It seemed necessary to adopt some different course of action. Shalmaneser had discovered during his abortive campaign that there were discords and jealousies among the various Phoenician cities; that none of them submitted without repugnance to the authority of Tyre, and that Sidon especially had an ancient ground of quarrel with her more powerful sister, and always cherished the hope of recovering her original supremacy. He had seen also that the greater number of the Phoenician towns, if he chose to press upon them with the full force of his immense military organisation, lay at his mercy. He had only to invest each city on the land side, to occupy its territory, to burn its villas, to destroy its irrigation works, to cut down its fruit trees, to interfere with its water-supply, and in the last instance to press upon it, to batter down its walls, to enter its streets, slaughter its population, or drive it to take refuge in its ships,[14142] and he could become absolute master of the whole Phoenician mainland. Only Tyre and Aradus could escape him. But might not they also be brought into subjection by the naval forces which their sister cities, once occupied, might be compelled to furnish, and to man, or, at any rate, to assist in manning? Might not the whole of Phoenicia be in this way absorbed into the empire? The prospect was pleasing, and Shalmaneser set to work to convert the vision into a reality. By his emissaries he stirred up the spirit of disaffection among the Tyrian subject towns, and succeeded in separating from Tyre, and drawing over to his own side, not only Sidon and Acre and their dependencies, but even the city of Palæ-Tyrus itself,[14143] or the great town which had grown up opposite the island Tyre upon the mainland. The island Tyre seems to have been left without support or ally, to fight her own battle singly. Shalmaneser called upon his new friends to furnish him with a fleet, and they readily responded to the call, placing their ships at his disposal to the number of sixty, and supplying him further with eight hundred skilled oarsmen, not a sufficient number to dispense with Assyrian aid, but enough to furnish a nucleus of able seamen for each vessel. The attack was then made. The Assyro-Phoenician fleet sailed in a body from some port on the continent, and made a demonstration against the Island City, which they may perhaps have expected to frighten into a surrender. But the Tyrians were in no way alarmed. They knew, probably, that their own countrymen would not fight with very much zeal for their foreign masters, and they despised, undoubtedly, the mixed crews, half skilled seamen, half tiros and bunglers, which had been brought against them. Accordingly they thought it sufficient to put to sea with just a dozen ships--one to each five of the enemy, and making a sudden attack with these upon the adverse fleet, they defeated it, dispersed it, and took five hundred prisoners.