The disaster was a terrible one: Sennacherib's triumphant advance was
suddenly checked, and he was forced to return to Asia when the goal of
his ambition was almost reached. The loss of a single army, however much
to be deplored, was not irreparable, since Assyria could furnish her
sovereign with a second force as numerous as that which lay buried in
the desert on the road to Egypt, but it was uncertain what effect the
news of the calamity and the sight of the survivors might have on the
minds of his subjects and rivals. The latter took no immediate action,
and the secret joy which they must have experienced did not blind them
to the real facts of the case; for though the power of Assyria was
shaken, she was still stronger than any one of them severally, or even
than all of them together, and to attack her or rebel against her now,
was to court defeat with as much certainty as in past days. The Pharaoh
kept himself behind his rivers; the military science and skill which had
baffled his generals on the field of Altaku did not inspire him with any
desire to reappear on the plains of Palestine. Hezekiah, King of Judah,
had emptied his treasury to furnish his ransom, his strongholds had
capitulated one by one, and his territory, diminished by the loss of
some of the towns of the Shephelah, was little botter than a waste of
smoking ruins. He thought himself fortunate to have preserved his power
under the suzerainty of Assyria, and his sole aim for many years was
to refill his treasury, reconstitute his army, and re-establish his
kingdom. The Philistine and Nabatasan princes, and the chiefs of Moab,
Ammon, and Idumsea, had nothing to gain by war, being too feeble to have
any chance of success without the help of Judah, Tyre, and Egypt. The
Syrians maintained a peaceful attitude, which was certainly their wisest
policy; and during the following quarter of a century they loyally
obeyed their governors, and gave Sennacherib no cause to revisit them.
It was fortunate for him that they did so, for the peoples of the North
and East, the Kaldâ, and, above all, the Elamites, were the cause of