

Alexander The Great's Battle at the River Jhelum - yoshizar
http://www.richeast.org/htwm/greeks/alex/alex.html

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snambi
The author is missing some other things that alexandar's men would not have
seen on their journey from greece to india.

[1] crocodiles [2] tigers [3] monkeys [4] venomous snakes ( this is a major
problem for moving at night) [5] mosquitoes [6] diseases ( with so much life,
comes diseases )

He says alexandar would have won the war easily if he had attacked two months
earlier. He had no idea about the heat in april and march. His horses don't
stand a chance in the punjab heat. They would have lost more easily if they
went two months earlier.

Alexander was accustomed to fight in temperate regions and deserts, where
horses are very effective. Where as india is either tropical or sub-tropical,
where horses don't do very well. What was once his weapon, has become his
weakness.

~~~
krishashok
Actually, the author is right. In Punjab, June and July is peak summer. April
is quite pleasant comparatively. In the Southern part of India, April and May
are horrible (I live there).

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doktrin
> _50,000 Infantry_

How verifiable are these numbers? This seems like an awfully large army, given
the context.

To put this in some perspective, that's about the size of the army Hannibal
entered Gaul with in the second punic war [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War>

~~~
Detrus
That's a reasonable army for the time period. I don't know how historians make
their estimates but often these are just estimates. Many armies in the time
period have 30-50-80K men. In Medieval times getting an army of 20K was a huge
deal, most armies were 10K.

Different economics, populations, fighting styles, time periods. They probably
estimate army size by time period sometimes.

~~~
kevin_rubyhouse
Why was it easier to field large armies in Alexander's time than in the
medieval period? Does it have anything to do with the feudal system? Or was it
that weapons, armor, and equipment was more expensive in the medieval times.
Last guess: training was more valuable in the medieval times than it was
earlier, so it was more effective to field smaller armies of better trained
and equipped men than a horde of untrained peasants with archaic weapons
(because that's all they could afford.) ?

~~~
ekianjo
In Medieval times there were more local conflicts than large scale invasions -
it was a time of fragmented states (that's what the feudal system is about).

Plus, in Medieval times, people were paid to wage war, therefore keeping a
large army was extremely expensive, and often you did not keep an army on your
own but hired mercenaries to wage war with/for you. In Antiquity, I believe
the reward system was different.

~~~
btilly
It pays here to look at a map of how small an average principality would be in
medieval times versus how large Alexander's empire was.

The population densities were, it should be noted, not that different in the
two periods. It was not until the mid-1700s that we started to see sustained
significant improvements in the carrying capacity of the land thanks to
agricultural improvements in England. Until then the carrying capacity would
vary, higher during a warm period in the 1200s, falling significantly when
things cooled down again in the 1300s.

See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%9313...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931317#European_famines_of_the_Middle_Ages)
to get a sense of how much worse life was in the 1300s than the 1200s.

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kmfrk
These stories make me hope that some code-savvy historians will one day create
a visualization of famous battles using d3.js or something similar to what
went into _Snow Fall_.

It'd be a fascinating way to teach history, and it'll work perfectly on
tablets.

~~~
derekp7
I've seen that on some History channel programs recently. Had to look twice to
make sure it was computer animated, not a filmed scene. Can't remember the
exact program series though.

~~~
Detrus
You mean Decisive Battles <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMZHovydSFQ> ? I
think he's talking about charts, d3.js. The show is made with a real time
video game from 2002/4.

~~~
kmfrk
Ah yes, I recall watching that, too. It was one of the Total War games.

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beloch
Bizarre posting. This appears to be a high-school page (authored either by
very-good students or not-so-good teachers) and last updated, according to the
page, in 2000! I lean towards thinking this is a student project since some of
the other articles on this site aren't very well researched. However, this
would have been a fairly spiffy result from a group of students in 2000!

But... Why post this? I am not sure I understand.

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acqq
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes>

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attheodo
His hometown is close to were I live. I've visited his father's, Philipos,
tomb at Vergina. Massive structure, loads of gold, really impressive. Sometime
they have to find Alexander's tomb too... it still remains an unexplored
mystery.

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saturdayplace
It's fiction, but I recommend "The Virtues of War" by Steven Pressfield. It's
a novel (based on history, but certainly dramatized) about Alexander's march
to the East.

~~~
mmanfrin
Pressfield's books are great. I'd additionally recommend following up the
Virtues of War with The Afghan Campaign -- which is also about Alexander, but
focused entirely on the time he spent in Afghanistan. There are some
astounding parallels to today.

Then, when you're done, Gates of Fire is a classic (Pressfield's novel on the
Battle of Thermopylae). Tides of War is on the Peloponnesian War that
followed.

~~~
grey-area
_A war like no other_ is also a classic on the Peloponnesian War; likewise
surprsingly relevant to present day politics and wars.

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nu2ycombinator
The king name is "Purushottam" not "Porus".

~~~
davidp
Names don't normally survive intact when crossing languages; even more so when
crossing multiple languages (original -> Greek -> Latin -> English).

Examples from Wikipedia:

\- The Greek name for Alexander is Alexandros (Ἀλέξανδρος).

\- The Persian name for Alexander is Iskandar (اسکندر).

\- Porus is a similarly Latinized version of the Greek version (Πῶρος) of the
Sanskrit name Purushottam (पुरुषोत्तम).

~~~
pm90
Yes, its interesting to trace the routes of these words. The Persian word for
Alexander is also Sikander and it was quite a popular name among sultans in
medieval India. And my favorite: Tsar was derived from Caesar :)

~~~
troels
And the scandinavian word "kejser/keisare", which meaning is equivalent to the
English "emperor" (As in "Holy roman emperor")

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charleshaanel
Nice, different post. This is relevant to my interests...

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easternmonk
There is still a village in Himalays where the residents refuse to mix with
other Indians claiming that they are descendants of Alexander.

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vicks711
Raja = King not warlord. Chandragupt Maurya the Emperor of Patliputra (now
Patna) had an army much bigger than Porus'

~~~
kevin_rubyhouse
The article agrees with you, "it was fought against a powerful Indian rajah,
an Indian equivalent to a king or warlord."

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kevin_rubyhouse
Nobody told Alexander the Great about the Indian monsoon season? Surely he
could have gained some information about the country he invaded before
committing.

~~~
twilightfog
I think an even better information could be that he would not reach the end of
the world. If he couldn't even get this beforehand, then I think missing the
Indian monsoon is a small oversight indeed.

