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00:00To be continued...
00:59Civilization, the story of mankind cannot be divorced from the history of war.
01:11War and Civilization looks at man's achievements over 5,000 years, what he has created, what
01:21he has destroyed, and asks, can there be a future without war?
01:30John Keegan is one of the best known and most distinguished military historians of our century.
01:36He has spent a lifetime studying war.
01:39Why men fight?
01:41How men fight?
01:42He has ranged across the globe and through history searching for the answers.
01:49War is an activity probably about 5,000 years old in man's life on Earth.
01:56Originally not a particularly destructive or lethal activity and not very wide-ranging
02:01in its effects.
02:03It's become over five millennia or became, at the beginning of this century, an activity
02:13that's threatened actually to bring civilization to an end.
02:17I think that's what Hiroshima threatened and man stared more or less universal destruction
02:23in the face.
02:28War is collective killing for a collective purpose.
02:32I don't think that you can produce any more refined or elaborate definition.
02:38The skills for this sort of killing have come from man's ability to hunt animals in groups.
02:48Men learn to combine for lethal purposes through hunting.
02:55And they also learn to accept leadership because hunting man seemed to work better if somebody's
03:00in charge.
03:01And this translates into war where men cooperate under a leader to kill other men.
03:14When cave dwellers became farmers and created settled communities, they became vulnerable.
03:21Nomadic raiders saw their crops, their tools, their livestock, their women and tried to take them.
03:29The origins of war lie in theft.
03:32War began when hunters discovered that settled peoples were easy meat, were a form of prey themselves.
03:43And they had things that were valuable.
03:46The settled peoples started to try and defend themselves.
03:51At first, perhaps simply by fortification, by making refuges which raiders couldn't penetrate.
04:01As villages grew into cities, cities into states, and states into empires, conquest led man into battle.
04:15The history of empires is written in blood.
04:22But when early empires overreached themselves, they learned harsh lessons from barbarians at
04:30their borders.
04:35As man embraced the idea of religion, he took up the sword.
04:44Countless wars have been fought in the name of one true God, of Islam, of Christianity.
04:53When the power of a political ideal gripped the people, revolution led them to overthrow their
05:03rulers.
05:07And when one political creed faced off against another, the world faced Armageddon.
05:22This is one of the last places on earth where wars are fought as they were in the beginning.
05:34In the beginning, warfare was simple.
05:37Eyeball to eyeball, one group of men armed with primitive weapons squared off.
05:45They exchanged insults, and then they fought hand to hand.
05:52They stopped when first blood was drawn.
05:58Early war was non-lethal, inconclusive, indecisive.
06:042,500 years ago, the ancient Greeks transformed war into what we know today.
06:13The Greeks would develop a new style of war, which was formal, decisive, and deadly.
06:23The western way of war.
06:37This is the first modern soldier, a hoplite.
06:46He appeared in Greece almost 3,000 years ago.
06:51800 years before Christ, hoplites invented a way of fighting that survives to this day.
06:59A way of fighting that has become the western way of war.
07:05The hoplite story begins on the mainland of ancient Greece.
07:13For hundreds of years, villages fought and squabbled among themselves.
07:18As they fought, they formed alliances.
07:21And as they formed alliances, the villages grew into bigger communities called city-states.
07:28The city-states of Greece included Sparta, Corinth, Thebes,
07:38And the most famous and influential of all, Athens.
07:45The citizens of these city-states were free men who created a vibrant culture of markets, political life, religion, and philosophy.
08:00All of this was possible because they were farmers.
08:04The Greeks were a settled agricultural society based on the idea of private property.
08:10They owned small holdings of between 5 and 15 acres, and they earned their living from growing fruit, cereals, and rearing sheep.
08:21And they were successful.
08:24It was the surplus of crops and food that enabled their culture to develop.
08:29When threatened, the farmers would band together and fight to protect their property and their way of life.
08:38Their most common enemy was a neighboring city-state.
08:42Although the city-states shared a common culture, they often quarreled.
