"=Retreat of the Ten Thousand.="--Xenophon's march is commonly known as the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," 401 B. C. The account of the "Retreat" is given in Xenophon's Anabasis. About fourteen thousand Greek soldiers under a Spartan leader named Clearchus entered the service of a Persian prince, Cyrus, surnamed the younger, brother of the then reigning King of Persia, Artaxerxes II. The purpose of Cyrus was to deprive his brother of the throne of Persia, and reign in his stead. The expedition marched through Asia Minor to Cunaxa, near old Babylon, where an army of 900,000 Persians engaged the army of Cyrus, which, with his Greek auxiliaries number but 300,000. The smaller army was really successful in the battle, but a rash attempt on the part of Cyrus to slay his brother during the engagement--in which he himself was killed--changed the fortunes of the day, the expedition ended in failure and hence the retreat of the Greek ten thousand up the valley of the Tigris, through Armenia to Trebizond, a Greek city on the Euxine--our modern Black Sea. This march of Greek infantry though attended with almost incredible hardships from cold, hunger, and the assaults of enemies, was not equal to the march of the Mormon Battalion for the reason that it covered but fifteen hundred miles, as against the two thousand miles covered by the Battalion. While the Greek infantry in their retreat numbered more men than the Battalion, and fought many battles, their march was, for the most part, through settled lands and along well defined roads, while the greater part of the Battalion's march was through desert lands; and four hundred and seventy-four miles of it through trackless deserts where nothing but savages and wild beasts were found, "or deserts where, for want of water, there was no living creature."[2:a] =Doniphan's Expedition into Mexico.=--Doniphan's march occurred in the same year, and in the same war in which the Battalion served--the war with Mexico, 1846. The march is known as Doniphan's Expedition into Mexico. The expedition started from Santa Fe and marched to Matamoras, near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico--a distance of about thirteen or fourteen hundred miles.[3:b] The march was via El Paso, Chihuahua, Parras, Saltillo and Monterey, thence to Matamoras. Here the expedition embarked for New Orleans, where the men were mustered out of service. The important battles of Brazito and Sacramento were fought enroute, the former placing El Paso, and the latter the city of Chihuahua--capital of the state of the same name--in the hands of the Americans. The expedition numbered about nine hundred men, mostly from Missouri, and under the command of Col. Alexander W. Doniphan of that state, and returned to Missouri via the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi.