Upon the victory of Elam's expulsion, king Nebuchadrezzar was not finished. His eyes turned northward to Babylonia's other oppressor: Assyria. It was during this period Assyria's king was Ashur-resh-ishi I (1127-1116), a man full of vitality with an energetic presence. A monarch of such nature seated upon a throne possesses the potential capability to inspire his entire nation to its ultimate success or failure with just a mere word.
It should also be noted that king Ashur-resh-ishi I had already amassed a number of modest, but no less notable achievements, which included stemming the migrant crisis of the Akhlamu, containing the foreign-based nomads to Assyria's south-east boundary. He'd led Assyria to victory over the hostile people of the Lullume, who encroached upon the east, dispersing the survivors elsewhere. If push came to shove, this king would be a formidable opponent for Nebuchadrezzar on both the intellectual and the literal battlefield.
Despite this knowledge available to him, Nebuchadrezzar formally declared war upon Assyria, mounting an aggressive march to attack. And yet, Ashur-resh-ish I tempered his response, and strategically blocked all the inroads to the central portions of Assyria. With news from its scouts, the Babylonian army frequently avoided large encampments upon smooth roads in favor of traversing rougher terrain in order to storm what the king of Babylonia thought would spell out certain defeat for the Assyrians.
Unfortunately, this tactic only slowed the marching Babylonian forces. Eyes were easily maintained upon troop movements, and when the time had come for Assyria and Babylonia to clash, it was on the terms of the defenders and their placement of the board. Naturally, Nebuchadrezzar's forces were not only halted but routed. The Babylonian king and the elite portion of his army managed to retreat back to the safety of their lands, but not without incurring heavy losses, forty chariots and the heroic figure to his men that was their chariot-leader, Ritti-Marduk.
In the aftermath of these campaigns, the good news for Babylonia was that Nebuchadrezzar managed to move his kingdom away from Elam and back to his people, theoretically passing control onto the landowners, and by default, the working populace. The bad news was that his overreach into Assyria no longer guaranteed the safety of this very freedom they'd won. With the defeat of his army, the spirits of his people no longer bore the same enthusiasm as when Elam was beaten.
An adherence to the doctrine of knowing when to fight and when not to fight was something sorely missed by Nebuchadrezzar, something the fiery king appeared never to consider.
[ALTAR OF TUKULTI-NINURTA - *Prayer site of Ashur-resh-ish and his soldiers before battle]
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