Notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the Assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the Egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the Pharaoh’s troops were accustomed to manouvre.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.
The theatre of war was not like Syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into “points like daggers,” and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.**
* Sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against Elam,
owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the
rain; a similar contretemps must have met Assurbanipal on
the banks of the Ididi.
** The Assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the
difficulties of the country which they have to overcome.
Bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.*
* Assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his
escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as
prisoners.
If they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage.