Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
There was here a close hand-to-hand fight, which lasted some time, and sixty of the royal horse-guards fell, and three generals, who fought close to Alexander's side, were wounded. At length the Macedonian discipline and valor again prevailed, and a large number of the Persian and Indian horsemen were cut down, some few only succeeding in breaking through and riding away.
Kennon watched for a moment as sheets of paper passed through Alexander's hands to be added to the pile at the opposite end of the desk. The man would do better, he thought, if he would have his staff transcribe the papers to microfilm that could be read through an interval-timed scanner. He might suggest that later. As for now, he shrugged and seated himself in the chair beside the desk.
And not only had that diplomatist and his wiser colleagues been hoodwinked, but Elizabeth and Burghley, and, for a moment, even Walsingham, were in the dark, while Henry III. had been his passive victim, and the magnificent Balafre a blind instrument in his hands. Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy. Nothing could surpass his ability to command but his obedience.
On every estate was a great bell, hung in an open stone belfry, and never to be rung except to give warning of riot, flood, fire, or hurricane. One of the blacks obeyed Alexander's peremptory command to ring this bell, and, as it was under the lee of the mill, reached it in a moment.
Such was the general nature of the disposition which Alexander made of his army. But we have in Arrian the details of the position of each brigade and regiment; and as we know that these details were taken from the journals of Macedonian generals, it is interesting to examine them, and to read the names and stations of King Alexander's generals and colonels in this the greatest of his battles.
Napoleon was, however, secretly opposing Alexander's plans for adding the Danubian provinces and Finland to his possessions. Then the possibility of Napoleon's reëstablishing Poland as a national kingdom which might threaten Russia's interests, was a constant source of apprehension to Alexander.
Amid the tangles of negotiation, it must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition with the necessary subsidies.
So ended Alexander's heroics; such was the catastrophe of his tragedy; one would like to find a special providence in it, though doubtless chance must have the credit. The funeral celebration was to be worthy of his life, taking the form of a contest for possession of the oracle.
For my part, while I do justice to the manner in which he declared himself on this important occasion, I do not ascribe to his eloquence the power of fixing Alexander's resolution, for I well know by experience how easy it is to make princes appear to adopt the advice of any one when the counsel given is precisely that which they wish to follow.
The chief of Alexander's household servants, a Macedonian named Proxenus, while digging a place to pitch the royal tent near the river Oxus, discovered a well, full of a smooth, fatty liquid. When the upper layer was removed, there spouted forth a clear oil, exactly like olive oil in smell and taste, and incomparably bright and clear: and that, too, in a country where no olive trees grew.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking