7- MAJOR-GENZEAL SIR GEORGE K. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF^ OX THE 



Tvre and thence to the upper waters of the Euphrates. Darius had 

 meantime approached him with a \'iew to dividing the Empire, 

 leaving the western portion to the Conqueror, but Alexander 

 would have all or none. Xor can we wholly attribute this to 

 ambition and vainglory. It is more than probable that he saw 

 that the conflict was one between two distinct ideals, viz., of 

 mihtarism and liberty, and that compromise was impossible. 

 Darius then gathered his armies once more, and prepared for 

 battle in Mesoj^otamia, where he hoped to dehver a crushing 

 blow on the invader. At Arbela, to the east of the Tigris Valley, 

 the great and final battle between the Greeks and Persians took 

 place, and again Alexander won an overwhelming victory againjst 

 tremendous odds. Darius fled towards the X.E. mountains. 



Pushing on to Babylon, which surrendered without resistance. 

 Alexander reformed his army, made a fresh base, and after due 

 rest for the troops pushed on to Susa, Persepohs, and in pursuit 

 of Darius. Through Persia he pursued the fugitive, at one period 

 performing wonderful marches of endurance, at another time — 

 indeed often — showing marvellous skill in mountain warfare, 

 but he was -baulked of his capture of the Persian king by the 

 murder of that fallen monarch near the S.E. shores of the Caspian. 



From this period, for the next two years. Alexander carried on 

 a series of the most marvellous operations in history, pushing on 

 to and crossing the Oxus and Jaxartes, then coming south to the 

 modern Herat and Kandahar. Thence he marched to Kabul, 

 wintered there, pushed forward to the Hindu Kush and advanced 

 on India, not by the comjDaratively easy route of the Kabul 

 river, but by infinitely more -difficult passes and defiles farther 

 north, ultimately debouching on the Peshawur Valley, crossing 

 the Indus above Attock, pushing through the tangled ravines 

 near the modern Rawalpindi to the Jhelum, where he defeated 

 Porus in a battle showing consummate skill and leadership, 

 then farther east to the watershed between the Indus and the 

 Ganges, where his Macedonians refused to advance farther and 

 he had to turn. From a military point of view these campaigns 

 are full of instruction and interest. For our present purpose, 

 however, they need only a brief allusion, because it would appear 

 evident that after the fall of Darius, Alexander seems to have 

 somewhat changed his aim, which no longer appears to have been 

 the liberation of civihsation from the tvranny of the Persian rule, 

 but the aggrandisement of himself as the supreme war lord. 

 He assumed Oriental pomp and customs, and there seems to be 



