Which historical army has been the most fierce?
No inquiries about Assyrians.
Although many people might say "Mongols" due to their atrocities, and some might say "Aztecs," "Soviets," or "Waffen-SS," the Assyrians were a terrifying and very vicious force even in the Bronze Age Semitic context. The Assyrians were renowned for their extreme cruelty, yet the Bible really paints a favourable picture of them.
Every religion produces a civilization in its own image, and Semitic Polytheism produced a society that was particularly violent, abhorrent, and bloodthirsty. The Bronze Age Semites thought that the various gods were at war with one another constantly, and this conflict was reflected in everyday affairs. Semitic polytheism, in contrast to Indo-European polytheism, was a particularly intolerable, fanatical, and violent religion, with human sacrifices, ritual castrations, mutilations, and cult prostitution being the rule rather than the exception. Deities like Baal, Marduk, Ishtar, Nergal, and Molech evoke dread in even modern minds, unlike Zeus, Odin, or Jupiter. (Who wants to gurgle? He is a Nergal, indeed.
Heavy four-horse chariots, light-ridden cavalry, and heavy infantry comprised the Assyrian army (pikemen and archers). Levies from nations that were subject to slavery and subjugation served as a supplement. It was feared because it was so disciplined and professional. And it was quite harsh, which was awful. They were the first to employ terror as a tactic, and they turned the lives of their adversaries into real-life horror shows.
To warn the following city of what was to come, the Assyrians made tablets that depicted them torturing their adversaries. These demonstrated them blinding, skinning, and impaling their victims on stakes while they were still alive. See Listverse's 10 Horrors of Being Invaded by the Assyrian Army.
These tablets have all been left behind by Ashurnasirpal II, and the descriptions are very horrifying. In one, he brags, "I flayed several right through my country and stretched their skins over the walls." I burned their young males and females, and I built a pillar of heads in front of the city.
The Assyrians are described in great detail in the Chronicles and II Kings. The Kingdom of Israel managed to fend off their assault for nearly three centuries, with King Ahab engaging them in a standoff at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. However, Sargon II finally defeated Israel in 722 BC. As a result, Israel and its 10 tribes were totally destroyed.
After a civil war in 612 BC, the Assyrian empire was overthrown. As a result of their uprising, the enslaved nations took control of Nineveh. In addition to Nineveh itself being reduced to a pile of ruins, the entire Empire was annihilated. So much of it had been forgotten that the biblical tales were dismissed as mere myths. In 609 BC, the final Assyrian fortress was destroyed. The Biblical tales of the Assyrians' brutality were only validated once the ruins of Nineveh were eventually found in 1842.
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