tudes were put to the sword, and multitudes sold into slavery. Alexander advanced some thirty miles into their country, and captured their principal town. At a second town he met with an obstinate defence, which cost the lives of many Macedonians. The inhabitants, said to number twenty thousand, despairing of ultimate success, set fire to the town and cast themselves with their wives and children into the flames. The citadel escaped the fire, and was garrisoned by a detachment left behind for the purpose. The lives of three thousand of its gallant defenders were spared.
Information was received that a confederacy of the Malloi, Oxydrakai, and other independent tribes occupying the river valleys was being formed with the intention of offering strenuous resistance to the invasion. Alexander hastened the movements of his fleet and army with the object of attacking the confederates severally in detail, before they could mature their plans and combine their forces. The fleet and the bulk of the army received orders to assemble at the next confluence, that of the Hydraotes (Ravi) with the Akesines (Chinab, including the Hydaspes, or Jihlam).
Alexander in person landed with a picked force, largely composed, as usual, of mounted troops, to operate against the Malloi, the most formidable of the allied tribes, who occupied the fertile valley of the Hydraotes, on both banks of the river. Their neighbours, the Oxydrakai, who dwelt on the banks of the upper course of the Hyphasis, although ordinarily at war with the Malloi, had resolved to forget old enmities and to make
