d get up into the city, and this at the very
place whither Uriah was ordered; so they exposed their best soldiers to
be in the forefront, and opened their gates suddenly, and fell upon the
enemy with great vehemence, and ran violently upon them. When those
that were with Uriah saw this, they all retreated backward, as Joab had
directed them beforehand; but Uriah, as ashamed to run away and leave
his post, sustained the enemy, and receiving the violence of their
onset, he slew many of them; but being encompassed round, and caught in
the midst of them, he was slain, and some other of his companions were
slain with him.

2. When this was done, Joab sent messengers to the king, and ordered
them to tell him that he did what he could to take the city soon; but
that, as they made an assault on the wall, they had been forced to
retire with great loss; and bade them, if they saw the king was angry at
it, to add this, that Uriah was slain also. When the king had heard this
of the messengers, he took it heinously, and said that they did wrong
when they assaulted the wall, whereas they ought, by undermining and
other stratagems of war, to endeavor the taking of rite city, especially
when they had before their eyes the example of Abimelech, the son of
Gideon, who would needs take the tower in Thebes by force, and was
killed by a large stone thrown at him by an old woman; and although
he was a man of great prowess, he died ignominiously by the dangerous
manner of his assault: that they should remember this accident, and not
come near the enemy's wall, for that the best method of making war with
success was to call to mind the accidents of former wars, and what good
or bad success had attended them in the like dangerous cases, that so
they might imitate the one, and avoid the other. But when the king was
in this disposition, the messenger told him that Uriah was slain also;
whereupon he was pacified. So he bade the messenger go back to Joab
and tell him that this misfortune is no other than what is common among
mankind, and that such is the nature, and such the accidents of war,
insomuch that sometimes the enemy will have success therein, and
sometimes others; but that he ordered him to go on still in his care
about the siege, that no ill accident might befall him in it hereafter;
that they should raise bulwarks and use machines in besieging the city;
and when they have gotten it, to overturn its very foundations, and to
destroy all t