To the Death (32 page)

To discourage any interference with these preparations, two hundred pieces of artillery were positioned ready for instant use. These were supported by an Arab force of two thousand
auxiliary
horse archers who kept up a constant patrol of the whole area. An elite wing of Roman cavalry, decked out in all its finery, made its presence known with showy charges, swords flashing in the sunlight. When all was ready, column by column, thirty thousand legionaries in full battle armour marched out; five legions, each with its own eagle and battle standards, drums beating. The crimson capes of its mounted officers, flowing across the haunches of their mounts, passed in front of Titus flanked by Mucianus and King Agrippa.

It took two hours for this glittering spectacle of gleaming armour and weapons to pass before Titus who, with his second-in- command Mucianus and King Agrippa, scorning the seats provided, stood to take the salute. It was a sight that awed the citizens of Jerusalem and caused the rebels to tighten their lips. Over the next four days, in accordance with custom, tables were set up and chests of gold and silver coins were brought out. In turn the men came forward and in full view of the watching Jews, each man had the money due to him counted - his to take away or have banked for him by the
Optios
who supervised the proceedings.

On day five, as the rebels had not responded to his offer of peace, Titus began building more platforms, planning to invade the Upper City by assaulting the Antonia. Josephus, who had received word that the rebels had imprisoned his parents and his brother, was determined to make one last appeal to them. Raised up on a partially completed platform he proclaimed “If you do not accept the peace the Romans offer you, you will die. Not because you turn your back on Caesar, but on God. Yes God. We, the children of Abraham, God's chosen people, have only one purpose in life - to honour and obey His Holy Law.
To do unto others, as you would be done by, for thereby hangs the whole of the law.
What have you done? Not to the Romans but your fellow Jews. There is no crime so vile it has been left undone. You are ruled over by the scum of nations; blasphemers who have spilt the blood of the innocent on the sacred altar, who have fouled this hallowed spot beyond redemption, beyond salvation. This Holy place, respected by the Romans out of regard for our customs and laws, you have turned into a place unfit for the keeping of pigs. It is not the Romans you should fear but the God of your fathers who even now, you wretched depraved people, will not abandon you.

Lay down your weapons and ask God not the Romans for mercy.

For the Almighty has left this place for ever.

Was this not foretold?

You were warned, but would not listen.

Deaf to the prophets He sent you.

The prophecy of the destruction of the Holy City and His Temple was foretold before your grandfathers were born.

And now the time has come, when the living will envy the dead and only the truly repentant will find salvation”.

A moment of silence followed this appeal. It was if a judgement was in the balance. Finally, it was broken by an atavistic howl and the sibilant hiss of stones showering down. Knocked to the ground, Josephus was saved by the cohort standing by, who rushed to shelter him with their shields.

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W
ith
tears running down his cheeks, Josephus ended his appeal. Unmoved, the rebels hurled jeers and catcalls at the despondent figure trudging slowly back to the Roman lines. Those citizens who had managed to find a place on the wall were horrified at the outcome. As they spread the news of what they regarded as a disastrous outcome, panic set in. With no hope of a peace settlement, more people were determined to flee the city and throw themselves on the mercy of the Romans. Property was sold for what it would fetch. The most treasured of valuable possessions went the same way. The only currency that held its value was gold coin.

The hundreds of criminal gangs operating in the city muscled in wherever they could, to take advantage of this desperate situation. The lucky ones who were allowed to leave the city, having paid the rebels a substantial bribe, were not allowed to take anything with them. To foil them, they swallowed gold coins with every member of the family helping to cheat the robbers, planning their recovery once they were safely out of the city.

When these refugees reached the Roman lines, Titus ordered that after questioning they were to be allowed to go where they wished. A few, daunted by the prospect of trekking in to the desert with no possessions, except those which could be recovered from their bowels, returned to Jerusalem.

As the months stretched into years, people began to lose their reason as the famine grew worse. Criminal gangs roamed the city in search of food, breaking into houses and ransacking them. The terrified occupants, too weak to resist, were tortured to reveal what they did not have. The lengths these gangs would go to in forcing people to give them food beggared belief. Victims were judged by their appearance. If they were fat, obviously they had access to secret stores of food. If they were wasted, they were not worth bothering with. Those who still had gold exchanged it for a single measure of corn. That valued each grain as being worth its weight of that precious metal. Having traded in secret, they ate in secret. In fear of discovery, no table was laid. Partially baked bread was grabbed from the oven and hastily gobbled, in fear of it being snatched from their mouths.

The rebels who had commandeered the city's remaining stores of food, refused to share them with the general population, arguing that they needed them to keep their soldiers fighting fit.

The armed gangsters roaming the city stayed well clear of the rebels. These depraved savages would stop at nothing to satisfy their needs. They killed the old for a crust. No mercy was shown to the young. Infants were casually swung against a wall, heads cracked like egg shells on unyielding stone. Worse still, this barbarous tribe harboured psychopaths who killed and maimed to satisfy nameless appetites. Monsters any normal society would either have put down or kept chained. Rape and murder were commonplace.

These outcasts lived on a staple diet of rats - huge beasts as big as cats, fat and sleek from feeding on the thousands of corpses rotting in the streets.

As the ordinary citizens suffered at the hands of criminal scum, men of wealth were rounded up by Simon and John to face trumped up charges of treason. Paid informers denounced them, claiming they were planning to flee the city.

Taken to cellars, these men usually disclosed where they had hidden their wealth. If the sight and sounds of their loved ones having the instruments of torture applied didn't do the trick, they themselves were subjected to them. Having secured what they wanted from these unfortunates, the rebels killed them and their families, and flung their bodies into the street. Like hyenas, they ripped the carcass of the Holy City to pieces.

