The first decided blow of the war was given. I had incurred the full wrath of Rome; the trench between me and forgiveness was impassable, and I felt a stern delight in the conviction that hope of truce or pardon was at an end; the seizure of Masada was a defiance of the whole power of the empire. But it had the higher importance of a triumph at the beginning of a war, the moment when even the courageous are perplexed by doubt, and the timid watch their opportunity to raise the cry of ill fortune. It showed the facility of conquest, where men are determined to run the full risk of good or evil; it shook the military credit of the enemy, by the proof that they could be overmatched in activity, spirit, and conduct. The capture of a Roman fortress by assault was a thing almost unheard of. But the consummate value of the enterprise was, in its declaration to those who would fight, that they had leaders, able and willing to take the last chance with them for the freedom of their country.
When day broke and the strength of this celebrated fortress was fairly visible, I could scarcely believe that our success was altogether the work of man. The genius of ancient fortification produced nothing more remarkable than Masada. It stood on the summit of a height so steep that the sun never reached the bottom of the surrounding defiles. Its outer wall was a mile round, with thirty-eight towers, each eighty feet high. Immense marble cisterns; granaries like palaces, capable of holding provisions for years; exhaustless arms and military engines, in buildings of the finest Greek art; defenses of the most costly skill at every commanding point of the interior—all showed the kingly magnificence and warlike care of the most brilliant, daring, and successful monarch of Judea since Solomon.
By the first dawn a new wonder struck the population, whom the tumult of the night had gathered on the neighboring hills. I ordered the great standard of Naphtali to be hoisted on the citadel. It was raised amid shouts and hymns, and the huge scarlet folds spread out, majestically displaying the emblem of our tribe, the Silver Stag, before the morn. Shouts echoed and reechoed round the horizon. The hill-tops, covered as far as the eye could reach, did homage to the banner of Jewish deliverance, and inspired by the sight, every man of their thousands took sword and spear and made ready for war.
My first care was to relieve the anxieties of my family, and Constantius, with triumph in every feature, and love and honor glowing in his heart, was made the bearer of the glad tidings. The duties of command now devolved rapidly on me. An army to be raised, a plan of operations to be determined on, the chieftains of the country to be combined, and the profligate feuds of Jerusalem to be extinguished, were the difficulties that lay before my first step. It is in preliminaries like these that the burning spirit of a man, full of the manliest resolutions and caring no more for personal safety than he cares for the weed under his feet, is fated to feel the true troubles of enterprise.
I soon experienced the disgust of having to contend with the indolent, the artful, and the base. My mind, eager to follow up the first success, was entangled in tedious and intricate negotiation with men whom no sense of right or wrong could stimulate to integrity. Rival interests to be conciliated, gross corruption to be crushed, paltry passions to be stigmatized, family hatreds to be reconciled, childish antipathies, grasping avarice, giddy ambition, savage cruelty, to be rectified, propitiated, or punished, were among my tasks before I could plant a foot in the field. If those are the fruits that grow round even the righteous cause, what must be the rank crop of conspiracy?
But one point I speedily settled. The first assemblage of the chieftains satisfied me as to the absurdity of councils of war. Every man had his plan, and every plan had some personal object in view. I saw that to discuss them would be useless and endless. I had already begun to learn the diplomatic art of taking my own way with the most unruffled aspect. I desired the proposers to reduce their views to writing, received their memorials with perfect civility, took them to my cabinet, and gave their brilliancy to add to the blaze of my fire. High station is soon compelled to dissemble. A month before I should have spoken out my mind and treated the plans and the proposers alike with scorn. But a month before I was neither general nor statesman. Freed now from the encumbrance of many councilors, I decided on a rapid march to Jerusalem[34]—there was power and glory in the word. By this measure I should be master of all that final victory could give, the popular mind, the national resources, and the highest prize of the most successful war.
