The Assyrians have long been known as a ruthless and barbaric people of the ancient civilizations. While this may be true in some instances, it is not an entirely accurate view of the Empire of Assyria. The Assyrians took their warfare seriously; in fact they studied war techniques like a science (Riley, 45).
The Assyrians even had special schools set up to teach sapping (military demolition of walls etc.) and mining city walls (Riley, 45).
The Assyrians were the innovators of war in their time.
The Assyrian army was feared for many reasons one including the use of iron in their weapons. The Assyrians were the first to use iron in spears, swords, shields and armor. They even tipped their battering rams for extra effectiveness. When the Assyrians first attacked their enemies with these awesome novelties of war, it caused almost as profound a reaction as the atom bomb has in our time (Fairservis, 96).
Against iron spears and swords, bronze shields were useless. The Assyrians had the most advanced weapons of their time. Their arrows were tipped in iron, the strongest metal of the time. Their bowmen were also among the worlds finest (Fairservis, 95).
They had heavy chariots drawn by two horses and had a crew of two, the driver and an archer. Later, a third man was added to protect the rear and a spare horse was hitched at the rear (Za Khan).
They introduced cavalry and an accurate sling and developed siege craft with siege towers, battering rams and hand propelled vehicles with armor protection (Za Khan).
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The primary weapon of the infantry was the bow. It was used in groups or individually; a shield bearer protected the bowman. The bow had a range of over two hundred and fifty meters. A quiver held fifty arrows and a captain had one hundred shield bowmen and shield bearers under his command, which produced formidable firepower (Za Khan).
Other weapons used by the infantry wear the spear, the javelin, slings and swords (Za Khan).
The cavalry employed horses ridden bareback by two horsemen. One rider held the reins while the other rider, with a shield on his back, used a bow or a lance. Because cavalry could be used on uneven ground, it started replacing the chariot around six hundred B.C (Za Khan).
The army also had special technical units. They accompanied the army and had chariots for the battle field and wagons for transporting necessary equipment which would include not only the obvious items of rations and tents but also such specialists types of equipment such as siege engines and rams (Saggs, 244).
When roads had to be cut, a task force of men equipped with bronze, iron or copper picks and axes would hack a path for the army to pass through. Not even a river could stop the well-equipped Assyrians. If the river could not be crossed on foot, they would construct boats or bridges to cross the river with. The bridges were most commonly boat bridges, bridges formed by tying a number of boats together across the river with planks on top to make a footway or even a road for the chariots to pass over (Saggs, 244).
Other specialists in lesser numbers included scribes for recording booty and other details of the armies campaign (Sags, 244).
Another weapon used by the Assyrians was not made of wood or iron, but was used in equal effect was psychological warfare. The Assyrians were masters of psychological warfare. They believed that it was necessary that should be persuaded that it was vain to attempt to oppose Assyria. The Assyrians achieved this in two ways, demonstration of overwhelming might and by propaganda (Saggs, 248).
King Sargon explicitly states that his victories had a propaganda aspect to them. After his defeat of the forces of the kingdom of Ururtu and their allies in his major campaign of 714, he says, “The remainder of the people, who had fled to save their lives, I let free to glorify the Victory of my lord Ashur. Some of these poor wretches died from exposure in the mountains, but others struggled home, where their account of the devastating striking power of the Assyrian forces struck their hearers dumb.” Other examples of the tactic of psychological warfare included the palaces of the kings. In Ashurnasirpal’s palace, scenes of war predominated the walls only in the room that probably served as an audience chamber to other kings and guests. It is a reasonable conclusion that this predominance of war scenes was to reinforce in the minds of visiting rulers and ambassadors their consciousness of Assyrian military might.
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The Assyrians used excessive brutality and military might rebels to show that it was pointless to rebel against the ruler. Ashurnasirpal, an Assyrian king who put down a rebellion using terror tactics to the fullest, documents one such case. He writes, “ I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round the about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls; and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled (Riley, 47).” The only time the Assyrians used ruthlessness and excessive brutality was in putting down rebellions. In fact, there are indications that the king insisted on very strict discipline in the matter of treatment of prisoners-of-war. One royal letter to an Assyrian administrator dealing with provisions for such prisoners actually warns the official: “you shall not be negligent. If you are, you shall die. Where the military action recounted was a matter only of conquest and not of putting down a rebellion, there is no mention of mass atrocities; the reference in such cases is only to the taking of prisoners, with no indication of executions or mutilations (Saggs, 262).
Often times, the Assyrian army would deport the people they had just conquered. The objective was not so much punitive as to benefit the Assyrian empire both economically and in terms of security (Saggs, 263).
The Assyrian armies did not only have the best tactics and weapons but were also the most prepared and organized. Assyria was capable of deploying forces running into hundreds of thousands of men, but military activities were not always represented by campaigns on that scale. But whatever the size of the force, its efficient use depended upon the twin factors of organization and discipline. The Assyrian grand army was not simply a horde of bloodthirsty peasants become infantry, backed by a furious cavalry out for loot. It was in fact a well-organized force, integrating specialist units of many types (Saggs, 243).
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At its core was a standing army. This was necessitated by several types of duty that had to be performed on a permanent basis. First was the personal security of the king, which required a permanent bodyguard (Saggs, 244).
The archers came first backed by powerful spearmen and shielded carriers who fought at close quarters. Then there were the heavy chariots and the horsemen who attacked with tremendous speed and power, maneuvering with great skill in compact units through and around enemy formations (Fairservis, 95).
Siege equipment was highly developed: wheeled rams were drawn up to the walls of a city and with great blows breaches were smashed through stone and brick (Fairservis, 95).
The armies marched on paved roads built by engineers; well-maintained roads provided a relay communication network that connected the entire empire (Fields, 88).
The armies of Assyria had permanent bases called ekal masharti, which literally means ‘palace of the place for marshalling forces,’ in effect, ‘barracks’ (Saggs, 251).
These building were buildings with large courtyards for army purposes. They stored weapons, food and stationed men in these barracks. The whole Assyrian army was not called out every time there was a battle of fight. The army was composed of levies raised under provincial governors, and it is found that the troops of one particular governor amounted to fifteen hundred cavalry and twenty thousand archers. There were many provinces and a general call-up across the empire could easily muster up hundred of thousands of troops (Saggs, 253).
While the siege of a city was in operation, the Assyrian army would set up a fortified camp outside the city, well defended so that troops off duty could rest. A ring of Assyrian guards would surround the city to cut off supplies; the almost inevitable result was that if a city was too strong to be taken by assault, it would eventually fall from famine (Saggs, 261).
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The siege form of Assyrian warfare was highly organized. The Assyrians had wheeled and armored battering rams, which were wheeled up ramps built of packed earth and stone to the higher and less thick part of the defending walls. Sappers would mine tunnels to bring about the collapse of sections of walls and infantry would scale ladders and siege towers and surmount the walls to any weakly defended spots (Saggs, 260).
The Assyrians had one of the most advanced and feared military forces of all times. They were the most prolific army of their time and changed how ware would be fought for the rest of time. In the end though, as all great empires do, they fell and a new dominate empire followed them. But while they ruling, the Assyrians were the best at what they did and they will always be remembered as one of the most advanced and feared empires of the ancient world.
