_Preparing for an Attack_
[Sidenote: The Hope of Success]
Indecision in the beginning of war is worse than war. I decided that
whatever were the consequences, the sword must be unsheathed without
delay. With Eleazar and Constantius, I cast my eyes over the map, and
examined on what point the first blow should fall. The proverbial safety
of a multitude of councilors was obviously disregarded in the smallness
of my council; yet few as we were, we differed upon every point but one,
that of the certainty of our danger; the promptitude of Roman vengeance
suffered no contest of opinion. Eleazar, with a spirit as manly as ever,
faced hazard, yet gave his voice for delay.
“The sole hope of success,” said he, “must depend on rousing the popular
mind. The Roman troops are not to be beaten by any regular army in the
world. If we attack them on the ordinary principles of war, the result
can only be defeat, slaughter in dungeons, and deeper slavery. If the
nation can be aroused, numbers may prevail over discipline; variety of
attack may distract science; the desperate boldness of the insurgents may
at length exhaust the Roman fortitude, and a glorious peace will then
restore the country to that independence for which my life would be a
glad and ready sacrifice. But you must first have the people with you,
and for that purpose you must have the leaders of the people——”
“What!” interrupted I, “must we first mingle in the cabals of Jerusalem
and rouse the frigid debaters of the Sanhedrin into action? Are we first
to conciliate the irreconcilable, to soften the furious, to purify the
corrupt? If the Romans are to be our tyrants till we can teach patriotism
to faction, we may as well build the dungeon at once, for to the dungeon
we are consigned for the longest life among us. Death or glory for me.
There is no alternative between, not merely the half slavery that we
now live in, and independence, but between the most condign suffering
and the most illustrious security. If the people would rise through the
pressure of public injury, they must have risen long since; if from
private violence, what town, what district, what family has not its claim
of deadly retribution? Yet here the people stand, after a hundred years
of those continued stimulants to resistance, as unresisting as in the
day when Pompey marched over the threshold of the Temple. I know your
generous friendship, Eleazar, and fear that your anxiety to save me from
the chances of the struggle may bias your better judgment. But here I
pledge myself, by all that constitutes the honor of man, to strike at all
risks a blow upon the Roman crest that shall echo through the land. What!
commit our holy cause in the nursing of those pampered hypocrites whose
utter baseness of heart you know still more deeply than I do? Linger till
those pestilent profligates raise their price with Florus by betraying
a design that will be the glory of every man who draws a sword in it?
Vainly, madly ask a brood that, like the serpent, engender and fatten
among the ruins of their country to discard their venom, to cast their
fangs, to feel for human feelings? As well ask the serpent itself to rise
from the original curse. It is the irrevocable nature of faction to be
base until it can be mischievous; to lick the dust until it can sting; to
creep on its belly until it can twist its folds around the victim. No!
let the old pensionaries, the bloated hangers-on in the train of every
governor, the open sellers of their country for filthy lucre, betray me
when I leave it in their power. To the field, I say—once and for all, to
the field.”
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Ardor]
My mind, at no period patient of contradiction, was fevered by the
perplexity of the time. I was about to leave the chamber when Constantius
gravely stopped me.
“My father,” said he, with a voice calmer than his countenance, “you
have hurt our noble kinsman’s feelings. It is not in an hour when our
unanimity may fail that we should suffer dissensions between those whose
hearts are alike embarked in this great cause. Let me mediate between
you.”
[Sidenote: The Support of the People]
He led Eleazar back from the casement to which he had withdrawn to cool
his blood, burning with the offense of my language.
“Eleazar is in the right. The Romans are irresistible by any force short
of the whole people. They have military possession of the country—all
your fortresses, all your posts, all your passes. They are as familiar as
you are with every defile, mountain, and marsh; they surround you with
conquered provinces on the north, east, and south; your western barrier
is open to them while it is shut to you; the sea is the high-road of
their armies, while at their first forbidding, you dare not launch a
galley between Libanus and Idumea. Nothing can counterbalance this local
superiority but the rising of your whole people.”
“Yet, are we to intrigue with the talkers in Jerusalem for this?”
interrupted I. “What less than a descended thunderbolt could rouse them
to a sense that there is even a heaven above them?”
“Still, we must have them with us,” said Constantius, “for we must have
all. Universality is the spirit of an insurrectionary war. If I were
commander of a revolt, I should feel greater confidence of success at
the head of a single province in which every human being was against the
enemy, than at the head of an empire partially in arms. The mind even of
the rudest spearsman is a great portion of him. The boldest shrinks from
the consciousness that hostility is on all sides; that whether marching
or at rest, watching or sleeping, by night or by day, hostility is round
him; that it is in the very air he breathes, in the very food he eats;
that every face he sees is the face of one who wishes him slain; that
every knife, even every trivial instrument of human use, may be turned
into a shedder of his blood. Those things, perpetually confronting
his mind, break it down until the man grows reckless, miserable,
undisciplined, and a dastard.”