08:48Almost every year, arguments arose over land.
08:52There would be a boundary dispute, and then there would be battle.
08:57And a very special style of warfare developed from these local quarrels.
09:03We should remember they're small communities, so they're going to have inevitably border disputes.
09:08But they have to devise a method that allows it to be decisive and quick,
09:12and allows these farmers to get back to their own farms without anybody getting annihilated.
09:21And that's what hoplite warfare does.
09:23The main goal of ancient Greek warfare was to be quick and decisive.
09:38And that has been the aim of Western military commanders ever since.
09:44The weight of hoplite arms and armor, coupled with the heat of the Greek summer, meant battles were short.
09:53Because both sides had to get back to their crops, battles needed to be decisive.
09:59On the day of battle, the hoplite would get up early to prepare his equipment.
10:19Often, fathers and sons would fight side by side.
10:37Most hoplites had a servant to help prepare for battle.
10:40The hoplite soldiers of Greece were people who wore heavy armor.
10:46And the word hoplite itself derives from the word hopla, which means gear.
10:51They had a rather cumbersome helmet that didn't have a lot of openings for sight or hearing.
10:57And we know that they had a breastplate of 35 pounds, and it would be solid plate,
11:02at least in the first century or two of their appearance.
11:05They had greaves, they had a small secondary sword.
11:09But most importantly, this enormous three-foot wooden shield out of hardwood, perhaps oak.
11:14And the entire ensemble may have weighed in at about 70 pounds.
11:22Ever since the days of the hoplites, soldiers have carried, on average, 70 pounds of equipment into battle.
11:35Even today, modern combat troops carry a pack and rifle weighing about 70 pounds.
11:46Like generations before them, commanders take critical decisions about how that 70 pounds is made up.
11:54Armor versus weapons versus provisions.
11:57The more provisions a soldier carries, the longer he can march and fight.
12:04But more provisions means fewer weapons, lighter armor, and a soldier who is less deadly in battle.
12:12Packing for war always has been a life and death decision.
12:15The hoplite shows heavy armor, few provisions, and heavy lethal weapons.
12:32A hoplite warrior, I think, would be a terrifying thing to look at.
12:35He would have not only his armor from his neck to his waist,
12:39he'd have greaves on his shin, he'd have this enormous shield,
12:42some type of insignia, which could be horrific in itself.
12:47It would have this crest that would bob back and forth,
12:50what we see in the Iliad that frightens small children.
12:53With weapons and armor at the ready,
12:55the hoplites formed a long line, several men deep, of phalanx.
13:01Actually, as an individual fighter, it's true a hoplite would probably be quite vulnerable,
13:06because his shield is round and it would probably not protect his entire body well.
13:09Also, his sword is very short, it's a secondary weapon.
13:14You take that soldier and you put him in a line, perhaps a half a mile long and eight men deep,
13:20and then those disadvantages become advantages, and his shield protects people.
13:25He wears it on the left, it protects the person on his left, he seeks protection on the man on his right.
13:30Ranks one, two and three, their spears reach the enemy and nobody can go through that line of pikes.
13:40It's like no other formation.
13:43In Greek, the word phalanx means roller.
13:47In a hoplite battle, the key to victory was to keep the phalanx rolling.
13:51The phalanx that kept moving forward stood a good chance of victory.
13:57If it stopped or broke ranks, its soldiers were doomed.
14:01The hoplites had a simple strategy for keeping the phalanx together.
14:05In the front row were middle-aged, battle-hardened soldiers.
14:10Behind them were the youngest, least experienced men.
14:13And at the rear, the oldest battle-hardened veterans kept the young ones moving forwards, at sword point if necessary.
14:24The style of warfare dictated the battlefield.
14:28For the phalanx to keep its shape, hoplites had to fight on level ground.
14:33And since the Greek way of war was governed by rules, the battlefield was agreed on in advance.
