CHAPTER XXXII

_“Never Shalt Thou Enter Jerusalem”_

[Sidenote: The Appearance of the Enemy]

Before the sun was up my peasants were on the march again. From the annual journeys of the tribes to the great city, no country was ever known so well to its whole population, as Palestine. Every hill, forest, and mountain stream was now saluted with a shout of old recognition. Discipline was forgotten as we approached those spots of memory, and the troops rambled loosely over the ground on which in gentler times they had rested in the midst of their caravans. Constantius had many an irritation to encounter, but I combated his wrath, and pledged myself that when the occasion arrived, my countrymen would show the native vigor of the soil.

“Let my peasants take their way,” said I. “If they will not make an army, let them make a mob; let them come into the field with the bold propensities of their nature unchecked by the trammels of regular warfare; let them feel themselves men and not machines, and I pledge myself for their victory.”

“They will soon have the opportunity; look yonder.”

He pointed to a low range of misty hills some miles onward.

“Are we to fight the clouds, for I can see nothing else?”

“Our troops, I think, would be exactly the proper antagonists. But there is one cloud upon those hills that something more than the wind must drive away.”

The sun threw a passing gleam upon the heights, and it was returned by the sparkling of spears. The enemy were before us. Constantius galloped with some of our hunters to the front, to observe their position. The trumpets sounded, and my countrymen justified all that I had said by the enthusiasm that lighted up every countenance at the hope of coming in contact with the oppressor.

[Sidenote: A Skilful Move]

We advanced; shouts rang from tribe to tribe; we quickened our pace; at length the whole multitude ran. At the foot of the height every man pushed forward without waiting for his fellow; it was complete confusion. The chief force against us was cavalry, and I saw them preparing to charge. We must suffer prodigiously, let the day end how it would. The whole campaign might hang on the first repulse. I stood in agony. I saw the squadrons level their lances. I saw the centurions dash out in front. All was ready for the fatal charge. To my astonishment, the whole of the cavalry wheeled round and disappeared.

The panic was like miracle—equally rapid and unaccountable. I rode to the top of the hill and discovered the secret. Constantius, observing the enemy’s attention taken up with my advance, had made his way round the heights. His trumpet gave the first notice of the maneuver. Their rear was threatened, and the cavalry fled, leaving a cohort in our hands.

Never was successful soldier honored with a more clamorous triumph than Constantius. Nature speaks out among her untutored sons. Envy has nothing to do in such fields as ours. He was applauded to the skies.

“Well,” said I, as I pressed the gallant hand that had planted the first laurel on our brows, “you see that, if plowmen and shepherds make rude soldiers, they make capital judges of soldiership. You might have conquered a kingdom without receiving half this panegyric in Rome.”

“The service is but begun, and we shall have another lesson to get or give to-morrow. Those fellows are grateful, I allow,” said he, with a smile, “but you must confess that, for what has been done, we have to thank the discipline that brought us into the Roman rear.”

“Yes, and the discipline that made them so much alarmed about their rear as to run away when they might have charged and beaten us.”

[Sidenote: A Scene of Inspiration]

This little affair put us all in spirits, and the songs and cheerful clamors burst out with renewed animation. But the appearance of the enemy soon became evident. We found the ruined cottage, the torn-up garden, the burned orchard—those habitual evidences of the camp. As we advanced, the tracks of wagons and of the huge wheels of the military engines were fresh in the grass, and from time to time some skeleton of a beast of burden, or some half-covered wreck of man, showed that desolation had walked there; the cavalry soon appeared on the heights in larger bodies; but all was forgotten in the sight that at length rose upon the horizon—we beheld, bathed in the richest glow of a summer’s eve, the summits of the mountains round Jerusalem, and glorious above them, like another sun, the golden beauty of the Temple of temples!

