After a period of uncertainty, the future summer holidays are well and truly on the agenda. While waiting to pack your bags to reach your favourite destination, Le Petit Futé offers you a journey to more or less distant lands, taking an interest in the history of the world's great conquerors. After Genghis Khan, the ruthless warrior and founder of the Mongol Empire, we head for Macedonia to highlight the greatest conqueror of antiquity: Alexander the Great. Having become king at a very young age, following the death of a father who passed on to him a taste for power at a very early age, he established a great empire from Greece to India during his short life, by dint of battles in which he exercised all his talents as a tactician. He thus contributed to the extension of Greek culture beyond its borders

Alexander, a man dedicated to an extraordinary destiny

Alexander was born in July 356 BC in the capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia, Pella. He is the son of Philip II and Olympias. His mother, who is none other than the Princess of Epirus, tells him that he is a descendant of Achilles by herself and of Zeus on his father's side. This is enough to forge a character that distinguishes him from the common man. As a student of Aristotle, he is introduced to Greek culture and is fascinated by the heroes of the Iliad, whom he defines as models

Conscious of his intelligence, his good physical abilities and his talents as a horseman, his father transmits to him very early the taste of power by entrusting him in 338 B.C. the command of the cavalry at the battle of Chéronée

Murdered in 336 BC, Philip II of Macedonia had just subdued the Greek cities and was planning to attack the Persians. As a consequence of his death, Alexander was proclaimed king at the age of 20 and announced his intention to carry out his father's project. Of course, as is often the case with successions, there was some unrest, but he succeeded in reprimanding all disputes by having his enemies killed, razing the city of Thebes to the ground and setting off on an expedition to Greece to secure the support of the Greek cities.

The conquest of the Persian Empire

Alexander the Great, after consolidating his power in Europe, takes the direction of Asia Minor, then controlled by the Persians. He triumphs over Persian soldiers in the Issos Valley, which corresponds to present-day Syria, causing his opponent King Darius III to flee. He continued the battles in Syria and succeeded in subduing the city of Tyre, then attacked Gaza before being welcomed as a hero in Egypt, where he drove out the Persian tyrant who reigned over Memphis. In the Nile delta, he founded the great city of Alexandria, the largest city in the Greek world in Hellenistic times

Between the spring of 331 and the summer of 330, Alexander decided to leave for Babylon to find Darius, who in the meantime had built up a large army. But he defeated him again at the battle of Gaugamels, although his army was much smaller in number. He seized the capitals of the Persians: Babylon, Susa, Persepolis and Pasagardes. Alexander then imposed himself as the successor of Darius, who eventually fled and was murdered by relatives. The battles continued in the Persian zone with the conquest of the Eastern satrapies and of Drangian, Sogdian and Bactrian. The battles were terrible and Alexander the Great encountered his first difficulties there, notably the disapproval of his army for the incorporation of Persian and Sogdian soldiers into their ranks. After having put his army in order, Iran pacified and the Persian resistance erased, Alexander turned to another great objective, the conquest of the East of the Indus, today's India

On his way to the Indus

We are in the spring of 327 B.C. when Alexander leaves with an army of 120,000 soldiers for the Indus, a region then unknown to the Greeks.He arrived there in 326 and led the battle of Hydaspe against the troops of King Poros, who wanted to prevent the Macedonian conqueror's army from crossing the river. The charges of the elephants that reinforced the Indian army made the fighting difficult, but Poros and his men eventually bowed and Alexander seized the Punjab, where he imposed Greek culture

During the year 325, Alexander arrives at the banks of the Hyphase, but his soldiers are exhausted by the monsoon and refuse to continue the road to the Ganges, the king's other objective

The return to Babylon and Alexander's death

With his troops, Alexander the Great headed south, where they crossed the desert of Gedrosia not without human losses. They eventually reached the Persian Gulf and stopped at Susa, where Alexander married Stateira, the daughter of Darius III. His soldiers also married Persian women and the Macedonian conqueror even went so far as to replace veterans of his army with young Iranians, provoking the anger and revolt of Macedonian soldiers. But Alexander, always anxious to have the last word, ends up making them listen to reason through terror, by executing several leaders

Alexander arrived in Babylon in 323 B.C. He then had new plans in mind and envisaged further conquests towards Carthage, Arabia and Italy. But he died on June 3, 323 at the age of 32, without any certainty today about the cause of his death

The gigantic empire of the one who was the great master of Greece, Asia and Egypt will not survive his demise. His young heirs were eliminated and the generals who had put him at the head of his conquered provinces ended up waging war against each other. In any case, Alexander the Great succeeded in spreading the culture of the Greek civilizations in Asia and as far as the Indus Valley. He also almost succeeded in being considered a god, and his name is inscribed in two holy books: the Bible and the Koran