I have heard it said that Alexander the Great was the most outstanding military figure in the history of the world, and if he had not died young, he would have been the first commander-in-chief ever to hope to unify the world.
From the perspective of Western history, Alexander the Great was indeed the pinnacle of an era, and the Alexander Empire he established at least marked the "return to the light" of Greek civilization.
Before his birth, the whole of Greece, including the Kingdom of Macedonia, was in decline.
The two great Greek states, Athens and Sparta, had the ambition to unify Greece, but due to their equal strength, Athens and Sparta fought each other for many years, and both sides were defeated, and neither of them was able to complete the unification of Greece.
At this time, the Persians in the southwestern part of the Iranian plateau, under the leadership of Cyrus II, established the Persian Empire in 550 BC, conquered the Neo-Babylonian kingdom and the Egyptian kingdom successively, and by the time of Darius I had established an empire spanning Asia, Africa and Europe.
In its heyday, the Persian Empire launched a war against Greece, making the situation in Greece very dangerous.
At this time, the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta had to unite below the offensive and won two Victories in the Persian-Greek War.
Although the Greeks won two consecutive victories, they also suffered heavy losses, the old city-state system was destroyed by war, and they were always facing the next attack of the Persian Empire.
In this predicament, the Kingdom of Macedonia, a regime considered to be the marginalization of Greek civilization, under the leadership of Philip II, completed the great cause of unifying Greece, which really hit the Greeks in the face.
Why is the Kingdom of Macedonia on the brink of Greek civilization?
Macedonians live in a place that is either backed by mountains or by the sea, suitable for animal husbandry and agriculture, in a remote corner, in a long-term backward state, in the eyes of those greek city-states, it is completely inferior to the rural people, and even many Greeks call them foreign barbarians.
It is estimated that even the Macedonians themselves did not have a good feeling for Greek civilization at that time, and in the Persian-Greek War, Macedonia was attached to the Persian Empire and joined the conquest of Greece.
After philip II came to power, the kingdom of Macedonia under Philip II, after painstaking management, strengthened the royal power, carried out a series of reforms, and soon led to the rise of the kingdom of Macedonia, especially Philip II established a standing army loyal to him personally, and created a very strong Macedonian phalanx, which made the Macedonian kingdom rise rapidly.
Philip II's successor, Alexander the Great, was a genius military commander who, after succeeding to the throne at the age of 20, quickly stabilized the order of Greece and in 335 BC formed a crusade army of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, defeating the powerful Persian Empire with few victories along the way.
It was not until 330 BC that the Persian army, which claimed to be a million troops, was completely defeated and a powerful empire was successfully established across Europe, Asia and Africa.
To not acknowledge alexander the great's toughness is to be completely ignorant of history, but to say that Alexander almost unified the world would be a bit of an over-boast, and it cannot be said that Alexander the Great defeated Persia and thought that he was invincible in the world.
Although Persia was once very powerful, it did not form its own cultural system, that is, it was big but not strong.
In a war, it is often won by absolute numbers, and the battle is chaotic, such as the Battle of Marathon in the Persian-Greek War, where the Persians were superior in numbers, but they were defeated by the inferior Athenian heavy infantry.
Philip II and Alexander were able to unify Greece and defeat the Persian Empire entirely by improving the Macedonian phalanx of Greek heavy infantry.
With this technological superiority, it was possible to crush the whole of Greece, integrate all of Greece, and then easily defeat the numerically superior but more chaotic enemy with a strict Macedonian phalanx, which at that time can be said to be a tactical innovation.
However, Alexander the Great at his peak was still a long way from unifying the world, especially at that time, East Asian China was not solved by the Macedonian phalanx.
Coincidentally, many scholars believe that Alexander the Great at that time intended to continue the crusade and attack China.
After defeating the Persian Empire, Alexander pursued Darius III and entered the Rest, which was killed by his men, but Alexander did not withdraw his troops, but continued eastward, entering the Khots mountains on the border between present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan in 329 BC (bordering the Pamir Plateau in Xinjiang, China) to the Syr Darya River in Central Asia.
Continuing to the east a little, it will enter the territory of what is now Xinjiang in China, and some people say that Alexander's destination at that time was China, but unfortunately he went wrong before he ran to fight India, of course, this hypothesis is not valid, before Emperor Wu of han, the Central Plains of China failed to fully open up the connection with Central Asia.
So, if Alexander insisted on attacking China in 329 BC, could he sweep through the Warring States Seven Heroes at that time?
First of all, let me tell you that in 329 BC, who was in charge of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States?
