| > Isn't it entirely possible Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced men telling him what to do? During battle he led his own element and consistently made the right calls when doing so. The wiser men where hundreds to thousands of meters away leading the rest of his army, with effectively no way to communicate with him. > Surely that, if nothing else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him? They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do was not upset the apple cart. The scale of the operations during these 20 years were nothing like the campaign he led. They operated entirely in Greece, the furthest they operated from their homes was in the hundreds of kilometers, in pretty much known terrain. Alexander led them all the way to India. > Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank. One man cannot organize and send it but can definitely lead it to do that. He made the decision to aid the failing flank, not his officers. His officers just followed him. If he chose to chase down the fleeing enemy they would just do that. There are countless examples through out history of leaders chasing down fleeing
enemies only to find their flank collapsed and the battle lost. Similarly there are countless examples of leaders overextending in their campaign running out of supplies. The gist is that you can't really argue with his track record. He won all the battles he fought and took down an empire several times larger than his kingdom with an army of about 50000 men. He was handed with a very effective military system, but he wielded it perfectly, that takes great skill. |
But he had to do much more than copy his father. He had to deal with logistics in a way that his father never had to. Alexander's war was as much about the logistics of supplying his army as about the battles it fought. He had to deal with large geopolitical aspects of the war, such as the need to win (or defend successfully) at sea, not just land, and he couldn't be both at sea and on land. Founding lots of cities to anchor his authority was a geopolitical technique that his father had not had to employ.
Sure, Alexander was his father's son, but Alexander's accomplishments are his own.