The Army that Antiochus gathered to face Amitrochates, son of Sandrokottos, numbered some forty thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and a siege train including a number of cart-mounted scorpions purchased from Rome for a substantial fee. It was a substantial force, but it was only half that of the Army his scouts had told him that Amitrochates had mustered. On the other side of the Caucasus Indicus Mountains a hundred-thousand Indian Troops, backed by fearsome War Elephants waited for the word to storm through the passes to invade his Father's Kingdom. Antiochus refused to allow them the opportunity.
Instead, he marched his army into the Inducus Pass, sending forth his Mercenary Cavalry, made up of Saka Horse Archers and Light Cavalry, to raid the villages and towns near the Arachosian entrance to the pass. The more cumbersome armies of Amitrochates could not catch the swift-moving, light-traveling, Saka, who used their formidable cavalry skills, honed by a life on the vast grasslands at the edge of the world, to great effect. For a season the armies of Amitrochates tried to entrap and destroy the Saka Mercenaries, but it availed them not at all. The Saka returned to Antiochus' Camp at the end of the spring of two-ninety-two fat with plunder.
In the summer of two-ninety-two, Amitrochates declared that he would waste no more time chasing down swift-moving Saka raiders, and ordered his army forth to strike at the source of these raids, the Seleucid Army camped in the Mountain Pass. This proved to be a mistake on the part of Amitrochates, son of Sandrokottos, whose father never would have allowed a season of raiding to so enflame his passions as to be lured into a battle where he could not bring his numbers to bear, on terms set by an enemy who had no hope of winning a battle absent those advantages.
Thus in the first month of Summer two-ninety-two was the Battle of the Caucasus Indicus fought between Antiochus and Amitrochates. The Battle was a resounding defeat for Amitrochates, whose elephants were sickened by the climate of the mountain and thus more easily put to flight by the fires lit by Antiochus to screen his army's positions. The Fires were lit with pitch and oils suddenly as the elephants thundered forward. The sudden smoke and flame frightened half of the elephants and many of them stampeded back into Amitrochates' own formations or else had to be slain by their handlers to avoid such a fate.
Those elephants who stayed the course and continued to charge found themselves slain by high-quality iron bolts from the cart-mounted scorpions that Antiochus had purchased at great expense from Rome. Once the Indian Elephants had been put to flight or slain, Antiochus ordered his men forth into the disorganized mass of Amitrochates' troops. The more lightly equipped Indian Troops put up a valiant fight, given the circumstances, but they were unable to stem the onslaught of the steel-armed Phalangites of Antiochus' forces.
Seeing the battle was lost, Amitrochates, son of Sandrokottos ordered the retreat back into Archosia. Antiochus would retake much of the Satrapy in the fall of two-ninety-two. When spring of two-ninety-one came, he moved to do the same to Gedrosia. Here, he and Amitrochates met in battle a second time, outside the walls of Pura. The battle went less disastrously for Amitrochates, but only in terms of men lost, as due to raids into the Indus by Antiochus' Saka Mercenary Cavalry, Amitrochates was obliged to cede the field to Antiochus after the second day of battle.
By the end of the fall of Two-Ninety-One, Antiochus had reclaimed both Arachosia and Gedrosia from Amitrochates, but Amitrochates had access to the vast wealth and manpower of India. Should the war continue, as it seemed it would, Amitrochates would no doubt learn from the mistakes of his first two campaigns and come back with enough force and enough strategic insight to crush Antiochus. Fortunately for Antiochus, this was not to be.
As Amitrochates was gathering another larger, more well-drilled, and well-equipped force in his winter quarters at Pattala, news arrived from the south of his Kingdom. The Kings of the Cholas, Cheras, and Sayaputras whom Sandrokottos had compelled to acknowledge the Suzrainty of his line while he was King of India had seen the difficulties that Amitrochates had been having in the North and chose that moment to attempt to throw off their status as nominal feudatories by invading Amitrochates' southern territories. Together, these three Kings had seized control of multiple cities already and were now threatening to push even further into Amitrochates' Kingdom.
So it was that in the Spring of two-ninety, a treaty was made between Antiochus and Amitrochates, acknowledging Antiochus' gains in Arachosia and Gedrosia and pledging peace for a period of no less than ten years, allowing Amitrochates to turn south to face the three Tamil Kings who had attacked him while his back was turned. While Amitrochates still retained control of Punjab and Indus, two satrapies in the East had been regained by Antiochus, and peace in the East was secured for at least a decade.
