GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE MOUNTAINS.
Some weeks had necessarily to pass before the patriot army could assume
the offensive. Some kind of drill was necessary, though Judas, who had the
chief direction of military affairs, did not attempt to teach his men any
elaborate manœuvres. But practice in sword-play and in shooting with the
bow was diligently attended to. A corps of slingers was also formed under
the command of one Sheba, a Benjamite, who possessed that skill with his
weapon which was characteristic of his tribe. The sling was admirably
suited to the kind of warfare which they would have to wage. As long as
there were stones there would not be wanting missiles for the slings,
while the supply of arrows would be likely to fall short, and could not
easily be renewed. Meanwhile some rude anvils had been fitted up, and
every one who could work as a smith was pressed into the service of
repairing old arms or making new ones. By degrees many of the fighting men
obtained an equipment which, if not very handsome, was at least fairly
effective. Some of the new arrivals, too, were old soldiers, and brought
their arms with them. Jews who had enlisted in the armies of the various
Asiatic kings flocked to the standard of independence, when once it had
been set up. Even some of the well-paid mercenaries who formed the
bodyguard of Antiochus were patriotic enough to prefer to their luxurious
existence the privations of life among the mountains. It was a life which,
at the least, they could lead without offence.
It was winter when Mattathias and his sons reached the mountains; and with
the first beginnings of spring the force under his command, now increased
to a respectable strength, commenced active operations. These were
extended over a considerable range of country to all the villages that had
submitted to the edicts of the heathen rulers of the land. Even fortified
towns, in several instances, were surprised, not, it may be guessed,
without the connivance of the patriotic party within the walls. The idol
altars which the King’s commissioners had set up were thrown down with
every circumstance of indignity. All stores belonging to the usurping
government were confiscated for the use of the national forces. But
private property was respected. Arms, indeed, if they were likely to be
useful, were taken, but always taken at a price.
Severe as was the discipline, it met with a cheerful submission from the
men, so commanding was the influence exercised by their leaders.
Conspicuous among them were, of course, the sons of Mattathias. All were
favourites, but Judas and Simon took the lead. The strength, the skill,
and the daring of the first were such that he was absolutely idolized by
his troops. There was no task, however perilous, which they would not
attempt under his guidance, for there was nothing which he did not seem
capable of achieving. His physical strength was enormous; and his
fertility of resource unfailing. He had always some new device for
outwitting the enemy; and when the crisis of an undertaking arrived, if an
attacking party were to be helped up some almost inaccessible height, a
gate to be broken open by main force, or a pass to be held against
overwhelming odds, Judas was always ready and always, it seemed,
successful. Scarcely less honoured, though in a different way, was the
prudence and kindliness of Simon. If Judas never failed in an attempt it
was, in part at least, because Simon’s advice was so uniformly sagacious,
because he could measure so exactly the means at their command. And when
the fighting was over, no one could be more unwearying in his attentions
to the wounded. The voice which rang so loud and clear through the din of
battle was now soft and caressing, and the touch of his hand was as gentle
and tender as if it had been a woman’s.
Such leaders could do anything with their troops, even when they had to
task their obedience by the infliction of punishment. Even such men as the
ex-robber Benjamin felt what may be called the infection of discipline. He
had accompanied one of the expeditions, in which a select force of
patriots, after marching forty miles within twenty-four hours, surprised a
squadron of Greek cavalry in one of the towns of Galilee. A short but
sharp conflict took place in the square of the town, and Benjamin had
borne himself with conspicuous courage. The struggle over, the soldiers
had received entertainment, not in every case very willingly given, from
the inhabitants of the town. Benjamin happened to be quartered upon a
particularly churlish host, and resenting the coarse and scanty fare, so
unsuited to the wealth apparent in all the fittings of the house, had
revenged himself by abstracting a rich cloak belonging to his miserly
entertainer. The article was stowed away on his own person, but the keen
eye of one of the Chasidim officers espied it; the thief was denounced
when the force had reached the encampment, and brought before the council,
which was held under the presidency of Judas. The culprit pleaded in vain
the shabby treatment which he had received. It was not for him, he was
told, to take the law into his own hands. When he urged that the man was a
traitor to his country he was asked whether he had himself taken the cloak
from patriotic motives. “Did you purpose,” said Judas, going to the point
with characteristic directness, “to make this a common possession, or to
take it for yourself?” Benjamin faltered under this searching question,
and had no answer to give. Then Judas pronounced his sentence: “In old
time he who had offended in this manner, as did Achan in the matter of the
spoils of Jericho, died the death. These times are not equal to a justice
so strict. But what the law enjoins that you will suffer. Were such sin as
yours to go unpunished we could expect no blessing on our arms. We should
become, not what we would be, the armies of the Lord, but a horde of
robbers. You will receive forty stripes save one; if you offend again, you
die.”
