nearer and nearer to the great fortress in and behind which lay the army of Neco, well ordered with shield and buckler, its horses harnessed, and its horsemen armed with spears that had been just furbished, and protected by helmets and brigandines.[14214] One of the “decisive battles of the world” was impending. If Egypt conquered, Oriental civilisation would take the heavy immovable Egyptian type; change, advance, progress would be hindered; sacerdotalism in religion, conventionalism in art, pure unmitigated despotism in government would generally prevail; all the throbbing life of Asia would receive a sudden and violent check; Semitism would be thrust back; Aryanism, just pushing itself to the front, would shrink away; the monotonous Egyptian tone of thought and life would spread, like a lava stream, over the manifold and varied forms of Asiatic culture; crushing them out, concealing them, making them as though they had never been. The victory of Babylon, on the other hand, would mean room for Semitism to develop itself, and for Aryanism to follow in its wake; fresh stirs of population and of thought in Asia; further advances in the arts; variety, freshness, growth; the continuance of the varied lines of Oriental study and investigation until such time as would enable Grecian intellect to take hold of them, sift them, and assimilate whatever in them was true, valuable, and capable of expansion. We have no historical account of the great battle of Carchemish. Jeremiah, however, beholds it in vision. He sees the Egyptians “dismayed and turned away back--their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back, since fear is round about them.”[14215] He sees the “swift flee away,” and the “mighty men” attempting to “escape;” but they “stumble and fall toward the north by the river Euphrates.”[14216] “For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries; and the sword devours, and it is satiate and made drunk with their blood, for the Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.”[14217] The “valiant men” are “swept away”--“many fall--yea, one falls upon another, and they say, Arise and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity from the oppressing sword.”[14218] Nor do the mercenaries escape. “Her hired men are in the midst of her, like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation.”[14219] The defeat was, beyond a doubt, complete, overwhelming. The shock of it was felt all over the Delta, at Memphis, and even at distant Thebes.[14220] The hasty flight of the entire Egyptian host left the whole country open to the invading army. “Like a whirlwind, like a torrent, it swept on. The terrified inhabitants retired into the fortified cities,”[14221] where for the time they were safe.