Ancient Empires: Alexander the Great Invades India | Exclusive

Still, Alexander's desire for conquest drives him on. Alexander heads south, following the Hindu Kush mountain range, going through the Khyber Pass, and ultimately into the Indus River Valley in modern day Pakistan. Upon entering India, Alexander has officially gone off the Greek map. But Alexander believes that there is an end point. There is a point where the world stops. Alexander finds that what lies next is not the end of the world at all, but is in fact the Nanda Empire, an empire that has a massive standing army of 200,000 strong, 4,000 war elephants, 6,000 chariots, 40,000 cavalry, all of which are highly trained and mobilized and ready for Alexander's forces. He learns that the world is so much bigger than he ever thought it was, and it makes him determined to keep pressing on in order to conquer the world. When Alexander reaches the Hidasspace River, he faces an Indian king named Porus, who is a great warrior who is over six feet tall, and he faces Alexander in a great battle, riding his elephant. This is the first time that the Greeks had engaged with Indian war elephants. Now, Alexander's initial strategy is to bravely charge directly at them. Eventually, though, Alexander develops another strategy, herding the elephants together so that they end up stomping on the Indian troops. Alexander remains undefeated, but at a terrible price. He loses his beloved horse, Bucephalus. To mark his victory, Alexander has a coin minted that depicts Alexander charging on Bucephalus against an elephant. As ever, this is Alexander's obsession with treating war as a personal battle, a heroic duel between himself and King Porus. After defeating him, Alexander makes King Porus regent of that region that he had just conquered. His enemy essentially becomes his ally. This is quite telling and is quite representative of Alexander's habits of treating heroic resistance against himself as either treachery or heroic proof of valor. Porus proved himself by almost resisting Alexander, and so Alexander honors him and celebrates him and makes him governor of his India province. One of the things that is coming out of Alexander's empire is a reframing of the sense of the globe and how large things are. And they are rewriting the way that they thought the world looked. In 326 BC, Alexander has marched his army 11,000 miles, nearly half the circumference of Earth. By the time they arrive at the Hyphasis River in India, the morale of Alexander's men is borderline mutinous. They don't know when they're going to stop, and they're essentially waiting for geography to stop Alexander. If the world does not end, then they might be fighting forever. My king, we cannot continue. This is the line in the sand for his men. He cannot push them any further. Alexander's troops demand to turn around and go home. He tries to get a handle on the situation, but this is too big for him. His charisma that had driven his army for 10 years across all of the known world had essentially run out at this point. Descend! Take it. Coward! He hasn't been defeated in India. He's been defeated only by his own soldiers that insist that he turns around.