Those thoughts banished rest from my pillow. I passed day and night in a perpetual, feverish exaltation of mind; yet if I were to compute my few periods of happiness, among them would be the week when I could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, from the mere overflowing of my warlike reveries at Masada. We may well forgive the splenetic apathy and sullen scorn of life that beset the holder of power, when time or chance leaves his grasp empty. The mighty monarch; the general, on whose sword hung the balance of empires; the statesman, on whose council rose or fell the welfare of millions, sunk into the unexciting employments of common life, their genius and their fame a burden and a reproach, the source of a restless and indignant contrast between what they were and what they are; how feeble an emblem of such minds is the lion fanged or the eagle chained! We may pass by even the frivolities which so often make the world stare at the latter years of famous men. When they can no longer soar to their natural height, all beneath is equal to them; our petty wisdom is not worth their trouble. They scorn the little opinions of commonplace mankind, and follow their own tastes, contemptuously trifle and proudly play the fool.
Before the week was done, I was at the head of a hundred thousand men; I was the champion of a great country; the leader of the most formidable insurrection that ever contended with Rome in the east; the general of an army whose fidelity and spirit were not to be surpassed on earth. Could ambition ask more? Yet there was even more, tho too solemn to be asked by human ambition. My nation was sacred; a cause above human nature was to be defended; in that cause I might at once redeem my own name from obscurity, and be the instrument of exalting the name, authority, and religion of a people, the regal people of the Sovereign of all!
Constantius returned. It was in vain that I had directed my family to take refuge in the mountain country of Naphtali. My authority was for once disputed at home. Strong affection mastered fear, and swift as love could speed, I saw them enter the gates of Masada.
Such meetings can come but once in a life. I was surrounded by innocent fondness, beauty most admirable, and faith that no misfortunes could shake; and I was surrounded by them in an hour when prosperity seemed laboring to lavish on me all the wishes of man. I felt, too, by the glance with which Miriam looked upon her “hero,” that I had earned a higher title to the world’s respect. Had she found me in chains, she would have shared them without a murmur. But her lofty heart rejoiced to find her husband thus vindicating his claims to the homage of mankind.
Yet to those matchless enjoyments I gave up but one day. By the next dawn, the trumpet sounded for the march. I knew the importance of following up the first blow in all wars—its matchless importance in a war of insurrection. To meet the disciplined troops of Rome in pitched battles would be madness. The true maneuver was to distract their attention by variety of onset, cut off their communications, keep their camps in perpetual alarm, and make our activity, numbers, and knowledge of the country the substitutes for equipment, experience, and the science of the soldier.
In summoning those brave men, I renewed the regulations of the Mosaic law[35]—a law whose regard for natural feelings distinguished it in the most striking manner from the stern violences of the pagan levy. No man was required to take up arms who had built a house and had not yet dedicated it; no man who had planted a vineyard or olive ground, and had not yet reaped the produce; no man who had betrothed a wife and had not yet taken her home; and no man during the first year of his marriage.
My prisoners were my last embarrassment. To leave them to the chance of popular mercy, or to leave them immured in the fortress, would be cruelty. To let them loose would be, of course, to give so many soldiers to the enemy. I adopted the simpler expedient of marching them to Berytus, seizing a squadron of the Roman provision ships, and embarking the whole for Italy. To my old friend the captain, whose cheerfulness could be abated only by a failure of the vintage, I offered a tranquil settlement among our hills. The etiquette of soldiership was formidably tasked by my offer, for the veteran was thoroughly weary of his thankless service. He hesitated, swore that I deserved to be a Roman, and even a captain of horse; but finished by saying that, bad a trade as the army was, he was too old to learn a better. I gave him and some others their unconditional liberty, and he parted from the Jewish rebel with more obvious regret than perhaps he ever dreamed himself capable of feeling for anything but his horse and his Falernian.
Eleazar took the charge of my family and the command of Masada. The sun burst out with cheerful omen on the troops, as I wound down the steep road, named the Serpent, from its extreme obliquity. The sight before me was of a nature to exhilarate the heaviest heart; an immense host making the air ring with acclamations at the coming of their chieftain. The mental perspective of public honors and national service was still more exalting. Yet I felt a boding depression, as if within those walls had begun and ended my prosperity!
On the first ridge which crossed our march I instinctively stopped to give a farewell look. The breeze had sunk, and the scarlet banner shook out its folds to the sun no more; a cloud hung on the mountain-peak and covered the fortress with gloom. I turned away. The omen was true.
But sickly thoughts were forgotten when we were once fairly on the march. Who that has ever marched with an army has not known its ready cure for heaviness of heart? The sound of the moving multitude, their broad mirth, the mere trampling of their feet, the picturesque lights that fall upon the columns as they pass over the inequalities of the ground, keep the eye and the mind singularly alive.
