While Alexander carried out the massacre, Darius unsuccessfully sent assassins to him. When he failed to eliminate the rival, Darius sent ambassadors to Alexander with a proposal of peace and alliance. But in response, the Macedonian king demanded unconditional surrender. The ambassadors left with nothing, and Alexander went to Egypt.
Egypt, long hostile to Iran, surrendered without resistance. Alexander was proclaimed the son of the god Amun and "King of Lower and Upper Egypt."
The newly-appeared pharaoh did not stay long in Egypt. Against the "son of God" Darius III again spoke with a huge army. The two armies met at the village of Gaugamela (331 BC). This time, Alexander answered all the astonished questions of his friends who were accustomed to his attacks on the move:“I don’t steal the victory.” The king ordered the soldiers to rest. And Darius with his millionth (according to the ancient Greek historian Arrian) army stood all night, waiting for an attack. And when the rested Macedonians went on the attack, the Iranian army, exhausted by night standing, offered them sluggish resistance. A large number turned out to be a disadvantage for them:because of their crowding, the Iranians were an excellent target for Macedonian spears and swords. And again, being in the thick of the fight, Darius III was the first to break down. Alexander, rushing towards him, managed to notice only the retreating back of the king. With a general panic in the Iranian army, the beating of the retreating began.
At the battle of Gaugamela, the Macedonians inflicted a decisive defeat on the Iranian troops. After this battle, only one ruler remained in Asia - Alexander the Great, who in Susa sat on the throne of the Achaemenids. The treasures of Susa were piled at the feet of the king:the royal treasury of Darius III in 50 thousand talents (1310 tons) of silver, Greek valuables, a tribute from almost all the peoples of the world.
But Susa and Babylon were not the ultimate goal of Alexander's Iranian campaign. There was still the capital of Persia - Persepolis. The two capitals of one state had a different fate! If in Babylon Alexander did not touch a single stone, then Persepolis gave his army to plunder. The swords of the Greeks and Macedonians knew no mercy. To top it off, inflamed with wine and unreasonable speeches of hetaera Thais from Athens, Alexander ordered the city to be set on fire.
After the conquest of the Achaemenid capital, Alexander released the Greek allies. The Hellenes' war with Iran is over. The war of Alexander the Great began for dominion over the ecumene - the world known to people.
But while Darius III was alive, Alexander could not calmly rule. The Iranian king still had enough satrapies - regions, sometimes including entire countries, where he could again gather troops. And Alexander rushed in pursuit of Darius, simultaneously subjugating the remaining parts of the Achaemenid state. In July 330 BC. e. The king overtook his rival. With joyful exclamations, urging his horse on, he literally flew to the place where he was pointed, and finally overtook Darius. He was dying, abandoned by everyone, treacherously slain by his satrap Bess. Dismounting from his horse, Alexander tried to hear his death rattle. When Darius III expired, Alexander announced to the army that the Iranian king had made him his successor. It was not in vain that he sat on the throne of the Achaemenids, made sacrifices to the god Marduk in Babylon and ordered the restoration of the tomb of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian state! From now on, Alexander became the "legitimate" successor and heir of Darius III on the Iranian throne.
Alexander with surprising ease adopted the barbaric methods of government and the barbaric habits of the former rulers of Iran. After all, he was not a Greek, but only touched the Greek culture, but did not absorb it, despite his love for Homer. He was much more attracted by the omnipotence and permissiveness of the ruler of Asia than by the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the king of Macedonia. Alexander put on Persian court clothes, which caused a lot of hidden fun and sidelong glances of the Macedonians; acquired a harem of 300 concubines. He demanded that they prostrate before him, that old friends asked him for an audience. Woe was to the one who did not accept the gifts of the king - he never forgave this. With a generous hand, he bestowed thirsty riches. The ruler of Asia arranged magnificent receptions and ordered that he be worshiped everywhere as a god.
The Macedonian nobility, who tried to criticize the "divine" Alexander, paid for their arrogance:the executions of the generals Permenion and Philot forced her to shut up. Unrestrained and stubborn, Alexander could not bear the attempt on his royal dignity - Clit, his childhood friend, who saved his life in the Battle of Granik, became a victim of his unbridled and despotism. Infuriated by the impudent speeches of Clitus, the king killed him at a feast.
But the luxurious courtyard and magnificent ceremonies could not restrain Alexander, whose greedy gaze, not having time to look at what he had acquired, was already striving for new lands.
The reason for the new campaigns was that the murderer of Darius III Bess also proclaimed himself the king of Asia. The army of Alexander, having hardly crossed the mountains, occupied Bactria (Afghanistan) and, having overcome the waterless desert with incredible difficulties, entered Sogdiana. Bess was captured and died under terrible torture.
