CHAPTER XXXI

_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!”