The army thus reinforced was at all events more efficient, if not actually more powerful, than formerly; the discipline maintained was as severe, the military spirit as keen, the equipment as perfect, and the tactics as skilful as in former times. A knowledge of engineering had improved upon the former methods of taking towns by sapping and scaling, and though the number of military engines was as yet limited, the besiegers were well able, when occasion demanded, to improvise and make use of machines capable of demolishing even the strongest walls.*

The Assyrians were familiar with all the different kinds of battering-ram; the hand variety, which was merely a beam tipped with iron, worked by some score of men; the fixed ram, in which the beam was suspended from a scaffold and moved by means of ropes; and lastly, the movable ram, running on four or six wheels, which enabled it to be advanced or withdrawn at will. The military engineers of the day allowed full rein to their fancy in the many curious shapes they gave to this latter engine; for example, they gave to the mass of bronze at its point the form of the head of an animal, and the whole engine took at times the form of a sow ready to root up with its snout the foundations of the enemy’s defences. The scaffolding of the machine was usually protected by a carapace of green leather or some coarse woollen material stretched over it, which broke the force of blows from projectiles: at times it had an additional arrangement in the shape of a cupola or turret in which archers were stationed to sweep the face of the wall opposite to the point of attack.

The battering-rams were set up and placed in line at a short distance from the ramparts of the besieged town; the ground in front of them was then levelled and a regular causeway constructed, which was paved with bricks wherever the soil appeared to be lacking in firmness. These preliminaries accomplished, the engines were pushed forward by relays of troops till they reached the required range. The effort needed to set the ram in motion severely taxed the strength of those engaged in the work; for the size of the beam was enormous, and its iron point, or the square mass of metal at the end, was of no light weight. The besieged did their best to cripple or, if possible, destroy the engine as it approached them.

Torches, lighted tow, burning pitch, and stink-pots were hurled down upon its roofing: attempts were made to seize the head of the ram by means of chains or hooks, so as to prevent it from moving, or in order to drag it on to the battlements; in some cases the garrison succeeded in crushing the machinery with a mass of rock. The Assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be discouraged by such trifling accidents; they would at once extinguish the fire, release, by sheer force of muscle, the beams which the enemy had secured, and if, notwithstanding all their efforts, one of the machines became injured, they had others ready to take its place, and the ram would be again at work after only a few minutes’ delay. Walls, even when of burnt brick or faced with small stones, stood no chance against such an attack.

The first blow of the ram sufficed to shake them, and an opening was rapidly made, so that in a few days, often in a few hours, they became a heap of ruins; the foot soldiers could then enter by the breach which the pioneers had effected.

It must, however, be remembered that the strength and discipline which the Assyrian troops possessed in such a high degree, were common to the military forces of all the great states—Elam, Damascus, Naîri, the Hittites, and Chaldæa. It was owing to this, and also to the fact that the armies of all these Powers were, as a rule, both in strength and numbers, much on a par, that no single state was able to inflict on any of the rest such a defeat as would end in its destruction. What decisive results had the terrible struggles produced, which stained almost periodically the valleys of the Tigris and the Zab with blood? After endless loss of life and property, they had nearly always issued in the establishment of the belligerents in their respective possessions, with possibly the cession of some few small towns or fortresses to the stronger party, most of which, however, were destined to come back to its former possessor in the very next campaign. The fall of the capital itself was not decisive, for it left the vanquished foe chafing under his losses, while the victory cost his rival so dear that he was unable to maintain the ascendency for more than a few years. Twice at least in three centuries a king of Assyria had entered Babylon, and twice the Babylonians had expelled the intruder of the hour, and had forced him back with a blare of trumpets to the frontier. Although the Ninevite dynasties had persisted in their pretensions to a suzerainty which they had generally been unable to enforce, the tradition of which, unsupported by any definite decree, had been handed on from one generation to another; yet in practice their kings had not succeeded in “taking the hands of Bel,” and in reigning personally in Babylon, nor in extorting from the native sovereign an official acknowledgment of his vassalage. Profiting doubtless by past experience, Assur-nazir-pal resolutely avoided those direct conflicts in which so many of his predecessors had wasted their lives. If he did not actually renounce his hereditary pretensions, he was content to let them lie dormant. He preferred to accommodate himself to the terms of the treaty signed a few years previously by Rammân-nirâri, even when Babylon neglected to observe them; he closed his eyes to the many ill-disguised acts of hostility to which he was exposed,* and devoted all his energies to dealing with less dangerous enemies.

