The rebels managed to bribe the head of the city, who delivered the Jews into their hands. The Greeks [_Yevanim, i. e._ the Greek Orthodox Russians] surrounded them with drawn swords, and with daggers and spears, exclaiming: "Why do you believe in your God, who has no pity on His suffering people, and does not save it from our hands? Reject your God, and you shall be masters! But if you will cling to the faith of your fathers, you shall all perish in the same way as your brethren in the Ukraina, in Pokutye,[128] and Lithuania perished at our hands." Thereupon Rabbi Eliezer, our teacher, the president of the [rabbinical] court, exclaimed: "Brethren, remember the death of our fellow-Jews, who perished to sanctify the name of our God! Let us too stretch forth our necks to the sword of the enemy; look at me and act as I do!" Immediately thousands of Jews renounced their lives, despised this world, and hallowed the name of God. The Rosh-Yeshibah was the first to offer up his body as a burnt-offering. Young and old, boys and girls saw the tortures, sufferings, and wounds of the teacher, who did not cease exhorting them to accept martyrdom in the name of Him who had called into being the generations of mortals. As one man they all exclaimed: "Let us forgive one another our mutual insults. Let us offer up our souls to God and our bodies to the wild waves, to our enemies, the offspring of the Greeks!" When our enemies heard these words, they started a terrible butchery, killing their victims with spears in order that they might die slowly. Husbands, wives, and children fell in heaps. They did not even attain to burial, dogs and swine feeding on their dead bodies. In September, 1648, Khmelnitzki himself, marching at the head of a Cossack army, and accompanied by his Tatar allies, approached the walls of Lemberg, and began to besiege the capital of Red Russia, or Galicia. The Cossacks succeeded in storming and pillaging the suburbs, but they failed to penetrate to the fortified center of the town. Khmelnitzki proposed to the magistracy of Lemberg, that it deliver all the Jews and their property into the hands of the Cossacks, promising in this case to raise the siege. The magistracy replied that the Jews were under the jurisdiction of the king, and the town authorities had no right to dispose of them. Khmelnitzki thereupon agreed to withdraw, having obtained from the city an enormous ransom, the bulk of which had been contributed by the Jews.