I was going to write this review and send a copy to my good friend Dick who seems to have similar interests in books to me. Then I thought that I might as well address it to him. So Dick this is for you almost as much is it is for me. You will remember that I recommended a couple of books by Peter Green about the Battle of Salamis and Alexander of Macedon. You will note that he doesn't call him Alexander the "Great".......because he certainly had some flaws as a human being. Anyway, you said the you had enjoyed both books and recently I came across the current book which covers much the same ground as Alexander of Macedon....well at least his invasion of the Persian and Egyptian empires. So I was intrigued to find that Engles had been encouraged/inspired to write the current book by Peter Green. Maybe it's a small world out there in Hellenic Studies.
But I have not been disappointed. In fact, I've been fascinated by the way the Engles has been able to go back to basic logistics: how much food and water does a marching soldier need? how much grain and fodder can a horse carry...including the food that it needs to sustain itself? how far could Alexander's army march in a day? How long would it take for the army to march through some of the narrow passes? and so on. Clearly these kind of calculations put boundaries around what was possible for Alexander and his army and, in some cases, it redefines the route or the timeline of his conquests.
One thing that I had not adequately appreciated was that if they were marching through desert conditions where they had to depend entirely on food and water that could be carried with them then they could sustain a three day expedition. But for a four day expedition they would need 11,400 pack animals ....and this still might be possible but a fifth day would be impossible ...even at half rations. This is a fundamental part of Engels reasoning about various routes taken by Alexander's army and the timing of marches etc. All sounds pretty reasonable to me......except for one thing.
Engles assumes that the pack horses and cavalry would have to carry their own grain rations and fodder in these desert conditions but I wonder if he has underestimated the ability of horses, mules, camels etc., to feed themselves off the land. I'm familiar with parts of the dry Australian interior which qualifies as desert on most criteria. Yet in most of these desert areas there is still patchy vegetation which can sustain livestock....albeit at a very low stocking rate. But if the cavalry and pack animals spread themselves over a broad front of, say, 500 metres (which would be probable for most of the army's advances as they were not fighting most of the time) then a typical day's march of, say 15 miles (24 km) per day would mean that the livestock would have access to whatever vegetation was in a swarth of 24,000 x 500 square m or 1200 ha.
And 1200 ha of arid land might easily have 80kg of dry matter per ha or around 96,000 kg of dry matter vegetation which horses etc., could graze on as they ambled along (because 15 km per day for a horse is not a fast pace......they can eat as they go). Engle's figures in his Appendix 5 indicate that the army's forage requirements for a day would be about 74,000kg but if much of this could be supplied by grazing on the march then this would significantly alter Engle's figures and extend the capacity of the Army. Now, in certain areas .....for example desert sand dunes there may be no vegetation (though that is not always true) and not all the dry vegetation may be edible but it is a great error to assume that simply because the vegetation is dry and brown that it does not supply nutrition. And in most of the situations that the army was marching they were not waterless deserts and the grazing might be significantly better.....replacing much of the grain requirements that Engle's estimates. So I think that this is a serious under-estimate by Engle's of the army's capacity to advance. But generally, it will not make a huge difference to capabilities or to the routes selected etc.
Something else which Engles draws attention to is the fact that Alexander's army was not accompanied by a huge baggage train with carts and camp followers (at least in the early stages to Persepolis).. They had nil or very few wheeled vehicles; the soldiers themselves had to carry large loads, and pack horses etc., made up the baggage train. But this gave them tremendous mobility and was the secret behind Alexander's ability to move so fast and out manoeuvre his opponents.
Quite a bit of Engle's time is devoted to analysing Alexander's rapid advances ....places such as Sogdiana from Oxus to Nautaka where they appeared to have covered 34.5 miles (55.5km) per day. He, quite reasonably, points out that such rapid advances were not made by the whole army but by smaller units and often by cavalry. And sometimes, the ancient authors had simply made errors about departure times or the route taken. I recall once, taking up a challenge by President Kennedy ..that any fit young person should be able to cover 50 miles (80 Km) in a day on foot. I covered the 80 km in just over 13 hours. Admittedly I was not carrying weapons and food and my knees were in poor shape for long afterwards...but it's certainly possible to travel long distances on foot, fast ....especially for guys who are trained and used to long marches.
I found myself quite fascinated by his analysis of the length of time it would take the army to march through a mountain pass such as the Khawak pass in the Hindu Kush. He points out that, like water in a funnel, it is the narrowest part that determines the rate of passage and shows the narrowest part here would allow no more than two soldiers and a pack animal to walk abreast at the same time. As it took 16 days for the army to traverse the pass, Engle's estimates that they had to be walking at least two abreast to permit about 100,000 troops and followers plus cavalry to make the crossing in 16 days. (And no-one would leave the base after the 13th day...because of the length of the column). He also notes (p154 that for an army of 65,000 personnel and 6,000 cavalry, marching ten abreast, their column would extend for some 16.65 miles ....so when the soldiers at the head of the column were filing into camp at the end of a day's march, those at the rear would not arrive for over 5 hours. The army must also make one day's halt every 7 days to give the pack animals respite.
Engles is clearly an admirer of Alexander's mastery of logistics. He, or his logistic experts, clearly calculated what was necessary for the army to be able to advance and set up advance stores in some places and were replenished by ship in many circumstances....especially in Palestine. Engle's take on the logistical disaster of the Gedrosian desert is interesting. It appears that Alexander lost about 75% of the army and followers (though it is suggested that the losses we're probably mainly with the camp followers). The big issue was an intelligence failure and a misunderstanding about when the fleet would be able to stock those marching inland. But it certainly takes some of the shine off Alexander as a logistical genius.
I must confess, that I loved this book. the combination of rigorous analytical work with marginally reliable ancient texts and modern maps brought to life the previous works that I've read...including that by Peter Green. Why do I keep reading this ancient history? Well it seems to me that Alexander's rapid advance, his Macedonian Phalanx and his exceptional skills as a general, and his political skills in establishing cities and satrapies enabled him to "Hellenise" a huge slice of the world that lasted, at least for 300 years and arguably more. In other words, it was a significant event in world history and worth studying for that reason alone.
But in the process, I've learned a lot of new things about logistics and the movement of armies across terrain. Happy to give this book five stars. ( )

