The horrid cruelties of the execution had been heard of in Jerusalem, and the spirit of the people was roused to vengeance. With that imperishable courage which distinguished them above all nations, a scorn of hazard that in those unhappy days only urged them to their ruin, they determined to make the enemy pay in slaughter for the memory of their warriors. A multitude without a leader, but among whom served with the simple spear many a leader, poured out from the gates to attack an enemy flushed with victory, and secured in entrenchments, impregnable to the naked strength of my unfortunate countrymen. They divided into two armies, one of which assaulted the lines, while the other marched to the valley of the Crosses. The assault on the lines was repelled after long and desperate displays of intrepidity. It was the intelligence of this attack that had broken up the banquet. The Romans sustained heavy losses in the early part of the night; their outposts in the plain were sacrificed, and the chief part of their cantonments burned.
But the “army of vengeance,” a name given to it alike by Jew and Roman, accomplished its purpose with dreadful retribution. The legionaries posted to defend the valley were trampled down and destroyed at the first charge. Troop on troop, sent to extricate them, met with the same fate. One of the few prisoners described the valley, when his cohort reached its verge, as having the look of a living whirlpool, a vast and tempestuous rolling and heaving of infuriate life, into which the attempt to descend was instant destruction.
“Every cohort that entered it,” said the centurion, “was instantly engulfed and seen no more. Last night our legion, the fifteenth, lay down in their tents five thousand strong; to-night there are not ten of us on the face of the earth.”
The conflict was long, and the last of the enemy were under the Jewish sword when I reached the mouth of the fissure. But in the first intervals of the struggle, the remains of our tortured people had been taken down from the accursed tree, tended with solemn sorrow, and given up to their relatives and friends to be borne back to Jerusalem. The crosses were thrown into a heap and set on fire; the fallen legionaries underwent the last indignities that could be inflicted by scorn and rage; and when even those grew weary, were flung into the blazing pile.
Salathiel Burns a Cross
The fate of the noble Eleazar was still unknown, and to obtain the certainty of his preservation or to render the last honor to his remains, I forced my way toward the spot on which I had seen him awaiting death. But my searches were in vain; the witnesses on both sides were now where there is no utterance. Guard, executioner, and victim were clay; the battle had raged chiefly round that spot, and the ground, trampled and deep in blood, gave melancholy evidence of the havoc. There were painful and peculiar signs of the sacrifice that had extinguished the little group of the converts, and I poured oil and wine upon their hallowed ashes. A large fragment of a cross still stood erect in the midst of them.
“Was it upon thee, accursed thing,” I exclaimed, “that the life-blood of my brother was poured? Was it upon thee that the last breath was breathed in torture from the lips of virtue, heroism, and purity? Never shalt thou minister again to the cruelty of the monsters that raised thee there.”
Indignantly I tore up the beam, and dragging it to the pile by my single strength—to the wonder of the crowd, who eagerly offered their help, but whom I would not suffer to share in this imaginary yet consoling retribution—I rolled it into the flames amid shouts and rejoicings.
Daybreak was now at hand, and the sounds of the enemy’s movements made our retreat necessary. We heaped the last Roman corpse on the pile, covered it with the broken spears, helmets, and cuirasses of the soldiery, and then left the care of the conflagration to the wind. From the valley to Jerusalem our way was crowded with the enemy’s posts; but the keen eye and agile vigor of the Jew eluded or anticipated the heavy-armed legionaries, by long experience taught to dread the night in Judea, and we reached the Grand Gate of Zion as the sun was shooting his first rays on the pinnacles of the Temple.
The Wild Host