Even if his frontier touched Karduniash to the south, elsewhere he was separated from the few states strong enough to menace his kingdom by a strip of varying width, comprising several less important tribes and cities;—to the east and north-east by the barbarians of obscure race whose villages and strongholds were scattered along the upper affluents of the Tigris or on the lower terraces of the Iranian plateau: to the west and north-west by the principalities and nomad tribes, mostly of Aramoan extraction, who now for a century had peopled the mountains of the Tigris and the steppes of Mesopotamia. They were high-spirited, warlike, hardy populations, proud of their independence and quick to take up arms in its defence or for its recovery, but none of them possessed more than a restricted domain, or had more than a handful of soldiers at its disposal. At times, it is true, the nature of their locality befriended them, and the advantages of position helped to compensate for their paucity of numbers.

Sometimes they were entrenched behind one of those rapid watercourses like the Radanu, the Zab, or the Turnat, which are winter torrents rather than streams, and are overhung by steep banks, precipitous as a wall above a moat; sometimes they took refuge upon some wooded height and awaited attack amid its rocks and pine woods. Assyria was superior to all of them, if not in the valour of its troops, at least numerically, and, towering in the midst of them, she could single out at will whichever tribe offered the easiest prey, and falling on it suddenly, would crush it by sheer force of weight. In such a case the surrounding tribes, usually only too well pleased to witness in safety the fall of a dangerous rival, would not attempt to interfere; but their turn was ere long sure to come, and the pity which they had declined to show to their neighbours was in like manner refused to them. The Assyrians ravaged their country, held their chiefs to ransom, razed their strongholds, or, when they did not demolish them, garrisoned them with their own troops who held sway over the country. The revenues gleaned from these conquests would swell the treasury at Nineveh, the native soldiers would be incorporated into the Assyrian army, and when the smaller tribes had all in turn been subdued, their conqueror would, at length, find himself confronted with one of the great states from which he had been separated by these buffer communities; then it was that the men and money he had appropriated in his conquests would embolden him to provoke or accept battle with some tolerable certainty of victory.

Immediately on his accession, Assur-nazir-pal turned his attention to the parts of his frontier where the population was most scattered, and therefore less able to offer any resistance to his projects.*

He marched towards the north-western point of his territory, suddenly invaded Nummi,* and in an incredibly short time took Gubbe, its capital, and some half-dozen lesser places, among them Surra, Abuku, Arura, and Arubi. The inhabitants assembled upon a mountain ridge which they believed to be inaccessible, its peak being likened to “the point of an iron dagger,” and the steepness of its sides such that “no winged bird of the heavens dare venture on them.” In the short space of three days Assur-nazir-pal succeeded in climbing its precipices and forcing the entrenchments which had been thrown up on its summit: two hundred of its defenders perished sword in hand, the remainder were taken prisoners. The Kirruri,** terrified by this example, submitted unreservedly to the conqueror, yielded him their horses, mules, oxen, sheep, wine, and brazen vessels, and accepted the Assyrian prefects appointed to collect the tribute.

The neighbouring districts, Adaush, Gilzân, and Khubushkia, followed their example;* they sent the king considerable presents of gold, silver, lead, and copper, and their alacrity in buying off their conqueror saved them from the ruinous infliction of a garrison. The Assyrian army defiling through the pass of Khulun next fell upon the Kirkhi, dislodged the troops stationed in the fortress of Nishtun, and pillaged the cities of Khatu, Khatara, Irbidi, Arzania, Tela, and Khalua; ** Bubu, the Chief of Nishtun,*** was sent to Arbela, flayed alive, and his skin nailed to the city wall.

