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[Illustration:
_From a Photograph by_ C. F. TYRWHITT DRAKE,
Esq.] [_Frontispiece._
THE DOME OF THE ROCK.
]
JERUSALEM,
THE CITY OF HEROD AND SALADIN.
BY
WALTER BESANT, M.A.,
CHRIST’S COLLEGE. CAMBRIDGE.
AUTHOR OF “STUDIES IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY,” ETC., ETC., ETC.
AND
E. H. PALMER, M.A.,
LORD ALMONER’S PROFESSOR OF ARABIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE, AND FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE.
AUTHOR OF THE “DESERT OF THE EXODUS.”
ETC., ETC., ETC.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
=Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty.=
1871.
[_The Right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
Very few words are needed to introduce this volume. It is intended to
give a history of the city of Jerusalem from about the year 30 to the
present time. This period includes the siege and capture by Titus, the
last revolts of the Jews, the Christian occupation of three hundred
years, the Mohammedan conquest, the building by the Mohammedans of the
Dome of the Rock, the Crusades, the Christian kingdom, the reconquest of
the city, and a long period of Mohammedan occupation, during which no
event has happened except the yearly flocking of pilgrims to the Church
of the Sepulchre, and an occasional quarrel among the monks.
There are here, surely, sufficient materials for the historian if only
he knows how to use them.
For the modern period, that of the Christian kingdom, two sources of
information exist, one, the contemporary and later chronicles of the
Crusaders, written either in Latin or Langue d’Oil, and the other, the
Arabic historians themselves. I have written my own part of the book
from the former; to my colleague is due all that part (the Mohammedan
Conquest, the chapter on Saladin, &c.) which has been taken from Arabic
writers. Most of this has the great advantage of being entirely new, and
now for the first time introduced to English readers. For my own share
in the work, I claim no other novelty than the presentation of facts as
faithfully as I could gather them, at first hand, and from the earliest
writers.
There is nothing sacred about the actors in this long story we have to
tell, and we have not thought it necessary to endeavour to invest them,
as is generally done by those who write on Jerusalem, with an appearance
of sanctity, because they fought for the City of Sacred Memories, or
because they bore the Cross upon their shoulders. We have, on the other
hand, endeavoured to show them as they were, men and women actuated by
mixed motives, sometimes base, sometimes noble, sometimes interested,
sometimes pure and lofty: but always men and women, never saints. The
Christians in the East were as the Christians in the West, certainly
never better, more often worse. If we have succeeded in making a plain
tale, divested of its customary pseudoreligious trappings, interesting
and useful, our design is satisfied.
One word more. There may be found, owing to the double source from which
our pages are derived, certain small discrepancies in the narrative. We
have not cared to try and reconcile these. Let it be remembered that the
one narrative is Christian, the other Mohammedan.
W. B.
_October, 1871._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY Page
1
CHAPTER II.
THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM 19
CHAPTER III.
FROM TITUS TO OMAR 47
CHAPTER IV.
THE MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST 66
CHAPTER V.
THE CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS 112
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST CRUSADE 141
CHAPTER VII.
KING GODFREY 190
CHAPTER VIII.
KING BALDWIN I. 211
CHAPTER IX.
KING BALDWIN II. 236
CHAPTER X.
KING FULKE 259
CHAPTER XI.
KING BALDWIN III. AND THE SECOND CRUSADE 269
CHAPTER XII.
KING AMAURY 298
CHAPTER XIII.
KING BALDWIN THE LEPER 335
CHAPTER XIV.
KING GUY DE LUSIGNAN 344
CHAPTER XV.
RICHARD CŒUR DE LION AND THE THIRD CRUSADE 362
CHAPTER XVI.
SALADIN 372
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MOHAMMEDAN PILGRIMS 417
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CHRONICLE OF SIX HUNDRED YEARS 443
CHAPTER XIX.
MODERN JERUSALEM 466
APPENDIX.
ON THE POSITION OF THE SACRED SITES 478
INDEX 489
JERUSALEM.
