* Tiglath-pileser is seen, for instance, setting out on a campaign in a mountainous country with only thirty chariots.
Notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the Assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the Egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the Pharaohs troops were accustomed to manouvre.
[Illustration: 188.jpg CROSSING A RIVER IN BOATS AND ON INFLATED SKINS]
The theatre of war was not like Syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into points like daggers, and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.
* Sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against Elam, owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the rain; a similar contretemps must have met Assurbanipal on the banks of the Ididi.
** The Assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the difficulties of the country which they have to overcome.
Bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.
** Assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as prisoners.
If they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage.
[Illustration: 189.jpg MAKING A BRIDGE FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOTS]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of Balawât.
Each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream. Partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side. The chariots could not be carried over so easily.