_The Struggle for Supremacy_
[Sidenote: The Sickness of the Heart]
The seventeenth day of the month Tamuz, ever memorable in the sufferings
of Israel, was the last of the Daily Sacrifice. Sorrow and fear were on
the city, and the silence of the night was broken by the lamentations of
the multitude. I returned to my chamber of affliction, and busied myself
in preparing for the guard of the Temple, to withdraw my mind from the
gloom that was beginning to master me. Yet when I looked round the room,
and thought of what I had been, of the opulent enjoyments of my palace,
and of the beloved faces which surrounded me there, I felt the sickness
of the heart.
The chilling air that blew through the dilapidated walls, the cruse of
water, the scanty bread, the glimmering lamp, the comfortless and squalid
bed, on which lay in the last stages of weakness a patriot and a hero—a
being full of fine affections and abilities, reduced to the helplessness
of an infant, and whom in leaving for the night I might be leaving to
perish by the poniard of the robber—unmanned me. I cast the simitar from
my hand, and sat down with a sullen determination there to linger until
death, or that darker vengeance which haunted me, should do its will.
The night was stormy, and the wind howled in long and bitter gusts
through the deserted chambers of the huge mansion. But the mind is the
true place of suffering, and I felt the season’s visitation in my locks
drenched about my face, and my tattered robes swept by the freezing
blasts, as only the natural course of things.
I was sitting by the bedside, moistening the fevered lips of Constantius
with water, and pressing on him the last fragment of bread which I might
ever have to give, when I, with sudden delight, heard him utter for
the first time articulate sounds. I stooped to catch accents so dear
and full of hope. But the words were a supplication—he prayed to the
Christian’s God!
[Sidenote: The Prayer of Constantius]
I turned away from this resistless conviction of his belief. But this was
no time for debate, and I was won to listen again. His voice was scarcely
above a whisper, but his language was the aspiration of the heart. His
eyes were closed, and, evidently unconscious of my presence, in his high
communion with Heaven, he talked of things of which I had but imperfect
knowledge or none; of blood shed for the sins of man; of a descended
Spirit to guide the servants of Heaven; of the unspeakable love that gave
the Son of God to mortal suffering for the atonement of that human guilt
which nothing but such a sacrifice could atone. He finished by the names
dear to us both; and praying “for their safety if they still were in
life, or for their meeting beyond the grave, declared himself resigned to
the will of his Lord.”
I waited in sacred awe until I saw, by the subsiding motion of the lips,
that the prayer was done, and then, anxious to gain information of my
family, questioned him. But with the prayer the interval of mental power
had passed away. The veil was drawn over his senses once more, and
his answers were unintelligible. Yet even the hope of his restoration
lightened my gloom; my spirits, naturally elastic, shook off their
leaden weight; I took up the simitar, and pressing the cold hand of my
noble fellow victim, prepared to issue forth to the Temple. The storm
was partially gone, and the moon, approaching to the full, was high in
heaven, fighting her way through masses of rapid cloud. The wind still
roared in long blasts, as the tempest retired, like an army repulsed, and
indignant at being driven from the spoil. But the ground was deluged, and
a bitter sleet shot on our half-naked bodies. I had far to pass through
the streets of the upper city, and their aspect was deeply suited to the
melancholy of the hour.
Vast walls and buttresses of the burned and overthrown mansions remained,
that in the spectral light looked like gigantic specters. Ranges of
inferior ruins stretched to the utmost glance; some yet sending up the
smoke of recent conflagration, and others beaten down by the storms or
left to decay. The immense buildings of the hierarchy, once the scene
of all but kingly magnificence, stood roofless and windowless, with the
light sadly gleaming through their fissures, and the wind singing a dirge
of ruin through their halls. I scarcely met a human being, for the sword
and famine had fearfully reduced the once countless population.
But I often startled a flight of vultures from their meal; or, in the
sinking of the light, stumbled upon a heap that uttered a cry, and
showed that life was there; or from his horrid morsel, a wretch glared
upon me, as one wolf might glare upon another, that came to rob him of
his prey; or the twinkling of a miserable lamp in the corner of a ruin
glimmered over a knot of felony and murder, reckoning their hideous gains
and carousing with the dagger drawn. Heaps of bones, whitening in the
air, were the monuments of the wasted valor of my countrymen, and the
oppressive atmosphere gave the sensation of walking in a sepulcher.