THE CITY OF HEROD AND SALADIN.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
It is our object to write a book which may serve as a historical
account, complete so far as it goes, of the principal events with
which Jerusalem is concerned, from the time when its history, as
connected with the Bible, ceases, till the present; that is to say,
from the year A.D. 33 downwards. But it is difficult to take up the
thread of the story at this date, and we are forced either to go as
far back as Herod the Great, or to begin our narrative with the
events which preceded the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. No date seems
to us more ready to our hand than that of the death of Herod
Agrippa. Even then we may seem beginning to tell a thrice told tale.
The revolt of the Jews, their defeat of Cestius, the siege of Titus,
are surely, it may be objected, too well known to require telling
again. They are not well known, though they have been told again and
again, and told with ten times the force, the vigour, the
originality which we can put into these pages. But they are told
here again because our central figure is Jerusalem. We have to show
her first, in all her pride, the joy of the Jews, the visible mark
of their greatness; and then we have to follow her through two
thousand years of varying fortune, always before the eyes of the
world,—always the object of tender pity and reverence,—always the
centre of some conflict, the scene of some religious contention.
Frequent as were the sieges of the city in the olden days, they have
been more frequent since. Titus took Jerusalem, Barcochebas took it,
Julius Severus took it, Chosroes, Heraclius, Omar, the Charezmians,
Godfrey, Saladin, Frederick, all took it by turns,—all after hard
fighting, and with much slaughter.
There is not a stone in the city but has been reddened with human
blood; not a spot but where some hand-to-hand conflict has taken
place; not an old wall but has echoed back the shrieks of despairing
women. Jew, Pagan, Christian, Mohammedan, each has had his turn of
triumph, occupation, and defeat; and were all those ancient
cemeteries outside the city emptied of their bones, it would be hard
to tell whether Jew, or Pagan, or Christian, or Mohammedan would
prevail. For Jerusalem has been the representative sacred place of
the world; there has been none other like unto it, or equal to it,
or shall be, while the world lasts; so long as men go on believing
that one spot in the world is more sacred than another, because
things of sacred interest have been done there, so long Jerusalem
will continue the Holy City. That this belief has been one of the
misfortunes of the human race, one of the foremost causes of
superstition, some of the pages which follow may perhaps help to
show. But, in our capacity as narrators only, let us agree to think
and talk of the city apart, as much as may be, from its sacred
associations, as well as from its ecclesiastical history.
The fatal revolt of the Jews, which ended in the fall of their city
and the destruction of their Temple, was due, among many other
causes, to the teaching of Judas the Galilæan acting on minds
inflated with pride in the exaggerated glories of the past, looking
to national independence as the one thing needful, and wholly
ignorant of the power and resources of the mighty empire which held
them in subjection. Judas, himself in spirit a worthy descendant of
the Maccabæans, had taught that Jehovah was the only King of the
Jews, who were his chosen people; that submission to a foreign yoke
involved not only national degradation, but treason to the lawful
powers; that tribute, the badge and sign of slavery, ought to be
refused at any cost. “We have no Lord and master but God,” was the
cry of his party. With that cry he and his followers assembled to do
battle against the world: with that cry on their lips they died. But
the cry and its idea did not die; for from that time a fourth sect
was among the Jews, more powerful than all the rest put together,
containing the great mass of the people, who had no education to
give them common sense, and whose ignorance added fuel to the flames
of a religious enthusiasm almost without parallel in the history of
the world. The Pharisees and the Sadducees still continued for a
time in the high places; the Essenes still lived and died apart from
the world, the Shakers of their time, a small band with no power or
influence; but all around them was rising a tide destined to whelm
all beneath the waves of fanaticism. The followers of Judas became
the Zealots and the Sicarii of later times: they were those who
looked daily for the Messiah; whom false Christs led astray by
thousands; who thought no act too daring to be attempted in this
sacred cause, no life too valuable to be sacrificed: they were those
who let their countrymen die of starvation by thousands while they
maintained a hopeless struggle with Titus.