Our men felt the whole delight of the scene, and ran about like deer, or horses let loose into pasture. But to the military habits of Constantius this rude vigor was the highest vexation. He galloped from flank to flank with hopeless diligence, found that his arrangements only perplexed our bold peasantry the more, and at length fairly relinquished the idea of gaining any degree of credit by the brilliancy of their discipline. But I, no more a tactician than themselves, was content with seeing in them the material of the true soldier. The spear was carried awkwardly, but the hand that carried it was strong; the march was irregular, but the step was firm; if there were song, and mirth, and clamor, they were the cheerful voices of the brave; and I could read in the countenances of ranks which no skill could keep in order, the generous devotedness that, in wars like ours, have so often baffled the proud and left of the mighty but clay.
During the day we saw no enemy, and swept along with the unembarrassed step of men going up to one of our festivals. The march was hot; the zeal of our young soldiers made it rapid, and we continued it long after the usual hour of repose. But then sleep took its thorough revenge. It was fortunate for our fame that the enemy was not nigh, for sleep fastened irresistibly and at once upon the whole multitude. Sentinels were planted in vain; the spears fell from their hands, and the watchers were tranquilly laid side by side with the slumbering. Outposts and the usual precautionary arrangements were equally useless. Sleep was our master. Constantius exerted his vigilance with fruitless activity, and before an hour passed, he and I were probably the sole sentinels of the grand army of Judea.
“What can be done with such sluggards?” said he indignantly, pointing to the heaps that, wrapped in their cloaks, covered the fields far round, and in the moonlight looked more like surges tipped with foam than human beings.
“What can be done? Wonders.”
“Will they ever be able to maneuver in the face of the legions?”
“Never.”
“Will they ever be able to move like regular troops?”
“Never.”
“Will they ever be able to keep their eyes open after sunset?”
“Never, after such a march as we have given them to-day.”
“What, then, under heaven, will they be good for?”
“To beat the Romans out of Palestine!”
Before the sun was up my peasants were on the march again. From the annual journeys of the tribes to the great city, no country was ever known so well to its whole population, as Palestine. Every hill, forest, and mountain stream was now saluted with a shout of old recognition. Discipline was forgotten as we approached those spots of memory, and the troops rambled loosely over the ground on which in gentler times they had rested in the midst of their caravans. Constantius had many an irritation to encounter, but I combated his wrath, and pledged myself that when the occasion arrived, my countrymen would show the native vigor of the soil.
“Let my peasants take their way,” said I. “If they will not make an army, let them make a mob; let them come into the field with the bold propensities of their nature unchecked by the trammels of regular warfare; let them feel themselves men and not machines, and I pledge myself for their victory.”
“They will soon have the opportunity; look yonder.”
He pointed to a low range of misty hills some miles onward.
“Are we to fight the clouds, for I can see nothing else?”
“Our troops, I think, would be exactly the proper antagonists. But there is one cloud upon those hills that something more than the wind must drive away.”
The sun threw a passing gleam upon the heights, and it was returned by the sparkling of spears. The enemy were before us. Constantius galloped with some of our hunters to the front, to observe their position. The trumpets sounded, and my countrymen justified all that I had said by the enthusiasm that lighted up every countenance at the hope of coming in contact with the oppressor.
We advanced; shouts rang from tribe to tribe; we quickened our pace; at length the whole multitude ran. At the foot of the height every man pushed forward without waiting for his fellow; it was complete confusion. The chief force against us was cavalry, and I saw them preparing to charge. We must suffer prodigiously, let the day end how it would. The whole campaign might hang on the first repulse. I stood in agony. I saw the squadrons level their lances. I saw the centurions dash out in front. All was ready for the fatal charge. To my astonishment, the whole of the cavalry wheeled round and disappeared.
The panic was like miracle—equally rapid and unaccountable. I rode to the top of the hill and discovered the secret. Constantius, observing the enemy’s attention taken up with my advance, had made his way round the heights. His trumpet gave the first notice of the maneuver. Their rear was threatened, and the cavalry fled, leaving a cohort in our hands.
Never was successful soldier honored with a more clamorous triumph than Constantius. Nature speaks out among her untutored sons. Envy has nothing to do in such fields as ours. He was applauded to the skies.
