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Alexander The Great Military Tactics

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Alexander the Great was a prime example of how military tacticians were evolving and becoming more strategic in their plans of war, he did this in many ways as depicted by these points, Alexander kept ties with many surrounding regions and by doing so he could recruit their soldiers to fight alongside him in his army. Not only did he have allies with surrounding regions but he would also recruit mercenaries and by doing so he would take the mercenaries away from his enemies because what he would offer for their services was much more than what his enemies offered, doing this caused his enemies army to be smaller therefore allowing his army to have a number advantage. Not only was making his army larger in size and making his enemies’ army …show more content…

These units provided the main strike force of the army, always the ones expected to make the decisive breakthrough, or to prevent the army from being outflanked.” (English) As depicted by this quote many historians believe that Alexander’s army was solely based on his cavalry flanking his opponents therefore helping his heavy infantry men so relief from facing the entire army. Even though Alexander had large number of heavy infantry in the same respect he also had large numbers of cavalry men, in late 331 Alexander had recruited 3,700 cavalry from Macedonia. Alexander had made it possible for his army to campaign for such long periods of times and had lowered the number of casualties suffered by allowing his heavy infantry to only fight the fore front of the enemy army and then Alexander’s cavalry would flank the enemy to draw the rest of their army away from the heavy infantry therefore lowering the number of casualties. Some historians argue how many casualties were suffered during Alexander’s command of this great army, only one number was given and it was about 50,000 casualties. In retrospect to the number of battles his army had served in this was not a large number, but then again this is not a factual number, no one really knows the true number of casualties suffered during his reign. Alexander’s main cavalry were called the Companion Cavalry, which composed of eight squadrons consisting of 200 cavalry men. The main purpose of the Companion Cavalry was to protect the King when he should fight on horseback. The starting Companion Cavalry consisted of only 1,800 soldiers that were recruited from the nobility of Macedonia. On top of Alexander’s own Companion Cavalry he had also recruited Thessalian

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