The State of Qin was King Huiwen of Qin, the State of Qi was king of Qiwei, the state of Chu was king of Huai, the state of Wei was king of Wei, the state of Korea was king Xuanhui of Han, the state of Zhao was king of Wuling of Zhao, and the state of Yan was the king of Yanyi.
This year is really a meeting of stars, in addition to the King of Yan and the King of Han pulling a little crotch, the other five monarchs have also done something, half of the wonderful war history of the Warring States, basically occurred in this period.
Therefore, it is really not the right time for Alexander to come, none of these kings are given in vain, and any one of them can be found for a while.
Alexander relied on nothing more than the mighty power of the Macedonian phalanx, a refinement of the traditional Greek heavily armored army.
The basic formation is a 16-man column armed with a 6-meter long gun, with cavalry and light infantry in a loose formation to cover the coordination, and each branch is organically combined into a primitive multi-service mixed unit.
The Macedonian phalanx consisted of four main classes of troops, heavy infantry, light infantry, cavalry and auxiliaries.
At the heart of the entire phalanx was the standing soldiers (heavy armor) carrying Macedonian spears, relying on strict discipline and working together in unison.
Light infantry are light armored soldiers, with good mobility, used to protect heavy armor infantry phalanxes.
The cavalry, armed with a Macedonian spear, threw it out as they charged, and then fought with their swords
In addition, there are auxiliary soldiers with javelins and bows and arrows.
As we all know, there are advantages and disadvantages between the branches of the armed forces, so there is a relationship of restraint, according to the battlefield situation, flexible adjustment of the arms, it should be said that the Macedonian phalanx has done quite well in this regard.
In my recent global historical multi-civilization strategy mobile game "Awakening of Nations", I have a deeper understanding of the relationship between classes, and this game is a good embodiment and restoration of the class confrontation mechanism on the real battlefield.
What is different from previous games is that many of the previous strategy games, most of them have only a few classes, and "Awakening of Nations" is powerful, he has multiple civilizations himself, and each civilization has its own unique classes, which makes people have more understanding of complex battlefields.
For example, the Chinese civilization I chose, there are infantry, archers and cavalry, only archers, but also divided into ordinary archers, and composite archers, cavalry is also divided into light cavalry and heavy cavalry.
If some students still don't understand the confrontation relationship between the classes, they can simulate the practice in the game, so that they can understand it more intuitively.
Under this advanced organization, it has to be said that in the plains, few troops can break such a phalanx.
Moreover, Alexander was more adept at using flanking diagonal attack tactics, which were simply when the Macedonian heavy infantry was glued to the enemy and immediately launched a flanking raid with heavy cavalry.
It should be said that during the Warring States period in the same period, China's army was not yet fully professionalized, most of them were soldiers and peasants, soldiers when fighting wars, and household farming when they did not fight wars, and there were only a small part of the professional army in each country.
Therefore, the same number of Chinese troops fighting against the Macedonian phalanx is completely a pebble, and it is not large to win, and it is estimated that Wei Wuzu of the State of Wei can fight hard with the Macedonians.
It can be said that the development of different civilizations to different stages is different, and Europeans do not pay attention to the development of agriculture, while urban civilization develops rapidly, and it is very normal for professional armies to appear.
However, it should be noted that the macedonian heavy cavalry can only be killed in war, and does not have the form of cavalry combat that we often see, and before the advent of horse riding tools such as saddles and stirrups, the combat effectiveness of cavalry was very limited.
Before the Chinese Qin Dynasty, the cavalry only played the role of reconnaissance, delivery of letters, and transportation, even if applied to combat, it was also the cavalry riding to the place, dismounting to fight, until the Han Dynasty saddles and stirrups appeared one after another, the cavalry gradually had combat effectiveness.
At that time, the Western cavalry did not have the ability to complete a series of charging and killing maneuvers on horseback without stirrups, and there are sources that when Europeans saw the Hun cavalry, they were surprised to write: "The special feature of the Huns' saddle is that it has a wooden bracket that is two heads high." In this way, no matter how the horse runs, the knights can sit firmly on the horse's back. ”
The Huns in the mouths of Europeans are not the Xiongnu of the Qin and Han Dynasties, but the Huns who swept through Europe in the 5th century AD and made the Western Roman Empire exist in name only, which was called "God's Whip" by Europeans and smoked Europeans.
There has always been controversy in historians as to where the Huns came from, but I actually think that the Huns were a new mixed nomadic people formed by the Huns who were constantly beaten westward during the Han Dynasty and some other ethnic groups in Central Asia.
A historian once had an interesting saying: "When you get on the bus, you may be a yellow person, but when you get off the car, you are no longer a yellow person." ”
This shows that when Chinese cavalry tactics were exported to Europe, all European cavalry were vulnerable, and this historical law was again manifested in the later Mongol Expedition to the West.