What Jew ever saw that sight but with homage of heart? Fine fancies may declaim of the rapture of returning to one’s country after long years. Rapture! to find ourselves in a land of strangers, ourselves forgotten, our early scenes so changed that we can scarcely retrace them, filled up with new faces, or with the old so worn by time and care that we read in them nothing but the emptiness of human hope; the whole world new, frivolous, and contemptuous of our feelings. Where is the mother, the sister, the woman of our heart? We find their only memorials among the dead, and bitterly feel that our true country is the tomb.

But the return to Zion was not of the things of this world. The Jew saw before him the city of prophecy and power. Mortal thoughts, individual sorrows, the melancholy experiences of human life, had no place among the mighty hopes that gathered over it, like angels’ wings. Restoration, boundless empire, imperishable glory, were the writing upon its bulwarks. It stood before him, the Universal City, whose gates were to be open for the reverence of all time; the symbol to the earth of the returning presence of the Great King; the promise to the Jew of an empire, triumphant over the casualties of nations, the crimes of man, and even the all-grasping avarice of the grave.

The multitude prostrated themselves; then rising, broke forth into the glorious hymn sung by the tribes on their journeys to the Temple:

“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness.

[Sidenote: A Tribal Hymn]

“Beautiful, the joy of the earth is Mount Zion, the city of the Great King!

“God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

“We have thought of thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.

“Walk about Zion, tell the towers thereof. Mark ye her bulwarks, consider her palaces. For her God is our God, forever and ever; he will be our guide in death; his praise is to the ends of the earth. Glory to the king of Zion.”

The harmony of the adoring myriads rose sweet and solemn upon the air; the sky was a canopy of sapphire; the breeze rich with the evening flowers; Jerusalem before me! I felt as if the covering of my mortal nature was about to be cast away, and my spirit to go forth on a bright and boundless career of fortune.

But recollections, never to be subdued, saddened my memory of the Temple, and when the first influence of the homage passed, I turned from the sight of what was to me the eternal monument of the heaviest crime of man. I gave one parting glance as day died upon the spires. To my surprise, they were darkened by more than twilight; I glanced again, smoke rolled cloud on cloud over Mount Moriah; the distant roar of battle startled us. Had the enemy anticipated our march, and was Jerusalem about to be stormed before our eyes?

We were not left long to conjecture. Crowds of frightened women and children were seen flying across the country. The roar swelled again; we answered it by shouts and rushed onward. Unable to ascertain the point of attack, I halted the multitude at the entrance of one of the roads ascending to the great gate of the upper city, and galloped forward with a few of my people.

[Sidenote: The Change in Jubal]

A horseman rushed from the gate with a heedless rapidity which must have flung him into the midst of our ranks or sent him over the precipice. His voice alone enabled me to recognize in this furious rider my kinsman Jubal. But never had a few months so altered a human being. Instead of the bold and martial figure of the chieftain, I saw an emaciated and exhausted man, apparently in the last stage of life or sorrow; the florid cheek was of the color of clay; the flashing eye was sunken; the loud and cheerful voice was sepulchral. I welcomed him with the natural regard of our relationship, but his perturbation was fearful; he trembled, grew fiery red, and could return my greeting only with a feeble tongue and a wild eye.

However, this was no time for private feelings. I inquired the state of things in Jerusalem. Here his embarrassment was thrown aside and the natural energy of the man found room.

“Jerusalem has three curses at this hour,” said he fiercely, “the priests, the people, and the Romans, and the last is the lightest of the three;—the priests bloated with indulgence and mad with love of the world; the people pampered with faction and mad with bigotry; and the Romans availing themselves of the madness of each to crush all.”

“But has the assault been actually made, or is there force enough within to repel it?” interrupted I.

“The assault has been made, and the enemy has driven everything before it, so far as has been its pleasure. Why it has not pushed on is inconceivable, for our regular troops are good for nothing. I have now been sent out to raise the villages, but my labor will be useless, for see—the eagles are already on the wall.”