In a small town near one of the sources of the Tigris, Assur-nazir-pal founded a colony on which he imposed his name; he left there a statue of himself, with an inscription celebrating his exploits carved on its base, and having done this, he returned to Nineveh laden with booty.

A few weeks had sufficed for him to complete, on this side, the work bequeathed to him by his father, and to open up the neighbourhood of the northeast provinces; he was not long in setting out afresh, this time to the north-west, in the direction of the Taurus.*

He rapidly skirted the left bank of the Tigris, burned some score of scattered hamlets at the foot of Nipur and Pazatu,* crossed to the right bank, above Amidi, and, as he approached the Euphrates, received the voluntary homage of Kummukh and the Mushku.** But while he was complacently engaged in recording the amount of vessels of bronze, oxen, sheep, and jars of wine which represented their tribute, a messenger of bad tidings appeared before him. Assyria was bounded on the east by a line of small states, comprising the Katna*** and the Bît-Khalupi,**** whose towns, placed alternately like sentries on each side the Khabur, protected her from the incursions of the Bedâwin.

They were virtually Chaldæan cities, having been, like most of those which flourished in the Mesopotamian plains, thoroughly impregnated with Babylonian civilisation. Shadikanni, the most important of them, commanded the right bank of the Khabur, and also the ford where the road from Nineveh crossed the river on the route to Hariân and Carche-mish. The palaces of its rulers were decorated with winged bulls, lions, stelae, and bas-reliefs carved in marble brought from the hills of Singar. The people seem to have been of a capricious temperament, and, nothwithstanding the supervision to which they were subjected, few reigns elapsed in which it was not necessary to put down a rebellion among them. Bît-Khalupi and its capital Suru had thrown off the Assyrian yoke after the death of Tukulti-ninip; the populace, stirred up no doubt by Aramæan emissaries, had assassinated the Harnathite who governed them, and had sent for a certain Akhiababa, a man of base extraction from Bît-Adini, whom they had proclaimed king. This defection, if not promptly dealt with, was likely to entail serious consequences, since it left an important point on the frontier exposed: and there now remained nothing to prevent the people of Adini or their allies from spreading over the country between the Khabur and the Tigris, and even pushing forward their marauding bands as far as the very walls of Singar and Assur.

Without losing a moment, Assur-nazir-pal marched down the course of the Khabur, hastily collecting the tribute of the cities through which he passed. The defenders of Sura were disconcerted by his sudden appearance before their town, and their rulers came out and prostrated themselves at the king’s feet: “Dost thou desire it? it is life for us;—dost thou desire it? it is death;—dost thou desire it? what thy heart chooseth, that do to us!” But the appeal to his clemency was in vain; the alarm had been so great and the danger so pressing, that Assur-nazir-pal was pitiless. The town was handed over to the soldiery, all the treasure it contained was confiscated, and the women and children of the best families were made slaves; some of the ringleaders paid the penalty of their revolt on the spot; the rest, with Akhiabaha, were carried away and flayed alive, some at Nineveh, some elsewhere. An Assyrian garrison was installed in the citadel, and an ordinary governor, Azilu by name, replaced the dynasty of native princes. The report of this terrible retribution induced the Laqî* to tender their submission, and their example was followed by Khaian, king of Khindanu on the Euphrates. He bought off the Assyrians with gold, silver, lead, precious stones, deep-hued purple, and dromedaries; he erected a statue of Assur-nazir-pal in the centre of his palace as a sign of his vassalage, and built into the wall near the gates of his town an inscription dedicated to the gods of the conqueror.

