CHAPTER XXV.
REVERSES.
Judas met the danger with his accustomed resolution. He waited in the citytill he could be certain of the road which the invaders were taking. Assoon as he knew that it was from the south that they were approaching, hecollected all his available force, having for the purpose to raise thesiege of the fortress, and marched forth to meet them.
The fortress of Beth-zur, which was intended to be the first line in thedefence of the capital, was in danger of falling into the hands of theenemy. Micah had received, early in the year, a commission to revictualit, but had found the task one that was difficult, if not impossible, toexecute. There was a positive scarcity of food, and the scarcity wasaggravated as usual by the practice of hoarding. It was to little purposethat Micah scoured the country, making requisitions of grain and othersupplies. Some few, strong in their faith, gave up what they had, andcommitted themselves and their children to the Lord, whose law they wereseeking to obey. Others met the demand with a flat refusal, and at thesame time taunted Micah with the folly of enforcing an impracticable lawin times of such difficulty. Many met him with the plea of poverty, andtheir wasted forms and sunken faces were proof enough that this plea wasgenuine. The work, therefore, for all the zeal that Micah displayed, wenton but very slowly, and, indeed, was not half finished when the advancedguard of the army of Lysias appeared. Beth-zur was immediately invested.The engines, of which Lysias had a large stock, played fiercely upon thewalls, and preparations was made for an assault. Micah, on the other hand,saw no hope that he would be able to stand a long siege. The garrisonunder his command was not large enough adequately to man the walls, whileit was too large for the stock of provisions which he had been able tocollect.
Under these circumstances his resolution was soon taken. Before dawn onthe second day of the investment the whole garrison made a desperatesally. Happily they had no non-combatants to care for, and as yet no sickor wounded. Fire was set to the engines. The besiegers, thinking that thiswas the object of the attack, and that the garrison would make their wayback into the fortress, when this had been accomplished, occupiedthemselves chiefly in putting out the fire. But Micah had no intention ofreturning. He availed himself of the confusion caused by the burning ofthe camp, cut his way with desperate resolution through the enemy, andsucceeded in reaching the camp of Judas with the larger part of his force.The rest were not able to follow him, but succeeded in regaining thefortress, which they continued to hold against the Greeks.
The camp was at Beth-Zachariah, about nine miles south from Jerusalem, andon an elevated position, not less than three thousand feet above the levelof the sea, which commanded the whole of the neighbouring country. Behind,to the north, could be seen the towers of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, theCity of David, in the nearer foreground, nestling among its oliveyards andvineyards. To the west lay the plain of Philistia, with the white cliff ofGath clearly visible in the extreme distance; to the east could be seenthe purple mountains of Moab. The road from Hebron, by which the Greekarmy would approach, crept along the eastern side of the mountains. Fromhis elevated position Judas could see the movements of his adversarieswhile they were still at a considerable distance. Observing that theypitched their camp on the further side of a narrow defile, with thecharacter of which he was intimately acquainted, he conceived the idea ofan ambush.
He summoned Azariah to his tent and detailed his plan. Azariah also knewthe place well, and entered into the scheme with enthusiasm--suchenthusiasm, indeed, that Judas felt it necessary to give him a partingcaution. "Remember," he said, "if this scheme fails, that you come back tome immediately. If the ambush should be discovered, retreat at once. Theremust be no attack. I cannot spare a man. We shall want all that we have,if not more than all, to make head against the thousands of Lysias."
Azariah promised obedience, and lost no time in setting out on his errand.Shortly after sunset he started, having with him a picked force of athousand men. Before midnight he had reached the place fixed upon byJudas, and there, in a hollow half-way up the side of the hill that formedone side of the pass, he laid his ambush.
It was an anxious night for the little band. It was always an acceptedmaxim in ancient warfare that it was the most steadfast courage that waswanted for the ambush. Men who were brave enough when fighting in the openplain found their courage fail when they had to lie for hours watching forthe moment of attack, crouched upon the ground, unable to move andscarcely venturing to talk. Azariah's men were brave--indeed they had beencarefully chosen for this very service--but they were not altogetherinsensible of the dangers of their position. They knew, too, and evenexaggerated the strength of the advancing army. As they talked in whispersduring the night, for, as may be imagined, few could sleep, they spoke ofthe chances of the coming day. The elephants, which had never before beenseen on Jewish soil, were mentioned with special awe.
"Strange and terrible beasts they are," said one man to his neighbour;"savage as lions, and many times larger and stronger."
"Is it so?" said the other. "I heard once from an Arab, who had beendriver of one of these creatures, that they are marvellously gentle andtame."
"Maybe they are by nature; but their drivers have ways of rousing them tofury before the battle."
"How so?"
"They show them the blood of grapes and mulberries, and the creatures rageterribly. 'Tis said that one of them can tread down a whole company ofmen."
"Well, but 'tis possible, I know, to stand against them. King Antiochus,father to the madman whom the Lord smote for his sins, had an array ofthem in his army when he fought against the Romans at Magnesia, but theyprofited him little. So Simeon told me--you know the man, the old Benjamitewho took service with the King. The Romans stood firm in their rank, andthrew their javelins at the beasts' trunks, and in the end, so Simeonsaid, they did more damage to their own people than to the enemy."
"The Lord grant that it be so to-morrow."
