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April 23.

On the morning of the Passover, John contrived—taking advantage of the permission freely granted to all who chose to enter the Temple unarmed—to send in his own men, choosing those whose features were not known to Eleazar’s followers, with concealed weapons. Directly they got into the Inner Temple, they made an attack on the men of the opposite faction. A good many were slaughtered, and the rest, finding it best to yield, made terms with their conquerors, Eleazar’s life being spared. There now remained only two factions in the city, Simon holding the strongest place—the Palace of Herod, which commanded the Upper Town—and John the Temple Fortress, without which the Lower Town could not be taken.

It was determined to begin the assault with the north-western part of the wall, that part of it where the valley turns in a north-westerly direction and leaves a level space between the wall and its own course. The engines used by the Romans were those always employed in the conduct of a siege—the ballistæ, the towers, and the battering rams. Then banks were constructed, on each of which was a tower and a ram. In the construction of these last all the trees round Jerusalem were cut down. Nor have they ever been replanted, and a thousand years later on the siege of the city by the Crusaders, only inferior in horror to that of Titus, nearly miscarried for want of timber to construct the towers of assault.