In Central Asia, Alexander showed himself even less human than before:Branchides, Central Asian Gaza, Kiropol were wiped off the face of the earth. Even the trees were not spared by the swords of the lord of Asia, who left behind a bare desert instead of oases. For a long time this ancient land remembered the heavy hand of Alexander the Great! Worse than the barbarians was this unfaithful student of the Greek philosophers. However, the mad temper of Alexander did not spare the philosophers either:the philosopher Callisthenes, who dared
criticize his eastern policy, died in prison.
From devastated Central Asia, Alexander the Great went to fabulous India (327 BC). Having conquered the Punjab and founded the cities of Nicaea and Bukefalia, Alexander was eager for the Indus to the last, as he hoped, the Eastern Sea. But the victory march was stopped by his own troops. The Macedonians, who tirelessly conquered the inhabited world for Alexander for eight years, could not stand it. They refused to cross the river Gefasis (Beas) in front of the Ganges valley (326 BC). Neither threats, nor persuasion, nor appeal to the gods and military honor, the king could not force his soldiers to take even a step forward. And the ruler of Asia turned back. But in the end, for the edification and intimidation of his descendants, he ordered to leave the “camp of giants” at the site of the last stop. Huge tents, weapons, stables and 12 grandiose altars were supposed to convince everyone that giants stopped here.
But Alexander did not go back the old way - he decided to reach the ocean, if not in the east, then in the south. Macedonian troops, descending the Indus, conquered the cities on its banks and destroyed the inhabitants.
Having reached the cherished surface of the Indian Ocean, Alexander decided to return by land with part of the troops, and sent his friend and commander Nearchus with another part of the army to get home by sea. Perhaps later Alexander bitterly regretted that he had chosen such a path for himself. His path lay through the hot, treacherous and waterless sands of southeastern Iran. Three-quarters of the victorious army remained in the burning sands of the Gedrosian desert.
Having entered into his possessions, Alexander learned that not everything was calm in his vast kingdom. Many satraps, who had passed to him from Darius III and left by the king in their posts, willingly believed the rumor about the death of Alexander, decided to form their own states. Many heads of these newly appeared kings and heads of garrisons, guilty of abuse of power, rolled down. But Alexander did not manage to establish the final order in his huge power. He defeated the Iranian state, taking advantage of its main weakness - fragmentation, but did not eradicate this vice.
Alexander's army was no longer purely Greek - more than half of it was made up of inhabitants of the conquered countries. Even the highest military positions could be received by Iranians.
Alexander the Great made Babylon the capital of his state. The new cities founded by Alexander were to become the backbone of the Greco-Macedonian rulers in Asia. The huge power created as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great, stretched from the Danube to the Indus and was the largest state of the Ancient World.
In 324 BC. e. Alexander began to prepare for new campaigns. His next victim was to be the Mediterranean:Carthage, North Africa, Sicily, Spain, Italy. Alexander was going to send the fleet of Nearchus to reconnaissance the western coast of Africa, which subsequently, having set off to fulfill Alexander's covenant, never returned.
But the king did not have time to complete what he started. 23 June 323 BC e. Alexander the Great, the ruler of half the world, died in Babylon of a fever, without realizing all his plans. After the death of Alexander the Great, his empire, deprived of a strong internal connection, fell apart like a house of cards. His commanders divided the world among themselves, and the coffin with the body of Alexander was taken to his part of the possessions by the satrap of Egypt, Ptolemy Lag, who made Alexander the patron god of his kind (see the article “Hellenistic States”).
A long memory has remained for centuries about Alexander the Great. And the reason for this is not his power, which collapsed immediately after his death. Nor was he the founder of a new dynasty:his two sons, Alexander and Hercules, died young in bloody strife. His youth and the ease with which he conquered half the world caused delight and envy. How many future great commanders repeated the words of Alexander:"20 years - and nothing for immortality!" Caesar thought with admiration of the amazing fate of Alexander the Great. Napoleon and Suvorov read books about his campaigns. How many legends circulated around the world, and how many eastern rulers derived their family from Iskander the Two-horned (as Alexander was called in the East). Many of the cities he founded (more than 30) in different parts of the world, bearing his name, were reminiscent of the great conquests. Some of them have survived to our time:Iskenderun (Alexandria under Issus), Al-Iskandaria (Alexandria of Egypt), Herat (Alexandria in Aria), Kandahar (Alexandria in Arachosia), Khojent (Alexandria Extreme).
And let the Greeks, whom the king forced to venerate himself as an Olympian, mockingly declared:“Let us leave Alexander, if he so desires, to call himself a god.” He still became one. He became the idol of young minds, the embodiment of good luck, a legend and an amazing story for his contemporaries and descendants.
According to the encyclopedia