14:40Where the battle is fought is kind of ironic because usually the disputes arise not over flat, good farmland, but over borderland that's rough and is used for grazing that typically separates one Greek city-state from another.
14:54So I think what we could imagine the course of events would be something like the following.
14:59Somebody comes down from the foothills and says, the Thebans have encroached on our land.
15:04There's an assembly of Athenians. They decide that this is one time too many.
15:10They march over the pass. They take two or three days' rations in their knapsack.
15:15The Thebans know they're coming. They get to a first flat plain across the border.
15:19Both sides see each other. The musters of hoplites are complete.
15:44Hoplites are complete.
15:47On the loose end of the road.
15:49One took the red front.
15:50Both sides see each other and have a name on this.
15:52There was last lasted longer.
15:54Three or so near an end of the thousand stages.
15:58We had this two years and said, thekm fame party which thì they would take on time to do.
16:00Each man would arrange in their preset place in the phalanx.
16:18They would look at the enemy.
16:23Sometimes they might look at the enemy for 10 minutes and charge.
16:26Sometimes it might be a half an hour we hear.
16:28In some cases, it might be an hour.
16:33It's the type of warfare like none other in the world
16:36where people consciously must think
16:38what's going to happen to them in the next 10, 15, 20 minutes.
16:44There's no skirmishing.
16:46There's no guerrilla tactics.
16:47There's no night tactics.
16:49Chance is pretty well out of the picture.
16:52The chance is simply how tough you are
16:53and how willing you are to stand your ground.
16:58In top right battle, the rules of war ensured a fair fight.
17:19Each side sent heralds to make sure the rules were observed
17:23and to agree on who had won.
17:29The ancient poet Homer described the tense moments before battle.
17:34They made a living fence, spear to spear, shield to shield,
17:39helmet to helmet, and man to man.
17:43The spears they brandished in their strong hands were interlaced.
17:46Their hearts were set on battle.
17:49culpties, O.F.
17:51fighters, if they could definitely stand their hardest
17:52against a weapon.
17:53The pavements of the world
17:56must go to force,ểu
18:13Trusting shield against shield, they shoved and fought and killed and fell.
18:39There was no shouting, nor was there silence.
18:42But the strange noise that wrath and battle together will produce.
18:50Inside the phalanx, a swirl of dust, blood and twisting bodies blinded the hoplite.
18:57His helmet muffled all sound.
19:00He could react only to the press of men about him.
19:07Sometimes brother killed brother.
19:10Being thus pressed and crowded together, he who had either drawn his sword or directed
19:17his lance could neither restore it again, nor put his sword up.
19:22With these weapons, they wounded their own men as they happened to coming away, and they
19:28were dying by mere contact with each other.
19:31So, let's go.
19:38Let's go.
19:40When one side broke through an opponent's phalanx the end was swift, those who turned
20:09and fled were cut down from behind.
20:29This violent, deadly, decisive way of fighting still affects how wars are fought today.
20:35The citizens of Athens, Thebes, and Sparta fought each other constantly, but when they
20:51were threatened by outsiders they would bury their differences, join forces, and march
20:56off to fight their common foe.
21:00In 490 BC that foe was the greatest empire on earth, Persia.
21:06The shipping lanes of the Aegean Sea are all that separate Greece from her worst enemy in
21:17the 5th century BC.
21:19The Persian Empire, the mightiest in the world, is angered by constant Greek attacks on its
21:30coast.
21:34Persia is vast, as big as the United States.
21:40Greece is no bigger than New York State.
21:45Persia decides to teach the Greeks a lesson.
21:48As her mighty forces set sail, the Greek way of war is about to be tested.
21:56In the greatest sea battle of the ancient world, the Greeks use their custom-made fighting ship,
22:02the Trireme.
22:03But first, the Greeks and Persians will fight on land.
22:15In 490 BC, an army of 25,000 Persians landed at the Bay of Marathon, confident of victory.
22:2911,000 hoplites had left Athens to do battle at Marathon.
22:35While the city was undefended, a Persian fleet approached Athens.
