Alexander the Great Crosses the Hydaspes
A monsoon-swollen river and a king who refused to yield produced Alexander's hardest battle in Asia
Quick facts
- Date
- May 326 BCE
- Combatants
- Alexander the Great vs. King Porus of the Pauravas
- Porus's force
- Up to 200 elephants, cavalry, infantry, and chariots
- Outcome
- Alexander victorious; Porus reinstated as a subject ruler
What happened
In May 326 BCE, Alexander the Great's Macedonian army fought King Porus of the Pauravas on the banks of the Hydaspes River, in what is now the Punjab region of Pakistan, at the eastern edge of Alexander's campaign into Asia. Porus refused Alexander's demand for tribute and positioned his army, including as many as 200 war elephants, an animal the Macedonians had never faced in battle, along the riverbank, betting that the monsoon-swollen Hydaspes would stop Alexander from crossing. Alexander instead staged a night crossing upstream in heavy rain, catching Porus's forces off guard and outmaneuvering them despite being outnumbered. After a hard-fought battle, Alexander defeated Porus but, impressed by his courage, restored him as a subject ruler over his own territory rather than deposing him.
Why it matters
The Hydaspes marked the practical limit of Alexander's eastward advance into the Indian subcontinent; his own troops, exhausted and unwilling to face the far larger armies reported further east in Magadha, refused to march further and forced his eventual retreat. The battle also introduced Macedonian and later Hellenistic military culture to direct contact with Indian polities, a contact that fed into the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms of the following centuries.
How we know
The battle is described in multiple surviving Greek and Roman histories of Alexander's campaigns, including Arrian's Anabasis, and its location and general course are corroborated by classical geography of the Punjab river system.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Battle of Hydaspes · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Livius.org. Hydaspes (326 BCE) · Reputable sourcelivius.org · The domain "livius.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- Ancient Greece → · Alexander the Great campaign that reached the Indus in 326 BCE