Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

CAPTURE OF BABYLON. 51(b. C. 539-538) reduced that city and incorporated the Babylonianwith the Persian kingdom. It was not properly asiege, scarcely a blockade. The Babylonians were very confidentin the strength of their huge walls and derided the besiegers.Cyrus had no battering-rams or catapults ; nor doeshe appear to have understood the undermining of walls. Hehad to confine himself to erecting walls or mounds and towershigher than and commanding those of the city. But by thismeans alone he was able to accomplish nothing. Finally, byone of those audacious conceptions which cause the great captainto loom up above his fellows, Cyrus, hearing from desertersthat an annual five days' religious festival was about totake place, during which the population would abandon itselfto rejoicing and pay less heed to his proceedings, made preparationto divert the water of the Euphrates from its bed.had shortly before drained the Gyndes ; the experience sogained led him to the present idea ; and the vast horde ofAsiatics which always seeks for crumbs from the table of anarmy, afforded him the means of executing his plan, by wideningthe canal which Sesostris had dug for carrying the overflowof the river into the Chaldean Lake. He increased thevigor of the usual operations to divert the attention of theBabylonians, which he succeeded in doing ; and, while thepopulation was engaged in revelry, the water of the Euphrateswas, in the course of a few hours, so far lowered as to yield afooting to his men under the wall and into the city. Theking's son, Belshazzar, left in charge of the capital while KingXa-bu-nahid took the field, was surprised in his palace andsurrendered ; or, according to other authorities, died swordin hand, surrounded by his ministers and attendants. Cyrus'stratagem had succeeded perfectly. Then, with both naturalhumanity and that supreme appreciation of policy which hasalways been the complement of the martial virtue of greatHe