Читать книгу Art of War - Sun-tzu - Страница 13

After Marathon, King Darius seems to have been stunned by the force of the blow; the aim of his life became the utter humiliation and conquest of Greece.

Darius had named as his successor his younger son, Xerxes, and confided to him the execution of his plans. Just five years after Marathon, Xerxes took up the sceptre. Then Mardonius became one of his chief counsellors and urged him to set forth on the march to Greece.

Twelve hundred ships of war formed his fleet and over a million men his army. The campaign, thus begun, was made further memorable by two great feats in engineering – the bridging of the Hellespont by means of boats, and the digging of a ship canal through the Isthmus back of Mount Athos.

Just at sunrise one balmy spring morning in the year 480 BCE, the great army of Xerxes began the crossing, the fighting force taking the upper bridge, the trains, cattle, and camp-followers the lower; and for seven days and nights, lashed actually into the utmost rapidity of march, the soldiery poured over in ceaseless stream.

An attempt was made to check him in the narrow pass of the Vale of Tempe, but the army sent thither under Themistocles speedily found that the position would be untenable because of the open sea to the right. With his matchless fleet Xerxes could land thousands in their rear, and Themistocles fell back. Only one point was known to exist where a stand might successfully be made – Thermopylae.

At Thermopylae itself King Leonidas of Sparta, with 300 picked men from his own city and a force of about 6,000 troops from other Grecian states, sprang forward and seized the pass. It was just about the end of June. Then one bright morning, around the 1st July, the assault began. The attempt was simply madness. Fresh and vigorous comrades filled the places of the weary men in the foremost ranks of Sparta, and the sun went down upon a scene of carnage for which Xerxes could find no excuse whatsoever. Yet he [Xerxes] orders the attack to be resumed on the morrow, and the morrow is but a repetition of the first day. Approached from the front, Leonidas was invincible. Was there no other way?

But treachery had been at work. On the third day the bitter tidings reached Leonidas that his heroic defence had been in vain. Treachery had turned the pass. The Persians were to his rear. There was yet time to escape. To Leonidas and his Spartans desertion of the position they had been detailed to defend meant dishonour. The Spartan king with his brave 300, with some 700 Thespians and a handful of Thebans, stood their ground. For a time it seemed as though nothing could stand before them, but with the setting of the sun, in the dust and grime of battle, the heroes of the little band started to fall one after another. Too honourable to surrender, but daring and defiant to the last, they ensured that their story would live on in legend. Only when the last of their life-blood of was drained was Thermopylae won. There was now nothing left to check the onward march of the Asiatic conqueror towards Athens.

(adapted from: Famous and decisive battles of the world by C. King)