22:41The toughest troops in Greece, the Spartans, refused to help their Athenian neighbors.
22:48Panic gripped the city.
22:52The Athenian phalanx must win at Marathon and win quickly.
22:57The security of Athens is at stake.
23:01The hoplites stared at the Persians a mile away across the plain.
23:11Then, they broke into a run.
23:21The Persians thought it suicidal madness.
23:24The Naught that has escaped the port of the
23:48The assault was so brutal, it carried the day.
24:056,400 Persians lay dead.
24:09But Athens was still at risk.
24:13The Persian navy was still closing on Athens.
24:16A message to resist at all costs had to get through to the city.
24:22But Athens and Marathon are 26 miles apart.
24:26The Greeks sent for the only man who might get there in time, a runner named Pheidippides.
24:33Pheidippides set off on his legendary run, the very first Marathon.
24:39As he delivered his message, he died of exhaustion.
24:43But he didn't die in vain.
24:45Athens took heart and held on until the army of Marathon returned.
24:53When the Persians saw them, they turned and fled.
24:57In this first great clash between east and west, between Persians and Greeks, the Greek way of war triumphed.
25:06Decisive action won the day.
25:08In thanksgiving for victory, the Athenians built the magnificent treasury at Delphi.
25:17Ten years after Marathon, Persia launched a second invasion.
25:21A Greek oracle foretold, the wooden wall alone shall not fall.
25:32The Athenian commander, Themistocles, interpreted wooden wall to mean ships, fighting ships.
25:39The Athenians built a fleet of state-of-the-art fighting ships called Triremes.
25:46The Triremes was the fastest ship afloat.
26:01Powered by 170 oarsmen, it had a top speed of 11 knots, or 12 and a half miles per hour.
26:09His main weapon was a giant timber, cased in bronze, that projected from the prowl.
26:24With this, the Trireme would simply ram any ship that got in its way.
26:30The fleet of Triremes was completed just in time.
26:34In 480 BC, the Persian emperor Xerxes approached Greece with the biggest army and navy, yet assembled 200,000 men.
26:47In a two-pronged attack, the Persian army attacked Greece from the north,
26:53while its feet approached Athens near the island of Salamis.
27:04As the Persian troops marched south, they found their way barred by 7,000 hoplites at Thermopylae,
27:15a narrow pass that was the key to Greece.
27:19At the core of the hoplite force were 300 of the most feared and disciplined troops in all Greece,
27:26the Spartans.
27:29Their king, Leonidas, was in command.
27:32A Persian was sent on horseback to observe what the troops were doing.
27:42Some of them were stripped for exercise, while others were combing their hair.
27:51No one attempted to catch him, or took the least notice of him.
27:56The spy watched them in astonishment and reported back.
28:00The Persian generals laughed at the Greeks with their absurd notions of warfare.
28:07Their very presence seemed mere impudent and reckless folly.
28:11Enraged by the calm of the Spartans, the Persian commander threw his army against them.
28:23The Persian attack against Leonidas lasted four days.
28:28The Spartans fought until their swords broke, and then fought on with their hands and teeth,
28:33until Leonidas and every one of his men lay dead.
28:40As Xerxes and his Persian army marched on Athens,
28:43the Athenians put their faith in their wooden wall and withdrew to the island of Salamis.
28:49Then, as now, Salamis was a thriving port.
28:56Where these vessels lie peacefully at anchor,
29:00800 Persian warships assembled for battle.
29:03On the morning of September 23rd, 480 B.C.,
29:14Xerxes, Persian emperor, king of kings,
29:17sat on a golden throne atop a hill just west of Athens.
29:25Beneath him sparkled the narrow straits of Salamis.
29:28He confidently watched his mighty fleet, sure of victory.
29:38But Themistocles, commander of the Athenian fleet, was well prepared.
29:45Outnumbered two to one, he planned to draw the Persians into the narrow waters
29:50where their huge fleet could not maneuver.
