The earliest account of recourse being had to military stratagem is that recorded in the eighth chapter of Joshua, where that leader of the Israelites, besieging the city of Ai, said, “Behold ye shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city: go not very far from the city, but be ye all ready: and I, and all the people that are with me, will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them. For they will come out after us, till we have drawn them from the city; then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand.” Thus fell the city of Ai into the hands of Joshua, and a similar kind of stratagem has since frequently turned the day between contending armies. Julius Cæsar did not consider it beneath a general or warrior to have recourse to almost a similar stratagem, when part of the army under Q. Cicero, in Gaul, was besieged. By the apparent flight of his troops, Julius Cæsar drew the enemy into a convenient spot for an engagement, and, turning, overcame them. A circumstance most trifling in itself, when it has been ushered in by superstition, as a good omen, has often raised the spirits of an army. Xenophon relates, in the Anabasis, that when the Greeks in some alarm were consulting, previous to the celebrated retreat of the ten thousand out of Asia, an accident, which in itself was even ridiculous, did nevertheless, through the importance attributed to it by the Grecian superstition, assist not a little to infuse encouragement. Xenophon was speaking of that favour from the gods which a righteous cause entitled them to hope for, against a perjured enemy, when somebody sneezed: immediately, the general voice addressed ejaculations to protecting Jupiter, whose omen it was supposed to be, a sacrifice to the god was proposed, a universal shout declared approbation, and the whole army in chorus sang the pæan. Bias, by the following artifice, induced Alyattes, King of Lydia, to raise the siege of Priene, where he was born. That city was pressed by famine, which circumstance being suspected by the besiegers, gave them great hopes; Bias, however, caused two mules to be fattened, and contrived a way to have them pass into the enemy’s camp. The good condition they were in astonished the king, who thereupon sent deputies into the city, under pretence of offering peace, but really to observe the state of the town and people. Bias, guessing their errand, had ordered the granaries to be filled with heaps of sand, and those heaps to be covered with corn. When the deputies returned, and made their report to the king, of the great plenty of provisions they had seen in the city, he hesitated no longer, but concluded a treaty and raised the siege.