164 HISTORICAL TALES.

as to a friend—advising him to make all haste, and
saying that he would do his best to hold back the
Greeks, who were eager to burn the bridge.

The frightened monarch was not slow in taking
this advice. Leaving a strong force in Greece, under
the command of his general Mardonius, he marched
with the speed of fear for the bridge. But he had
nearly exhausted the country of food in his advance,
and starvation and plague attended his retreat, many
of the men being obliged to eat leaves, grass, and the
bark of trees, and great numbers of them dying
before the Hellespont was reached.

Here he found the bridge gone. A storm had de-
stroyed it. He was forced to have his army taken
across in ships. Not till Asia Minor was reached
did the starving troops obtain sufficient food—and
there gorged themselves to such an extent that many
of them died from repletion. In the end Xerxes
entered Sardis with a broken army and a sad heart,
eight months after he had left it with the proud ex-
pectation of conquering the western world.