Then came the famine.

At the beginning, before the maddened, devil-inspired factions began to destroy each other and to prey upon the peaceful people, Jerusalem was amply provisioned.

But each party squandered the stores that were within its reach, and, whenever they could do so, burnt those of their rivals, so that the food which might have supplied the whole city for months, vanished quickly in orgies of wanton waste and destruction.

Now all, or almost all, was gone, and by tens and hundreds of thousands the people starved.
Those who are curious about such matters, those who desire to know how much human beings can endure, and of what savagery they can be capable when hunger drives them, may find these details set out in the pages of Josephus, the renegade Jewish historian.

It serves no good purpose and will not help our story to repeat them; indeed for the most part they are too terrible to be repeated.