*gasp* OK, I've reached the point where I need a really excellent book that focuses, and hopefully elucidates, Alexander's battles, insofar as we know. Does anyone have any really good reccys for this sub-strata of Alexandriana?

And also - when I read about Alexander's battles - not just the show-pieces of Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, Hypaspes - but the lot, all the small campaigns, the guerrilla wars, the dozens and dozens and dozens of big and small engagements - I remember reading that he never lost one. And I can't think of one he ever DID lose, in 11 years of unremitting warfare across the globe.

Was there EVER such a military genius in history? I thought the world of Caesar, but Caesar doesn't even come CLOSE. And what are the elements that made Alexander unbeatable, literally?

A few off the top of my head:

a) He had the rare ability to recon so thoroughly before a battle that he hardly ever fought without knowing the terrain and being able to imaginatively put his proposed battle into that.

b) His supply lines and organization were just unbelievable. How many times I've read, in the Civil War, where a general would order up pontoons to cross a river and they didn't arrive, were late, were too small, whatever, and the campaign fails. Except for the desert march, that never seems to have happened to Alexander.

c) I remember reading about Robert E. Lee, that he had the ability to foresee so accurately what his opponent's tactical choices would be, that he could match them as soon as they were made. Alexander a zillion times more so (although no one beats me in admiration for General Lee, I think).

d) Celeritas. Caesar always used speed to get there fustest with the mostest (as Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest allegedly said). But Alexander makes Caesar's legions seem like tortoises. Time and again you read of his armies marching 30-40 miles a day, day after day, right through the night, whatever. Unbelievable!

e) I read that Phillip was the first Greek to make really creative use of the evolving machinery of siege enginery - not just waiting to starve them out, but taking a strongly aggressive posture using catapults, siege towers, the lot. It seems to me Alexander took this whole subject and ran with it like the wind. It reminds me of the kind of engineering genius Caesar's men showed at Alesia and his other set-piece sieges - a combination of technical mastery and innovative tactics as well.


I'm sure there are many more, but these strike me now. But a good book by someone more expert would help ;)