The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c25.142

v1.c25.142

take them for descendants of the companions of their own Heracles—offered submission. The resistance of others was easily suppressed. But further down stream a strong confederation of free tribes was awaiting the Europeans with a high courage. These were a tribe, called Mālavas (in Greek Malloi)¹, between the lower Hydraōtes and the Acesines, and the Kshudrakas (in Greek Oxydrakai) higher up the Hydraōtes, between that river and the Hyphasis². The rapids at the meeting of the Hydaspes and the Acesines³ gave some trouble to the fleet, and two boats foundered. On the frontiers of the Mālavas the whole European force—the fleet and the three divisions of Craterus, Hephaestion, and Philip re-assembled. The fleet was now sent on under Nearchus three days in advance with orders to wait for the land-force at the next confluence, that of the Acesines and the Hydraōtes. The land-force was broken up anew into different divisions for the attack on the Mālavas. With a suddenness which disconcerted their plans the Indian tribesmen found Alexander in their midst. The first of their cities to be attacked was on the edge of a tract of sandy desert, from which one morning early a force of mounted Macedonians, with the king at its head, broke upon it, having ridden all night across the waste. And here first was enacted what was repeated in city after city of the confederacy—the attack, the capture, the massacre. Many of the inhabitants of these places escaped to the jungles or across the Hydraōtes: many were captured by the Macedonians in their flight and slaughtered. It was at the storming of one of these towns⁴ that the king exposed his person in a way which nearly cost his life. We may probably infer that the morale of the European army, fighting across the interminable spaces of this strange land, had begun to decline, that such desperate expedients on the part of the great leader were necessary. Alexander, reaching the top of the citadel wall among the first, stood there for one moment in his shining armour, a mark for the defenders' darts, and then leapt down almost alone on the inner side. There he stood with his back to the wall, beating off the crowd of his assailants, while the Macedonian nobleman Peucestes held over him the sacred shield which had been taken from the temple of Athena at Ilium and was believed to have been carried in the Trojan War. By the time that his army, frantic, had broken into the citadel, Alexander was lying with a severe wound in his breast. The Macedonians believed that their king was killed and gave way to a fury of blood-lust, sparing neither woman nor child in the city. But Alexander recovered, and, as soon as he could be moved, was carried by boat down the Hydraōtes, near which river the town stood, to the main camp at the confluence of the Hydraōtes and the Acesines.