had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and
they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce Coele-Syria,
the Lebanon, Arvadian Phoenicia, Hamath, and the Hebrews--in fact,
two-thirds of the whole country--to subjection, and to organise that
league of the twelve kings which reckoned Ahab of Israel among its
leaders. This rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and
its members had not yet properly combined, when Shalmaneser III. arose
and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully
withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the
struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed
time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal.
As it was, it was doomed to succumb--not so much to the superiority of
the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal
discords. The league of the twelve kings did not survive Ben-hadad II.;
Hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the
attacks of the Assyrians and in repressing the revolts of Israel; when
Tiglath-pileser III. arrived on the scene, both princes and people,
alike at Damascus and Samaria, were so spent that even their final
alliance could not save them from defeat. Its lack of geographical unity
and political combination had once more doomed Syria to the servitude
of alien rule; the Assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered
and then made vassals of all those states against which they might
have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided
instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single
ruler. From Carchemish to Arpad, from Hamath to Damascus and Samaria,
their irresistible advance had led the Assyrians on towards Egypt, the
only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the
world; and now, at Gaza, on the frontier between Africa and Asia, as
in days gone by on the banks of the Euphrates or the Balikh, these two
powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire
of the Asiatic world on a single throw of the dice.

[Illustration: 336.jpg TAILPIECE]

CHAPTER III--SARGON OF ASSYRIA (722-705 B.C.)

_SARGON AS A WARRIOR AND AS A BUILDER._

_The origin of Sargon II.: the revolt of Babylon, Merodach-baladan and
Elam--The kingdom of Elam from the time of the first Babylonian empire;
the conquest's of Shutru