“Well,” said I, as I pressed the gallant hand that had planted the first laurel on our brows, “you see that, if plowmen and shepherds make rude soldiers, they make capital judges of soldiership. You might have conquered a kingdom without receiving half this panegyric in Rome.”
“The service is but begun, and we shall have another lesson to get or give to-morrow. Those fellows are grateful, I allow,” said he, with a smile, “but you must confess that, for what has been done, we have to thank the discipline that brought us into the Roman rear.”
“Yes, and the discipline that made them so much alarmed about their rear as to run away when they might have charged and beaten us.”
This little affair put us all in spirits, and the songs and cheerful clamors burst out with renewed animation. But the appearance of the enemy soon became evident. We found the ruined cottage, the torn-up garden, the burned orchard—those habitual evidences of the camp. As we advanced, the tracks of wagons and of the huge wheels of the military engines were fresh in the grass, and from time to time some skeleton of a beast of burden, or some half-covered wreck of man, showed that desolation had walked there; the cavalry soon appeared on the heights in larger bodies; but all was forgotten in the sight that at length rose upon the horizon—we beheld, bathed in the richest glow of a summer’s eve, the summits of the mountains round Jerusalem, and glorious above them, like another sun, the golden beauty of the Temple of temples!
What Jew ever saw that sight but with homage of heart? Fine fancies may declaim of the rapture of returning to one’s country after long years. Rapture! to find ourselves in a land of strangers, ourselves forgotten, our early scenes so changed that we can scarcely retrace them, filled up with new faces, or with the old so worn by time and care that we read in them nothing but the emptiness of human hope; the whole world new, frivolous, and contemptuous of our feelings. Where is the mother, the sister, the woman of our heart? We find their only memorials among the dead, and bitterly feel that our true country is the tomb.
But the return to Zion was not of the things of this world. The Jew saw before him the city of prophecy and power. Mortal thoughts, individual sorrows, the melancholy experiences of human life, had no place among the mighty hopes that gathered over it, like angels’ wings. Restoration, boundless empire, imperishable glory, were the writing upon its bulwarks. It stood before him, the Universal City, whose gates were to be open for the reverence of all time; the symbol to the earth of the returning presence of the Great King; the promise to the Jew of an empire, triumphant over the casualties of nations, the crimes of man, and even the all-grasping avarice of the grave.
The multitude prostrated themselves; then rising, broke forth into the glorious hymn sung by the tribes on their journeys to the Temple:
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness.
“Beautiful, the joy of the earth is Mount Zion, the city of the Great King!
“God is known in her palaces for a refuge.
“We have thought of thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.
“Walk about Zion, tell the towers thereof. Mark ye her bulwarks, consider her palaces. For her God is our God, forever and ever; he will be our guide in death; his praise is to the ends of the earth. Glory to the king of Zion.”
The harmony of the adoring myriads rose sweet and solemn upon the air; the sky was a canopy of sapphire; the breeze rich with the evening flowers; Jerusalem before me! I felt as if the covering of my mortal nature was about to be cast away, and my spirit to go forth on a bright and boundless career of fortune.
But recollections, never to be subdued, saddened my memory of the Temple, and when the first influence of the homage passed, I turned from the sight of what was to me the eternal monument of the heaviest crime of man. I gave one parting glance as day died upon the spires. To my surprise, they were darkened by more than twilight; I glanced again, smoke rolled cloud on cloud over Mount Moriah; the distant roar of battle startled us. Had the enemy anticipated our march, and was Jerusalem about to be stormed before our eyes?
We were not left long to conjecture. Crowds of frightened women and children were seen flying across the country. The roar swelled again; we answered it by shouts and rushed onward. Unable to ascertain the point of attack, I halted the multitude at the entrance of one of the roads ascending to the great gate of the upper city, and galloped forward with a few of my people.
A horseman rushed from the gate with a heedless rapidity which must have flung him into the midst of our ranks or sent him over the precipice. His voice alone enabled me to recognize in this furious rider my kinsman Jubal. But never had a few months so altered a human being. Instead of the bold and martial figure of the chieftain, I saw an emaciated and exhausted man, apparently in the last stage of life or sorrow; the florid cheek was of the color of clay; the flashing eye was sunken; the loud and cheerful voice was sepulchral. I welcomed him with the natural regard of our relationship, but his perturbation was fearful; he trembled, grew fiery red, and could return my greeting only with a feeble tongue and a wild eye.
