VII. His Capture of Babylon. The campaigns of Cyrus were naturally watched with keen interest by the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. The songs in Isaiah 14, 15, and 21:1-10, and Jeremiah 51:29-31, voice their joyous expectation of Babylon's impending humiliation. In a contemporary inscription Cyrus has given a vivid account of the fall of the capital. Early in October of the year 538 B.C. he assembled a large army on the northern borders of Babylonia. Here a battle was fought in which the Babylonians were completely defeated. The town of Sippar quickly surrendered to Cyrus's general, and two days later the Persian army entered Babylon. The record states that the gates of the mighty city were opened by its inhabitants, and Cyrus and his followers were welcomed as deliverers. King Nabonidus was captured and banished to the distant province of Carmania, northeast of the Persian Gulf. In the words of Cyrus: "Peace he gave the town; peace he proclaimed to all the Babylonians." In the eyes of the conquered, he figured as the champion of their gods, whose images he restored to the capital city. The temples as well as the walls of Babylon were rebuilt, and the king publicly proclaimed himself a devoted worshipper of Marduk and Nebo, the chief gods of the Babylonians. Thus from the first the policy of Cyrus in treating conquered peoples was fundamentally different from that of the Babylonians and Assyrians. They had sought to establish their power by crushing the conquered rather than by furthering their well-being; but Cyrus, by his many acts of clemency, aimed to secure and hold their loyalty.