LOOKING FOR THE GREAT ALEXANDER

 

I suppose you could call it the Melting Monarch's Mummy Trick, or the Ebbing Emperor Illusion – except this was no illusion. On what would be latter be 11 June, 323 B.C.,  Alexander III of Macedonia died in Babylon, probably after being poisoned,  since assassination was the normal recall procedure in Macedonian politics. 

Very long books have been written about who poisoned Alexander and why, and you might find that interesting. I did. But the death of Alexander the Great was just the prologue to the second greatest act of prestidigitation in world history, when the mummy of the most famous man since Adam vanished from the center of one of the largest cities in the civilized world, from one of the most famous and often visited mausoleums in the world. 

One day he was there, and the next – poof - he was gone, never to be seen again. And it wasn't that anybody forgot about him. The day his corpse went walk-about, he was still the best known conquer in history. He was “The Great” with a capital “G”, for heavens sake. And then he was gone. And he is still gone. It must be a mystery; right?

His body lay in his tent for three days, unattended. Sound familiar?  His loyal follows paid no respects to the man they had followed into the mountains of Afghanistan and the plains of India because they were too busy arguing over who should inherit what parts of his empire and his fortune.  Alexander himself thought the best way to enhance his image would have been for his body to be thrown into the Euphrates River, so he would simply disappear- very mysterious. 

Instead, eventually, he was mummified after the Egyptian fashion, and placed in a casket carved to bear his image. This was supposedly then placed inside a gold sarcophagus, which would have made it very, very heavy. The intent was to ship his body back to Macedonia, where he would be buried next to his father.  But somewhere in Syria the procession was waylaid by cavalry under the command of Ptolemy, whom Alexander had assigned to run his province of Egypt.

After slaughtering the funeral procession, Ptolemy hijacked the mummy to the Egyptian holy city of Memphis, about 160 miles south of his new capital which Alexander had ordered built, and had named “Alexandria”. Under Macedonian tradition, by burying Alexander's corpus delicti,  Ptolemy was laying claim to his empire. But after twenty years of fighting, Ptolemy gave up his dreams of world-wide glory and had himself just crowned Pharaoh of Egypt. And the late Alexander the Great took up residence in the temple of Ptah in Memphis.

He stayed there for about fifty years before the son, Ptolemy Soma , had him shipped down river to Alexandria (above), where he was given his own tomb inside the Brucheum, the Greek quarter of the city. Then in about 210 B.C. the grandson, Ptolemy Philopater, built a larger shrine, the Mausoleum of the Ptolemies (later called just The Soma - Greek for "the body"), to house the mummies of his parents, grand and great-grand parents as well as the mummy of Alexander.

The new temple, designed to look as old as the ancient temples still dotting the landscape, stood at the corner of The Street of Soma and Canoptic Street – the 42^nd Street and Fifth Avenues of ancient Alexandria. Down the street from this temple of the divine were the Royal Palaces, what was left of the famous Library of Alexandria and the Temple of the Caesar's. 

For the next five hundred years they dragged the corpse out for special occasion, and for viewing by visiting dignitaries, including a Who's Who of classical Rome - Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Caesar Augustus, and one Roman Emperor after another. This dressed-up desiccated carcass had become an object of veneration, made divine by the faith imparted in the cadaver by the thousands who prayed and offered sacrifice to it. 

To facilitate them, the ninth Pharoh to bear the name Ptolemy - A.K.A. Hook Nose Ptolemy -  had the gold sarcophagus melted down, and Alexander's mummy was then encased in glass - which had been around in Egypt since 3,400B.C.E. -  the better for the tourists to see. The gold, went in the Ptolemy 9's  purse.

But it was not faith alone that persevered Alexander's corpse, it was also the tourist industry, which sprang up to serve the faithful and the curious who visited The Soma. There were hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops - everybody wanted souvenirs. When they caught Caesar Augustus trying to slip Alexander's nose into his pocket, he claimed it broke off by accident. They still made him leave it behind. 

The Emperor Caligula (above) was brazen enough that he broke the glass and walked out with the breastplate ripped right off of Alexander's chest. In the second century A.D., to protect the taxes produced by this industry, the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus closed The Soma to all but the richest visitors. Average folks still came to look at the building, but not as many.

