retire to Rhoteum. But he failed in an attempt to surprise Kyzikus, and was obliged to content himself with plundering the adjoining territory'. It is affirmed that Darius was engaged this summer in making large preparations, naval as well as military, to resist the intended expedition of Alexander. Yet all that we hear of what was actually done implies nothing beyond a moderate force.

1 Diodor. xvi. 7.

67

CHAPTER XCII.

ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER.

334.

A YEAR and some months had sufficed for Alex- B.C. 335ander to make a first display of his energy and military skill, destined for achievements yet greater; and to crush the growing aspirations for freedom among Greeks on the south, as well as among Thracians on the north, of Macedonia. The ensuing winter was employed in completing his preparations; so that early in the spring of 334 B.C., his army destined for the conquest of Asia was mustered between Pella and Amphipolis, while his fleet was at hand to lend support.

The whole of Alexander's remaining life-from his crossing the Hellespont in March or April 334 B.c. to his death at Babylon in June 323 B.C., eleven years and two or three months-was passed in Asia, amidst unceasing military operations, and evermultiplied conquests. He never lived to revisit Macedonia; but his achievements were on so transcendent a scale, his acquisitions of territory so unmeasured, and his thirst for farther aggrandisement still so insatiate, that Macedonia sinks into insignificance in the list of his possessions. Much more do the Grecian cities dwindle into outlying appendages of a newly-grown Oriental empire. During all these eleven years, the history of Greece is almost a blank, except here and there a few scattered events.

During reign, the history of

Alexander's

Greece is

nearly a

blank.

To what extent the

jects of

Alexander belonged

to Grecian history.

It is only at the death of Alexander that the Grecian cities again awaken into active movement.

The Asiatic conquests of Alexander do not belong Asiatic pro- directly and literally to the province of an historian of Greece. They were achieved by armies of which the general, the principal officers, and most part of the soldiers, were Macedonian. The Greeks who served with him were only auxiliaries, along with the Thracians and Pæonians. Though more numerous than all the other auxiliaries, they did not constitute, like the Ten Thousand Greeks in the army of the younger Cyrus, the force on which he mainly relied for victory. His chief-secretary, Eumenes of Kardia, was a Greek, and probably most of the civil and intellectual functions connected with the service were also performed by Greeks. Many Greeks also served in the army of Persia against him, and composed indeed a larger proportion of the real force (disregarding mere numbers) in the army of Darius than in that of Alexander. Hence the expedition becomes indirectly incorporated with the stream of Grecian history by the powerful auxiliary agency of Greeks on both sides-and still more, by its connexion with previous projects, dreams, and legends, long antecedent to the aggrandisement of Macedon-as well as by the character which Alexander thought fit to assume. To take revenge on

Persia for the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and to liberate the Asiatic Greeks, had been the scheme of the Spartan Agesilaus, and of the Pheræan Jason; with hopes grounded on the memorable expedition and safe return of the Ten Thousand. It had been recommended by the rhetor Isokrates, first to the

CHAP. XCII.] PLANS AND PRETENCES OF ALEXANDER.

69

combined force of Greece, while yet Grecian cities were free, under the joint headship of Athens and Sparta-next, to Philip of Macedon as the chief of united Greece, when his victorious arms had extorted a recognition of headship, setting aside both Athens and Sparta. The enterprising ambition of Philip was well pleased to be nominated chief of Greece for the execution of this project. From him it passed to his yet more ambitious son.

lenic pre

tences set

of up by Alex

of

I

ander. The real

feeling of

the Greeks

was adverse

to his

success.

Though really a scheme of Macedonian appetite Pan-heland for Macedonian aggrandisement, the expedition against Asia thus becomes thrust into the series Grecian events, under the Pan-hellenic pretence retaliation for the long past insults of Xerxes. call it a pretence, because it had ceased to be a real Hellenic feeling, and served now two different purposes; first, to ennoble the undertaking in the eyes of Alexander himself, whose mind was very accessible to religious and legendary sentiment, and who willingly identified himself with Agamemnon or Achilles, immortalised as executors of the collective vengeance of Greece for Asiatic insult-next, to assist in keeping the Greeks quiet during his abHe was himself aware that the real sympathies of the Greeks were rather adverse than favourable to his success.

sence.

Alexander's

Apart from this body of extinct sentiment, osten- Analogy of tatiously rekindled for Alexander's purposes, the relation to position of the Greeks in reference to his Asiatic conquests was very much the same as that of the

the Greeks

those of the Emperor

Napoleon

to the Con

German contingents, especially those of the Confederation of the Rhine, who served in the grand federation army with which the Emperor Napoleon invaded

of the

Rhine.

Russia in 1812. They had no public interest in the victory of the invader, which could end only by reducing them to still greater prostration. They were likely to adhere to their leader as long as his power continued unimpaired, but no longer. Yet Napoleon thought himself entitled to reckon upon them as if they had been Frenchmen, and to denounce the Germans in the service of Russia as traitors who had forfeited the allegiance which they owed to him. We find him drawing the same pointed distinction between the Russian and the German prisoners taken, as Alexander made between Asiatic and Grecian prisoners. These Grecian prisoners the Macedonian prince reproached as guilty of treason against the proclaimed statute of collective Hellas, whereby he had been declared general, and the Persian king a public enemy'.

1 Arrian, i. 16, 10; i. 29, 9, about the Grecian prisoners taken at the victory of the Granikus-ὅσους δὲ αὐτῶν αἰχμαλώτους ἔλαβε, τούτους δὲ δήσας ἐν πέδαις, εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀπέπεμψεν ἐργάζεσθαι, ὅτι παρὰ τὰ κοινῇ δόξαντα τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, Ελληνες ὄντες, ἐνάντια τῇ ̔Ελλάδι ὑπὲρ Twv Bapßápov éμáxovтo. Also iii. 23, 15, about the Grecian soldiers serving with the Persians, and made prisoners in Hyrkania-'Adikeîv γὰρ μέγαλα (said Alexander) τοὺς στρατευομένους ἐνάντια τῇ Ἑλλάδι παρὰ τοῖς βαρβάροις παρὰ τὰ δόγματα τῶν Ἑλλήνων.

Toward the end of October 1812, near Moscow, General Winzingerode, a German officer in the Russian service,—with his aide-de-camp a native Russian, Narishkin,-became prisoner of the French. He was brought to Napoleon-" At the sight of that German general, all the secret resentments of Napoleon took fire. Who are you (he exclaimed)? a man without country! When I was at war with the Austrians, I found you in their ranks. Austria has become my ally, and you have entered into the Russian service. You have been one of the warmest instigators of the present war. Nevertheless, you are a native of the Confederation of the Rhine: you are my subject. You are not an ordinary enemy you are a rebel: i have a right to bring you to trial. Gens d'armes, seize this man!' Then addressing the aide-de-camp of Winzingerode, Napoleon said, 'As for you, Count Narishkin, I have