THE BATTLE TACTICS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

INTRODUCTION

“France beat the armies of the First Coalition1 by massing poorly trained and disciplined but
enthusiastic recruits in deep columns which moved forward irresistibly. They won, but the
price in casualties was great. … the whole front was covered by an irregular swarm of
skirmishers, called tirailleurs. This light infantry shielded the columns behind them and
disorganised the main line of the enemy ahead…”2
Napoleon and his generals defeated almost all the armies of Europe using these tactics, and
the assault of massed columns of infantry was decisive in almost all his battles.
But the tactics failed totally, in Spain and Portugal once Arthur Wellesley, the later Duke of
Wellington, took command of the British and allied forces there. And, in the end,
Napoleon’s tactics failed again at Waterloo.
So what were the tactics of the British army under Wellington;
“The army would take up a defensive position on a reverse slope with protected flanks,
with a powerful line of skirmishers in front, and artillery dispersed, but well forward. If
the French attacked, their tirailleurs were neutralized and their columns destroyed by
musketry from the thin red lines.”3
Put simply, against the French massed columns, Wellington used battalions of infantry in line
formation, no more than three ranks deep. The slopes they hid behind protected them from
the French artillery, the ‘tirailleurs were neutralized’ by British skirmishers, and when the
French columns finally came in range they were devastated by concentrated British musket
fire. These tactics were successfully used in a string of battles in the Iberian Peninsula,
including Vimero, Talavera, Busaco, Salamanca and Vittoria, against famous French
Marshals and Generals such as Junot, Ney, Soult, Marmont, and Napoleon’s own brother,
Joseph.
Consider this brief extract from Jac Weller’s description of the battle of Talavera:
The main French was made by two 12-battalion Divisions (15,000 men), one column
following the other with each battalion marching “30 men broad and 15 ranks deep”.
Opposing them was a British “Division of 6,000 men … in a single two-deep line”. “The
British line appears to have divided into twelve small crescents … each across the head of
one of the French columns. Every British musket could fire effectively; only about 1,300
Frenchmen could reply. … The heads of each column melted away under steady rolling
fire.”4
So what does all this have to do with Alexander's battle tactics? Actually, quite a lot.
Both the French massed columns and the British thin red lines are examples of tactical
innovations that continually defeated their army's enemies in battle. In each case this
happened because the opposing commanders failed to learn from and adapt to the new tactics
being used against them.

1
Spain, Holland, Austria, Prussia, England and Sardinia,
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/france/coalit1.htm
2
Weller, Jac, Wellington in the Peninsula, London, Greenhill, 1992 (new edition) p. 23.
3
Weller, Wellington in the Peninsula, p. 373.
4
Weller, Wellington in the Peninsula, pp. 100 – 101.
There is a delightfully apt flow chart in Norman Dixon's book, On the Psychology of
Military Incompetence that neatly summarises the point he is trying to make. Which is that
the primary causes of military incompetence are:
 Rigidity;
 Conformity;
 Traditionalism:
 Over-obedience; and
 Aversion to progress.5
Dixon, a psychologist, concentrated his attention on the underlying psychological conditions
and their likely causes behind such entrenched attitudes in the mindsets of too many military
commanders. That is not an issue I wish to address here. And in any case, Dixon’s
psychological interpretations would probably be regarded as totally out of date, now.
That said, I do believe that rigid military mindsets with a consequent failure to adapt to the
tactical innovations of an opponent, has led to many of the great, and often repeated military
disasters and failures of history.
To go back to the Napoleonic examples, in the Peninsula Wars the French Marshals
repeatedly used massed columns attacks against Wellington, and every time they failed. No
commander, as each was replaced by his successor, stopped to ask, why are we failing?
Should we be trying something else?
Even Napoleon, at Waterloo, fell into the same trap. When he famously sent in his Old
Guard, it was only to see them broken and routed by the musket-fire of yet another thin red
line, when Wellington gave the command, “Up Guards! Make ready! Fire!”
The British Guard rose from their prone position; “a front of near 400 men ... firing on a
column about 60 files wide”. The “British line overlapped on either side of the French
column ... were raking the head of the French column with a crossfire.” Other British
battalions soon joined the attack on the enemy flanks. The French Guard, unable to “deploy
their columns into lines ... to meet firepower with firepower”, was eventually “routed with a
loss of near half its total strength”.6
It need not have happened that way. “The Imperial Guard was meeting Wellington’s
veterans for the first time”. But, as Weller notes, “Its commanders (including almost
certainly Napoleon himself) had not taken seriously what French officers who had fought in
the Peninsula has said of British infantry and their firepower”.7 Instead, they had chosen to
follow the rules of Rigidity, Conformity and Traditionalism.
I'll be frank. Up until the second year of my degree, I was much more interested in Roman
rather than Greek history. (Incidentally, the Department of Classics and Ancient History
back then was strongly divided between Hellenophiles and those who loved all things
Roman.) The first course that year, did little to change my opinion, focused as it was on

5
Dixon, Norman E., On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, London, Futurama Publications, 1976,
p. 193. As a psychologist, Dixon was more interested in the underlying psychological factors that lay behind
these sources of military incompetence. Much of his ideas on these matters will now be out of date, given the
changes in modern psychological and psychiatric thought and theories. These matters have no bearing on my
arguments. The types of behaviours cited are demonstrably real, and a consideration of their effects remains a
valid consideration in any analysis of warfare and battle tactics, ancient or modern.
6
Weller, Jac, Wellington at Waterloo , London, Greenhill, 1992 (new edition), pp. 146 – 8.
7
Weller, Wellington at Waterloo, p. 147. The French commanders at Waterloo who had previously fought
against Wellington in the Peninsula included Marshal Soult, Napoleon’s Chief of Staff, p. 244, and Marshal
Ney, who led the French cavalry, p. 109.
Athenian politics and the Peloponnesian War. But the second course, under Professor R. D.
(Bob) Milns, focused on Philip II and Alexander. Here, I was confronted with something
both remarkable and strikingly familiar, in the repeated victories of Alexander against much
larger armies. All achieved through his use of then new, and radically different combat units
and tactics, in particular the Macedonian phalanx and his Companion cavalry.
It was plain to me that this was another example of how one side in a war repeatedly failed
because of their commanders’ inability to understand and adapt to the innovative tactics of
their opponent.
But what was it about the Macedonians that made them so very effective in war?
My first analysis, of the battle at the Granicus, has a number of errors and misinterpretations,
so I won't be posting that here. How I saw the battle being won is still correct in its
essentials, though.
For now, I would simply say that to understand the effectiveness of Alexander’s military
machine it is important to first understand the real difference between light and heavy
infantry, and light and heavy cavalry. That was where I began my thesis, and I offer the
above as just as a little background information regarding the roots on which my conclusions
were based.

Kathleen Toohey.

Bibliography:
Cornwell, Bernard, Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three
Battles, London, William Collins, 2014.
Dixon, Norman E., On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, London, Futurama
Publications, 1976.
Longford, Elizabeth, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, London, Harper Collins, 1971.
Weller, Jac, Wellington in the Peninsula, London, Greenhill, 1992 (new edition).
Weller, Jac, Wellington at Waterloo , London, Greenhill, 1992 (new edition).
Wilkinson-Latham, R. J., Discovering Famous Battles: The Peninsular War, Shire
Publications Ltd., 1973.