29:52Themistocles held back his triremes in the Straits of Salamis,
30:01daring the Persians to attack.
30:02The Persians took the bait and sailed into the narrows.
30:24Themistocles gave the order,
30:29and the Athenians rode hard toward the Persians.
30:45Each captain steered his craft straight on one another.
30:49The whole force went down, broken, when ship rammed ship.
30:53With splintered ships now locked together,
30:56the top decks became a battleground
30:59where the Greeks fought the Persians in bloody hand-to-hand combat.
31:05They might have been tuna or netted fish,
31:09shores and reefs filled up with our dead.
31:11For they kept on, spearing and gutting us with splintered oars and bits of wreckage,
31:22while moaning and screams drowned out the sea noise,
31:25till night's black face closed to go in.
31:33In an eerie echo of the past,
31:36the hulks of modern steel ships rest rotting
31:39where the wrecks of the Persian fleet lay splintered two and a half thousand years ago.
31:46The Greek tactic of decisive engagement on carefully chosen ground
31:50had worked on land at Marathon.
31:54At Salamis, it worked at sea.
31:57The Greek way of war was poised to take over the world.
32:02This face has not been seen since before the birth of Christ.
32:11A deep wound slices down from the forehead,
32:14through the eye, and into the cheek.
32:19Reconstruction of the face began with this ancient skull.
32:26Medical artist Richard Neve used forensic techniques
32:29for identifying modern-day murder victims
32:32from fragments of their skulls.
32:36This skull comes from an ancient burial site in northern Greece.
32:47A tomb on the site contained a 2,000-year-old skull
32:51and a skeleton archaeologists believed was that of Philip of Macedon,
32:56one of the ancient world's greatest commanders.
33:05The main clue was a nick in the bone over the right eye.
33:11We know that Philip II was wounded in the right eye by an arrow.
33:17Here we can see the relationship of the damage to the upper border of the eye socket here
33:24and the cheekbone here.
33:28One can think of a barbed arrow coming down from above.
33:34It's going to come crashing down here, damage the bone,
33:38tear across the eyeball, and then fracture the cheekbone here.
33:41Quite clearly, with an injury like that, that man is going to be blind in that eye.
33:47So that is the first sort of important thing that one can see
33:51when you reassemble all these pieces of the bone.
33:54The evidence fits a description of Philip losing an eye
33:57to a stray arrow during a siege.
34:01The account says Philip accepted the loss of an eye
34:05in exchange for domination and power.
34:10Philip's quest for power began in Macedonia,
34:14a wild barbarian kingdom north of the Greek city-states.
34:19Over 20 years, Philip developed a new type of army.
34:25He understood the power of the Greek pike square, or phalanx,
34:30and placed it at the heart of his own army.
34:35Philip was one of the shrewdest military organizers in history.
34:40He didn't just borrow the phalanx, he took it one step further.
34:45To do so, he looked to the rolling hills of Macedonia.
34:51The nobles of the north were exceptional horsemen.
34:56Philip took these men and turned them into cavalry.
35:00From the island of Crete, he recruited fierce tribesmen,
35:10famous for their expertise as archers.
35:13He added specialist warriors,
35:15whose skill with javelin and sling
35:17could disrupt enemy formations as they assembled for battle.
35:23Putting these units together,
35:25Philip created an army that was far more flexible
35:28than any of the Greek city-states had mustered.
35:34But above all,
35:35Philip increased the deadliness of the phalanx.
35:39The balance between arms and armor
35:42was tipped heavily toward arms.
35:46Philip reduced the size of shields.
35:49He lengthened the spear, or sarissa,
35:51from eight feet to Fort Dean.
36:06With its spears lowered for battle,
36:08the lethal points of the first five ranks
36:10extended beyond the front of the phalanx.
36:13In battle, an enemy soldier
36:16would find ten spearheads coming at him.
36:19Don't run for the fighter's!
36:28Throughout the field,
36:32If you saw that in the fight,
36:33there was no lower chase of a liberation.
