Xenophon and De Soto

Sunday was a quiet day allowing me to complete a book I purchased several years ago, Xenophon's March by John Prevas. It has been with me on numerous trips, probably been to half a dozen countries, but for one reason or another, I never got past the first few places before it was displaced by something of more immediate urgency or interest. I have now finished it and I very much enjoyed it.

Xenophon's March is the account of the 10,000 Greek mercenary army hired by Cyrus in his bid to unseat his brother Artaxerxes, King of Kings, ruler of the Persian Empire, in 401 B.C. The Greeks marched 1,500 mile from their homeland to Babylon, fought a battle with Artaxerxes in which they distinguished themselves and were victorious on their part of the field. Regrettably for them though, Cyrus was cut down and decapitated. 1,500 miles from home and in the midst of barbarian hordes, the Greeks found themselves in rather desperate straights. But they made it home.

One aspect which never gets much discussed in ancient accounts is the issue of logistics and supplies. How do you feed, water and maintain a mobile army of 10,000 in difficult terrain among hostile inhabitants? We often set great store on the near-miraculous destructive power of our modern weapons but often the real determinant in any engagement, particularly of any duration, is supplies and logistics.

Following the account in Xenophon's March it is easy to see how they did it. As they marched, days at a time, passing through villages and towns, sustaining themselves in between by whatever they are carrying in wagons, there is a pattern of stark simplicity. If they are in territory of Greeks or allies, they pass through with little disruption other than to trade for supplies. What did they have to trade, in an era dominated by barter? Loot and slaves.

Because if you weren't an ally or Greek, the other two patterns of interaction were brutally simple. Where there was no animosity, they simply took all the supplies they needed, loot of any value, and young women as concubines and young men as slaves for labor. They ate the supplies and sold the loot, concubines and slaves as they needed. And those were the relatively lucky villages. The old and young were left behind to fare as best they could.

If the Greeks were in a region where their progression was actively resisted, engagement with the inhabitants of local villages was simpler yet. They took what they needed and killed and destroyed everything else. Burned to the ground. The brutality was extensive and complete.

So basically, if there was an ancient army coming through, your prospects as a village were 1) trade, 2) pillage, 3) complete destruction.

In thinking about the supplies and logistics and the pattern of engagement, it seemed to me that this was a pattern I recognized from somewhere else. It then occurred to me that this is pretty much what is described in the account of Hernando De Soto's progress through the southeast in 1539-1542 when he and over 600 men, 200 horses and 300 pigs marched from Florida, through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana to Texas, from whence they returned to Mexico City. Only some 300 men survived the three year expedition.

From 401 B.C. to 1542 AD you have virtually identical supply and logistics patterns for armies of exploration and conquest. Patterns that were devastatingly destructive to peoples and communities along the route of march. Interesting to see the same patterns in such different historical contexts.