[Sidenote: The Avenues of Death]
I dragged my limbs with increased difficulty through those long avenues
of death that, black, silent, and split into a thousand shapes of ruin,
looked less like the streets of a city than the rocky defiles of a
mountain shattered by lightnings and earthquakes. On the summit of the
hill I found a crowd of unhappy beings, who came, like myself, actuated
by zeal to defend the Temple from the insults to which its sanctity was
now nightly exposed. Faction had long extinguished the native homage of
the people. Battles had been fought within its walls, and many a corpse
loaded the sacred floors, that once would have required solemn ceremonies
to free them from the pollution of an unlicensed step.
And what a band was assembled there! Wretches mutilated by wounds, worn
with sleeplessness, haggard with want of food; shivering together on the
declivity, whose naked elevation exposed them to the whole inclemency
of the night; flung like the dead, on the ground, or gathered in little
knots among the ruined porticos, with death in every frame and despair in
every heart.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Views the Pomp of War]
I was sheltering myself behind the broken columns of the Grand gate,
from the bitter wind which searched every fiber, and was sinking into
that chilling torpor which benumbs body and mind alike, when a clash of
military music and the tramp of a multitude assailed my ear. I started up
and found my miserable companions mustered, from the various hollows of
the hill, to our post on the central ground of Mount Moriah, whence the
view was boundless on every side. A growing blaze rose up from the valley
and flashed upon the wall of circumvallation. The sounds of cymbal and
trumpet swelled; the light advanced rapidly; and going the circuit of the
wall, helmets and lances of the cavalry were seen glittering through the
gloom; a crowd of archers preceded a dense body of the legionary horse,
at whose head rode a group of officers. On this night the fatal wall had
been completed, and Titus was going its round in triumph. Every horseman
carried a torch, and strong divisions of infantry followed, bearing lamps
and vessels of combustible matter on the points of their spears. As the
whole moved, rolling and bending with the inequalities of the ground, I
thought that I saw a mighty serpent, coiling his burning spires round the
prey that was never to be rescued by the power of man.
But the pomp of war below and the wretchedness round me, raised
reflections of such bitterness that when Titus and his splendid troop
reached the mountain of the Temple, one outcry of sorrow and anticipated
ruin burst from us all. The conqueror heard it, and, from the instant
maneuvering of his troops, was evidently alarmed; he had known the
courage of the Jews too long not to dread the effect of their despair.
And despair it was, fierce and untamable!
I started forward, exclaiming: “If there is a man among you ready to
stake his life for his country, let him follow me.”
To the last hour the Jew was a warrior! The crowd seized their spears,
and we sprang down the cliffs. As we reached the outer wall of the city,
I restrained their exhaustless spirit until I had singly ascertained
the state of the enemy. Titus was passing the well-known ravine near
the fountain-gate, where the ground was difficult for cavalry, from its
being chiefly divided into gardens. I flung open the gate, and led the
way to the circumvallation. The sentinels, occupied with looking on the
pomp, suffered us to approach unperceived; we mounted the wall, overthrew
everything before us, and plunged down upon the cavalry, entangled in the
ravine. It was a complete surprise.
The bravery of the legions was not proof against the fury of our attack.
Even our wild faces and half-naked forms, by the uncertain glare of the
torches, looked scarcely human. Horse and man rolled down the declivity.
The arrival of fresh troops only increased the confusion; their torches
made them a mark for our pikes and arrows; every point told, and every
Roman that fell, armed a Jew. The conflict now became murderous, and we
stabbed at our ease the troopers of the Emperor’s guard, through their
mail, while their long lances were useless.
The defile gave us incalculable advantages, for the garden walls were
impassable by the cavalry, while we bounded over them like deer. All was
uproar, terror, and rage. We actually waded through blood. At every step,
I trod on horse or man; helmets and bucklers, lances and armor, lay in
heaps, and the stream of the ravine soon ran purple with the proudest
gore of the legions.
