Sado-ka City Falls

The Fall of Zodanga is both a military conquest and a rescue at the moment of a forced political union. John Carter brings a Thark army to the city, opens a way through its defenses, and reaches the palace just as Dejah Thoris is being joined to Sab Than. His intervention breaks the ceremony and precipitates a battle whose victory leaves the throne room under Thark control and Zodanga’s ruling family dead.

Causes and the March on Zodanga

The expedition’s scale grew from the promise of loot. Tars Tarkas enlisted three smaller hordes, and within three days the force was one hundred thousand strong. The column marched at night, resting by day inside deserted cities; as it crossed the dead sea bottoms, Tars Tarkas recruited warriors from additional hordes. Ten days after setting out, the army reached Zodanga with one hundred and fifty thousand fighters.

The force was formidable but not naturally unified. Its component hordes had their own quarrels, and keeping them together without internal battle was itself a major feat of leadership. Near Zodanga, those rivalries receded before a shared hostility toward the red men, especially the Zodangans, whose campaigns had targeted Green Martian incubators. The siege thus draws its strength from both immediate opportunity and a longer history of conflict.

Breaching the City

At the walls, the task of gaining entry fell to John Carter. He kept Tars Tarkas’s main force in two divisions beyond earshot of the city and approached a small gate with twenty warriors. The walls, built of massive carborundum blocks, stood seventy-five feet high and fifty feet thick. Carter’s escort considered them nearly impossible to scale, but he turned the warriors into a human staircase, climbed to the uppermost man, and used joined lengths of leather to descend the other side.

Carter had learned from Kantos Kan how to open the gates. Once the twenty warriors were inside, he found himself near the palace grounds and decided to divide the attack: one detachment would move toward the palace while the main force struck the soldiers’ barracks. He sent for fifty Tharks and arranged for his men to open two large gates. The approach depended on silence; no shots were to be fired and no general advance was to begin until Carter reached the palace with the reinforcement. The plan succeeded, allowing Tars Tarkas and the fifty riders to enter before the larger assault unfolded.

The Ceremony and Carter’s Intervention

Inside the palace grounds, Carter saw a brightly lit audience chamber crowded with Zodangan nobles and their families. Than Kosis sat with his consort on golden thrones, while a formal procession brought forward golden collars and the ornaments of Zodanga’s ruling house. Two figures concealed in scarlet silk stood before the throne. When the coverings were removed, Carter recognized Sab Than and Dejah Thoris: Kantos Kan had failed to prevent the ceremony.

The collars made the political purpose plain. Dejah Thoris was about to be bound to the Zodangan prince, an outcome Carter regarded as intolerable. He shattered a great window, entered the chamber, and struck the golden chain before the union could be completed. Sab Than attacked him with a dagger, but Carter restrained him rather than kill him. The custom against killing a member of the opposite sex checked Carter’s hand, even as the hall filled with drawn swords.

Carter announced that Zodanga had fallen and pointed to the entrance, where Tars Tarkas and his warriors were riding into the palace. The assembled Zodangans did not flee; they met the Tharks in combat. The interruption of the ceremony therefore becomes the hinge between the hidden entry and the open battle: the palace assault is revealed, and the private rescue is caught up in the city’s conquest.

Battle in the Throne Room

Carter thrust Sab Than away from the platform and drew Dejah Thoris to his side, but Than Kosis confronted him with a sword. As they fought, Sab Than returned to help his father. Dejah Thoris moved between them; Carter’s sword struck Sab Than, making him jeddak of Zodanga by his father’s death. The new ruler then broke free and faced Carter again, joined by officers who attacked while Carter tried to defend himself without killing the prince.

The danger widened when Zodangan fighters called for Dejah Thoris to be killed, accusing her of plotting the attack. Carter tried to move her behind him and toward a narrow doorway behind the throne, but officers blocked the route. Tars Tarkas then fought through the crowd and reached the platform, giving Carter crucial support as the Tharks pressed through the chamber.

The Zodangans fought to the end rather than escaping. When the battle ceased, only Tharks remained alive in the great hall besides Carter and Dejah Thoris. Sab Than lay dead beside Than Kosis, and the chamber’s Zodangan nobles and warriors had been killed. The episode’s victory is therefore decisive but not bloodless: the ceremony is stopped and the palace taken, while the city’s ruling household and much of its elite are destroyed.

Consequences and Significance

The assault resolves the immediate threat of Dejah Thoris’s marriage to Sab Than while overturning Zodanga’s leadership. Carter’s actions connect the military plan to the personal stakes: he first secures entry for the army, then diverts part of it toward the palace, and finally risks being overwhelmed to keep Dejah Thoris from harm. Tars Tarkas’s arrival turns that precarious defense into victory.

The sequence also brings together competing rules and loyalties. Carter refuses to kill Sab Than when the prince first attacks because of the customary prohibition on killing the opposite sex, yet the battle later ends with Sab Than dead in the struggle. Meanwhile, the Zodangans’ refusal to retreat contrasts with the Tharks’ overwhelming numbers. The fall of the city is presented not as a simple triumph but as the collision of love, custom, revenge, and conquest, with the throne room serving as the point where all four become inseparable.