Chapter Eighty-Seven: Embark on a Counteroffensive

The news of Alexander's victory over Antigonus in Babylon and his rendezvous with Eumenes soon reached Peusestas's ears, and he began to realize that not everything was as simple as he thought. He hadn't thought about www.biquge.info result, but he always thought that the little king didn't have the ability to defeat the old commander Antigonus, so he greatly restrained Eumenes. He hadn't really thought hard about how to deal with such an outcome. At first, he thought that if Antigonus won he would go to Antigonus's side, and if the king won, then he would go to the king's side, after all, he did not use force against either side, but now he was afraid, he was afraid of punishment, because his many constraints on Eumenes caused Eumenes to finally fail to catch up with the battle of Babylon, although it did not affect the final outcome, but he had already offended the king and Eumenes. When Alexander's envoys came to convey the king's instructions and asked Peusestas to come to meet him, Peusestas was so weak that he did not dare to go, but chose to flee. After putting down the phrase "defend the East for the Empire", he took with his 10,000 men and the army left behind by Sylpitius, and persuaded some of the Persian soldiers under the satrap to flee back to Persepolis. The vast majority of Macedonians were reluctant to follow him, and Antignes, weighing the pros and cons, decisively chose to follow the king, taking with him 3,000 silver shields and the rest of the satrap's army to Babylon. Thus, after deducting 4,000 wounded soldiers from the nearly 20,000 soldiers captured by Anticona, plus 5,000 cavalry and more than 20,000 infantry brought by Eumenes and Antignes, Alexander's total strength in Babylon reached more than 70,000.

Alexander sent the eastern generals such as Stassander and Stasano back to their fiefdoms, firstly to prevent the invasion of the northern Scythians, and secondly, to contain Peusestas in case he took the opportunity to gain power. Another of Stasano's tasks was to provide the king with a kind of BMW that was abundant in Central Asia, the so-called Khal Tejin Horse, which Stasano knew and accepted the task very gladly.

But in this way, the army was pulled away by nearly 16,000 people at once. With Antiochon's 3,000 silver shieldmen, Eumenes' 3,000 mixed cavalry troops, Oakshates' 2,500 mountain cavalry, and Peisson's few but powerful elephant troops, Alexander's army was just over 50,000, but that was far more than any Diadochi might have left.

After leaving Antigonus, he would quickly return to the Medes with his 8,000 troops, accompanied by 3,000 Hecanian cavalry, an army that had not suffered much damage, and with their strength, Pezon wanted to re-develop. But Alexander could not have given him this opportunity, and since the Medes were so close to Babylonia that they were so close to Babylon, in order to eradicate this threat and to occupy this vast land, Cassandrus set out with a force of 13,000 men soon after, and marched towards Ecbatana.

Eumenes led more than 22,000 people, including the Silver Shield Army, to pursue Antigonus, originally Alexander IV wanted to conquer in person, but because the affairs of Babylon were too busy, so he had to let Eumenes go, with Eumenes' talent, it was not inferior to Antigonus, and now with the king's authorization, it should be no problem to deal with the down-and-out Antigonus.

However, as the army was ready to march, news of Ptolemy's attack on Tyre did not take long for Babylon to reach Babylon, so Eumenes decided to turn around and march towards Phoenicia. When Ptolemy heard the news, he was overwhelmed with grief and indignation, and his father could not recognize the situation, which led to this disaster. As the saying goes, "Heaven can still live, but self-inflicted sins cannot live", Ptolemy's wrong move completely offended Alexander, and finally ruined his dream of being a king of Egypt.

It has to be said that this move of Philotas is still very good, once Antigonus wins, the king's power will be wiped out, and now although Antigonus is defeated, at least Ptolemy has been dragged into the water, thereby delaying Alexander's army, and Antigonus has gained precious time to recuperate. On this occasion, Antigonus once again consolidated his dominance over most of Asia Minor. Soon after the news of Alexander's victory reached Ptolemy's ears, Ptolemy, who was so frightened that he regretted his decision and had no choice but to retreat with his army, only to learn that Eumenes' army was only about 22,000 men near Gaza. So Ptolemy's ambitions swelled again, and he hurriedly asked Nikano to forcibly recruit a force of 8,000 men from Egypt to join him in Gaza. After reaching Tyre, Eumenes stayed for only one day before continuing his advance south. The two armies eventually met near Gaza.

When Mithezhenes of Armenia learned of Alexander's victory, he immediately sent someone to accuse him, but Alexander did not take this man to heart, and it was not too late to clean him up after he had defeated all the Diadochi. Soon after, Laomedon also returned from Atrobatus, who had given him a good reception, but did not send a single soldier, and finally Laomodon saw that the aid was hopeless and that he was too anxious to take his leave. Regarding Atrobates's perfunctory, Alexander Ye was not much relieved and did not pursue it for the time being.

After Antigonus turned the spear on Ptolemy, Antigonus had Evargoras and Nicanor guard Cilicia before coming to Asia Minor to stabilize the situation. Aridaus, who was cowering on the island of Caios, was also about to move, and he led an army to suddenly attack Smyrna and occupy it, and Ptolemy (Antigonus's nephew) immediately sent an army to meet it, but by this time Ptolemy had not many troops left, and the morale of the soldiers after learning of the battle at the front was quite low, and he was soon defeated by Alidaus near the Gediz River. Aridaus, who never seemed to have won any victories to boast of, suffered a great loss at the hands of Antigonus, and this defeat of Ptolemy had inflated his self-confidence to the extreme, so he wrote to Lysimachus, Cassander, and the king of Bithynia, Ciptus I, calling for a rebellion against Antigonus's tyrannical rule, and as you can imagine, no one answered his call. He also wrote a letter to King Alexander, but before Alexander could receive the letter, he was defeated by Antigonus. The first thing Antigonus did when he returned to Anatolia was to defeat Aridaus, which shocked the restless forces at once, and he once again proved to the world that he was Antigonus, that he could be defeated, but that he would never sink. Aridaus once again showed great fledging skills, this time alone, but not as much as Christus, and fled to Rhodes a few days later.

Lysimachos and Cassander, who also began to step up their conscription and training at this time, because the rise of Alexander Jr. made them feel a great sense of crisis. In particular, Cassander, suffered a big loss at sea, he did not dare to slack off, in order to encircle the Greeks under his rule, he began to rebuild the city of Thebes, and symbolically gave Athens, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, Larissa and other cities a certain right of freedom, which somewhat relieved the pressure of his rule, but there must be a benefit and a disadvantage, after promising these rights, it will be difficult to recover these rights in the future, otherwise it will inevitably cause a huge backlash.

The spotlight, however, is in southern Syria, a place called Gaza.