, had been wrought, but
this time on the enemies of the Egyptians, who naturally ascribed their
deliverance to the interposition of their own gods; and seeing the enemy
in confusion and retreat, pressed hastily after him, distressed his
flying columns, and cut off his stragglers. The Assyrian king returned
home to Nineveh, shorn of his glory, with the shattered remains of his
great host, and cast that proud capital into a state of despair and
grief, which the genius of an AEschylus might have rejoiced to depict,
but which no less powerful pen could adequately portray.

It is difficult to say how soon Assyria recovered from this terrible
blow. The annals of Sennacherib, as might have been expected, omit it
altogether, and represent the Assyrian monarch as engaged in a
continuous series of successful campaigns, which seem to extend
uninterruptedly from his third to his tenth year. It is possible that
while the Assyrian expedition was in progress, under the eye of
Sennacherib himself, a successful war was being conducted by one of his
generals in the mountains of Armenia, and that Sennacherib was thus
enabled, without absolutely falsifying history, to parade as his own
certain victories gained by this leader in the very year of his own
reverse. It is even conceivable that the power of Assyria was not so
injured by the loss of a single great army, as to make it necessary for
her to stop even for one year in the course of her aggressive warfare;
and thus the expeditions of Sennacherib may form an uninterrupted
series, the eight campaigns which are assigned to him occupying eight
consecutive years. But on the other hand it is quite as probable that
there are gaps in the history, some years having been omitted
altogether. The Taylor Cylinder records but eight campaigns, yet it was
certainly written as late as Sennacherib's fifteenth year. It contains
no notice of any events in Sennacherib's first or second year; and it
may consequently make other omissions covering equal or larger
intervals. Thus the destruction of the Assyrian army at Pelusium may
have been followed by a pause of some years' duration in the usual
aggressive expeditions; and it may very probably have encouraged the
Babylonians in the attempt to shake off the Assyrian yoke, which they
certainly made towards the middle of Sennacherib's reign.

But while it appears to be probable that consequences of some importance
followed on the Pelusiac calamity, it is toler