Without a murmur the culprit bared his shoulders for the lash. When the
whip had once fallen Judas stayed the executioner’s hand. “Benjamin,” he
said, “you have done ill, but you have also done well. You saved from
death our brother Seraiah as he lay wounded under the feet of the
horsemen. For this good deed the rest of the punishment is remitted. Go,
and sin no more.”
Seraiah indeed had been so seriously wounded that he had to be carried
back to the camp on a litter rudely constructed of boards, and Ruth was
now nursing him in the cave which had been originally set apart for their
dwelling, and which they still retained. It was a miserable abode, though
it at least afforded shelter from the rain. Indeed the lot of the women
and children in the patriot encampment was full of suffering. The men had
the constant excitement of their warfare to cheer them, but the women had
only to toil and to endure. In the day the drought consumed them, and the
frost by night. They had none of the comforts of life. Their food was
coarse in the extreme, and often very scanty. But, perhaps, their greatest
trial was in the matter of clothes. The stock which they had brought with
them from their homes was, for the most part, worn out, and it was only on
rare occasions, when some property of the heathen fell into the hands of
the patriots, that any part of it could be replenished. Sheepskins and
goatskins dried in the sun were commonly used, what remained of their
wardrobes being reserved for special occasions.
Some time after the incident described above a serious trouble came upon
Azariah. Miriam, his elder daughter, when she returned one day from her
usual task of gathering herbs to eke out the family meal, complained of
headache. It was evident that she was suffering from sunstroke. As the
spring advanced the heat in some of the narrow mountain valleys became
exceedingly oppressive, and the town-bred child felt it acutely. For some
days her life was in danger, all the greater because she had neither
medical attendance nor skilful nursing. Ruth did all she could for the
little sufferer, but then Ruth had her own husband to attend to, for,
though recovering from his wound, he needed much care, and her child was
still too young to be left alone. One or two visits in the day was all
that she could give. For the most part the girl’s father was her nurse,
the little Judith giving such help as she could. Love gave a lightness and
tenderness to his touch, and supplied the place of skill in that
marvellous way which is so often possible to love. Day after day, as he
sat by the bedside, and watched his charge, the girl’s face, now pale and
wasted, and aged as it was with suffering, reminded him more and more of
his lost Hannah. He lived over the happy past that they had known before
the evil days began, the time when their first acquaintance as youth and
maiden had ripened into love, and the early years of their wedded life.
Thus he began to live in a world of imagination, while the sordid
circumstances of the present seemed to make no impression upon him, though
he always retained a punctual recollection of the duties that belonged to
his attendance upon the sick.
One day Ruth had come in to pay the daily visit for which, however
engrossing her own occupations, she always contrived to find an
opportunity. The patient was in a sound sleep, with the little Judith for
her sole attendant, Azariah having received an urgent summons to attend a
council of war, in which some subject with which he was especially
acquainted was to be discussed.
After a few minutes Azariah returned, but without any of the signs of
agitation or haste that might be expected from one hurrying back to the
performance of a duty that he had been compelled to neglect. His sister
wondered to see him so calm, and she was still more surprised when he went
on to say—
“How like the child is growing to my dear Hannah!”
Ruth had often thought the same, but had not ventured to say so, for
Azariah had never mentioned his dead wife.
“Yes,” she answered, “I have often thought so.”
“I have had some happy times of late. Before I could not get out of my
mind the dreadful sight of her face when I last saw it.” He paused for a
moment, overpowered by the recollection, but soon resumed in a cheerful
voice: “But now in this dear child I seem to see her as she was in those
happy Bethlehem days before our marriage, and again in the still happier
time we had together in Jerusalem.”
“But does it not trouble you to leave the child alone?”
“Nay, sister, she is not alone. Nor do I speak of our dear little Judith
here.” And he stroked the little girl’s head, and bade her go and play
outside, but be careful not to go into the sun.