Six, or at the most eight, months had sufficed to achieve these rapid successes over various foes, in twenty different directions—the expeditions in Nummi and Kirruri, the occupation of Kummukh, the flying marches across the mountains and plains of Mesopotamia—during all of which the new sovereign had given ample proof of his genius. He had, in fine, shown himself to be a thorough soldier, a conqueror of the type of Tiglath-pileser, and Assyria by these victories had recovered her rightful rank among the nations of Western Asia.

The second year of his reign was no less fully occupied, nor did it prove less successful than the first. At its very beginning, and even before the return of the favourable season, the Sukhi on the Euphrates made a public act of submission, and their chief, Ilubâni, brought to Nineveh on their behalf a large sum of gold and silver. He had scarcely left the capital when the news of an untoward event effaced the good impression he had made. The descendants of the colonists, planted in bygone times by Shalmaneser I. on the western slope of the Masios, in the district of Khalzidipkha, had thrown off their allegiance, and their leader, Khulaî, was besieging the royal fortress of Damdamusa.* Assur-nazir-pal marched direct to the sources of the Tigris, and the mere fact of his presence sufficed to prevent any rising in that quarter. He took advantage of the occasion to set up a stele beside those of his father Tukulti-ninip and his ancestor Tiglath-pileser, and then having halted to receive the tribute of Izalla,** he turned southwards, and took up a position on the slopes of the Kashiari.

At the first news of his approach, Khulai had raised the blockade of Damdamusa and had entrenched himself in Kinabu; the Assyrians, however, carried the place by storm, and six hundred soldiers of the garrison were killed in the attack. The survivors, to the number of three thousand, together with many women and children, were, thrown into the flames. The people of Mariru hastened to the rescue;* the Assyrians took three hundred of them, prisoners and burnt them alive; fifty others were ripped up, but the victors did not stop to reduce their town. The district of Nirbu was next subjected to systematic ravaging, and half of its inhabitants fled into the Mesopotamian desert, while the remainder sought refuge in Tela at the foot of the Ukhira.**

The latter place was a strong one, being surrounded by three enclosing walls, and it offered an obstinate resistance. Notwithstanding this, it at length fell, after having lost three thousand of its defenders:—some of its garrison were condemned to the stake, some had their hands, noses, or ears cut off, others were deprived of sight, flayed alive, or impaled amid the smoking ruins. This being deemed insufficient punishment, the conqueror degraded the place from its rank of chief town, transferring this, together with its other privileges, to a neighbouring city, Tushkhân, which had belonged to the Assyrians from the beginning of their conquests.* The king enlarged the place, added to it a strong enclosing wall, and installed within it the survivors of the older colonists who had been dispersed by the war, the majority of whom had taken refuge in Shupria.**

He constructed a palace there, built storehouses for the reception of the grain of the province; and, in short, transformed the town into a stronghold of the first order, capable of serving as a base of operations for his armies. The surrounding princes, in the meanwhile, rallied round him, including Ammibaal of Bît-Zamani, and the rulers of Shupria, Naîri, and Urumi;* the chiefs of Eastern Nirbu alone held aloof, emboldened by the rugged nature of their mountains and the density of their forests. Assur-nazir-pal attacked them on his return journey, dislodged them from the fortress of Ishpilibria where they were entrenched, gained the pass of Buliani, and emerged into the valley of Luqia.**

