Warmatrix

Achaemenid empire at its greatest extend

History discerns several successive ancient Persian empires, each with a different dynasty: Median, Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian. The Achaemenid was the first that could truly be called an empire and thus is often referred to as the First Persian empire.
Most of the time during the Bronze and Iron Ages Mesopotamia had been dominated by the mighty but ruthless empire of Assyria. At the end of the 7th century it weakened and was overpowered by a coalition led by an Iranian tribe of horsemen called the Medes, who managed to raze the ancient capital of Nineveh in 612 BCE and next tear down the whole empire. The Medes founded their own empire with a new capital at Ecbatana and grew rich on east-west trade.
The Persian empire was the successor of the Median one. It was founded by Cyrus the Great. At his time, the Persians were vassals of the Median empire. The young Cyrus already displayed competence and ambition. The Median king Astyages perceived him as a threat to the throne and tried to eliminate him in 553 BCE. Though outnumbered, the Persians fought back for three years. With the vast resources of the Median empire at his disposal, Astyages should have won in the end, but he was betrayed by some of his subjects who found him too autocratic. Quickly the Persians turned the tables, conquered Ecbatana and soon the rest of the kingdom. Cyrus was cunning and did not merely subjugate the Medes. Instead, he created a Persian-Median state were men from both tribes had high positions.
Cyrus created a professional standing army that was supplemented by militia troops on large campaigns. The core was formed by the 'Immortals', a unit of 10,000 infantry armed with spears, bows, wicker shields and scale armor. It was always kept up to strength, because when a member died, he was immediately replaced. The Immortals were supplemented by less well-armed militia infantry called Sparabara, who fought part-time but frequently. Lastly there were the Takabara, light troops armed with javelins that in peacetime acted as garrisons. However the strength of the Persian army lay not in its infantry, but cavalry. It included chariots manned with archers, horse archers, heavy cavalry, camels and later even elephants. The cavalry was swift and maneuverable, capable of raining down arrows with precision, but also of heavy charges.
The fall of the Median empire left a power vacuum. Croesus, king of Lydia, in Asia Minor, probed the defenses in the east in 547 BCE and Cyrus quickly confronted him at Pteria. The battle was indecisive and with winter already coming down on the armies, Croesus withdrew back to the west. But unknown to the Lydians, Cyrus's army shadowed them and when enough men of the retreating army had been dismissed, struck at the Battle of Thymbra in 546 BCE. Croesus frantically re-gathered as many troops as he could, gaining a roughly 2:1 advantage in numbers, and counterattacked. But his cavalry was thrown into chaos by the smell of camels taken from the Persian baggage train, which the easterners had placed in the frontlines. The Persians won the battle, took the city of Sardis after a 14 day siege and then the whole of Lydia. Again Cyrus tried his policy of reconciliation, but the Lydians betrayed him and counterattacked once more. Furious, Cyrus sent his general Mazares west again and he overcame the Lydians for a second time. This time there was no mercy; instead pillaging and enslavement on a grand scale. The Median general Harpagus completed the job in the west by conquering Cilicia and Phoenicia in four years.
Meanwhile, Cyrus had turned his attention east, where his borders were vulnerable to the same kind of threat that the Persians had been to the Medes. In 540 BCE he conquered the kingdom of Elam and its capital Susa. His dominance of the Middle East was complete, except for the great city of Babylon, which had carved out a substantial kingdom for itself in the preceding years. In 539 BCE Cyrus confronted the Babylonians in the Battle of Opis. Prior to the battle, he had again waged a propaganda campaign, positioning himself as a liberal and beneficient ruler. Little is known about the actual battle, but it seems to have been hard fought and ended in a decisive victory for the Persians.
The last campaigns of Cyrus' life were directed northeast, into northern Iran and the steppes of central Asia, all the way up to the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) river and even beyond. Here he managed to subdue several wild horsemen tribes, including the Saka, who would provide heavy cavalry for the Persian armies in later years. Some sources say he died in that region while on campaign, while others claim he died peacefully in his capital. In a quarter of a century Cyrus and his Persians had conquered a vast empire, through a combination of military prowess and shrewd politics.
Cyrus's successors would later expand the Persian empire to include Egypt, part of Libya and the Indus valley. They managed to combine the military effectiveness of the horse-riding tribes with an effective and stable bureaucracy and religious toleration, creating a mighty and stable empire, the largest in the world at the time. It would take the military genius of Alexander the Great to bring it down. Even then it reasserted itself under the Parthians after a couple of decades.