also levied a large native army, had posted the entire force not far from Pelusium, in an advantageous position.  On his Greeks and Carians he could thoroughly depend, though they had lately seen but little service; his native levies, on the contrary, were of scarcely any value; they were jealous of the mercenaries, who had superseded them as the ordinary land force, and they had had little practice in warfare for the last forty years.  At no time, probably, would an Egyptian army composed of native troops have been a match for such soldiers as Cambyses brought with him into Egypt—­Persians, Medes, Hyrcanians, Mardians, Greeks—­trained in the school of Cyrus, inured to arms, and confident of victory.  But the native soldiery of the time of Psamatik III. fell far below the average Egyptian type; it had little patriotism, it had no experience, it was smarting under a sense of injury and ill-treatment at the hands of the Saite kings.  The engagement between the two armies at Pelusium was thus not so much a battle as a carnage.  No doubt the mercenaries made a stout resistance, but they were vastly outnumbered, and were not much better troops than their adversaries.  The Egyptians must have been slaughtered like sheep.  According to Ctesias, fifty thousand of them fell, whereas the entire loss on the Persian side was only six thousand.  After a short struggle, the troops of Psamatik fled, and in a little time the retreat became a complete rout.  The fugitives did not stop till they reached Memphis, where they shut themselves up within the walls.

It is the lot of Egypt to have its fate decided by a single battle.  The country offers no strong positions, that are strategically more defensible than others.  The whole Delta is one alluvial flat, with no elevation that has not been raised by man.  The valley of the Nile is so wide as to furnish everywhere an ample plain, wherein the largest armies may contend without having their movements cramped or hindered.  An army that takes to the hills on either side of the valley is not worth following:  it is self-destroyed, since it can find no sustenance and no water.  Thus the sole question, when a foreign host invades Egypt, is this:  Can it, or can it not, defeat the full force of Egypt in an open battle?  If it gains one battle, there is no reason why it should not gain fifty; and this is so evident, and so well known, that on Egyptian soil one defeat has almost always been accepted as decisive of the military supremacy.  A beaten army may, of course, protract its resistance behind walls, and honour, fame, patriotism, may seem sometimes to require such a line of conduct; but, unless there is a reasonable expectation of relief arriving from without, protracted resistance is useless, and, from a military point of view, indefensible.  Defeated commanders have not, however, always seen this, or, seeing it, they have allowed prudence to be overpowered by other considerations.  Psamatik, like many another ruler of Egypt, though defeated in the field, determined to defend his capital to the best of his power.  He threw himself, with the remnant of his beaten army, into Memphis, and there stood at bay, awaiting the further attack of his adversary.