When your world conquest run suddenly includes the Nanda Empire.
by Effective_Bluebird19
When your world conquest run suddenly includes the Nanda Empire.
by Effective_Bluebird19
4 Comments
I will quote a passage from Greek historian Plutarch’s “The Life of Alexander”.
>they [Alexander’s Army] violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges…
For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. And there was no boasting in these reports. For Androcottus, who reigned there not long afterwards, made a present to Seleucus of five hundred elephants, and with an army of six hundred thousand men overran and subdued all India.
Translation: An extraordinarily massive army was waiting for them on the banks of Ganga.
Porus had around 200 war elephants and still gave Alexander one of his hardest battles. So when his army heard the Nandas had thousands more waiting ahead, they decided they had seen enough.
I mean it’s probably exaggerated by the troops who really really didn’t want to fight anymore, especially in the humid heat of India.
Porus was more a justification than anything, “look that was a tough one and he was a petty king” (although porus by all accounts was a pretty powerful regional power)”what the hell are we gonna do when we face 30x that army. The master of India descending on us”.
My personal opinion is Alexander was eventually going to march into defeat eventually, maybe not at the hands of the nanda, but his mental state, alcoholism and ego who were definitely gonna catch up to him. Bro is lucky he died when he did and kept his legacy instead of being warlord #213 who people hated or jobbed hard cause his ego was too large.
Although the succeeding mauryans did defeat selucus and expel them from India. So maybe the troops were warranted in their worry. Especially since alot of anti elephant tactics like wagons, traps or pitch were significant investment to counter usually like 20-30 elephants lol. Not 1000+.
(Yeah the flaming pigs were also the most overblown bullshit on par with old invincible german tank meme)
And well the Mauryan elephants used by seleucus were critical to defeat the antigonids and basically decide the fate of the middle East and beyond after that.
So maybe the elephant paranoia had water.
Why is Ganga always anglicized when it can be written and pronounced with its original form in plain English?
“6000 elephants” yeah they’d be lucky to have 60. The entire army probably had around 6000 men.