At Ardupa a brief halt was made to receive the ambassadors of one of the Hittite sovereigns and others from the kings of Khanigalbat, after which he returned to Nineveh, where he spent the winter. As a matter of fact, these were but petty wars, and their immediate results appear at the first glance quite inadequate to account for the contemporary enthusiasm they excited. The sincerity of it can be better understood when we consider the miserable state of the country twenty years previously. Assyria then comprised two territories, one in the plains of the middle, the other in the districts of the upper, Tigris, both of considerable extent, but almost without regular intercommunication. Caravans or isolated messengers might pass with tolerable safety from Assur and Nineveh to Singar, or even to Nisibis; but beyond these places they had to brave the narrow defiles and steep paths in the forests of the Masios, through which it was rash to venture without keeping eye and ear ever on the alert. The mountaineers and their chiefs recognized the nominal suzerainty of Assyria, but refused to act upon this recognition unless constrained by a strong hand; if this control were relaxed they levied contributions on, or massacred, all who came within their reach, and the king himself never travelled from his own city of Nineveh to his own town of Amidi unless accompanied by an army. In less than the short space of three years, Assur-nazir-pal had remedied this evil. By the slaughter of some two hundred men in one place, three hundred in another, two or three thousand in a third, by dint of impaling and flaying refractory sheikhs, burning villages and dismantling strongholds, he forced the marauders of Naîri and Kirkhi to respect his frontiers and desist from pillaging his country. The two divisions of his kingdom, strengthened by the military colonies in Nirbu, were united, and became welded together into a compact whole from the banks of the Lower Zab to the sources of the Khabur and the Supnat.

During the following season the course of events diverted the king’s efforts into quite an opposite direction (B.C. 882). Under the name of Zamua there existed a number of small states scattered along the western slope of the Iranian Plateau north of the Cossæans.* Many of them—as, for instance, the Lullumê—had been civilized by the Chaldæans almost from time immemorial; the most southern among them were perpetually oscillating between the respective areas of influence of Babylon and Nineveh, according as one or other of these cities was in the ascendant, but at this particular moment they acknowledged Assyrian sway. Were they excited to rebellion against the latter power by the emissaries of its rival, or did they merely think that Assur-nazir-pal was too fully absorbed in the affairs of Naîri to be able to carry his arms effectively elsewhere? At all events they coalesced under Nurrammân, the sheikh of Dagara, blocked the pass of Babiti which led to their own territory, and there massed their contingents behind the shelter of hastily erected ramparts.**

Assur-nazir-pal concentrated his army at Kakzi,* a little to the south of Arbela, and promptly marched against them; he swept all obstacles before him, killed fourteen hundred and sixty men at the first onslaught, put Dagara to fire and sword, and soon defeated Nurrammân, but without effecting his capture.

As the campaign threatened to be prolonged, he formed an entrenched camp in a favourable position, and stationed in it some of his troops to guard the booty, while he dispersed the rest to pillage the country on all sides.

One expedition led him to the mountain group of Nizir, at the end of the chain known to the people of Lullumê as the Kinipa.* He there reduced to ruins seven towns whose inhabitants had barricaded themselves in urgent haste, collected the few herds of cattle he could find, and driving them back to the camp, set out afresh towards a part of Nizir as yet unsubdued by any conqueror. The stronghold of Larbusa fell before the battering-ram, to be followed shortly by the capture of Bara. Thereupon the chiefs of Zamua, convinced of their helplessness, purchased the king’s departure by presents of horses, gold, silver, and corn.** Nurrammân alone remained impregnable in his retreat at Nishpi, and an attempt to oust him resulted solely in the surrender of the fortress of Birutu.*** The campaign, far from having been decisive, had to be continued during the winter in another direction where revolts had taken place,—in Khudun, in Kissirtu, and in the fief of Arashtua,**** all three of which extended over the upper valleys of the lesser Zab, the Radanu, the Turnat, and their affluents.

The king once more set out from Kakzi, crossed the Zab and the Eadanu, through the gorges of Babiti, and halting on the ridges of Mount Simaki, peremptorily demanded tribute from Dagara.* This was, however, merely a ruse to deceive the enemy, for taking one evening the lightest of his chariots and the best of his horsemen, he galloped all night without drawing rein, crossed the Turnat at dawn, and pushing straight forward, arrived in the afternoon of the same day before the walls of Ammali, in the very heart of the fief of Arashtua.** The town vainly attempted a defence; the whole population was reduced to slavery or dispersed in the forests, the ramparts were demolished, and the houses reduced to ashes. Khudun with twenty, and Kissirtu with ten of its villages, Bara, Kirtiara, Dur-Lullumê, and Bunisa, offered no further resistance, and the invading host halted within sight of the defiles of Khashmar.***