However, this was no time for private feelings. I inquired the state of things in Jerusalem. Here his embarrassment was thrown aside and the natural energy of the man found room.
“Jerusalem has three curses at this hour,” said he fiercely, “the priests, the people, and the Romans, and the last is the lightest of the three;—the priests bloated with indulgence and mad with love of the world; the people pampered with faction and mad with bigotry; and the Romans availing themselves of the madness of each to crush all.”
“But has the assault been actually made, or is there force enough within to repel it?” interrupted I.
“The assault has been made, and the enemy has driven everything before it, so far as has been its pleasure. Why it has not pushed on is inconceivable, for our regular troops are good for nothing. I have now been sent out to raise the villages, but my labor will be useless, for see—the eagles are already on the wall.”
I looked; on the northern quarter of the battlements I saw, through smoke and flame, the accursed standard. Below rose immense bursts of conflagration; the whole of the new city, the Bezetha, was on fire. My plan was instantly formed. I divided my force into two bodies; gave one to Constantius, with orders to enter the city and drive the Romans from the walls; and with the other threaded the ravines toward a position on the hills. I had to make a long circuit. The Roman camp was pitched on the ridge of Mount Scopas, seven furlongs from the city. Guided by Jubal, I gained its rear. My troops, stimulated by the sight of the fugitive people, required all my efforts to keep them from rushing on the detachments, which we saw successively hurrying to reenforce the assault.
Night fell, but the signal for my attack, a fixed number of torches on the tower of the Temple, did not appear. Our troops, ambushed in the olive-groves skirting the ridge, had hitherto escaped discovery. At length they grew furious and bore me along with them. As we burst up the rugged sides of the hill, like a huge surge before the tempest, I cast a despairing glance toward the city; the torches at that moment rose. Hope lived again. The sight added wings to our speed, and before the enemy could recover from its astonishment, we were in the center of the camp. Nothing could be more complete than our success. The legionaries, sure of the morning’s march into Jerusalem and the plunder of the Temple, were caught leaning in crowds over the ramparts, unarmed, and making absolute holiday. Caius Cestius,[36] their insolent general, was carousing in his tent after the fatigues of the evening. The tribunes followed his example; the soldiery saw nothing to require their superior abstemiousness, and the wine was flowing freely in healths to the next day’s rapine, when our roar opened their eyes. To resist was out of the question. Fifty thousand spearmen, as daring as ever lifted weapon, and inflamed with the feelings of their harassed country, were in their midst, and they fled in all directions. I pressed on to the general’s tent, but the prize had escaped; he had fled at the first alarm. My followers indignantly set his quarters on fire; the blaze spread, and the flame of the Roman camp rolled up like the flame of a sacrifice to the god of battles.
The seizure of this position was the ruin of the cohorts, abandoned between the hill and the city. At the sight of the flames the gates were flung open, and Constantius drove the assailants from point to point until our shouts told him that we were marching upon their rear. The shock then was final. The Romans, dispirited and surprised, broke like water, and scarcely a man of them lived to boast of having insulted the walls of Jerusalem.
Day arose and the Temple met the rising beam, unstained by the smoke of an enemy’s fire. The wreck of the legions lay upon the declivities, like the fragments of a fleet on the shore. But this sight, painful even to an enemy, was soon forgotten in the concourse of the rescued citizens, the exultation of the troops, and the still more seducing vanities that filled the heart of their chieftain.
Toward noon, a long train of the principal people, headed by the priests and elders, was seen issuing from the gates to congratulate me. Choral music and triumphant shouts announced their approach through the valley. My heart bounded with the feelings of a conqueror. The whole long vista of national honors, the popular praise, the personal dignity, the power of trampling upon the malignant, the clearance of my character, the right to take the future lead on all occasions of public service and princely renown, opened before my eye.
I was standing alone upon the brow of the promontory. As far as the eye could reach all was in motion, and all was directed to me; the homage of soldiery, priests, and people centered in my single being. I involuntarily uttered aloud:
“At last I shall enter Jerusalem in triumph.”
I heard a voice at my side:
“Never shalt thou enter Jerusalem but in sorrow!”
