Tristan Hughes

What we hear about is what Alexander's doing on the right.

And, you know, as you correctly say, if they know that Alexander's there and they've positioned themselves with property, their best household troops to face him, we do hear some amazing stories, don't we?

And Alexander's so distinguishable as well with his big plume, I guess, that people can recognize him straight away.

So he is a walking target.

He thinks he's destined for big, big things.

And it proves so.

And I think just wrapping up Granicus, it very much feels that the top dogs in the Persian army, many of them fall on the field.

And the army kind of disperses from there.

They chase them away from the riverbank.

The whole army gets across.

There are not too many casualties on the Macedonian side.

At least according to Arrian and the like.

And then you get this other story, which I'll mention briefly.

And it kind of goes back to this idea of, you know, Alexander attacking straight away, catching the Persians off foot.

And the fact that quite a lot, several thousand Greek infantrymen, the mercenaries, had not formed up yet on the Persian side.

And so the Greeks kind of get there and then they realize that the Macedonians are across and they've already won the battle.

Yeah.

And then Alexander has the choice of either, you know, kind of letting them, you know, kind of capturing them or reaching a deal with them or slaughtering them.

And he sends a message and then he just kind of surrounds them and he kills quite a few thousand of them and enslaves the rest, sending like a clear message to the Greek mercenaries, to the Greeks who have decided to defy him and join the Persians.

I mentioned it quickly, but I also think it's the proximity of the river Granicus to Greece is probably also something in his mind, because you will see later, as we'll get to later, his attitude to defeated Greek mercenaries does change on occasions, puts them in a faraway place like Afghanistan as garrison troops.