“Yet,” observed Eleazar, “the constant robbery of an insurrectionary war
must render it a favorite command.”
[Sidenote: Constantius Describes a Campaign]
“Let me speak from experience,” said Constantius. “Two years ago I
was attached, with a squadron of galleys, to the expedition against
the tribes of Mount Taurus. While the galleys wintered in Cyprus, I
followed the troops up the hills. Nothing had been omitted that would
counteract the severity of the season. Tents, provisions, clothing
adapted to the hills, even luxuries despatched from the islands, gave
the camps almost the indulgences of cities. The physical hardships of
the campaign were trivial compared with those of hundreds in which the
Romans had beaten regular armies. Yet the discontent was indescribable,
from the perpetual alarms of the service. The mountaineers were not
numerous and were but half armed; they were not disciplined at all. A
Roman centurion would have outmaneuvered all their captains. But they
were brave; they knew nothing but to kill or be killed, and it made no
difference to them whether Death did his work by night or by day. Sleep
to us was scarcely possible. To sit down on a march was to be leveled at
by a score of arrows; to pursue the archers was to be lured into some
hollow, where a fragment of the rock above or a felled tree, was ready
to crush the legionaries. We chased them from hill to hill; we might as
well have chased the vultures and eagles that duly followed us, with the
perfect certainty of not being disappointed of their meal. Wherever the
enemy showed themselves they were beaten, but our victory was totally
fruitless. The next turn of the mountain road was a stronghold, from
which we had to expect a new storm of arrows, lances, and fragments of
rock.
“The mountaineers always had a retreat,” he continued. “If we drove them
from the pinnacles of the hills, they were in a moment in the valleys,
where we must follow them at the risk of falling down precipices and
being swallowed up by torrents, in which the strongest swimmer in the
legions could not live for a moment. If we drove them from the valleys,
we saw them scaling the mountains as if they had wings, and scoffing at
our tardy and helpless movements, encumbered as we were with baggage and
armor. We at length forced our way through the mountain range, and when
with the loss of half the army we had reached their citadel, we found
that the work was to be begun again. To remain where we were was to be
starved; we had defeated the barbarians, but they were as unconquered as
ever, and our only resource was to retrace our steps, which we did at
the expense of a battle every morning, noon, evening, and night, with
a ruinous loss of life and the total abandonment of everything in the
shape of baggage. The defeat was of course hushed up, and according to
the old Roman policy, the escape was colored to a victory; I had the
honor of carrying back the general into Italy, where he was decreed an
ovation, a laurel crown, and a crowd of the usual distinctions; but the
triumph belonged to the men of the mountains, and until our campaign is
forgotten, no Roman captain will look for his laurels in Mount Taurus
again.”
[Sidenote: The Force of Invasion]
“Such forever be the fate of wars against the natural freedom of the
brave,” said I; “but the Cicilians had the advantage of an almost
impenetrable country. Three-fourths of Judea is already in the enemy’s
possession.”
“No country in which man can exist can be impenetrable to an invading
army,” was the reply. “Natural defenses are trifling before the vigor and
dexterity of man. The true barrier is in the hearts of the defenders.
We were masters of the whole range. We could not find a thousand men
assembled on any one point. Yet we were not the actual possessors of a
mile of ground beyond the square of our camp. We never saw a day without
an attack, nor ever lay down at night without the certainty of some
fierce attempt at a surprise. It was this perpetual anxiety that broke
the spirits of the troops. All was in hostility to them. They felt that
there was not a secure spot within the horizon. Every man whom they saw,
they knew to be one who either had drawn Roman blood or who longed in his
inmost soul to draw it. They dared not pass by a single rock without a
search for a lurking enemy. Even a felled tree might conceal some daring
savage, who was content to die on the Roman spears, after having flung
his unerring lance among the ranks or shot an arrow that went through the
thickest corslet. I have seen the boldest of the legionaries sink on the
ground in absolute exhaustion of heart with this hopeless and wearying
warfare. I have seen men with muscles strong as iron weep like children
through mere depression. With the harsher spirits, all was execration and
bitterness, even to the verge of mutiny. With the more generous all was
regret at the waste of honor, mingled with involuntary admiration of the
barbarians who thus defied the haughty courage and boasted discipline of
the conquerors of mankind. The secret spring of their resistance was its
universality. Every man was embarked in the common cause. There was no
room for evasion under cover of a party disposed to peace; there was no
Roman interest among the people, in which timidity or selfishness could
take refuge. The national cause had not a lukewarm friend; the invaders
had not a dubious enemy. The line was drawn with the sword, and the cause
of national independence triumphed, as it ought to triumph.”