An indescribable pang smote me. There was not a living soul near me to have uttered the words. The troops were standing at a distance below and in perfect silence. The words were spoken close to my ear. But I fatally knew the voice, and conjecture was at an end. My limbs felt powerless, as if I had been struck by lightning. I called Jubal up the peak to assist me. But the blow that smote my frame seemed to have smote his mind. His eyes rolled wildly; his speech was the language of a fierce disturbance of thought, altogether unintelligible. A lunatic stood before me.
Was this to be the foretaste of my own afflictions? Was I to see my kindred and friends put under the yoke of bodily and mental misery as a menace of the punishment that was to cut asunder my connection with human nature?
In pain and terror I drew my unfortunate kinsman from the gaze of the troops, and entreated him to tell me by what melancholy chance his feelings had been thus disturbed. He looked at me with a fierce glance, and half unsheathed his dagger. But I was not to be repelled, and still labored to soothe him. He hurriedly grasped the weapon, flung it down the steep, and sinking at my feet, burst into tears.
An uproar in the valley roused me from the contemplation of this wreck of youth and hope. The enemy, tho defeated, had suffered little comparative loss. The pride of the legions could not brook the idea of defeat by what they deemed the rabble of the city and the fields. Cestius, under cover of the broken country on our flanks, had rallied the fugitives of the camp, and now, between me and the city, were rapidly advancing in columns, forty thousand men.
The maneuver was bold. It might force us either to fight at a ruinous disadvantage, or to leave the city totally exposed. But, like all bold games, it was perilous, and I determined to make the Roman feel that he had an antagonist who would not leave the game at his discretion.
From the pinnacle on which I stood, the whole champaign lay beneath me. Nothing could be lovelier. The grandest combinations of art and nature were before the eye—Jerusalem on her hills, a city of palaces, and in that hour displaying her full pomp; her towers streaming with banners; her battlements crowded with troops; her priesthood and citizens in their festal habits pouring from the gates and covering the plain with the pageant; that plain itself colored with the richest produce of the earth; groves of the olive; declivities, purple with the vine or yellow with corn, gleaming in the sun, sheets of vegetable gold.
The signals of my advance parties along the heights soon told me that the enemy were in movement. My plan was speedily adopted. On the right spread the plain; on the left lay the broken and hilly country through which the enemy were advancing by its three principal ravines. I felt that, if they could unite, success with our undisciplined levies was desperate. The only hope was that of beating the columns separately as they emerged into the plain. Cavalry had now begun to ride down upon the processions, which, startled at the sight, were instantly scattered and flying toward Jerusalem.
“The day of congratulation is clearly over,” said Jubal, pointing in scorn to the dispersed citizens. “To-day, at least, you will not receive the homage of those hypocrites of the Sanhedrin.”
“Nor perhaps to-morrow, fellow soldier, for we must first see of what material those columns are made. If we beat them, we shall save the elders the trouble of crossing the plain, and receive their honors within the walls.”
“In Jerusalem!” exclaimed he wildly; “no, never! You have dangers to encounter within those walls that no art of man could withstand; dangers keener than the dagger, more deadly than the aspic, more resistless than the force of armies! Enter Jerusalem and you are undone.”
I looked upon him with astonishment. But there was in his eyes a sad humility; a strangely imploring glance, which formed the most singular contrast to the wildness of his words.
“Be warned!” said he, pressing close, as if he dreaded that his secret should be overheard; “I have seen and heard horrid things since I last entered the city. Beware of the leaders of Jerusalem! I tell you that they have fearful power, that their hate is inexorable, and that you are their great object!”
“This is altogether beyond my conception; how have I offended, and whom?” I asked.
He seemed to have recovered the tone of his mind. “You are charged with unutterable acts. Your abandonment of the priesthood; sights seen in your deserted chambers, which not even the most daring would venture to inhabit; your escape from dangers that must have extinguished any other human being, have bred fatal rumors. It has been said that you worshiped in the bowels of the mountain of Masada, where the magic fire burns eternally before the image of the Evil One; nay, that you even conquered the fortress, impregnable as it was to man, by a horrid compact, and that the raising of your standard was the declared sign of that compact, dreadfully to be repaid by you and yours!”
“Monstrous and incredible calumny! Where was their evidence? My actions were before the face of the world!”