When Herod Agrippa died, his son, who was only seventeen years of
age, was in Rome; and, as he was too young to be entrusted with the
conduct of the turbulent province of Judæa, Cuspius Fadus was sent
there as Governor. He found that Agrippa had allowed the robbers who
always infested the country east of Jordan to gain head. He put them
down with a strong arm, and turned his attention to things of
domestic importance. By the permission of Vitellius, the custody of
the sacred robes had been surrendered to the High Priest. Cuspius
Fadus ordered that they should be restored to the fortress of
Antonia. The Jews appealed to Cæsar, and, by the intercession of
young Agrippa, they carried their point, and retained the possession
of the robes. Under Fadus, one Theudas, whom Josephus calls a
magician, persuaded multitudes of the Jews to go with him to the
Jordan, which he pretended would open its waters to let him pass.
Cuspius Fadus sent out a troop of cavalry, who took Theudas alive,
cut off his head, and brought it to Jerusalem. Under Cuspius, too,
occurred a great famine in Judæa, which was relieved by the
generosity of Queen Helena of Adiabene, the proselyte.[1]
Footnote 1:
The story of Queen Helena is told by Josephus, ‘Antiq.’ xx. 2, 3,
4, and in Milman, ‘Hist. of the Jews,’ ii. p. 200; and see also,
for the whole of this period, Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p.
150 _et seq._
When Fadus either died or was recalled, Tiberius Alexander, a
renegade Jew, nephew of Philo, succeeded him for a short time. It is
not stated how long he continued in power. His only recorded act is
the crucifixion of two of the sons of Judas the Galilæan. In his
turn Tiberius was replaced by Ventidius Cumanus, and the first
symptoms of the approaching madness broke out. The fortress of
Antonia commanded the Temple area, and communicated with the Temple
itself by means of cloisters. On those days of public festivals when
the fanaticism of the people was most likely to break out and cause
mischief, a strong guard was always placed in Antonia, in full view
of the people, to overawe them with good behaviour. Most
unfortunately, on one occasion, immediately after the arrival of
Cumanus, one of the soldiers of the guard expressed his contempt for
the religious ceremonies by an indecent gesture. The rage of the
people knew no bounds; they declared that Cumanus had himself
ordered the affront to be committed. The governor bore their
reproaches with patience, only urging them not to disturb their
festival by riotous conduct. As, however, they still continued
clamouring, he ordered his whole garrison to proceed to Antonia.
Then a panic ensued. The mob, thinking they were about to be
attacked by the soldiers, turned and fled, trampling on each other
in the narrow passages. Many thousands perished in this way, without
a blow being struck. And while they were still mourning over this
disaster, another happened to them. Some of the very men who had
raised the first tumult, probably countrymen on their way home, fell
on and robbed Stephanus, a slave of the Emperor. Cumanus, obliged to
punish this, sent soldiers to bring in the chief men of the village.
One of the soldiers tore up a book of the Law with abuse and
scurrility. The Jews came to Cumanus, and represented that they
could not possibly endure such an insult to their God. Cumanus
appeased them for the time by beheading the soldier who had been
guilty of the offence.
The animosities of the Samaritans and the Jews were the cause of the
next disturbances. The Galilæans always used the roads which passed
through the Samaritan territory in their journeys to and from the
Temple. Faction fights naturally often took place. In one of these,
of greater magnitude than the generality, a good many Galilæans were
killed: the Jews came to Cumanus and complained of what they were
pleased to call murder. Cumanus took the part of the Samaritans, and
actually went to their aid, after the Jews called in the assistance
of a robber chieftain, and helped them to defeat the Galilæans. It
is difficult to see what else they could do. Both parties appealed
to Cæsar. Cumanus was recalled: his military tribune was beheaded,
decision was given in favour of the Jews: all this, no doubt, was
done with a full knowledge of the dangerous and the turbulent nature
of the people, and with a view to preserving the peace.
Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of
Pallas the favourite of the Emperor, magnificent, prodigal,
luxurious, and unscrupulous. He found the country in the worst state
possible, full of robbers, and impostors. These sprung up everyday,
and were everyday caught and destroyed; no doubt most of them men
whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they
ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor
creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than
themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes
which were doomed to disappointment, and leading out the wild
countrymen to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and
victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian
Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that
at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they
themselves march in triumphant. He came, but instead of seeing the
walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his
people, slaying four hundred of them.
To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city
of Jerusalem. Wearied with the importunities of the high priest,
Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all
events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that
it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he
resolved to rid himself of a friend so troublesome, by the speediest
and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like
the hired bravoes of the middle ages, men who would commit any
murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that
they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only
those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause. Now their
cause was that of the sect which had grown out of Judas’s teaching,
the zealots. These Sicarii mingling with the crowd of those who went
up to worship, carrying daggers concealed under their garments, fell
upon Jonathan the High Priest, and murdered him.[2] This done they
went on slaying all those who were obnoxious to them, even in the
Temple itself. “And this,” says the historian, “seems to me the
reason why God, out of his hatred to the wickedness of these men,
rejected our city: and as for the Temple, he no longer esteemed it
sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans
upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it: and brought
upon us, our wives, and children, slavery,—as desirous to make us
wiser by our calamities.” And now the voice of discord was heard
even among the priests themselves, who had hitherto preserved a
certain sobriety. Between the chief priests and “the principal men
of the multitude of Jerusalem,” a feud broke out. Each side had its
followers: they cast, we are told, not only reproachful words, but
also stones at each other. And the chief priests, robbing the
threshingfloors and appropriating all the tithes to themselves,
caused many of the poorer priests to die of want.
Footnote 2:
Milman says, in the Temple itself, which does not appear from the
account of Josephus, who expressly says that, after this, they had
the boldness to murder men in the Temple itself.
Then occurred the first outbreak in Cæsarea. This town was about
equally divided between the Syrians and the Jews, the former
claimed the pre-eminence on the ground that Herod the founder,
though himself a Jew, had built the splendid temples and statues
by which the city was evidently intended to be a Grecian city,
upon the site of Strato’s Tower; while the Jews argued that as the
founder was a Jew, the city was evidently Jewish, and ought not to
be ruled except by Jews. The dispute, as was always the case, came
to the arbitrament of arms, in which the Jews got the best of it.
Then Felix came himself, with a strong force, and brought them to
their senses. But as the dispute still went on, he sent
representatives on both sides to Nero the Emperor, who ruled in
favour of the Greeks or Syrians. Here, the decision of the Emperor
appears to have been just. Herod, the founder of Cæsarea, had
clearly not intended to found a city for the further propagation
of a sect to which he indeed belonged, regarding it, nevertheless,
with the toleration of a cultivated Roman, as only one sect out of
many. The Jews accepted the decision in their usual way: they only
became more turbulent. Agrippa’s own dispute with his own
countrymen was decided, however, in their favour, no doubt from
politic considerations. He had built an upper room in his palace,
where, lying on his couch, he could look over into the Temple and
watch the sacrifices. Some of the priests discovering this, made
out that it was an intrusion into the necessary privacy of their
religious ceremonies, and hastily ran up a wall to prevent being
overlooked. Festus, who had now succeeded Felix, ordered it to be
pulled down; but, most probably at the instigation of Agrippa,
whose popularity might be at stake, he gave permission to appeal
to Nero. Ismael, the high priest, went, accompanied by the keeper
of the Treasury. They carried their point: the wall was allowed to
stand, but Ismael was detained in Rome, and Agrippa appointed and
deprived three high priests in succession—Joseph, Annas, and Jesus
son of Dammai. The firm, strong hand of Festus was meantime
employed in putting down robbers, and regulating the disturbances
of the country. Unhappily for the Jews, while he was so engaged,
he was seized with some illness and died. Albinus succeeded him.
