ar
to have lost hope, and, formally or tacitly, to have forthwith dissolved
their confederacy. The Hittites and Hamathites probably submitted to the
conqueror; the Phoenicians withdrew to their own towns, and Damascus was
left without allies, to defend herself as she best might, when the tide
of conquest should once more flow in this direction.

In the fourth year the flow of the tide came. Shalmaneser, once more
advancing southward, found the Syrians of Damascus strongly posted in
the fastnesses of the Anti-Lebanon. Since his last invasion they had
changed their ruler. The brave and experienced Ben-hadad had perished by
the treachery of an ambitious subject, and his assassin, the infamous
Hazael, held the throne. Left to his own resources by the dissolution of
the old league, this monarch had exerted himself to the utmost in order
to repel the attack which he knew was impending. He had collected a very
large army, including above eleven hundred chariots, and, determined to
leave nothing to chance, had carefully taken up a very strong position
in the mountain range which separated his territory from the neighboring
kingdom of Hamath, or valley of Coele-Syria. Here he was attacked by
Shalmaneser, and completely defeated, with the loss of 16,000 of his
troops, 1121 of his chariots, a quantity of his war material, and his
camp. This blow apparently prostrated him; and when, three years later,
Shalmaneser invaded his territory, Hazael brought no army into the
field, but let his towns, one after another, be taken and plundered by
the Assyrians.

It was probably upon this last occasion, when the spirit of Damascus was
cowed, and the Phoenician cities, trembling at the thought of their own
rashness in having assisted Hazael and Ben-hadad, hastened to make their
submission and to resume the rank of Assyrian tributaries, that the
sovereign of another Syrian country, taking warning from the fate of his
neighbors, determined to anticipate the subjection which he could not
avoid, and, making a virtue of necessity, to place himself under the
Assyrian yoke. Jehu, "son of Omri," as he is termed in the
Inscription--i.e., successor and supposed descendant of the great Omri
who built Samaria, sent as tribute to Shalmaneser a quantity of gold and
silver in bullion, together with a number of manufactured articles in
the more precious of the two metals. In the sculptures which represent
the Israelitish ambassadors presenting this tribute t