The multitude had repelled the Romans and forced them up the broad central street of the city. But a reenforcement from the Tower of Antonia had joined the troops, and were driving back the victors with ruinous disorder. I heard the war-cries of the tribes as they called to the rescue, and the charge, “Onward, Judah!” “Ho, for Zebulun!” “Glory to Naphtali!” I thought of the times of Jewish triumph, and saw before me the warriors of the Maccabees. Nerved with new sensations, the strong instincts which make the war-horse paw the ground at the trumpet and make men rush headlong upon death, heightened by the stinging recollections of our days of freedom, I forced my path through the multitude that tossed and whirled like the eddies of the ocean. I found my kinsmen in front, battling desperately against the long spears of a Roman column, that, solid as iron, and favored by the higher ground, was pressing down all before it. The resistance was heroic, but unavailing; and when I burst forward, I found at my side nothing but faces dark with despair or covered with wounds. In front was a wall of shields and helmets, glaring in the light of the conflagration that was now rapidly spreading on all sides. The air was scorching, the smoke rolling against us in huge volumes; burning and loss of blood were consuming the multitude. But what is in the strength of the soldier or the bravery of discipline to daunt the desperate energy of men fighting for their country—and, above all men, of the Israelite, fighting in sight of the profaned Temple? The native frame, exercised by the habits of our temperate and agricultural life, was one of surpassing muscular strength; and man for man thrown naked into the field, we could have torn the Roman garrison into fragments for the fowls of the air. But their arms, and the help which they received from the nature of the ground, were too strong for the assault of men fighting with no shield but their cloaks and no arms but a pilgrim’s staff or some weapon caught up from a dead enemy.
Yet on me there came a wild impression that this night was to make or unmake me; an undefined feeling that in the shedding of my blood in sight of the Temple there might be some palliative, some washing away of my crime. I sprang forward between the combatants and defied the boldest of the legionaries; the battle paused for an instant, and my name was shouted in exultation by ten thousand voices. A shower of lances from the battlements was instantly poured upon me. I felt myself wounded, but the feeling only roused me to bolder daring. Tearing off my gory mantle, I lifted it on the point of my javelin, and, with the poniard in my right hand, devoted the Romans to ruin in the name of the Temple.