The King glowered at him sullenly. He was sore and ill-natured after his night on the ground. “See to it that you win this battle for me, or death shall be your portion!” he said. “Let no quarter be given to those dogs yonder, who by their impudence have brought on them my wrath and have caused me weariness in sleeping out here beneath the stars!”
“I hear your words,” replied the Prince, coldly. “Rest assured that we shall win this battle or we shall welcome death.”
“Enough!” exclaimed the King. “Join battle when you please! I have no appetite for talk. I have sent for wine and will drink while you slay yonder reptile-worshipers. I do not see their godlike calf at the front. Have a care of his horns!” The King laughed at his own wit.
Again saluting, the Prince turned his horse and galloped off, followed by his staff. He saw that the enemy was also making ready for battle, and he forgot the King in the fierce joy of conflict. Placing himself at the head of his cavalry, he gave the signal for advance.
Two hundred chariots sprang forward, and the long lines of infantry moved. From the other side opposing chariots dashed out and, in a moment, the crash of colliding wheels and the shouts and screams of combatants arose. The Persian cavalry rode at a brisk trot out to the left and by a wide circuit came in upon the right flank and rear of the Egyptians, scattering the Arabs who vainly sought to oppose. Along the whole front, two miles or more in extent, the battle was joined. The sky was filled with darts. The sun, springing up from the east, flashed upon sword and spear and upon struggling men who stabbed and slashed and reviled and cursed each other. The Aryan right as ordered stood still. But the Greeks of the opposing line came forward to the assault, like a moving wall prickly with spears, their fair, eager faces ablaze with the light of battle; and as they came on they shouted to Phanes daring him to come and meet them whom he had betrayed. Slingers and archers pelted them as they advanced; but, partially covered by their big, round shields, they did not halt. The Persian and Medean infantry was not terrified, but prayed the captains for leave to charge. The presence of the King, in whose sight they must do or die, nerved the Aryan soldier for the contest. When the Greeks arrived at the base of the sand-dunes, the King, disregarding the orders of the Prince of Iran, directed his infantry to charge, and the men sprang forward and down upon the Greeks with spears at rest. Then was shown the splendid discipline of these mercenaries of Psammenitus. They met the living wall of men rolling down upon them with firm, up-thrusting spears. The shock was terrific. The lines swayed back and forth. The longer spears of the Greeks gave them the advantage. Unable to reach their enemies, the Persians impotently struggled against the iron hedge and were thrust back. Cambyses observed the contest with alarm. He sent in his own body-guard to aid the hard-pressed infantry. But the Greeks moved steadily onward. Their phalanx could not be pierced. They seemed invincible. They surmounted the hills. But here the uneven ground broke their formation somewhat and enabled the Persians to press in and come to close quarters.
Cambyses was no coward. He stayed with his guard, but he began to cast about for aid. He saw the long, swaying lines of men to his left, where the allies fought with the fierce Ethiopians. He observed the mixed and tangled wreckage of struggling horses and men where the chariots had met. Looking beyond, he saw the dense mass of Persian cavalry, led by the Prince of Iran in person, on a magnificent white horse, wheeling about upon the rear and right flank of the Egyptians, driving back a cloud of Arabs. He watched the cavalry come thundering down upon the rear of the enemy, bringing terror and confusion. Psammenitus, who was mounted on a fleet dromedary, also saw the coming destruction and, terrified, fled from the field at full speed. The Ethiopians, trodden down and overthrown by the heavy Persian horse, lost courage and quickly became a mob. The savage allies of the Persian line hewed them down without mercy. In a very short space of time none but the Greeks were left to present any resistance. Their captains, seeing that the battle was lost, ceased the forward movement and sought to form their ranks in a square. Surrender was not considered, for the hated Phanes was with the enemy. But because of the inequalities of the ground, they were not able to form before the Prince’s cavalry rode in upon them, broke through their wavering lines, smote them with maces, hewed them with swords, and stabbed them with javelins, until few were left. They stood their ground to the last and, in death, nobly redeemed their oaths to Psammenitus. So, in vast slaughter, the army of the Egyptian King disappeared, and with it fell Egypt.
CHAPTER XV
THE MADNESS OF CAMBYSES
THE King of Egypt fled on his swift dromedary, while the men who had marched with him to battle gave up their lives in his behalf and a red riot of slaughter stained the desert sands. The Persian cavalry, now unhindered by any organized resistance, carried death to the despairing, panting fugitives who fled from the contest. The Egyptian army was annihilated. Barely did the King himself enter his city of Memphis and close its gates ere the Prince of Iran, at the head of a picked body of men on horses almost spent with rapid going, appeared and demanded his surrender. The vast array of invaders soon spread over the fertile valley of Egypt and shut the king so closely within his city-walls that no succor could enter and only hope could flee. Psammenitus, unable to face a hero’s death, bowed to the power of the King of Kings, surrendered into his hands his crown, and acknowledged him as lord. He took his place with other captive kings at the table of his master and ate in bitterness of spirit the bread of peace.
Victory having come to him easily, Cambyses became puffed up and arrogated to himself divine attributes. Secretly his heart was eaten with envy of the Prince of Iran, the idol of the army, to whom all men attributed the great victory. As a result, the king openly slighted the Prince, relieved him of the general command, placed other officers near his own person and through them issued his orders. Leaving barely enough troops to garrison lower Egypt, Cambyses himself led a great army southward into Ethiopia; but, as he had failed to take into account the vast deserts through which he had to pass to reach that region, his army soon came to want and starvation, and half of the soldiers composing it died of disease and privation. Had not the Prince of Iran asserted his prerogatives, assumed command of the garrisons of Egypt, and gathered a great caravan which he sent to the King’s relief, the remainder of the ill-fated army would have perished. Undeterred by this experience, the King sent a second expedition against the people of the oasis of Ammon and the priests of its great temple; but the whole army perished in a mighty sand-storm. He contemplated a third expedition for the reduction of Carthage and the northern littoral of Africa; but it failed because the Phœnicians refused to give the aid of their fleets against their kindred.
All of these events consumed much time. Meanwhile in Egypt the King of Kings ruled with an iron hand. He looked with suspicion upon everybody. Knowing that he was loved by none, he filled his court with spies that he might detect any who would dare even to whisper against him. He blotted out in the blood of Psammenitus and his relatives an incipient revolt of the Egyptians, who, encouraged by the vast misfortunes that had befallen the army of their conqueror, dared to dream of liberty. He derided the Egyptian gods, closed their temples and made granaries of them, and slew the sacred bull, Apis, with his own sword. His jealousy led him to murder many of his own officers. Some of the most valiant men of the army upon slight pretext were arrested and executed summarily; others were found dead from the stabs of hired assassins.