No city in the past or in the future would be visited by such bestiality. No generation would give birth to such evil. The depraved behaviour of the Jewish rebel leaders meant they would stand at the bar of history, revealed to the world as the worst of humanity - fundamentalists, fanatics, terrorists and ruthless warlords who destroyed the Holy City, the Temple and the Nation of Israel.

Meanwhile the Romans had nearly completed building their platforms, though they had done so at a cost. Many legionaries died from missiles fired by the Jews. While this was going on, increasing numbers of starving Jews were creeping into the ravines in search of anything edible. Fearing that arsonists might be mingling with the civilians, Titus ordered them to be rounded up. One such encounter would live forever in the memory of the Roman patrol that was out that night. They discovered a group of Jews huddled in the darkness around a smoking fire, cooking a meal.

Crouched like primeval savages they slashed at a roasting joint with their daggers. As they wolfed down the bloody haunch, the scout who had found them stifled a cry of revulsion on seeing what he thought was a goat ended not in a cloven hoof but in a human foot. Its toenails glistening with fat in the firelight. Having been discovered, the cornered Jews tried to fight their way clear but were easily subdued and captured. Taken back to the Roman camp, Titus ordered that they were to be crucified in full view of their countrymen lining the wall.

This tragedy was played out daily, with an average of five hundred men per day being captured. The Roman soldiers, bitter at a war that had gone on for six long years, extracted a grim revenge on these men. They nailed up their prisoners live, in every conceivable attitude - upside down, horizontally and diagonally. This macabre spectacle quickly numbered thousands, attracting flocks of birds of prey. It was a grisly addition to the theatre of death that the citizens were forced to watch, as the rebels drove them to the walls with whips. Even children were forced to witness what happened to “deserters”.

Meanwhile, Titus went from platform to platform, demonstrating that he would soon be ready for the final attack. After twenty days of continuous labour, all four of the huge platforms were ready. The Fifth Legion positioned theirs opposite the Antonia. Another, built by the Twelfth, was positioned in support fifty feet along the wall on the left hand side. On the right hand side, the Tenth placed a tower near the Almond pool. The Fifteenth moved their tower to attack the wall near the High Priest's monument.

John, however, had not been idle. As well as his own men, hundreds of citizens had been drafted in as miners. Day and night they had dug deep to get under the wall; then they had cut a horizontal shaft. These galleries were carefully supported by wooden props for John's mine took him directly under the Fifth and Twelfth legions' platforms. These were then enlarged into caverns that he packed with barrels of bitumen and timber faggots coated with tar. Both sides were ready at the same time. The Romans eased their towers into their final positions and the Jews set torches to their underground bonfires. The Jews' final touches were to run leather hoses down the tunnels to the seat of the fire. Using bellows, they pumped air to the heart of the fires they had set. The resulting conflagration burned through the supporting props in minutes, culminating in the barrels of bitumen exploding.

With the ground collapsing beneath them, the platforms the Romans had laboured so hard and so long to make, disappeared, falling in chaos into the bowels of the furnace raging beneath them. There was no escape for the legionaries manning them, who fell into the flaming craters to be burned alive. A horrified Titus watched helplessly, as clouds of black smoke billowed out of the gigantic pits that had swallowed up his men. A dense cloud of dust and debris was hurled skywards, as more and more barrels exploded. This was followed, by sheets of flame shooting heavenwards as the platforms added to the fuel the Jews had packed underground. Within an hour, Jewish ingenuity had destroyed months of work by their adversary. The shocked Romans fell back in despair. They had been certain that victory would be theirs. This reversal plunged them into depression. Morale hit rock bottom.

The following day Gioras struck while the enemy was in a state of shock. The Romans, in anticipation of the platforms' success, had moved their battering rams close to the wall and were ready to put them to use. These were the rebels' targets, but first they launched a diversionary attack against the remaining platforms, drawing the Roman forces away from the rams. Three volunteers then ran out of the city armed with firebrands and swords.

Throughout the war, neither side produced three braver men. Attacking the legionaries manning the rams, they set fire to them. Standing fast while the flames took hold, they fought off the enraged Romans. With such an example of courage, the rebels charged out of the city to engage the enemy. In minutes, the two sides were locked in the most desperate hand to hand fighting.

To add to the confusion, the Jews were setting fire to anything that would burn. With the remaining platforms well alight and the rams engulfed in flames, the rebel forces which now numbered several thousand launched a direct frontal attack, driving the Romans back to their camp. Here, the retreating Romans, shamed by Jewish courage, halted their headlong flight and made a stand.

At this point of crisis in the battle, Titus arrived from the shambles of the Antonia.

Outraged, he cursed the men who, after capturing the enemy's walls, were in danger of losing what they had won. He stood down a badly wounded centurion, and with grim determination took command of his men. Leading from the front, he tried to outflank the Jews. Their leaders, however, alert to this new danger, signalled with blasts on rams' horns to wheel and counter this manoeuvre. Without let-up the battle raged on, dust filling the air, the noise deafening, confusion spreading. The Jews held, desperate in the knowledge that victory was their only option. The Romans, shamed by retreat and knowing that Titus himself was in the front line, fought like men possessed. It was simple. Like their opponents, death before dishonour was the unspoken common creed. With their objectives achieved - the platforms destroyed, the rams disabled, and the Roman army given a very bloody nose - the rams' horns sounded for a withdrawal. The rebels wisely decided to return to the city, having secured a famous victory.

With their platforms destroyed the dejected Romans, their morale at rock bottom, trudged back to their camp. Thousands of Jews who had poured out of the city in support of the rebels returned triumphantly, singing hymns of praise to their God. Many of the defeated Romans started to believe that by using the traditional methods of war, they would never take the city. Not unaware of the misgivings and doubts sweeping through his army, Titus called for a council of war.