Assyrians army

During the 13th and 12th centuries, Assyria’s kings push their boundaries ever outwards, with campaigns of conquest every summer.

The Assyrians were aggressive in battles but they always offered their enemies the chances to surrender. This tactic came handy in sieges that were usually long and expensive. Their use of brutality to intimidate enemies was to become the distinctive stamps of Assyrians warfare.

In the 12th century, Hittite power collapsed and Assyria began a three-hundred-year rose to power under direction of successive powerful kings that restored in the establishment of the Assyrian Empire in the 9th century.

It is not difficult to imagine the terror that an Assyrian attack inspired. The Assyrian army of the 8th century BC was the most sophisticated army of its time in terms of size weaponry, tactics, siege craft innovation, mobility, logistical support and over all military efficiency. They were vast, well trained and disciplined.

It had several expert commanders, and plentiful supplies of equipment for all types of combat. In 800 BC, the Assyrians could field an army of 20,000 light cavalry armed with bows and spears, and 1200 two horse chariots.

Between 890 and 640 BC, the height of Assyrians power, the Assyrians fight 108 major and minor wars, punitive expedition and other significant military operations against neighboring states. The heavy infantry, clad in coats of mail, wielded daggers, and swords of iron, the new metal which made the Assyrian’s weapon stronger than those of their opponents.

The Assyrians used iron to not only gain military advantage but also to protect their people despite the higher cost of iron and metalworking needed for building amours.

The cavalry, the early days, rode into actions on two horse chariots and dismounted to shoot from behind tail wicker shields. Gradually arches mastered the tactics of shooting accurately from horseback at full gallop.

The Assyrian Empire reached its highest peaks in the 9th, 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Assyrians army