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were jealous of the mercenaries, who had superseded them as the ordinary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 Saïte 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