I got this book because I saw it recommended somewhere as a potential good resource for writers, and I think the recommendation was a good one! I don't know a whole lot about Alexander's campaigns, but I still found the book interesting, and it definitely had a lot of very useful information about the type and amount of supplies one needs to move men and pack animals over large distances.

The author makes the point that Alexander and his generals were very conscious of these issues, and that all of their movements to build his empire were driven by the need to make sure they had adequate supplies of food and water available at all times; this thesis seems well supported by the historical evidence available. Engels also, very usefully, abstracts away from the specifics of Alexander's situation to provide some general numbers and calculations about the amount of supplies needed to move given numbers of men and animals over what time frames and distances, which is very helpful for a writer. It is information that could easily be applied to any large group on the move, not just a military force. ( )

Engels adds a great deal to the understanding of how Alexander’s army managed to accomplish what it did, and how issues of logistics sometimes dictated the route that it took. Engels’ examination of the physical requirements of men and animals in conjunction with the limitations of transport and communications is an important model for anyone studying pre-modern armies, especially those of the ancient and medieval periods. ( )

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Donald W. Engels

This is a great book, full of facts, dates, maps, tables and a extensive bibliography. Engels does a wonderful job explaining what it took to move the Macedonian army from point "A" to point "B". I found one of Alexanders rules interesting NO carts, No Oxen. Oxen move slower than Horses mules and camels so they had no place in his army except maybe on the menu. Baggage also slow down the army, so no carts, if you couldn't carry it you didn't need it.

Donald Engels provides a useful counterweight the the numerous military strategic accounts of Alexander's conquests. He deals with the neglected subject of ancient world military logistics and concludes that 1) Alexander's campaign routes and timing were logistically determined 2) when a logistic plan failed, it could destroy an army as surely as a military defeat, an example being the loss of 3/4 of his army in the Gedrosian desert when the Monsoon winds halted supply by sea.
The essence of Alexander's strategy was the fast movement of troops with the smallest baggage train possible, achieved by his soldiers carrying much of their own equipment and being accompanied by horses and mules with supplies. The book provides interesting detailed calculations, showing that there was little margin for error. The army that crossed the Hellespont comprised of 65.000 personnel plus cavalry and pack animals that had a combined grain requirement (not counting water or fodder) of 269.000 lbs per day that had to be carried, delivered by river or sea or drawn from an extensive area of rich agricultural land after a harvest, facts which greatly determined when and where Alexander could proceed and how he had to divide his forces. ( )