You'd would think it would be easy to locate such a famous spot, even 2,000 years later, but just after daybreak on 21 July, 365 A.D. there was an 8.3 earthquake off Cyprus, 400 miles to the northwest. The shaking and tsunamis slammed into Alexandria, killing about 5,000 people, knocking down 50,000 houses and dropping the level of the entire coast about 20 feet. Needless to say, the morning after that morning, The Soma lost its importance to the city.  Probably Alexander's mummy had slipped into the harbor and most likely the survivors had more important things to worry about other than the dried out carcass of a long dead now heathen monarch.

The only reason to suspect The Soma and the corpse survived this temblor is the reprobate philosopher Libanius. He had resisted conversion to the new political correctness of Christianity.  For committing that sin he had been exiled from Constantinople. Yes, he was a pagan. But the dirty little secret of Christianity is that even pagans were appalled by the sins usually attributed by Christians to the pagans; sins like lust and greed. 

In describing greedy Christians in about 390 A.D. Libanius asked (above), “Who could be the friend of such as these? When they behave like this for money's sake, would they keep their hands off temple offerings or tombs?...And this evil...is universal, whether you mention Paltus or Alexandria where the corpse of Alexander is displayed..”  And that is the only mention of the tomb of Alexander after the earthquake of 365 A.D.   And since there is no record that Libanius ever visited Alexandria after his exile, I find this less than convincing, especially considering that Libanius died not long after writing this passage. Had he lived, maybe he would have corrected it.

There is a theory floating about that, in order to revitalize the local tourist industry the corpse of Alexander was re-named as the corpse of the Christian Saint Mark, and The Soma as the Church of St. Mark.  Why Christians would have done something like that, I have no idea. It just seems to me to be a lot of trouble to go to. 

After 365 A.D. the tourist industry of Alexandria certainly needed a new Alexander The Great, but the two things ancient Alexandria had after the earthquake was dead bodies, and salvaged stones for building new temples. And while it might be emotionally satisfying to blame religious fanatics for the loss of the Alexander's corpse, and it might be appealing to suppose Alexander the Great still exists, buried under St. Mark's square in Venice (above), it is far more likely that he ended up in the harbor of Alexandria, soaking like a packet of old freeze dried coffee, slowly losing his effervescence.

The real magic trick of history is that in the face of overwhelming evidence each generation continues to labor under the delusion that they invented sin and mystery, or at least identified it better.  And this column is certainly proof of  that.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - One

 

As sunlight first touched Chancellorsville, Virginia on Monday, 4 May, 1863, both armies were staggering back from a disaster. The 133,000 man Federal Army of the Potomac under Joe Hooker had literally been worse than decimated, losing some 17,000 men - 1,600 dead, 9,800 wounded and almost 6,000 captured or missing. - almost 13% of their total strength.   But the 60,000 man rebel Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee had suffered some 13,000 causalities - 1,700 dead, 9,000 wounded and over 2,000 captured or missing – or over 20% of their strength. 

General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker,  although still in command,  rightly bore most of the blame for the Federal failure.  He was mocked in the press both south (above) and north.  However, although few could see it at the time, the tragedy was a tactical victory for the Confederates, but a strategic defeat.

Two advantages helped disguise the scale of the disaster for General Lee's army.  First and foremost, General Longstreet's corps had not been present at Chancellorsville.  Lee (above) had been forced to disperse one third of his army,  some  30,000 men , to southern tidewater Virginia, so they could be fed.  They would now be rejoining Lee -  combat veterans, fresh and not blunted by a wasting battle.   And secondly, Lee had won a clear psychological victory over Hooker.  Lee, it seemed,  always won his battles with the Army of the Potomac. But Lee knew better.

The only shadow which seemed to darken this victory was that Lee's right hand man,  the  religiously fanatical General “Stonewall” Jackson,  had lost his left arm at Chancellorsville.  He was bedridden now, and would not be available to General Lee on his invasion of Pennsylvania. And Lee must invade. His army would never be stronger.  And only in the north would the Confederacy find the surpluses to feed, clothe and arm their soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, most of the 42,000 men under Lieutenant General John Pemberton were

marching to realign after Grant's attack around the rebel right flank. There were now about 33,000 men in and around Vicksburg, another 6,000 in and around Jackson, with perhaps 2,000 men in Port Hudson on the Mississippi, just above Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Pemberton's first impulse had been to abandon Port Hudson and call the garrison back to Vicksburg,  but Confederate President Jefferson Davis had countermanded that order.  In fact, over the next few weeks Davis would feed another 10,000 reinforcements into the isolated post, while commanders elsewhere in the state would be starved for men.

