_The Difficulties of a Leader_
[Sidenote: The First Decisive Blow]
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.
[Sidenote: The Duties of Command]
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?
[Sidenote: The Value of Councils]
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.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Leads an Insurrection]
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.
[Sidenote: An Omen]
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!
[Sidenote: The Marching of a Host]
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.
[Sidenote: Constantius Despairs]
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!”