Pteria, with many of its surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage and
destruction upon these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time
in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than that of
Croesus; trying at the same time, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on
the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took place between the
two armies, but with indecisive result: after which Croesus, seeing that
he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces as they stood,
thought it wise to return to his capital, and collect a larger army for
the next campaign. Immediately on reaching Sardis he despatched envoys
to Labynetus king of Babylon; to Amasis, king of Egypt; to the
Lacedaemonians, and to other allies; calling upon all of them to send
auxiliaries to Sardis during the course of the fifth month. In the mean
time he dismissed all the foreign troops who had followed him into
Cappadocia.

Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted
with success. And on the part of the Lacedaemonians, at least, there was
no tardiness; for their ships were ready and their troops almost on
board, when the unexpected news reached them that Croesus was already
ruined. Cyrus had forseen and forestalled the defensive plan of his
enemy. Pushing on with his army to Sardis without delay, he obliged the
Lydian prince to give battle with his own unassisted subjects. The open
and spacious plain before that town was highly favorable to Lydian
cavalry, which at that time (Herodotus tells us) was superior to the
Persian. But Cyrus, employing a strategem whereby this cavalry was
rendered unavailable, placed in front of his line the baggage camels,
which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or to behold.
The horsemen of Croesus were thus obliged to dismount; nevertheless they
fought bravely on foot, and were not driven into the town till after a
sanguinary combat.

Though confined within the walls of his capital, Croesus had still good
reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies, to whom
he sent pressing envoys of acceleration. For Sardis was considered
impregnable--and one assault had already been repulsed, and the Persians
would have been reduced to the slow process of blockade. But on the
fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for the besiegers that which
they could not have accomplished either by skill or force. Sardis was
situated on an outlying peak of the northe