[Sidenote: The Roman Charge]
At length, while we were absolutely oppressed with the multitude of
dead, a sudden blast of trumpets and the shouts of the enemy led me to
prepare for a still fiercer effort. A tide of cavalry poured over the
ground; Titus, a gallant figure, cheering them on, with his helmet in
his hand, galloped in their front; I withdrew my wearied followers from
the exposed situation into which their success had led them, and posting
them behind a rampart of Roman dead, awaited the charge. It came with
the force of thunder; the powerful horses of the imperial squadron broke
over our rampart at the first shock and bore us down like stubble. Every
man of us was under their feet in a moment; and yet the very number of
our assailants saved us. The narrowness of the place gave no room for
the management of the horse; the darkness assisted both our escape and
assault; and even lying on the ground, we plunged our knives in horse
and rider, with terrible retaliation.
The cavalry at length gave way, but the Roman general, a man of the
heroic spirit that is only inflamed by repulse, rushed forward among
the disheartened troops, and roused them by his cries and gestures
to retrieve their honor. After a few bold words, he again charged at
their head. I singled him out, as I saw his golden helmet gleam in the
torch-light. To capture the son of Vespasian would have been a triumph
worth a thousand lives. Titus[46] was celebrated for personal dexterity
in the management of the horse and lance, and I could not withhold my
admiration of the skill with which he penetrated the difficulties of the
field, and the mastery with which he overthrew all that opposed him.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Attacks Titus]
Our motley ranks were already scattering, when I cried out my name and
defied him to the combat. He stooped over his charger’s neck to discover
his adversary, and seeing before him a being as blackened and beggared as
the most dismantled figure of the crowd, gave a laugh of fierce derision,
and was turning away, when our roar of scorn recalled him. He struck
in the spur, and couching his lance, bounded toward me. To have waited
his attack must have been destruction; I sprang aside, and with my full
vigor flung my javelin; it went through his buckler. He reeled, and a
groan rose from the legionaries who were rushing forward to his support.
He stopped them with a fierce gesture, and casting off the entangled
buckler, charged again. But the hope of the imperial diadem was not to be
thus cheaply hazarded. The whole circle of cavalry rolled in upon us; I
was dragged down by a hundred hands, and Titus was forced away, indignant
at the zeal which had thwarted his fiery valor.
In the confusion I was forgotten, burst through the concourse, and
rejoined my countrymen, who had given me over for lost, and now received
me with shouts of victory. The universal cry was to advance, but I felt
that the limit of triumph for that night was come; the engagement had
become known to the whole range of the enemy’s camps, and troops without
number were already pouring down. I ordered a retreat, but there was one
remaining exploit to make the night’s service memorable.
Leaving a few hundred pikemen outside the circumvallation, to keep off
any sudden attempt, I set every hand at work to gather the dry weeds,
rushes, and fragments of trees from the low grounds into a pile. It was
laid against the rampart. I flung the first torch, and pile and rampart
were soon alike in a blaze. Volumes of flame, carried by the wind,
rolled round its entire circuit. The Romans rushed down in multitudes
to extinguish the fire. But this became continually more difficult.
Jerusalem had been roused from its sleep, and the extravagant rumors
that a great victory was obtained, Titus slain, and the enemy’s camp
taken by storm, stimulated the natural spirit of the people to the
most boundless confidence. Every Jew who could find a lance, an arrow,
or a knife hurried to the gates, and the space between the walls and
the circumvallation was crowded with an army which, in that crisis of
superhuman exultation, perhaps no disciplined force on earth could have
outfought.
Nothing could now save the rampart. Torches innumerable, piles of
faggots, arms, even the dead, all things that could burn, were flung upon
it. Thousands, who at other times might have shrunk, forgot the name
of fear, leaped into the very midst of the flames, and tearing up the
blazing timbers, dug to the heart of the rampart and filled the hollows
with sulfur and bitumen; thousands struggled across the tumbling ruins,
to throw themselves among the Roman spearsmen and see the blood of an
enemy before they died.
[Sidenote: The Rampart’s Illumination]
War never had a bolder moment. Human nature, roused to the wildest
height of enthusiasm, was lavishing life like dust. The ramparts spread
a horrid light upon the havoc; every spot of the battle, every group
of the furious living, and the trampled and deformed dead, was keenly
visible. The ear was deafened by the incessant roar of flame, the falling
of the huge heaps of the rampart, and the agonies and exultations of men,
reveling in mutual slaughter.
