Page 420 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

do so was to play hazard with their lives, and they could not
complain if they lost the game. Anyway, the Assyrian soldiers
hazarded their lives, too, and they did not complain if they lost.
Many of the soldiers who had stood in their time against Elamite

and Babylonian had died in the western marches, and Assur and
Nineveh were full of widows and orphans, eking out a miserable
existence on the charity of the families of their dead husbands

and fathers. And there were wounded and crippled comrades,
too—not many, for a man wounded on campaign had little hope
of reaching home. A gathering of halt and maimed and blind
veterans was always waiting when the army returned, hoping

that old comrades would spare them something of the booty
which they brought back. And certainly these poor destitutes

were more deserving of pity than the rebels awaiting a clean
execution.
This time the army was as determined as their monarch to
crush the west beyond all possibility of renewed revolt. This time

they would go on until there were no unconquered territories
beyond in which the seeds of rebellion could remain. While the
main force marched solidly west along the well-trodden road, the

chariotry, by now built up to be capable of operating independ­
ently, acted as a mobile striking force on the flanks. Pushing
north, it scattered a confederation of twenty-three Kurdish
chieftains in a single swift engagement, and still managed to

rejoin the main force before Carchemish. This city was the richest
on the whole road and one of the centers of the neo-Hittite move­

ment. Time and again its king had submitted to Tiglathpileser
and then annulled his submission. Its fortifications could still
have withstood a long and costly siege, and once again the ruler
used this bargaining counter to obtain terms. But this time, al­

though the city escaped destruction, the king was deposed, an
Assyrian governor and a large Assyrian garrison stationed in the
citadel, and a punishing annual tribute of three tons of silver and

a hundred twenty pounds of gold imposed.
From Carchemish the King’s Road ran northwest towards
Hattusas and the heart of Asia Minor. Along that road the Hittite

armies had marched in days long past, to the conquest of Mitarmi
and nearly five hundred years before to the sacking of Babylon.