36:34So this is luck of how they sit into a gym.
36:35It was really excellent!
36:36You could easily have a мечe here,
36:37but I should be ho asset.
36:38Faris into the force of the earth...
36:39The weapon of the mostilax bike
36:40and the reason they wish manera
36:41do not do not fall.
36:41It was ağini restaurant!
36:42However,
36:43a village said,
36:43In organized storm in the air,
36:44it is super historic.
36:45THE END
37:15Moving with rank upon rank of pikemen pressing each other forward, the phalanx developed an unstoppable momentum.
37:25Anything that got in its way faced wall after wall of sharp, thrusting iron.
37:41The Macedonian phalanx skewered its enemy like pieces of meat.
37:49The hardest part of battle was to keep its spearheads free of enemy dead.
37:59Philip revolutionized warfare not only because of the way he taught his troops to fight, he also paid them and trained them all year round.
38:09Unlike their Greek neighbors, Philip's army campaigned in all seasons.
38:15They could march 20 to 30 miles a day with their heavy equipment.
38:21No other army could match them.
38:25This was a professional army, a permanent standing army.
38:31Philip's army was unstoppable.
38:33In 20 years of campaigning, he defeated the tribes of Thessaly and Thrace, conquered much of the Balkans, northern Greece, and the European parts of modern Turkey.
38:45But the great prize lay to the south, Philip wanted the rich old city states of Greece.
38:53He marched south through the pass of Thermopylae.
38:57On the flat plain of Chironia in the heart of Greece, a hoplite army stood in his way.
39:03Philip's new army was to meet the best of the old.
39:08Fighting at Philip's side was a promising young commander, his son Alexander.
39:19338 BC, the Battle of Chironia.
39:25Across this plain, 50,000 Athenians and Thebans faced Philip's Macedonian army of 32,000.
39:42The fate of all Greece hung on the outcome.
39:48On the left flank, Philip's son Alexander commanded the cavalry.
39:54Only 18 years old, Alexander had his eye on his father's throne.
40:03The Thebans advanced, led by their elite force, the Sacred Band, a unit of 300 homosexual lovers sworn to fight to the death.
40:28Philip ordered his phalanx to roll forward.
40:38Then he feigned a retreat.
41:06He lured the Athenians forward until a gap opened between them and the Thebans.
41:15Alexander gave the order.
41:17A single headlong cavalry charge broke the enemy long.
41:21With 6,000 dead, the Athenians turned and ran for their lives.
41:33The Thebans lost 20,000.
41:36The Sacred Band was destroyed to a man.
41:45True to their word, the Sacred Band had fought side by side to the death.
41:51Philip so admired their courage that he approved a monument to commemorate their sacrifice.
42:10With victory at Chironia, Philip was ruler of Greece.
42:19But just two years later, he was dead, assassinated.
42:22Alexander inherited the throne of Greece and with it his father's most ambitious dream, to destroy Persia.
42:41With his new Macedonian army, he had the means to achieve it.
43:06One of Alexander's army was the Companion Cavalry.
43:11Its officers lived together as brothers, sharing risks and competing against each other in courage and military daring.
43:22Courage was something Alexander possessed in abundance.
43:27He led from the front.
43:31In his merciless treatment of the Thebans, Philip's son, Alexander, showed what would become his hallmark.
43:39Total annihilation of the enemy.
43:41He was a ruthless person who would kill his close friends if the mood took him.
43:49He was also very contemptuous of his own safety if he felt it necessary to risk his life.
43:54Nine times wounded, once the last time, almost to death.
43:57He was not a person to go drinking with on a Saturday night, literally.
44:03Because, of course, it was all at a drinking session that he did kill one of his closest friends,
44:09Clystus, by thrusting a spear through his chest because Clystus had said something he didn't like.
44:14Over three years, from 334 to 331 BC, Alexander beat the Persian army at Granicus, Issus, and finally at Arbella in modern Iraq.
44:29Alexander, master of Greece, was now ruler of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria.