The sun had just risen when the approach of the Greek army became visible.And now the vanguard was almost within striking distance of the ambushwhich, to all appearance, was still undiscovered. Another few steps andthey would be immediately below, at a point where they might be assailedwith disastrous effect. Behind a little rock which was within a few yardsof the pass Azariah knelt, sword in hand, waiting to give the signal tohis men. Their fears had mostly vanished in the morning light, and thedreaded elephants did not form part of the advanced guard.
But just as Azariah was about to give the signal to charge his quick earcaught the sound of tramping feet, which seemed to come from some placeabove his own position. The next moment he caught sight, in the slantingrays of the early sun, of the glitter of helmets and shields. A Greekforce, fully equal in number to his own, was marching in a directionparallel to the pass but higher up the mountain-side. Lysias had learntwisdom from experience. He no longer despised his enemy, but credited himwith the military skill which, indeed, he had more than once provedhimself to possess. He had foreseen the ambush, and had sent a force toguard against the danger. Azariah's force, though out of sight of theroad, could be seen from the higher ground, and the Greeks greeted theirappearance with shouts of laughter. For one moment a wild desire to chargeswept through the mind of the Jewish captain. He had hoped to blot out bysome brilliant service the remembrance of his former disaster, and now hehad failed again. True, it was not by his own fault; yet he had failed,and he would have to go back to Judas empty-handed. A single word wouldhave sent his men in furious onset against the foe. Should he say it? Thenthere came back to his recollection the gentleness and forbearance ofJudas. He could not disobey such a leader a second time. He gave thesignal to retreat. His men heard it with disgust; but they knew that hewas acting against his own desire as much as against theirs, and theyobeyed without a murmur, or, if some of the youngest and fiercest amongthem complained of the order, it was only under their breath that theyspoke.
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nbsp; Azariah now made his way to Judas with all the haste that he could use.
"I have failed," he said. "The heathen seemed to know of our designbeforehand. There could be no surprise, so I did not attack, but came backto you at once."
"You have done well," said Judas, who knew what a sacrifice the fierysoldier had made. "A chance victory won by disobeying orders is worse thana defeat."
But Judas, though, as always, he did full justice to his lieutenant, wasmuch depressed by the failure of the attempt, and he looked with a gloomybrow at the approaching host, as it came on in all the pomp andcircumstance of war, the sunlight gleaming on the banners, the helmets ofbrass and gold, and on the long, slanting lines of spear-heads. As it camenearer the regular tread of the columns and the clang of arms, with nowand then the shrill voice of a clarion or the deep note of a trumpet heardabove the roar, moved even the stoutest warrior to something like fear.
Judas followed once more the tactics which he had so often foundsuccessful. To stand on the defensive was hopeless; his few thousandswould inevitably be trodden down under the feet of this huge multitude.His only hope was in attack. If he could but break the line at a singlepoint his success might be again, as it had been before, the beginning ofa panic, and the great host of Lysias might melt away as the host ofApollonius had melted; but the attack must be made while the enemy wereyet upon ground where they had not space to make full use of theirnumbers. He charged with his accustomed fury before the vanguard of theenemy had emerged into the open. For a time it seemed as if his audacitywas to be successful. The hostile army reeled under the shock of thepatriots' furious charge. In two or three places it broke. But there wasin reserve a second line of veterans, the steadiest and best troops thatcould be found in the Syrian armies, for Lysias knew by this time thatnone but the very best could stand against Judas and his Ironsides. Andthen the numbers were overpowering. Step by step the Jewish column wasforced back. They left six hundred of the enemy dead on the field behindthem; but the attack had failed.
Then, as the Greek army deployed upon the open ground which the retreat ofthe Jews left open to them, the elephants came upon the scene--the "huge,earth-shaking beasts," which even the hardiest warrior could hardly seefor the first time without some sinking of heart. Each animal wasaccompanied by picked bodies of horse and foot. Each carried a tower fromwhich skilful marksmen, whose accurate aim was greatly helped by theirelevated position, hurled missiles upon the ranks of the foe. Thecreatures themselves seemed to share in all the fury of the battle. Theytrumpeted loudly and furiously; at the bidding of the Indian drivers whowere perched upon their necks they seized soldiers from among the Jewishranks with their trunks, whirled them aloft, and then dashed them down,mangled and lifeless corpses, upon the ground.
Then was done one of the heroic acts which stand out conspicuously on thepages of history. Eleazar, one of the Maccabee brothers, saw how hiscountrymen were being demoralized by the terror of these strangeadversaries, and felt that it was a crisis that called for personaldevotion. One of the elephants was conspicuous among the rest, not onlyfor its superior size but for the splendour of its equipment. He felt surethat it must be the one that carried the boy-King himself. Immediately hisresolve was taken. He made his way, striking furiously right and left, anddealing death with every blow, through the Syrian ranks, crept under thehuge beast, and dealt him a mortal wound. Like another Samson, he perishedby his own success. The creature fell with a suddenness that gave him noopportunity of escape, and he was crushed to death by its weight.
_The Death of Eleazar._]
The hero did not accomplish his object, to rally his countrymen. One mightrather say that their panic was heightened by the fall of one of theheroic brothers, a son of the great house to which they owed theirliberty. But his deed was not forgotten. The fourth of the Maccabeebrothers lived in the history of his people as Eleazar Avaran--Eleazar "theBeast Slayer."
But the battle was lost beyond all hope. The only thing left for Judas wasto save as much as he could out of the wreck. He sounded the signal forretreat, drew off his men in good order, and, making his way back asrapidly as possible to Jerusalem, threw himself into the Temple fortress,resolved to stand a siege.
The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times Page 27