All that we know is that Esarhaddon, on his accession, found Abd-Melkarth in revolt against his authority. He had formed an alliance with a certain Sanduarri, king of Kundi and Sizu,[14159] a prince of the Lebanon, and had set up as independent monarch, probably during the time of the civil way which was waged between Esarhaddon and two of his brothers who disputed his succession after they had murdered his father.[14160] As soon as this struggle was over, and the Assyrian monarch found himself free to take his own course, he proceeded at once (B.C. 680) against these two rebels. Both of them tried to escape him. Abd-Melkarth, quitting his capital, fled away by sea, steering probably either for Aradus or for Cyprus. Sanduarri took refuge in his mountain fastnesses. But Esarhaddon was not to be baffled. He caused both chiefs to be pursued and taken. “Abd-Melkarth,” he says,[14161] “who from the face of my solders into the middle of the sea had fled, like a fish from out of the sea, I caught, and cut off his head . . . Sanduarri, who took Abd-Melkarth for his ally, and to his difficult mountains trusted, like a bird from the midst of the mountains, I caught and cut off his head.” Sidon was very severely punished. Esarhaddon boasts that he swept away all its subject cities, uprooted its citadel and palace, and cast the materials into the sea, at the same time destroying all its habitations. The town was plundered, the treasures of the palace carried off, and the greater portion of the population deported to Assyria. The blank was filled up with “natives of the lands and seas of the East”--prisoners taken in Esarhaddon’s war with Babylon and Elam, who, like the Phoenicians themselves at a remote time, exchanged a residence on the shores of the Persian Gulf for one on the distant Mediterranean. An Assyrian general was placed as governor over the city, and its name changed from Sidon to “Ir-Esarhaddon.”