o force Pharaoh to
give up his prey. Marching directly upon Carchemish, he attacked the
Egyptian and defeated him with great slaughter. Following up his
victory, he wrested from Pharaoh, in engagement after engagement, all
that he had gained in Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, and was in the
midst of fighting in Egypt itself, when the news came of the death of
his father; and he hastened home at once by forced marches to secure
his possession of the throne. In his train were captives of all the
nations he had conquered: Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, and Egyptians.
Among the Jewish prisoners was Daniel, the author of the book of the
Old Testament called by his name, and to whom we owe the little
personal knowledge we have of the great Babylonian monarch.

Of all the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar in this long struggle with
Egypt, that of the Jewish people is the most interesting to us. The
Jews had fought hard for independence, but if they must be conquered
and held in subjection, they preferred the rule of Egypt to that of
Babylon. Even the long slavery of their ancestors in that country and
the sufferings it had entailed, with the tragic memories of the exodus
and the wanderings in the desert, had not been potent to blot out the
traditions of the years passed in that pleasant land with its
delicious climate, its nourishing and abundant food. Alike in
prosperity and in evil days the hearts of the people of Israel yearned
after Egypt, and the denunciations of her prophets are never so bitter
as when uttered against those who turned from Jehovah to worship the
false gods of the Nile. Three times did the inhabitants of Jerusalem
rebel against the rule of Babylon, and three times did Nebuchadnezzar
come down upon them with a cruel and unrelenting vengeance, carrying
off their people into bondage, each time inflicting great damage upon
the city and leaving her less capable of resistance; yet each time her
rulers had turned to Egypt in the vain hope of finding in her a
defence against the oppressor, but in every instance Egypt had proved
a broken reed.

Of the three successive kings of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar had left to
rule the city as his servants, and who had all in turn rebelled
against him, one had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment in
Babylon; a second had been carried there in chains and probably
killed, while the third, captured in a vain attempt to escape after
the taking of the city, had first been made to see