The Assyrian Army

The vast bulk of the assyrian army was made up of farmers who, as we've seen, were plucked from their lands whenever the need arose. Shalmanezar the third boasted a force of a hundred and 20 thousand men at a time when the world population has been estimated at only 50 million. Shalmenezar enthusiastically continued his father's policies of aggressive expansion and mass deportation. But in the final years of his reign, an enormous rebellion broke out across the entire empire. And this long and bitter civil war allowed virtually all of the people that ashurnazipal had conquered to shake off assyrian rule.