Meanwhile, however, the Vannic kings had been steadily gaining strength and now found themselves powerful enough to more than hold their own. Erelong they began to cause the Assyrians considerable inquietude on their northern frontier, and about 804 B.C. Menuas drove back the Assyrians and attacked the Hittites. Crossing the Euphrates the Urartians exacted tribute from Malatia.[969] The events of the next generation are obscure; but in 776 the Hittite tribes of Syria, notably those under the Amanus, took advantage of the discomfiture of the Assyrians at the hands of the new Urartian king, Argistis of Ararat, to throw off their allegiance; and within a few years most of them were free of the Assyrian yoke. But their freedom was transient. Argistis looms in the history of these times as a great conqueror, and the Hittite states on his immediate frontier, including not only Malatia and Kummukh, but possibly a great part of Tabal, yielded to his authority. After a temporary withdrawal, it would seem, the whole of northern Syria was swiftly brought within the domain of the new power. In 758 B.C. the kingdom of Malatia, which under Khite-ruadas had regained a momentary independence, was invaded once more by the hardy mountaineers: the capital, as well as fourteen castles and a hundred towns, fell into their hands.[970] By 756 B.C. Marash also had probably fallen, for the conquests of the Vannic power extended as far south as had the Assyrian, and the Hittite states of northern Syria were all forced into allegiance. Previous to the year 744 B.C. at any rate, when the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III., with a reinvigorated army, prepared to repel the invaders, Carchemish, Gurgum, Kummukh, Unki and Quë all acknowledged the suzerainty of Sharduris.[971]