When I was playing "Awakening of All Nations", I also found this problem, at the beginning, I developed a cavalry, but the combat effectiveness was not high, resulting in my total combat strength not improving, and later I found stirrups and other skills in scientific and technological research, and the combat effectiveness of cavalry increased rapidly.
In this game, not only the stirrups can improve the combat effectiveness of the cavalry, including plate armor, defensive formations and other systems can improve the combat effectiveness of the cavalry, so that the perfect restoration of the soldier's upgrade from the equipment to the weapon.
From this logic, the heavy armored cavalry of the Macedonian period without stirrups was not strong in combat effectiveness, and the so-called mobility was general, so that the core of the Macedonian phalanx was still the position warfare of the armored infantry.
This barbaric mode of warfare existed only before the Spring and Autumn Period in China, and by the Warring States period, it had long been eliminated, and the philosophy of war had long since left Europe a few streets away.
The fatal disadvantage of the Macedonian phalanx is that the front is relatively rigid, while the two wings and sides are relatively weak, as long as the two wings are broken, the soldiers in the spear array are waiting to be stabbed by hand.
Because the Macedonian phalanx is dominated by heavily armored infantry and cavalry, it has poor mobility and cannot withstand the devastation of mobile warfare, especially in the face of dense arrow arrays, which are weak in the face of dense arrow arrays, and are almost powerless to fight back in the face of light cavalry archers or infantry shooting groups.
As early as the Athenian heavy armored infantry array, encountered the attack of crossbows, there was no way, had to choose to retreat.
Pay attention to the key points, the trick to restrain the Macedonian phalanx is the word "ride" and "shoot", and the best thing in East Asian history is "riding" and "shooting", which consumes the enemy in sports warfare.
The greatest contribution of King Wuling of Zhao's life, which appeared above, was to carry out the military reform of "Hufu Riding and Shooting", because at that time, Chinese did not wear pants, riding was difficult, so he learned Hu people, put on his pants, and then rode and shot.
The reason why King Wuling of Zhao carried out this kind of military reform was because he saw that the Central Plains relied on military vehicles and spears to fight wars, and his flexibility was poor, and he believed: "The cavalry of the northern nomads comes like birds, goes like a string, and is today's rapid reaction force. ”
Therefore, the Macedonian phalanx has no room for survival in the East Asian battlefield, and the warring states of the long-term battlefield will not agree with you on the battlefield at all, nor will they give you time to number tens of thousands of people and then fight with you.
In specific battles, Europeans are more adept at fighting and hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield, while the Chinese battlefield prefers to win outside the battlefield, such as paying more attention to logistical competition.
In the Battle of Changping, the early confrontation took three years, until the grain and grass of the Zhao State were exhausted, and only then had to replace Zhao Kuo with Lianpo and carry out a strategic decisive battle with the Qin army.
When Alexander was on crusades, he had no supplies at all, and the rations he brought were only 30 days, and he was barely able to fight from Greece to the Iranian plateau, not to mention the Chinese battlefield, and it was estimated that he would be hungry after spending several waves.
As far as strategic thinking is concerned, China has entered the period of large corps combat, around 329 BC, countries often have hundreds of thousands of people in the scale of the battle, to the Battle of Changping, it is the peak of development, the two sides of the war personnel were nearly a million, the entire Warring States period the number of people killed in battle as many as two million, in contrast, the European battlefield is completely "village man weapon fighting, an dare to speak war"
As far as tactical thinking is concerned, our military expert Sun Wu of the Spring and Autumn Period said in his book "Sun Tzu's Art of War", "Soldiers, devious ways also!" ”
The more unexpectedly we attack and attack others, the more we can achieve victory, which is the core of our tactics, and with the situation on the battlefield, we will make ever-changing countermeasures.
Of course, war is a complex science, and various factors must be considered, and changes in each factor may bring about different results.
Alexander the Great was unable to fight the Warring States Seven Heroes after all, all the analysis was based on fiction, if there is a sandbox, can present the war that has not been realized in history, I think it will be very interesting.
The multi-civilization theme strategy mobile game "Awakening of All Nations" has this flavor, which can restore the duels of various world civilizations and the reproduction of classic battles in the game.
In the game, not only can you achieve the confrontation between Macedonia and the Warring States Seven Heroes, but also let Caesar fight against Cao Cao, such as Sun Wu, who is also a hero to choose from.
Through the game's sand table simulation, which is stronger or weaker, you will know at a time, satisfying all the reverie of our history lovers about the ancient battlefield!