One of the most powerful Confederate regiments was on a forced march to Grand Gulf that morning - the 400 plus men of the 26^th Mississippi Infantry.   In April they had repelled the Federals at Fort Pemberton.  Now, they were ordered to Grand Gulf. They might have used the Southern Railroad to save time and energy, but after the raid on Newton Station, that line was no longer available.  The only way to get from the Yazoo delta to Grand Gulf was on foot.  And for two and a half days they had been marching under their colonel, A.E. Reynolds.  But they only got as far as Bayou Pierre before running into the Federals, who were marching north to meet them.

Their commander, the acquisitive Arthur Exum Reynolds,  was a big man in Tishomingo County - he was rich, he was politically powerful and he was fat. The 300 pound lawyer (above, evidently holding in his gut)  had moved to the north eastern corner of Mississippi in the early 1840's, once the Chickasaw native peoples had been forced out.  After the Presidential election of 1860, as a wealthy state representative "A.E." was a natural choice to represent his county at the secession convention. He agreed with the majority that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery",  but like 16 others he voted to wait until other states had joined the rebellion before taking the ultimate step.

When they did, "A.E." raised his own 400 man regiment. He was unanimously elected Colonel of the 26^th.  They arrived at Fort Donaldson, Tennessee in February of 1862 (above) - just in time to suffer 12 dead and 69 wounded in their and General Grant's first major battle.  During that engagement, "A.E."'s horse was killed, and the substantial Colonel, while uninjured, lacked the wind to keep up with his unit under his own power. So he led from the rear. The entire regiment, including A.E., were forced to surrender. They were paroled and reformed in September at Jackson, Mississippi. The 46 year old A.E. was again in command as they skirmished with Grant's army during his December 1862 advance to and January 1863 retreat from Grenada, Mississippi.  And now under orders from the profane General Loring, A.E. wisely offered only token resistance to the advancing Yankees.

Captain Patterson's  engineers worked all night to repair the bridge over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, and at 5:30 the morning of Monday, 4 May, 1863, General Smith's division crossed the bridge and continued up the Port Gibson road toward Willow Springs. As they approached the tiny community a battery of rebel artillery from the Mississippi 26th made a show of firing a few rounds, but retreated before Federal artillery could return the favor. And with that the valuable fresh water of Willow Springs fell into Union hands.

While the Yankees were refilling their canteens a civilian plantation owner appeared riding a mule and demanding to speak with the officer in charge. The General's soldiers, the outraged plantation owner complained, had stolen everything in his larder - pigs and cows and horses. 

The man demanded his property be returned and the thieves punished. The craggy General Smith calmly ask the planter who owned the mule he had arrived upon. It was his mule, responded the planter. Well, said General Smith, the thieves could not have been his men, because his men would not have left the mule behind. And with that the planter was sent on his way, on foot.

Clearly, the troops were already working to stretch their rations beyond the ten days they had been told to make them last. And they were having no trouble doing that.  However General Smith did not allow his men to tarry at the springs or forage too much along their route. That very afternoon Smith pushed his men forward through Rock Springs,  5 miles to Harkinson's Ferry -  the main crossing of the Big Black River by the Port Gibson Road.  They arrived there just as the day was ending, and after a brief exchange of cannon fire the 20th Ohio Infantry stormed across the bridge, forcing the rebels to assume that Grant was going to make a drive directly for Vicksburg, just 20 miles further north.  The Yankees did little more than raid up the road, but if an immediate  assault in Vicksburg was not Grant's intention, what was next for the Army of the Tennessee?

Before he had even crossed the Mississippi  River, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant (above) understood what he was risking by passing below the still active guns at Vicksburg. He would write later, “To have no communications - to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole army without a rear link was a tremendous gamble!" Once over the river he could not retreat, there would be no rescue and no resupply. He could not merely stay where he was.  He had to fight and he had to win, every fight and every skirmish. A single reversal could force him to pause and any pause would spell doom.  But fight who, and fight where?

There was still the possibility of joining with Nathaniel Banks( above)  and his 30,000 man Army of the Gulf,  and together crushing Port Hudson and then marching north to Vicksburg with 70,000 men.   But Banks had been tempted to follow a will-o-wisp of easy victories up Bayou Teeche, moving farther away from the key battleground of the Mississippi River.  The Massachusetts political general would not meet his promised return date of 10 May in front of Port Hudson.  And Grant could not wait until Banks returned. Grant had the initiative, and he could not surrender it,  else Pemberton would eventually gather strength against him. He most move forward. And after a bath in the newly liberated fortress of Grand Gulf, Grant rode north to keep a close eye on his most troublesome subordinate, Major General John McClernand.

