g up of a great organisation of
which Nineveh and its ruler were the head. It was a new principle and a
new idea. And measures were at once adopted to realise it.

The army was made an irresistible engine of attack. Its training,
discipline, and arms were such as the world had never seen before. And
the army was followed by a body of administrators. The conquered
population was transported elsewhere or else deprived of its leaders,
and Assyrian colonies and garrisons were planted in its place. The
administration was intrusted to a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which
stood the king. He appointed the satraps who governed the provinces, and
were responsible for the taxes and tribute, as well as for the
maintenance of order. The bureaucracy was partly military, partly civil,
the two elements acting as a check one upon the other.

But it was necessary that Ararat should be crushed before the plans of
the new monarch could be carried out. The strength of the army was first
tested in campaigns against Babylonia and the Medes, and then
Tiglath-pileser marched against the confederated forces of the Armenian
king. A league had been formed among the princes of northern Syria in
connection with that of the Armenians, but the Assyrian king annihilated
the army of Ararat in Comagene, and then proceeded to besiege Arpad.
Arpad surrendered after a blockade of three years; Hamath, which had
been assisted by Azariah of Judah, was reduced into an Assyrian
province; and a court was held, at which the sovereigns of the west paid
homage and tribute to the conqueror (B.C. 738). Among these were Rezon
of Damascus and Menahem of Samaria. Tiglath-pileser was still known in
Palestine under his original name of Pul, and the tribute of Menahem is
accordingly described by the Israelitish chronicler as having been given
to Pul.

The Assyrian king was now free to turn the full strength of his forces
against Ararat. The country was ravaged up to the very gates of its
capital, the modern Van, and only the strong walls of the city kept the
invader out of it. The Assyrian army next moved eastward to the southern
shores of the Caspian, striking terror into the Kurdish and Median
tribes, and so securing the lowlands of Assyria from their raids. The
affairs of Syria next claimed the attention of the conqueror. Rezon and
Pekah, the new king of Samaria, had attempted to form a league against
Assyria; and, with this end in view, determined to replace Ahaz,