As for Albinus, Josephus tells us that there was no sort of
wickedness named but he had a hand in it. “Not only did he steal
and plunder every one’s substance, not only did he burden the
whole nation with taxes, but he permitted the relations of such as
were in prison for robbery to redeem them for money; and nobody
remained in the prisons as a malefactor but he who gave him
nothing.... The principal men among the seditious purchased leave
of Albinus to go on with their practices: and every one of these
wretches was encompassed with his own band of robbers. Those who
lost their goods were forced to hold their peace, when they had
reason to show great indignation at what they had suffered; those
who had escaped were forced to flatter him, that deserved to be
punished out of the fear they were in of suffering equally with
the others.”
This, however, is a vague accusation, and is found in the ‘Wars of
the Jews,’ where Josephus is anxious to represent the revolt of the
people as caused by the bad government of the Romans. From the
‘Antiquities’ we learn that it was Albinus’s wish to keep the
country in peace, with which object he destroyed many of the
Sicarii. Unfortunately for himself, he formed a great friendship
with Ananias the high priest; and when Eleazar, son of Ananias, fell
into the hands of the Sicarii, he consented to release ten of his
own prisoners for his ransom. This was a fatal measure, because
henceforth the Sicarii, if one of their number fell into trouble,
and got taken by the Romans, caught a Jew and effected an exchange.
Thus the prisons were emptied.
At this time the Temple was finished, and eighteen thousand workmen
found themselves suddenly out of employment. Terrified at the
prospect of this starving mob being added to their difficulties (for
the streets of Jerusalem were already filled with bands of armed
men, partisans of deposed high priests), the citizens asked Agrippa
to rebuild the Eastern Cloisters, the splendid piece of work which
had been built originally by Solomon along that east wall which
still stands overlooking the valley of the Kedron. But Agrippa,
whose interest in the turbulent city was very small, already
meditated departure to some safer quarter, and was spending all the
money he had to spare at Beyrout, where he built a theatre, and
collected a gallery of sculptures. But he conceded something to his
petitioners, and allowed them to pave the city with stone.
Albinus disappears from the history, and Gessius Florus, who
exchanged a scourging with whips for a scourging with scorpions,
ruled in his place. Cestius Gallus, a man of equal rapacity with
himself, ruled in Syria. One cannot read Josephus without, in the
first place, suspecting that he wilfully exaggerates the wickedness
of the Roman rulers; that he does so in the case of Albinus is
clear, as we have shown from comparing the account given in the
‘Antiquities’ with that given in the ‘Wars.’ But even if he only
exaggerates, and making allowance for this, were men of special
inhumanity and rapacity chosen for those very qualities to rule the
country? And if not, if Gessius Florus and Albinus be fair specimens
of the officers by whom Rome ruled her provinces and colonies, by
what mysterious power was this vast empire kept from universal
revolt?
“Upon what meat had this their Cæsar fed,
That he was grown so great?”
The Jews, however, were not the people to brook ill-treatment; and
when they took arms against the Romans it was not as if their case
seemed to themselves hopeless. They had, it is true, the western
world against them; but they had the eastern world behind them, a
possible place of refuge. And though they armed against the whole
Roman Empire, it must be remembered that the forces at the command
of the Emperor were not overwhelming; that they were spread over
Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Greece, and Italy; that only a
certain number could be spared; and that the number of the Jews in
Syria amounted probably to several millions. When Cestius Gallus was
in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover he ordered the lambs which
were sacrificed to be counted. They came to two hundred and
fifty-five thousand six hundred. It was reckoned that this
represented a total of three millions present in Jerusalem and
camped round about it, assisting at the festival. Probably not more
than half, perhaps not more than a quarter of the whole number of
the people came up. However this may be, it is certain that
Palestine was very densely populated; that there were great numbers
of Jews in Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Italy; that at any signal
success those would have flocked to the standard of revolt; and that
had the nation been unanimous and obedient to one general, instead
of being divided into sects, parties, and factions, the armies of
Vespasian and Titus would have been wholly unable to cope with the
rebellion, and the independence of the Jews would have been
prevented only by putting forth all the power of the Roman Empire.
This was shown later on in the revolt of Barcochebas, a far more
serious revolt than this of the zealots, though not so well known,
because it was attended with no such signal result as the
destruction of the Temple, and because there was no Josephus in the
camp of the enemy taking notes of what went on.
