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View Full Version : [Historical] How might a small army survive a journey from Afghanistan to Turkey?



Kiero
2018-03-30, 09:14 AM
I was reading Ghost on the Throne, an interesting account of the period following the death of Alexander the Great, which featured something I'd not heard of before. During Alexander's conquests, he settled a load of Greek mercenaries in Baktria and Sogdiana (what is now Afghanistan/Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan). When rumours of his death came out after the battle of Hydaspes in 326BC (where he was wounded), around 3,000 mercenaries used that as the cue to flee their posts and return to the west.

This is written about by both Diodous Siculus (Book XVII 99.5-6):


For many days the king lay helpless under his treatment,79 and the Greeks who had been settled in Bactria and Sogdiana, who had long borne unhappily their sojourn among peoples of another race and now received word that the king had died of his wounds, revolted against the Macedonians. 6 They formed a band of three thousand men and underwent great hardship on their homeward route. Later they were massacred by the Macedonians after Alexander's death.

Emphasis mine - I think he's conflating this with a later and larger revolt after 323BC when Alexander actually died, and Peithon's soldiers murdered the surrendering mercenaries to steal their stuff. He writes about that in Book XVIII 7.1-9. Quintus Curtius (9.7.16-24) by contrast says they made it home.

So focusing on the first revolt (in 326BC), this a repeat of Xenophon's Anabasis in a later era, but it's barely been written about at all. 3000 mercenaries (and we have to assume plus whatever family and camp followers they brought/accrued along the way) walked some 3000 miles across often hostile territory to make it to Hellas.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how such a journey might have been possible, in the absence of any sources to explain it beyond the fact that it happened? How would you move that many people through several satrapies and survive intact to reach Turkey?

jayem
2018-03-30, 10:01 AM
I was reading Ghost on the Throne
So focusing on the first revolt (in 326BC), this a repeat of Xenophon's Anabasis in a later era, but it's barely been written about at all. 3000 mercenaries (and we have to assume plus whatever family and camp followers they brought/accrued along the way) walked some 3000 miles across often hostile territory to make it to Hellas.
...
Does anyone have any thoughts on how such a journey might have been possible, in the absence of any sources to explain it beyond the fact that it happened? How would you move that many people through several satrapies and survive intact to reach Turkey?
You say it's "a repeat of the Xenophon's Persian Expedition" (although it's quite a bit further, about 3 times as far as the post battle bit of the Anabasis, but better prepared), and Alexanders army had also gone back and forth.

So I guess either of these could be used as first guesses.
Perhaps a mix of moving very quickly where you've caused upset (assuming 3,000 is most of the settlements, you've got a good head start from anything behind). Being very polite where you haven't, and either recruiting or pretending to "just be redeployed".

Kiero
2018-03-30, 10:52 AM
You say it's "a repeat of the Xenophon's Persian Expedition" (although it's quite a bit further, about 3 times as far as the post battle bit of the Anabasis, but better prepared), and Alexanders army had also gone back and forth.

So I guess either of these could be used as first guesses.
Perhaps a mix of moving very quickly where you've caused upset (assuming 3,000 is most of the settlements, you've got a good head start from anything behind). Being very polite where you haven't, and either recruiting or pretending to "just be redeployed".

That's fair; thematically it's like the Anabasis, but as you say the total distance is much greater, even if the latter part of the journey is probably the same. They will have the roads/routes they used coming out as options open to them along the way. Though as I understand it, large bodies like theirs only went eastwards to replenish garrisons, they didn't tend to come back again. Any satrap who's lands they cross isn't going to be very impressed with having a large body of men not under their command tramping around.

Given how much larger the second rising was (around 23,000 men), I don't think that 3,000 represents anything more than a minority of the settlers. Greeks weren't the only settlers in the region either; there were many Hellenised Iranians and others (Babylonians were quite common garrison troops out in the east). So there could be the danger of pursuit from behind them as well.