Grant arrived at Rocky Springs after a daylong ride, "...by a strange and circuitous road." The next morning he might move directly on Vicksburg.  But he had only some 30,000 men in 2 corps drawing up to the Big Black River south of the city.  And Pemberton had about that same number in the new fortifications on the eastern side of Vicksburg.  Isolated as he was , Grant could not afford any battle which offered him less than favorable odds.   Deep in his enemies' rear,  he must keep the Confederates divided and not allow them to concentrate against him. Grant truly had the elephant by the tail.  He needed Sherman to join him, as quickly as possible.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty

 

Sunrise on Sunday, 3 May 1863 found a new and odd looking crossing of the 5 food deep south fork of Bayou Pierre - a 166 foot long by 12 foot wide floating raft bridge. It had been constructed - 20 yards upstream from the old suspension bridge at Askamalla ford - from the fences, pig sties, stable enclosures and the sidewalks of Port Gibson, Mississippi. 

It was an amazing and sad structure requiring constant repair, but over the next week it would endure the passage of nearly 45,000 Federal soldiers, their cannon, wagons and cavalry. Such herculean effort was deserving of a Julius Caesar to praise its construction. Instead it received a mere footnote in the history of Captain Patterson's Kentucky Company of Mechanics and Engineers - a regiment despite its name - ably assisted in this effort by work teams from the 78th Ohio Volunteer Regiment.

The 78th (above, in Zanesville, Ohio) was an example of how the war was evolving into something larger than was originally intended. The regiment had been formed in October of 1861 at Camp Gilbert on the outskirts of Zanesville, Ohio. Unlike the 90 day provincial and insular regiments formed in the heady rush before the First Battle of Bull Run, these men were drawn from all over the state, and had enlisted for 3 years. But their Colonel, 42 year old Mortimer Dormer Leggett, was an amateur soldier - being a lawyer and superintendent of the Zanesville public schools before the war.

The self described "Jayhawkers" had fought at Fort Donaldson and had lost a man killed and 8 wounded on the second day of Shiloh. They had participated in the siege of Corinth, Mississippi, and the assault on Chickasaw Bayou. They stormed the trenches at Fort Hindman, and helped dig the failed Lake Providence Canal. They had come to Mississippi as part of the 2nd Brigade, under General John A. Logan's 3rd Division, XVII Corps. And they were practical enough to know that building a floating bridge was just part of their job as soldiers.

Bursting the cork at Port Gibson with the help of the 78th., Grant now had two roads to choose from. To Grant's left the road ran west for three miles before crossing the mainstream of Bayou Pierre on a second suspension bridge. The road then forked. A turn south would lead to the fortress of Grand Gulf. But follow the road north across the Big Black River and a traveler would reach Warrenton and Vicksburg beyond. This crossing was protected by Confederate Colonel Cockerel with just 3 now battle weary Mississippi regiments and 6 cannon.

Or Grant might choose to advance for 8 miles northwest up the road to his right, which crossed the north fork of Bayou Pierre on a third suspension bridge. Continuing north this road led to Willow Springs and yet another fork, guarded by the remnants of Colonel Garott's Alabama brigade. The left turning here lead northwest to cross the Big Black river at Harkinson's Ferry, before reaching the village of Mount Vernon and then Warrenton.  Take the right fork and you would trend northeast through Cayuga and Auburn before crossing 14 mile Mile Creek and reaching Raymond - and beyond, the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi.

Lieutenant General Pemberton (above), now in Vicksburg,  might have sent troops from the city to bolster the defenses along Bayou Pierre.  But the Pennsylvanian in gray was painfully aware that Grant's XVth Corps, under General William Tecumseh Sherman, with most of the Federal gunboats for artillery support, was still poised at Miliken's bend, less than a day's sailing time  north of Vicksburg. Pemberton dare not strip the cities' defenses else the aggressive Sherman launch a coup de main. Besides, it was not in Pemberton's nature to rush to the battlefield.

Instead,  he remained in the city, strengthening trench lines around Vicksburg while allowing General Loring (above) to assemble all troops recalled from northern and central Mississippi along the Big Black River. What Pemberton and Loring both needed now was time.