The object of Florus, we are told, was to drive the people to
revolt. This we do not believe. It could not have been the policy of
Florus to drive into revolt a dangerous and stubborn people, whose
character was well known at Rome, whom the Emperor had always been
anxious to conciliate. His object may have been, undoubtedly was, to
enrich himself as speedily as possible, knowing that revolt was
impending and inevitable, and anxious to secure himself a provision
in case of his own recall or banishment. Until that provision was
secured it would have been fatal for Florus that the revolt should
break out.
The first disturbances took place at Cæsarea, when the Greeks,
exulting in Nero’s decision, were daily more and more insulting to
the Jews. The latter had a synagogue, round which was an open space
of ground which they wished to purchase. The owner refused to sell
it, and built mean shops upon it, leaving only a narrow passage
whereby the Jews could pass to their place of worship. One John, a
publican, went to Florus, and begged him to interfere, offering at
the same time a bribe of eight talents, an enormous sum, which shows
that this was more than an ordinary squabble. Florus went away,
leaving them to fight it out; and the Greeks added fresh matter of
wrath to the Jews by ostentatiously sacrificing birds in an earthen
vase as they passed to the synagogue. The significance of this act
was that the Greeks loved to tell how the Jews had been all expelled
from Egypt, on account of their being leprous. Arms were taken up,
and the Jews got the worst of the fray. They withdrew to a place
some miles from the town, and sent John to Florus to ask for
assistance. John ventured on a reminder about the eight talents, and
was rewarded by being thrown into prison. Then Florus went on to
Jerusalem, where the wildest tumults raged in consequence of this
affront to religion. Alarmed at the symptoms of revolt, he sent
messengers beforehand to take seventeen talents out of the sacred
treasury, on the ground that Cæsar wanted them. Then the people ran
to the Temple, and called upon Cæsar by name, as if he could hear
them, to rid them of this Florus. Some of them went about with
baskets begging money for him as for a man in a destitute and
miserable condition.
The next day news came that Florus was advancing to the city, and
the people thought they had better go out and speak him fair. But he
was not disposed to receive their salutation, and so sent on Capito,
a centurion, with fifty soldiers, bidding them go back and not
pretend to receive him as if they were delighted to see him among
them again. And he rode into the city, the people being all
expectation of what would happen the next day. And in the morning
the tribunal of Florus was erected before the gates of his palace.
The high priest was summoned to attend, and ordered to give up those
who had led the tumult. He urged in extenuation that he did not know
the ringleaders, that the act of a few hot-headed youths ought not
to be visited on the whole city, and that, in short, he was very
sorry for the whole business, and hoped Florus would overlook it.
Florus gave orders to his soldiers to pillage the upper market; they
did so, scourging, pillaging, and murdering. Berenice, the sister of
Agrippa, came herself, barefoot, with shorn head and penitential
dress, before Florus, urging him to have pity. But the inexorable
Roman, bent on revenge, allowed the soldiers to go on.
Next day he sent again for the high priest, and told him that as a
sign of the loyalty of the people, and their sorrow for the late
tumults, he should expect them to go forth and meet the two cohorts
who were advancing to Jerusalem with every sign of joy. The
seditious part of the citizens refused. Then the chief priests, with
dust upon their heads and rent garments, brought out the holy
vessels and the sacerdotal robes, with their harpers and harps, and
implored the people not to risk a collision with the Romans. They
yielded, and went out to welcome the cohorts. But the soldiers
preserved a gloomy silence. Then some of the more fiery Jews,
turning on the Romans, began to abuse Florus. The horsemen rode at
them and trampled them down, and a scene of the wildest uproar took
place at the gates as they pressed and jostled each other to get in.
Then the troops marched straight on Antonia, hoping to get both the
fortress and the Temple into their hands. They got into Antonia,
when the Jews cut down some part of the cloisters which connected
the fort with the Temple. Florus tried to join them, but his men
could not pass through the streets, which were crammed with Jews.