So it was that Antiochus returned to administration and trade, consolidating the Eastern Provinces of his Father's Kingdom and setting learned men to study the secrets of the Scorpions that had so aided him in claiming the key early victory at the Battle of the Caucasus Indus, for had he not had the weapons available, then the half of Amitrochates' elephants that had not panicked would have surely allowed him time to reorganize his men and yet carry the day.
It took those learned men more than a year to figure out how the Romans had managed to make a ballista small enough that it could be mounted on a cart while still retaining enough rate of fire and power to be used against formations or elephants, but they managed it and by two-eighty-nine, multiple workshops in the Eastern Provinces under Antiochus' control could produce these new Carroballistae.
Trade too continued to flow. Several thousand of the Nisean Horses were purchased by King Pyrrhus of Epirus, including a breeding population. That silver was used to further improve infrastructure in the Eastern Provinces, building roads and aqueducts, and refurbishing the port of Tiz in Gedrosia which had suffered under the administration of Amitrochates and Sandrokottos due to their attention being on land-based conquest in the Deccan Kingdoms and south against the Tamil Kingdoms rather than the spice trade. The wealth of spices brought into the port also helped fill the coffers of the Kingdom.
At the same time, traders ventured east once more to trade in Kasia, Kosia, Arzia, and Kroron. As dyes, high-quality iron, glass, mirrors, spices, and brass went east, silk, tea, jade, and porcelain went west, further increasing the coffers of the Kingdom and making several merchants very rich in the process. By two-eighty-seven, Antiochus had not only reversed the terrible decline the Eastern Provinces of his father's Kingdom had been suffering but turned it into an ascent.
When Seleucus died suddenly in the Summer of two-eighty-six he had been in the midst of planning a campaign to seize control of Thrace after it had been weakened by the attack of Antigonos Gonatas and the death of Antigonos Gonatas at the Battle of Seuthopolis as well as the subsequent death of Lysimachus to an infected wound from said battle three days later. Antiochus succeeded his father and immediately began plans to utilize the army his father had gathered to invade the Kasia, Kosia, Kroron, and Arzia instead. He would delay the campaign until the fall of two-eighty-four so that he could consolidate the Western half of his Kingdom in the same way he had the East.
When he attacked Kasia, the City's small force of Cavalry and Infantry proved to be no match for his army, fortified with Carroballistae that nullified the mobility advantage of Kasia's cavalry. A short one-week siege ensued before the Kasians surrendered. Their King had been slain in the fighting, and his heir had barely been clinging to life due to an infected spear wound in the thigh he had taken in the battle. When their prince died, and their only other option was to let his younger sister take the throne, the Kasians found it preferable to let Antiochus have it rather than allow a Woman to rule in truth.
One week later, Kosia, Kroron, and Arzia offered voluntary submission to the Suzrainty of Antiochus, which Antiochus accepted gladly appointing those Kingdom's Kings as governors for having the wisdom to kneel. With control of the goods from Sacae now under Antiochus' control, more wealth would come in than ever before, allowing Antiochus to purchase more steel for his armies. By the time Antiochus returned to his Capital in the Summer of two-eighty-three, he was already planning on going to war once more with Egypt so that he might push the Ptolemies out of Asia Minor.
Such dreams would eventually come to fruition upon the death of Ptolemy I in two-eighty and the breakdown of the succession between his two warring sons. The death of the last of the Diadochi who had ridden with Alexandros Megas would presage the death of Egyptian control of the shores of Southern Asia Minor, and perhaps also of the coastal Levant.
So swore Antiochus I Asianos, Master of Asia. . .
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AN: So yeah, turns out that the Mauryans miscalculated. Bindusara was good at crushing revolts, but not so much at fighting a peer opponent. Some people believe that Chandragupta did most of the conquering that was later attributed to him, which is a view I ascribe to. Chandragupta the conqueror, Bindusara the Consolidator. Here we see him dealt defeat in Arachosia and Gedrosia and be forced to make peace to turn south and fight the Tamil Kings of Chola, Chera, and Sayaputra. The consensus is that Chandragupta wasn't able to conquer them outright and only force them into nominal vassalage.
Whether Bindusara can conquer them or not is mostly irrelevant to the scope of this story, however. Much of what goes on in India is opaque to the Seleucid court, and anything that goes on in Southern India is downright beyond their sight. Antiochus' eastern campaigns being a success in this story matters primarily due to the money gained from control of sections of the silk and spice trade allowing him to improve his army for another go at Egypt.
At any rate, next up we'll check in with Egypt. That should be a wild ride since the Egyptian Court right now reads like the first book of Game of Thrones. Seriously, there's enough backstabbing and infidelity in the IRL history for that, but then you add Ptolemy I demanding his sons work together on top and that adds a whole new layer of intrigue.
Then we'll check in on Carthage after that.
Stay tuned. . .