The vast army of Sargon and Sennacherib had been split up, and the two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. One part at least of the military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated, and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the ranks. The male population of Assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its success, and yielding it an easy prey to the wiles of its adversaries.* * The information we possess concerning Esarhaddon is gathered from: 1. _The Insertion of Cylinders A, B, C_, the second of the three better known as the _Broken Cylinder_. These texts contain a summary of the king's wars, in which the subject-matter is arranged geographically, not chronologically: they cease with the _eponymy_ of Akhazilu, i.e. the year 673. 2. Some mutilated fragments, of the _Annals_. 3. _The Blade Stone of Aberdeen_, on which the account of the rebuilding of Babylon is given. 4. _The Stele of Zindjirli_. 5. The consultations of the god Shamash by Esarhaddon in different circumstances of his reign. 6. A considerable number of small inscriptions and some tablets. The classification of the events of this reign presents serious difficulties, which have been partly overcome by passages in the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_.