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Determination]
“But we are a people split into as many varieties of opinion as there are
provinces or even villages in Judea,” observed Eleazar; “the Jew loves
to follow the opinions of the head of his family, the chief man of his
tribe, or even of the priest, who has long exercised an influence over
his district. We have not the slavishness of the Asiatic, but we still
want the personal choice of the European. We must secure the leaders, if
we would secure the people.”
“Men,” said Constantius, “are intrinsically the same in every climate
under heaven. They will all hate hazard, where nothing but hazard is to
be gained. They will all linger for ages in slavery, where the taskmaster
has the policy to avoid sudden violence; but they will all encounter the
severest trials, where in the hour of injury they find a leader prepared
to guide them to honor.”
“And to that extent they shall have trial of me!” I exclaimed. “Before
another Sabbath I shall make the experiment of my fitness to be the
leader of my countrymen. At the head of my own tribe I will march to the
Holy City, seize the garrison, and from Herod’s palace, from the very
chair of the Procurator, will I at once silence the voice of faction and
lift the banner to the tribes of Israel.”
[Sidenote: The Stronghold of Masada]
“Nobly conceived,” said Constantius, his countenance glowing with
animation; “blow upon blow is the true tactic of an insurrectionary war.
We must strike at once, suddenly, and boldly. The sword of him who would
triumph in a revolt must not merely sound on the enemy’s helmet, but cut
through it.”
“Yet to a march on Jerusalem,” said Eleazar, “the objections are
palpable. The city would be out of all hope of a surprise, difficult to
capture, and beyond all chance to keep.”
“Ever tardy, thwarting, and contradictory!” I exclaimed; “if the Roman
scepter lay under my heel, I should find Eleazar forbidding me to crush
it. My mind is fixed; I will hear no more.”
I started from my seat and paced the chamber. Eleazar approached me.
“My brother,” said he, holding out his hand with a forgiving smile, “_we_
must not differ. I honor your heart, Salathiel; I know your talents;
there is not a man in Judea whom I should be prouder to see at the head
of its councils. I agree with you in your views, and now I offer you
myself and every man whom I can influence to follow you to the last
extremity. The only question is, where the blow is to fall.”
Constantius had been gazing on the chart of Judea, which lay between us
on the table.
“If it be our object,” said he, “to combine injury to the Romans with
actual advantage to ourselves, to make a trial where failure can not be
ruinous and where success may be of measureless value, here is the spot.”
He pointed to Masada.[31]
The fortress of Masada was built by Herod the Great as his principal
magazine of arms. A fierce and successful soldier, one of his luxuries
was the variety and costliness of his weapons, and the royal armory of
Masada was renowned throughout Asia. Pride in the possession of such a
trophy, probably aided by some reverence for the memory of the friend
of Cæsar and Antony, whom the legions still almost worshiped as tutelar
genii, originally saved it from the usual Roman spoliation. But no
native foot was permitted to enter the armory, and mysterious stories
of the sights and sounds of those splendid halls filled the ears of the
people. Masada was held to be the talisman of the Roman power over Judea
by more than the people; the belief had made its way among the legions,
and no capture could be a bolder omen of the war.
[Sidenote: The Preparations]
I still preferred the more direct blow on Jerusalem, and declaimed on
the vital importance in all wars, of seizing on the capital. But I
was controlled. Eleazar’s grave wisdom and the science of Constantius
deprived me of argument, and the attack on Masada was finally planned
before we left the chamber. Nothing could be more primitive than our plan
for the siege of the most scientific fortification in Judea, crowded with
men and furnished with every implement and machine of war that Roman
experience could supply. Our simple preparations were a few ropes for
ladders, a few hatchets for cutting down gates and palisadoes, and a few
faggots for setting on fire what we could. Five hundred of our tribe, who
had never thrown a lance but in hunting, formed our expedition, and at
the head of those, Constantius, who claimed the exploit by the right of
discovery, was to march at dusk, conceal himself in the forests during
the day, and on the evening of his arrival within reach of the fortress
attempt it by surprise. Eleazar was, in the mean time, to rouse his
retainers, and I was to await at their head the result of the enterprise,
and if successful, unfurl the standard of Naphtali and advance on
Jerusalem.