44:49Ahead of him lay an epic campaign of conquest which would take him to Afghanistan and India,
44:55far beyond the boundaries of the known world.
44:59To this day, no other warlord has conquered an area larger than the Empire of Alexander in so short a time.
45:09And throughout his reign, the core of Alexander's army came from his homeland of Macedonia.
45:17No one had ever tackled the problem of feeding and supplying an army so far from home.
45:23Alexander's genius was to be both a great fighter and the father of modern logistics.
45:30He kept his army close to the coast, supplying them from a flotilla of ships that followed the army's advance.
45:38Once supplied, Alexander's men had to carry their own provisions.
45:43If Alexander caught them using ox carts to carry food or equipment, he would burn the cart and slaughter the ox.
45:49An ox could only pull enough supplies to feed itself for eight days, let alone carry food for his army.
45:56In Alexander's time, he was driven to a certain extent by the availability of logistic support, whether water, whether grain, whether forage, whatever it was, in the direction in which he went.
46:10Now, to take an example, there was some question as to which route he was going to take. Would he go down the Euphrates Valley or would he go along the north?
46:19And for logistic reasons, he went across the top and then down the eastern side of the Tigris River.
46:23The reason was that the grass was growing along the northern side where it was a bit higher and a bit cooler and therefore grass didn't burn off.
46:32And also, the grain there was in undefended villages which he could get rather than Euphrates Valley where there was no grass because it burned off during the summer and all the grain was in defended locations.
46:42That is, I think, an example where logistic considerations drove an operational decision.
46:47Nothing has changed. No matter how good an army is, it can't operate without arms, equipment, and food.
47:00Preparations for the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II went on for months.
47:08When the time came to fight, it was the last and shortest stage of an enormous logistical operation.
47:14The weapons of war have changed, but the lessons of Alexander's campaign in Persia remain valid today.
47:23When forced away from the coast in his supply dumps, Alexander followed rivers for fresh water.
47:31He often sent messengers ahead with bribes and promises of clemency for those who would provision his troops.
47:38As he marched his troops farther from home than any army before, logistics and supply became a matter of life and death.
47:49The arithmetic is simple. If 100,000 men run out of food, 100,000 die.
47:57Nowhere is managing supplies more crucial than during a siege. A besieging army is static. Local food sources soon run out.
48:08Termasos in Asia Minor sits high on a mountain peak. The only approach is through narrow passes that are easily defended.
48:27Alexander came upon the city during his journey through Anatolia. He didn't like what he saw.
48:35The city was isolated. Alexander knew its supplies would eventually run out.
48:43But at high altitude and in difficult terrain, so would his. The gain would not match the investment. Wisely, he withdrew.
48:53Ten years after he abandoned the siege at Termasos, Alexander's empire covered virtually all the known world.
49:04The lesser commander might have lost everything at the very start in a hopeless assault on Termasos.
49:12Alexander was one of the boldest generals in history and one of the shrewdest.
49:17In the entire history of warfare, no man has matched the achievements of Alexander the Great.
49:26For more than 2,000 years, his legend has obsessed the greatest generals.
49:32Julius Caesar wept because he couldn't match Alexander's conquests.
49:38Napoleon thought you couldn't understand war without studying Alexander.
49:42Even Adolf Hitler professed his admiration for the king of Macedonia.
49:49At 33, Alexander was dead and his name passed into legend.
49:55In his short, brilliant life, Alexander took his army further east than any European army would travel until the age of gunpowder.
50:04But he had never been west. There, the next great power would emerge.
50:11the eighth ہے of man was born in the 30s.
50:12The third boat died.
50:13The third boat står into the city of Montreal who��더illion on stage.
50:14The fourth boat took his典 건 Canada at Ha bitcoin and maybe 18 feet.
50:16By the 25th boatарif that struggled by the discovery of men as a anarchist's deadNotes
50:19They allraktized the neighbourhood of derselij brothers who took the world at a university.
50:20It was from the s
50:23…
50:24…
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