Page:A dictionary of the Book of Mormon.pdf/252

Mormon. they met with still further reverses, and by A. C. 329, rapine, revolution and carnage prevailed throughout all the land.

In A. C. 330, the Lamanite king, Aaron, with an army of forty-four thousand men, was defeated by Mormon, who had forty-two thousand warriors under his command.

Five years later the Lamanites drove the degenerate Nephites to the land of Jashon,and thence yet farther northward to the land of Shem. But in the year following the tide of victory changed, and Mormon, with thirty thousand troops, defeated fifty thousand of the enemy in the land of Shem; this he followed up with such energetic measures that by the year A. C. 349 the Nephites had again taken possession of the lands of their inheritance.

These successes resulted in a treaty between the Nephites as one party, and the Lamanites and Gadianton robbers as the other. By its provisions the Nephites possessed the country north of the Isthmus, while the Lamanites held the regions south. A peace of ten years followed this treaty.

In the year A. C. 360, the king of the Lamanites again declared war. To repel the expected invasion, the people of Nephi gathered at the land of Desolation. There the Lamanites attacked them, were defeated, and returned home. Not content with this repulse, the succeeding year they made another inroad into the northern country, and were again repulsed. The Nephites then took the initiative and invaded the southern continent, but being unsuccessful, were driven back to their frontier at Desolation (A. C. 363). The same season, the city of Desolation was captured by the Lamanitish warriors, but was wrested from them the year following.

This state of things continued another twenty years; war, contention, rapine, pillage, and all