“If your virtues were written in a sunbeam, envy would darken and hatred destroy,” exclaimed my kinsman, with the bold countenance and manly feeling of his better days. “They have in their secret councils stained you with a fate more gloomy than I can comprehend; they say that you are sentenced, even here, to the miseries of guilt beyond the grave.”
I felt as if he had stricken a lance through my heart. Fiery sparkles shot before my eyes. I instinctively put my hand to my brow, to feel if the mark of Cain was not already there. I gave one hurried glance at heaven, as if to see the form of the destroying angel stooping over me. But the consciousness that I was in the presence of the multitude compelled me to master my feelings. I commanded Jubal to be ready with his proofs of those calumnies against the time when I should confound my accusers. But I now spoke to the winds. The interval of reason was gone. He burst out into the fiercest horrors.
“They pursue me!” exclaimed he; “they come by thousands, with the poniard and the poison! They cry for blood! They would drive me to a crime black as their own!”
He flung himself at my feet, and, clasping them, prevented every effort to save him from this degradation. He buried his face in my robe, and, casting up a scared look from time to time, as if he shrank from some object of terror, apostrophized his vision.
“Fearful being,” he cried, “spare me! turn away those searching eyes! I have sworn to do the deed, and it shall be done. I have sworn it, against the ties of nature, against the laws of Heaven; but it shall be done. Now, begone! See!”—he cowered, pointing to a cloud that floated across the sun—“see! he spreads his wings; he hovers over me; the thunders are flaming in his hands. Begone, Spirit of Evil! It shall be done! Look, where he vanishes into the heights of his kingdom! the prince of the power of the air.”
The cloud which fed the fancy of my unfortunate kinsman dissolved, and with it his fear of the tempter. But he lay exhausted at my feet, his eyes closed, his limbs shuddering—the emblem of weakness and despair. I tried to rouse him by that topic which would once have shot new life into his heroic heart.
“Rise, Jubal, and see the enemy. This battle must not be fought without you. To-day neither magic nor chance shall be imputed to the conqueror, if I shall conquer. Jerusalem sees the battle, and before the face of my country I will show myself the leader, or will leave the last drop of my blood upon those fields.”
The warrior kindled within him. He sprang from the ground and shot down an eagle glance at the enemy, who had now made rapid progress, and were beginning to show the heads of their columns in the plain. He was unarmed. I gave him my sword, and the proud humility with which he put it to his lips was a pledge to me that it would be honored in his hands.
“Glorious thing!” he exclaimed, as he flashed it before the sun, “that raises man at once to the height of human honors, or sends him where no care can disturb his rest; the true scepter that graces empire; the true talisman, more powerful than all the arts of the enchanter! What, like thee, can lift up the lowly, enrich the destitute, and even restore the undone? What talent, knowledge, gift of nature, nay, what smile of fortune can, like thee, in one hour, bid the obscure stand forth the hero of a people or the wonder of a world? Now for glory!” he shouted to the listening circle of the troops, who answered him with shouts.
“Now for glory!” they cried, and poured after him down the side of the mountain.
“‘Now for glory!’ they cried.”
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.
The three gorges of the valleys through which the enemy moved, opened into the plain at wide intervals from one another. I saw that the eagerness of Cestius to reach the open ground was already hurrying his columns; and that, from the comparative facilities of the ravine immediately under my position, the nearest column must arrive unsupported. The moment came. The helmets and spears were already pouring from the pass, when a gesture from me let loose the whole human torrent upon them. Our advantage of the ground, our numbers, and still more, our brave impetuosity, decided the fate of this division at once. The legionaries were not merely repulsed, they were absolutely trampled down; there they lay, as if a mighty wall or a fragment of the mountain had fallen upon them.
The two remaining columns were still to be fought. The compact and broad mass of iron that rushed down the ravines seemed irresistible, and when I cast a glance on the irregular and waving lines behind me I felt the whole peril of the day. Yet I feared idly. The enemy charged and forced their way into the very center of the multitude like two vast wedges, crushing all before them. But, tho they could repel, they could not conquer. The spirit of the Jew fighting before Jerusalem was more than heroism. To extinguish a Roman, tho at the instant loss of life; to disable a single spear, tho by receiving it in his bosom; to encumber with his corpse the steps of the adversary, was reward enough for the man of Israel.
