When we live, death does not exist; When we die, we are no longer alive, so death has nothing to do with us. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

- Epicurus (representative of the hedonism of Arestepus)

Alexander the Great is definitely a great emperor who has never been seen before or after in history, and no one can achieve such brilliant achievements as Alexander the Great in his time; No matter how formidable the enemy, they will eventually be prostrate at the feet of Alexander the Great, and the whole world will be shocked by the vast empire that Alexander the Great has built.

Even so, Alexander the Great ultimately failed, not to any powerful enemy, but to his own fate; If someone knows the life of Alexander the Great in detail, then he will know that Alexander the Great is a figure a hundred times more powerful than Oscar, that is the greatest figure of an era, and the most dazzling emperor in the long history!

On July 20, 356 BC, Alexander was born in Pera, the capital of Macedonia; Alexander's upbringing in Macedonia was influenced by Homer's Iliad and its character Achilles and the legendary character Hercules. When Alexander was a child, his father, Philip II, hired the Greek philosopher Aristotle as his mentor in Mieza for the rest of the Macedonian nobility.

According to Plutarch, at the age of B.C., Alexander saw a horse that was considered untamable by others, and his name was Busifaras; He only said a few gentle words to the horse and succeeded in taming the horse.

In 340 BC, when Philip II went out to fight against the Byzantine tribes of the Thracian barbarians, the 16-year-old Alexander ruled the Macedonian kingdom on behalf of his father, and led his troops to suppress the uprising in northern Macedonia and establish new cities.

The real challenge, however, came in 338 BCE, when Philip's defeat of the Byzantine tribes led to a great rebellion against the Macedonian kingdom in the Greek city-states, for which the two city-states of Athens and Thebes formed an alliance ready to fight Philip at any time. Philip could not ignore this action, so the two sides engaged in a battle that would determine the fate of Greece, the Battle of Chaeronea.

Alexander played an extremely important role in this battle, as the commander-in-chief of the left wing of the coalition army, he saw the right time to decisively break into the gap of the coalition army, completely annihilated the strongest team known in Greece, the Theban Holy Army, and directly attacked the enemy from behind, resulting in a very crucial victory for the Macedonian kingdom, Alexander was only 18 years old, but his genius was undoubtedly displayed.

In 337 BC, Philip II divorced Olympias, and subsequently married Cleopatra, niece of the Macedonian nobleman Atalus; When Atalus commented at the wedding reception between Philip II and Cleopatra that there would be a legitimate heir to the Macedonian royal family, Alexander replied: "What about me, you despicable person, do you think of me for something, a mongrel?" ”

With that, he threw the glass at him, and when Philip stood on a chair with his guard Atalus drawing his sword at Alexander, he was angry and fell on the chair because he was drunk and unsteady; Alexander taunted him: "Look! A king who was ready to sweep the Eastern Continent from the Western Continent couldn't even jump over a chair. ”

After being expelled by Philip, Alexander and Olympus returned to Olympias' maiden kingdom of Epirus, and then continued on to Illyria, where his secure inheritance was questioned. But after a short time, Philip sent messengers to recall Alexander and reconcile with him.

In 336 BC, Philip II's daughter Cleopatra (double name) was assassinated by the royal bodyguard Pausanias at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra (double name) and King Alexander I of the Epirus kingdom in Egger, and the time of Alexandria came.

At the age of twenty, Alexander was elected the new king by Antipater, a prominent vassal and diplomat in the Macedonian army, and taking advantage of his advantage in Pella, he won the support of the Macedonian people and army through the funeral of Philip II and the policy of reducing taxes; He executed two of Elops' sons for their involvement in the assassination of Philip II.

Atalas, who was sent by Philip to conquer the eastern continent, was executed on charges of plotting to overthrow Alexander. Olympias killed Cleopatra and her son, who also had the right to succeed, and Alexander became the only able-bodied male heir to the Macedonian royal family.

Athens, who was forced to ally with Philip, and Thebes, who hated Philip II, saw Philip II's assassination as an opportunity to regain his independence and began to show signs of instability; In order to win the recognition of the Greek League, at the end of 336 BC, Alexander led his army into Thessaly, which had been ruled by Philip II, in a strategy that ostensibly agreed to peace, but secretly entered Thessaly, where he was recognized as the new hereditary ruler of Thessaly.

When Alexander ascended the throne, Macedonia's treasury was scarce, and in 335 BC, Alexander, who had regained the support of a coalition of Greek city-states other than Sparta in Corinth, went on an expedition against the Thracian barbarians in northern Macedonia to secure the northern defenses for the eastern continent and to retaliate against the local Tribaly tribes for the sneak attack on Philip II's troops and the theft of booty in 338 BC.

