pretty quick.

He only lost 1,000 men at Hydaspes, meanwhile he lost 7,000 at Issus and 1100 at Gaugamela. He sent a dispatch force of 2300 led by Pharnuches to quell a rebellion that entirely got destroyed.

Prior to Gaugamela, his army numbered 50,000, after it while pursuing Darius and sending home some veterans, he received additional reinforcements from back home, numbering it to 60,000. At the end of his India campaign, his Army was said to have numbered 100,000 from the amount of Asian soldiers he recruited back in Sogdiana and India before dismissing them. He also received 30,000 newly trained Persian youths to fight in phalanx formation by the time he arrived in Babylon. Regardless on the accuracy of the numbers of new recruits, he did have the cash to hire some Greek mercenaries or call in reinforcements from Macedonia if he really needed to, although it might've not been wise. However, it was still very possible that he could've conquered the Maurya Empire had he sent back exhausted veterans and the wounded of his Persian and Indian campaigns back in Babylon, rest in Babylon for one or two years with the remaining army and stabilize the affairs of his current subjects, keep at-least 10,000 Macedonian infantry and possibly receive a couple thousand Macedonian reinforcements and utilize the newly trained Persians, and then head out on a new expedition across the Indus. But he died too prematurely.

Plus, it seems that his plan after he got back to Babylon was to do what I just said, but to go after Carthage instead, seeing how there was way much more intel on them and they were arguably more of a threat.

The Macedonians got btfo so easily by the Romans that we don't even talk about it. It's all about Carthage instead. They were little bitches with a cheap gimmick.

No. The force was too small and would have had no way to replenish losses. Even if he could teleport more men to him from macedon, he's going to simply run out.

Which battle was the greatest defeat macedon suffered to rome?

probably Cynoscephalae in terms of crushing the Macedonians ability to realistically contest Roman influence in Greece

*goes around*

what now?

In a vaccum? They ignore you and bowl over your friends, leaving you sitting alone on the field with a few hundred pissed off bisexual men staring at you after an afternoon of sitting around sweaty, muscular men with big, hard wood in their hands.


In reality?
The next block kills you. Keep moving and you hit the medium and light troops, who kill you. Keep going laterally, and you start encountering the cavalry. They will also kill you, though they;ll be more glorious about it.

Slip between two blocks and you're either going to get someone stepping out of rank to kill you, or you're going to get killed by the greeks standing in reserve behind the real men.

Alexander had his shit handled.