And next day Florus retired to Cæsarea, leaving only one cohort
behind, and the city boiling and seething with rage and madness. And
now, indeed, there was little hope of any reconciliation. Both
Florus and the Jews sent statements of their conduct to Cestius
Gallus, and begged for an investigation. And it must have been now,
if at all, that Florus became desirous of fanning the embers of
discontent into a flame and making that a war which had only
promised to be a disturbance. But nothing can be discovered to prove
that Josephus’s assertions as to his motives are based on fact. It
is easy, of course, to attribute motives, but hard to prove them.
Nothing advanced by Josephus proves more than that Florus was
rapacious and cruel, and the people discontented and turbulent.
Cestius sent Neapolitanus, one of his officers, to report on the
condition of the city. Agrippa joined him. The people came sixty
furlongs out of the town to meet them, crying and lamenting, calling
on Agrippa to help them in their miseries, and beseeching
Neapolitanus to hear their complaints against Florus. The latter
they took all round the city, showing him that it was perfectly
quiet, and that the people had risen, not against the Romans, but
against Florus. Then Neapolitanus went into the Temple to perform
such sacrifices as were allowed to strangers, and commending the
Jews for their fidelity, went back to Cestius. Agrippa came next.
Placing his sister Berenice, doubtless a favourite with the people,
in the gallery with him, he made a long harangue. He implored them
to consider the vast power of the Romans, and not, for the sake of a
quarrel with one governor, to bring upon themselves the ruin of
themselves, their families, and their nation. He pointed out that if
they would have patience the state of their country should be fairly
placed before the emperor’s consideration, and he pledged himself
that it would receive his best care. “Have pity,” he concluded, with
a burst of tears,—“have pity on your children and your wives, have
pity upon this your city and its holy walls, and spare the Temple;
preserve the holy house for yourselves.”
The Jews, ever an impressionable race, yielded to the entreaties of
Agrippa and the tears of Berenice, and making up the tribute money,
paid it into the treasury. Then they began to repair the damage they
had done to Antonia. All looked well; but there was one thing yet
wanting to complete their submission, they were to obey Florus till
he should be removed. This condition they refused to comply with,
and when Agrippa urged it upon them, they threw stones at him and
reproached him with the uttermost bitterness. Then Agrippa went away
in despair, taking with him Berenice, and leaving the city to its
fate.
The insurrection began, as it ended, with the taking of the stormy
fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea. Here the Roman garrison were
all slaughtered. Eleazar the son of Ananias the high priest began
the insurrection in Jerusalem, by passing a law that the sacrifices
of strangers were henceforth to be forbidden, and no imperial gifts
to be offered. The moderate party used all their influence, but in
vain, to prevent this. Agrippa sent a small army of three thousand
men to help the moderates. The insurgents seized the Temple: the
moderates, who included all the wealthy classes, occupied the upper
city, and hostilities commenced. A great accession of strength to
the insurgents was caused by the burning of the public archives,
where all debts were incurred, and consequently the power of the
rich was taken from them at one blow.
Then appeared on the scene another leader, for a very brief
interval, Manahem, the youngest son of Judas the Galilæan. He came
dressed in royal robes and surrounded with guards, no doubt eager to
play the part of another Maccabæus. The insurgents took Antonia and
the royal palace, and drove the Roman garrison to the three strong
towns of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. Ananias, found hidden in
an aqueduct, was killed at once; and Manahem became so puffed up
with his success that he became intolerable. It was easy to get rid
of this mushroom king, who was deposed without any trouble by
Eleazar and tortured to death. And then the Roman garrison yielded,
Metilius, their commander, stipulating only for the lives of his
soldiers. This was granted; but no sooner had they laid down their
arms than the Jews fell upon them, vainly calling on the faith of a
treaty, and murdered them all except Metilius. Him they spared on
condition of his becoming a proselyte.