[Sidenote: The Phenomenon in the Sky]
In that hour came one of those solemn signs that marked the downfall
of Jerusalem. The tempest, that had blown at intervals with tremendous
violence, died away at once; and a surge of light ascended from the
horizon and rolled up rapidly to the zenith. The phenomenon instantly
fixed every eye. There was an indefinable sense in the general mind that
a sign of power and providence was about to be given. The battle ceased;
the outcries were followed by utter silence; the armed ranks stood still,
in the very act of rushing on each other; all faces were turned on the
heavens.
The light rose pale and quivering like the meteors of a summer
evening. But in the zenith, it spread and swelled into a splendor that
distinguished it irresistibly from the wonders of earth or air. It
swiftly eclipsed every star. The moon vanished before it; the canopy of
the sky seemed to be dissolved, for a view into a bright and infinite
region beyond, fit for the career of those mighty beings to whom man is
but the dust on the gale.
As we gazed, this boundless field was transformed into a field of battle;
multitudes seemed to crowd it in the fiercest combat; horsemen charged
and died under their horses’ feet; armor and standards were trampled in
blood; column and line burst through each other. At length the battle
stooped toward the earth, and with hearts beating with indescribable
feelings we recognized in the fight the banners of the tribes. It was Jew
and Roman struggling for life; the very countenances of the combatants
became visible, and each man below saw a representative of himself above.
The fate of Jewish war was there written by the hand of Heaven; the fate
of the individual was there predicted in the individual triumph or fall.
What tongue of man can tell the intense interest with which we watched
every blow, every movement, every wound, of those images of ourselves?
The light now illumined the whole horizon below. The legions were seen
drawn out in front of the camps, ready for action—every helmet and
spear-point glittering in the radiance; every face turned up, gazing
in awe and terror on the sky. The tents spreading over the hills; the
thousands and tens of thousands of auxiliaries and captives; the little
groups of the peasantry, roused from sleep by the uproar of the night,
and gathered upon the knolls and eminences of their fields—all were
bathed in a flood of preternatural luster. But the wondrous battle
approached its close. The visionary Romans seemed to shake, column and
cohort gave way, and the banners of the tribes waved in victory over the
celestial field. Then human voices dared to be heard. From the city and
the plain burst forth one mighty shout of triumph!
[Sidenote: A Dreadful Sign]
But our presumption was soon to be checked. A peal of thunder that made
the very ground tremble under our feet rolled from the four quarters of
the heaven. The conquering host shook, broke, and fled in utter confusion
over the sapphire field. It was pursued, but by no semblance of the Roman.
An awful enemy was on its steps. Flashes of forked fire, like myriads of
lances, darted after it; cloud on cloud deepened down, as the smoke of
a mighty furnace; globes of light shot blasting and burning along its
track. Then amid the double roar of thunder rushed forth the chivalry
of heaven. Shapes of transcendent beauty, yet with looks of wrath that
withered the human eye—armed sons of immortality descending on the wing
by millions—mingled with shapes and instruments of ruin, for which the
mind has no conception. The circle of the heaven was filled with the
chariots and horses of fire. Flight was in vain; the weapons were seen to
drop from the Jewish host; their warriors sank upon the splendid field.
Still the immortal armies poured on, trampling and blasting, until the
last of the routed were consumed.
The angry pomp then paused. Countless wings were spread, and the angelic
multitudes, having done the work of vengeance, rushed upward, with the
sound of ocean in the storm. The roar of trumpets and thunders was heard,
until the splendor was lost in the heights of the empyrean.
We felt the terrible warning. Our strength was dried up at the sight;
despair seized upon our souls. We had seen the fate of Jerusalem. No
victory over man could now save us from the coming of final ruin!
[Sidenote: Despair]
Thousands never left the ground on which they stood; they perished by
their own hands, or lay down and died of broken hearts. The rest fled
through the night, that again wrapped them in tenfold darkness. The whole
multitude scattered with soundless steps, and in silence like an army of
specters.