The Greek-Persian rivalry began in the 6th century BC, when the free Greek city-states on the eastern continent fell to the Persian Empire, which was expanding westward; After the Ionian Rebellion and the Battle of Marathon, in 481 BC, Xerxes I of the Persian Empire attempted to occupy all of Greece during the Second Persian-Greek War.

Although Xerxes I did not attack Greece after being defeated back to Persia, Xerxes I's burning of the Acropolis of Athens in 480 BC and other actions considered blasphemous led to the presence of revenge and counterattack against Persia in Alexander's Greek political circles, which were also exploited by Philip II and Alexander.

Under the slogan of his father's assassination by the Persians and the "liberation of the Greek city-states on the eastern continent", Alexander set out for the eastern continent in 334 BC, while his mother Olympias remained in Pella, and Antipater also remained in Macedonia to maintain stability within the Macedonian kingdom with about 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry.

Alexander himself crossed the Aegean Sea with more than 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, consisting of the Kingdom of Macedonia and other Greek city-states; Although his expedition made up for the debt left to him by Philip II, the empty treasury kept him with only 30 days of supplies.

After entering the Eastern Continent, Alexander's troops were in dire need of supplies through conquest; However, Monnon, the Greek mercenary commander of the Persian Empire, suggested that the Persian governor burn the surrounding fields, but the Persian governor's pity for their property was not accepted.

The three satraps of the Persian provinces at the time, including the son-in-law of the Persian Emperor Darius, assembled an army of 40,000 to engage Alexander head-on at the Granicus River; Alexander himself led the Guards cavalry "Companion Cavalry" (Royal Cavalry) at the Battle of Granicus, and was the first to engage the Persian cavalry, and the two Persian governors were killed by Alexander and his "companion cavalry".

Alexander's own helmet and hat were also chopped off by the battle axe of one of the Persian governors, who were killed by Alexander's subordinate Clitus when he attacked behind him; In order to intimidate the Greek mercenaries who served the Persians, Alexander had his troops slaughter most of the Greek mercenaries on the battlefield, and the rest were taken back to the Macedonian kingdom to be forced to labor.

He returned to the Acropolis with three hundred pairs of Persian armor as a sacrifice to Athena, with the following inscription: "From Alexander, the son of Philip, and the consecration of the Greeks (except the Spartans), taken from the barbarians who inhabited the eastern continent." ”

Although Alexander's army was outnumbered by the Persian army, and despite the many disadvantages, Alexander delivered a series of devastating blows to the Persian army and won the victory; There are three main reasons for his success: first, the army left to him by Philip II was better trained than the Persian army; Second, Alexander was an outstanding genius general; Thirdly, Alexander himself had a heroic and fearless spirit.

Although Alexander was in command of the rear at the beginning of each battle, his policy was to take the lead if the troops launched a decisive attack; This risky tactic wounded him repeatedly, but the soldiers, seeing him live and die with them, did not ask them to take risks that he himself did not want to take, which had a huge effect on their morale.

After the battle, he found that Persia's naval superiority was seriously troubled by his logistical supply, but Greece did not have a strong enough fleet to challenge Persia's naval supremacy; So he decided to take a foolish approach, taking all the ports and bases of the Eastern Mediterranean by land, and Alexander set out from Silesia and marched south to Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt.

Alexander first led his troops to conquer Silesia, eliminating the few Persian troops stationed there; He then advanced to northern Syria, on the way to the Persian Emperor Darius, who commanded hundreds of thousands of troops from the hinterland of the eastern continent to appear behind Alexander, cutting off the supply lines of the Macedonian army, and Alexander returned to face Darius's superior forces and carried out the Battle of Issus.

In this battle, Alexander's army almost completely annihilated the Persian Empire, and the Persian Emperor Darius was forced to flee; In order to consolidate his flanks, Alexander did not choose to pursue it exhaustively, but returned to the army to continue southward to conquer the ports of the eastern Mediterranean coast, and after seven months of difficult siege, finally conquered the city of Sidon in the Phoenician region.

During the siege of Sidon, Alexander received a letter from the Persian Emperor stating that he would cede half of the Persian Empire to Alexander in order to reach a peace agreement; Alexander's general, Parmanuelle, thought this suggestion was good, saying, "If I were Alexander, I would take it," to which Alexander replied, "If I were Parmanuel, I might take it." (To be continued.) )