On that very day and hour, while the Jews were plunging their
daggers in the hearts of the Romans, a great and terrible slaughter
of their own people was going on in Cæsarea, where the Syrians and
Greeks had risen upon the Jews, and massacred twenty thousand of
them in a single day. And in every Syrian city the same madness and
hatred seized the people, and the Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered
in all. No more provocation was needed; no more was possible. In
spite of all their turbulence, their ungovernable obstinacy, their
fanaticism and pride, which made the war inevitable, and in the then
state of mankind these very massacres inevitable,—one feels a
profound sympathy with the people who dared to fight and die, seeing
that it was hopeless to look for better things. The heads of the
people began the war with gloomy forebodings; the common masses with
the wildest enthusiasm, which became the mere intoxication of
success when they drove back Cestius from the walls of the city, on
the very eve of his anticipated victory—for Cestius hastened
southwards with an army of twenty thousand men, and besieged the
city. The people, divided amongst themselves, were on the point of
opening the gates to the Romans, when, to the surprise of everybody,
Cestius suddenly broke up his camp and began to retreat. Why he did
so, no one ever knew; possessed by a divine madness, Josephus
thinks, because God would take no pity on the city and the
Sanctuary. As the heavy armed Romans plodded on their way in serried
ranks, they were followed by a countless multitude, gathering in
numbers every hour, who assailed them with darts, with stones, and
with insults. The retreat became a flight, and Cestius brought back
his army with a quarter of its numbers killed, having allowed the
Roman arms to receive the most terrible disgrace they had ever
endured in the East.
Vespasian was sent hastily with a force of three legions, besides
the cohorts of auxiliaries. A finer army had never been put into the
field, nor did any army have ever harder work before them. Of the
first campaign, that in Galilee, our limits will not allow us to
write. In the graphic pages of Josephus, himself the hero of
Jotapata, or in the still more graphic pages of Milman, may be read
how the Jews fought, step by step, bringing to their defence not
only the most dogged courage, but also the most ingenious devices;
how the blue waves of the Lake of Galilee were reddened with the
blood of those whom the Romans killed in their boats; how Vespasian
broke his word and sold as slaves those he had promised to pardon;
how Gamala fought and Gischala fell, and how for the sins of the
people, John was permitted by Heaven to escape and become the tyrant
of Jerusalem.
The months passed on, and yet the Romans appeared not before the
walls of the city. This meantime was a prey to internal evils, which
when read appear almost incredible. The bold rough country folk who
followed John, who had fought in Galilee, and escaped the slaughter
of Vespasian, came up to the city filled with one idea, that of
resistance. In their eyes a Moderate, a Romanizer, was an enemy
worse than a Roman, for he was a traitor to the country. They found
themselves in a rich and luxurious town, filled with things of which
in their distant homes they had had no idea. And these things all
belonged to the Romanizers. They needed little permission to
pillage, less, to murder the men who had everything to lose, and
nothing to gain, by continuing the war. And then ensued a civil war,
the scenes of which surpass in horror those of any other page in
history. Through the streets ran the zealots dressed in fantastic
garb, which they had pillaged, some of them attired as women,
murdering all the rich and those who were obnoxious to their party.
It is vain to follow their course of plunder, murder, and sedition.
They invited the Idumæans to come to their assistance—a fierce and
warlike race, who had been all Judaized since the time of Hyrcanus.
These gladly came. By night, while a dreadful tempest raged
overhead, a sign of God’s wrath, and amid the shrieks of wounded men
and despairing women, the Idumæans attacked and gained possession of
the Temple, and when the day dawned eight thousand bodies lay piled
within the sacred area. Among them were those of Ananus, and Jesus
the son of Gamala, the high priests. Stripped naked, their corpses
were thrown out to the dogs, and it was forbidden even to bury them.
Simon Ben Gioras, who had first signalized himself in the defeat of
Cestius, came to the city to add one more to the factions. The
moderate party were stamped out and exterminated, and the city
divided between John and Simon, who fought incessantly till Titus’s
legions appeared before the walls.
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NOTE.—The materials for this chapter were chiefly found in
Josephus and Milman’s ‘History of the Jews.’ In the chapters which
follow, it has not been thought necessary to name the authorities
for each chapter. References will be found occasionally, among
other books, to Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ and Lewin’s ‘Siege of
Jerusalem.’