g the advantage of being
accounted the king's guests during the interval, they pledged themselves
to attend the marriage festival, and honour their sovereign by their
presence. Their abrupt refusal at the eleventh hour, after all was ready
to receive them, partook of the nature both of breach of engagement and
disloyalty. "They would not come."

A second message was sent, more specific and more urgent: but the men
met the importunate kindness of the king with contemptuous mockery:
"they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to
his merchandise." A portion of them carried their opposition beyond
supercilious neglect into blood-thirsty enmity; "the remnant took his
servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them."

"But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his
armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city." As far
as appears from the narrative, those who affronted the king by neglect,
and those who put his messengers to death, received the same punishment.
Although the cruelty perpetrated by some of the conspirators was an
aggravation of their guilt, the crime for which they suffered was one of
which all alike were guilty,--the crime of despising the king's
invitation, and pouring contempt upon his authority.

The transaction may have had great political significance. It was a
combination among the aristocracy to thwart the king and dictate to him
a line of policy. They meant by their absence in mass to leave him
without support, that he might be compelled to court them on their own
terms. In such a case only two alternatives are open to the supreme
magistrate: he must either submit to the aristocracy and buy them back
at their own price, or supersede them by a bold appeal to the common
people. Suppose that in this country the Lords should by compact refuse
to attend Parliament, for the express purpose of extorting concessions
in favour of themselves by bringing the process of legislation to a
stand: the sovereign, in that case, must either submit to the terms of
the refractory nobles, or by prerogative create a new peerage from the
plebean ranks. Such, on a minute scale and in a simple form, was the
course adopted by the king in this ancient oriental drama.

He destroyed their city: it was the king's own city, but he loathed it
because of the rebellion of its inhabitants. He took no pleasure in its
streets and palaces when their moral glory had de