I saw crowds of those bold peasants fling themselves on the ground, creep in between the feet of the legionaries, and die stabbing them; others casting away the lance to seize the Roman bucklers and encumber them with the strong grasp of death; crowds mounting the rising grounds, to leap down upon the spears. The enemy, overborne with the weight of the multitude, at length found it impossible to move farther; yet their strength was not to be broken. Wherever we turned there was the same solid wall of shields, the same thick fence of leveled lances. We might as well have assaulted a rock. Our arrows rebounded from their impenetrable armor; the stones that poured on them from innumerable slings rolled off like the hail of a summer shower from a roof. But to have stopped the columns and prevented their junction was in itself a triumph. I felt that we had scarcely to do more than fix them where they stood, and leave the intense heat of the day, thirst, and weariness to fight our battle. But my troops were not to be restrained. They still rolled in furious heaps against the living fortification. Every broken lance in that impenetrable barrier, every pierced helmet, was a trophy; the fall of a single legionary roused a shout of exultation and was the signal for a new charge.
But the battle was no longer to be left to our unassisted efforts; the troops in Jerusalem moved down with Constantius at their head. In the perpetual roar of the conflict, their shouts had escaped my ear, and my first intelligence of their advance was from Jubal, who had well redeemed his pledge during the day. Hurrying with him to one of the eminences that overlooked the field, I saw with pride and delight the standard of Naphtali spreading its red folds at the head of the advancing multitude.
“Who commands them?” asked Jubal eagerly.
“Who should command them, with that banner at their head,” replied I, “but my son, my brave Constantius?”
He heard no more, but, bending his turban to the saddle-bow, struck the spur into his horse, and with a cry of madness plunged into the center of the nearest column. The stroke came upon it like a thunderbolt; the phalanx wavered for the first time; an opening was made into its ranks. The chasm was filled up by a charge of my hunters. To save or die with Jubal was the impulse! That charge was never recovered; the column loosened, the multitude pressed in upon it, and Constantius arrived, only in time to see the remnant of the Roman army flying to the disastrous shelter of the hills.
The day was won—I was a conqueror! The invincible legions were invincible no more. I had conquered under the gaze of Jerusalem! Where was the enmity that would dare to murmur against me now? What calumny would not be crushed by the force of national gratitude? A flood of absorbing sensations filled my soul. No eloquence of man could express the glowing and superb consciousness that swelled my heart, in the moment when I saw the Romans shake, and heard the shouts of my army proclaiming me victor. After that day, I can forgive the boldest extravagance of the boldest passion for war. That passion may not be cruelty, nor the thirst of possession, nor the longing for supremacy; but something made up of them all, and yet superior to all—the essential spirit of the stirring motives of the human mind—ambition, kindled by the loftiest objects and ennobled by them—a game where the stake is an endless inheritance of renown, a sudden lifting of the man into the rank of those on whose names time can make no impression—immortals, without undergoing the penalty of the grave!
I determined to give the enemy no respite, and ordered the ravines to be attacked by fresh troops. While they were advancing, I galloped in search of Jubal over the ground of the last charge. He was not to be seen among the living or the dead.
The look of the field, when the first glow of battle had passed, was enough to shake a sterner spirit than mine. Our advance to the gorges of the mountain had left the plain naked. The sea of turbans and lances was gone, rolling, like the swell of an angry ocean, against the foot of the hills. All before us was the cliff or the rocky pass, thronged with helmets and spears. But all behind was death or misery worse than death; hundreds and thousands groaning in agony, crying out for water to cool their burning lips, or imploring the sword to put them out of pain. The legionaries lay in their ranks as they had fought; solid piles of men, horses, and arms, the true monuments of soldiership. The veterans of Rome had sustained the honors of her name.
I turned from this sight toward the rescued city. The sun was resting on its towers; the smoke of the evening sacrifice was ascending in slow wreaths from the altar of the sanctuary. The trumpets and voices of the minstrels poured a stream of harmony on the cool air. The recollection of gentler times came upon my heart. Through what scenes of anxious feeling had I not passed since those gates closed upon me. The contrast between the holy calm of my early days and the fierce struggles of my doomed existence pressed with bitter force. My spirit shook. The warrior enthusiasm was chilled.