I looked; on the northern quarter of the battlements I saw, through smoke and flame, the accursed standard. Below rose immense bursts of conflagration; the whole of the new city, the Bezetha, was on fire. My plan was instantly formed. I divided my force into two bodies; gave one to Constantius, with orders to enter the city and drive the Romans from the walls; and with the other threaded the ravines toward a position on the hills. I had to make a long circuit. The Roman camp was pitched on the ridge of Mount Scopas, seven furlongs from the city. Guided by Jubal, I gained its rear. My troops, stimulated by the sight of the fugitive people, required all my efforts to keep them from rushing on the detachments, which we saw successively hurrying to reenforce the assault.

[Sidenote: Another Success]

Night fell, but the signal for my attack, a fixed number of torches on the tower of the Temple, did not appear. Our troops, ambushed in the olive-groves skirting the ridge, had hitherto escaped discovery. At length they grew furious and bore me along with them. As we burst up the rugged sides of the hill, like a huge surge before the tempest, I cast a despairing glance toward the city; the torches at that moment rose. Hope lived again. The sight added wings to our speed, and before the enemy could recover from its astonishment, we were in the center of the camp. Nothing could be more complete than our success. The legionaries, sure of the morning’s march into Jerusalem and the plunder of the Temple, were caught leaning in crowds over the ramparts, unarmed, and making absolute holiday. Caius Cestius,[36] their insolent general, was carousing in his tent after the fatigues of the evening. The tribunes followed his example; the soldiery saw nothing to require their superior abstemiousness, and the wine was flowing freely in healths to the next day’s rapine, when our roar opened their eyes. To resist was out of the question. Fifty thousand spearmen, as daring as ever lifted weapon, and inflamed with the feelings of their harassed country, were in their midst, and they fled in all directions. I pressed on to the general’s tent, but the prize had escaped; he had fled at the first alarm. My followers indignantly set his quarters on fire; the blaze spread, and the flame of the Roman camp rolled up like the flame of a sacrifice to the god of battles.

The seizure of this position was the ruin of the cohorts, abandoned between the hill and the city. At the sight of the flames the gates were flung open, and Constantius drove the assailants from point to point until our shouts told him that we were marching upon their rear. The shock then was final. The Romans, dispirited and surprised, broke like water, and scarcely a man of them lived to boast of having insulted the walls of Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: A Voice of Wo]

Day arose and the Temple met the rising beam, unstained by the smoke of an enemy’s fire. The wreck of the legions lay upon the declivities, like the fragments of a fleet on the shore. But this sight, painful even to an enemy, was soon forgotten in the concourse of the rescued citizens, the exultation of the troops, and the still more seducing vanities that filled the heart of their chieftain.

Toward noon, a long train of the principal people, headed by the priests and elders, was seen issuing from the gates to congratulate me. Choral music and triumphant shouts announced their approach through the valley. My heart bounded with the feelings of a conqueror. The whole long vista of national honors, the popular praise, the personal dignity, the power of trampling upon the malignant, the clearance of my character, the right to take the future lead on all occasions of public service and princely renown, opened before my eye.

I was standing alone upon the brow of the promontory. As far as the eye could reach all was in motion, and all was directed to me; the homage of soldiery, priests, and people centered in my single being. I involuntarily uttered aloud:

“At last I shall enter Jerusalem in triumph.”

I heard a voice at my side:

“Never shalt thou enter Jerusalem but in sorrow!”

An indescribable pang smote me. There was not a living soul near me to have uttered the words. The troops were standing at a distance below and in perfect silence. The words were spoken close to my ear. But I fatally knew the voice, and conjecture was at an end. My limbs felt powerless, as if I had been struck by lightning. I called Jubal up the peak to assist me. But the blow that smote my frame seemed to have smote his mind. His eyes rolled wildly; his speech was the language of a fierce disturbance of thought, altogether unintelligible. A lunatic stood before me.

Was this to be the foretaste of my own afflictions? Was I to see my kindred and friends put under the yoke of bodily and mental misery as a menace of the punishment that was to cut asunder my connection with human nature?