“Believe me,” he went on, “that when I am not here, Miriam’s angel is with
her. Perhaps you will think me mad when I say that I have seen, and that
not once or twice only, the flash of white garments vanishing in the
darkness as I came into the cave. And last night, as I sat here, dreaming,
it may be, but certainly seeing everything in the cave as plainly as I see
it this moment, the angel came with the little babe—our little David that
my Hannah took with her to Paradise—to kiss his sick sister. And when
Miriam awoke about an hour after dawn, the fever had left her.”
At this moment the girl opened her eyes. “Oh, father,” she cried, “did you
indeed see little brother last night?—for I saw him too; but I did not see
that an angel was carrying him. He seemed to be in the air somehow, with
no one holding him up. And he had beautiful white clothes—not these nasty
sheepskins and goatskins that we have to wear—and he stretched out his
hands to me, and kissed me, and I felt that moment as if that dreadful
burning had gone out of me. And oh! there was such a wonderful look upon
his face. It was just like the look on dear mother’s face that evening
when the sun was just setting, and you took little brother up in your
arms, and said his name was David.”
Ruth could only listen to such talk with wonder and awe. But she went back
to her husband and child with a lighter heart than she had borne for many
days.
But a trouble was at hand which, though it had been for some time
foreseen, was great enough to make private sorrows and anxieties seem
inconsiderable. It was reported through the encampment that Mattathias,
the father of his people, was dying.
The old man’s health had been failing for some time. The hardships of his
new life had told grievously upon it, all the more that he refused the
exemption from labour which his age required. He had ceased to accompany
the expeditions because he found that his presence hampered the movements
of younger and stronger men, but the management of the multifarious
affairs of the encampment—the home administration, as it may be called, of
the patriotic movement—he kept in his own hands. Early and late he busied
himself in this work, and before many weeks were past his labours wore him
out.
He was well aware that the end had come, and that all that remained for
him to do was to appoint a successor who should accomplish, or at least
carry on—for he did not deceive himself as to the difficulty of the
work—the task which he had commenced. All the leaders were summoned to his
presence, the wounded Seraiah, for whose capacity and serene courage the
old chief had a high regard, being carried thither on a litter. The old
man was propped in his bed on cushions, the difficulty of breathing making
it impossible for him to lie down. On either side stood his five sons,
John, the eldest, being at his right hand, with Eleazar and Jonathan near
him, while Simon and Judas were on the left. A physician, the solitary
professor of the healing art that the camp possessed, sat by the bed’s
foot, with a cup of some cordial in his hand.
[Illustration: _The Last Charge of Mattathias._]
The old man began by laying his hand on John’s head. “My son,” he said,
“for your loyalty and faithful obedience I thank the Lord that gave me so
excellent a son for my first-born. You know what it is in my mind to do
with respect to the succession of my work, and I am assured that you
approve. But for the sake of those that stand by,”—and he pointed to the
assembled chiefs—“I solemnly declare that for no defect of courage or
honesty I pass you by. And say if you are content to leave it according to
what seems best to my judgment.”
“Father,” said the faithful John, “I am content.”
Simon beckoned to the physician, who handed the cup of cordial to the
dying man. He swallowed a few drops, and then went on:
“Hear, my friends and brethren. In the distribution of my worldly goods I
follow custom and law. The inheritance of my fathers I give to my eldest
born, according to the custom of the birthright; and I direct that the
younger shall have such portions as are due to them. But I have that to
give which has been entrusted to me of the Lord, and with which I must
deal according to His pleasure, so far as it is given to me to know it.
Simon, I will that thou be the father of the people. Care for them as for
thy children. Do justice between man and man. Strive to the utmost that
they keep the Law of the Lord their God. He has given thee prudence and
discernment and knowledge of the customs of our fathers. See that thou use
these things for the glory of the Lord and the good of the people. Judas,
I will that thou be captain of the host. Be stout and of a good courage,
and the Lord shall fight on thy side, and give thee the victory. The end
is not yet, and maybe thou wilt not see it with thine eyes; but, though it
tarry, wait for it. ‘For they that go on their way weeping, bearing
precious seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring their
sheaves with them.’”
He then addressed a few words to the two other sons, words of mingled
encouragement and advice. This done he stretched out his hands, and, with
a voice of surprising firmness in one so weak, blessed the whole assembly,
repeated the usual profession of an Israelite’s faith, and then drew his
last breath without a struggle.