rying forward,
often a day or more in advance of his battalions, without once turning
to see who followed him, and without waiting to allow the horses of his
baggage-waggons to be unharnessed or permitting his servant^ to pitch
his tent; he rested merely for a few moments on the bare ground,
indifferent to the cold and nocturnal frosts of the month of Sebat. It
would appear as if Sharezer had placed his hopes on the Cimmerians, and
had expected their chiefs to come to the rescue. This hypothesis seems
borne out by the fact that the decisive battle took place beyond the
Euphrates and the Taurus, in the country of Khanigalbat. Esarhaddon
attributed his success to Ishtar, the goddess of bravery and of combat;
she alone had broken the weapons of the rebels, she alone had brought
confusion into their lines, and had inclined the hearts of the survivors
to submit. They cried aloud, "This is our king!" and Sharezer thereupon
fled into Armenia. The war had been brought to a close with such
rapidity that even the most unsettled of the Assyrian subjects and
vassals had not had time to take advantage of it for their own purposes;
the Kalda on the Persian Gulf, and the Sidonians on the Mediterranean,
were the only two peoples who had openly revolted, and were preparing
to enter on a struggle to preserve their independence thus once more
regained. Yet the events of the preceding months had shaken the power
of Nineveh more seriously than we should at first suppose. For the first
time since the accession of Tiglath-pileser III. the almost inevitable
troubles which accompany the change of a sovereign had led to an open
war. The vast army of Sargon and Sennacherib had been split up, and the
two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by
able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have
suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course
of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. One part at least of the
military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated,
and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the
ranks. The male population of Assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the
necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing
too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises
of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue
strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its s