And it seemed he might get it. At Millikin's bend General Sherman was suddenly cautious. Separated from his friend Grant, the ginger headed Ohioian (above) was looking at the 70 mile long tattered cordoryed road to Hard Times Landing. It had almost been destroyed by the 30,000 men who had already marched down it. And should his own corps make that passage "Cump" must leap his 15,000 men across the Old Man River and into the yawning abyss of central Mississippi, where the entire Federal army might be cutoff and devoured. No wonder then that Sherman was worried. On 29 April, just before Grant crossed the Mississippi, he wrote his wife that "...when they take Grand Gulf they (will) have the elephant by the tail."  But Grant had no intention of stopping or even waiting.

Grant's ordered Sherman, ""I wish you to collect a train of 120 wagons . . . and send them to Grand Gulf; and there load them with rations, as follows: One hundred thousand pounds of bacon, the balance coffee, sugar, salt and hard bread . . . The enemy is badly beaten, greatly demoralized, and exhausted of ammunition. The road to Vicksburg is open. All we want now are men, ammunition, and hard bread. We can subsist our horses on the country, and obtain considerable supplies for our troops."  Sherman set to work fulfilling his orders, but he was convinced Grant's plan was leading the army into disaster.

The first division of the McClernand's XIII Corps to cross the floating bridge over the south fork of Bayou Pierre that Saturday morning, 3 May 1863, was the 12th, commanded by the humorless patrician, 42 year old Hoosier, Brigadier General Alvin Peterson Hovey. 

Hovey had an undeserved reputation as a populist, and a history as a pro-union Democrat. Both of these traits convinced Republicans to make him a Colonel. Hovey was then transformed into a radical Republican once he was confronted with the ugly reality of slavery, and the realization that his political future depended on his support for the war.  He assured a superior, "I want all the cotton burned north and south....I want all the women and children, especially of rebels, reduced to starvation and want."  A modicum of military skill and conspicuous bravery at Shiloh convinced Grant to promote Hovey and give him a division. Once across the bridge, the 12th division turned left, toward Grand Gulf.

The second division across the bridge was the 10th, commanded by the short - both physically and in patience - and cranky 48 year old career cavalryman, Brigadier General Andrew Jackson Smith (above). The irascible Smith had never commanded infantry before the civil war, but he was immensely popular with both his superiors and his troops, because he rarely complained, had little time for pomp or speeches, and because he shared his soldier's hardships. He was also dependably and reliably professional, later becoming Grant's "go-to" officer whenever a crises arose. And in an ocean of political generals, as far as anyone knew, General Andrew Jackson Smith had no strong personal political opinions, at all.

Cyrus Hussey (above), on the other hand, was a man with plenty of opinions. A rigid and judgmental 24 year old Quaker school teacher, Cyrus opposed slavery on religious grounds. He enlisted in the 48th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1861, as a sergeant, but by spring of 1863, Cyrus was the Colonel. He was a respected officer even by the many who did not like him. For relaxation, he did algebra and diagrammed sentences, or just complained in letters to his wife about the moral failings of his superiors.  Once Cyrus had chosen a side, he never wavered in his beliefs. Falling in love with an Episcopalian, Rebecca Hodson, Cyrus married her in December of 1859, even though he was immediately disowned by his own congregation.  But it was about the only rebellious thing he ever did,

The 48th Ohio crossed the south fork about 9:30 that Saturday morning. As they marched through the now open, rolling Mississippi countryside, Cyrus heard what he thought was cannon firing off toward Grand Gulf. In fact it was General Bowen setting off the ammunition he could not escape with, as he evacuated the forts overlooking the river.  Grant heard the same sound in Port Gibson and knew immediately what it meant. The Rebels had no intention of fighting to hold onto the Bayou Pierre line, and were retreating all the way back to the Big Black River. The deep thunder of the exploding Confederate munitions meant he would soon have that elephant by the tail,  and Sherman's Corps could now cut short their voyage down the river, and disembark at Grand Gulf. 

Shortly after noon General Smith's division arrived to find the third suspension bridge over the north fork of Bayou Pierre burning, like the other two. But upon inspection 25 year old engineer Lieutenant Colonel James Harrison Wilson was able to report that although the rebels had set fire to the wooden roadbed, even it had not burned completely. The iron cables - actually iron chains held together by rope - and the iron towers they draped from,  had suffered no significant damage. By early evening the Kentucky Engineers and Mechanics were at work repairing the bridge. And at the first light of dawn, Sunday 4 May, 1863, the 10th Division would be able to cross the Bayou, and advance on Willow Springs.

The cork was now, truly, out of the bottle.  And so was Grant!

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