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Title: Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume II - In the years 1769, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Author: Elgin, James Bruce, Earl of
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume II - In the years 1769, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773" ***
TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER THE
SOURCE OF THE NILE,
In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773.
IN FIVE VOLUMES.
BY JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, ESQ. F.R.S.
[Illustration]
VOL. II.
_Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_
_Multi, sed omnes illachrymabiles_
_Urgentur ignotique longâ_
_Nocte, carent quia vate sacro._
HORAT.
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY J. RUTHVEN,
FOR G. G. J. AND J. ROBINSON,
PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON.
M.DCC.XC.
CONTENTS
OF THE
SECOND VOLUME.
BOOK III.
ANNALS OF ABYSSINIA.
Translated from the Original.
CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF THE ABYSSINIANS, FROM
THE RESTORATION OF THE LINE OF SOLOMON TO THE
DEATH OF SOCINIOS, AND THE DOWNFALL OF THE ROMISH
RELIGION.
ICON AMLAC.
From 1268 to 1283.
_Line of Solomon restored under this Prince--He continues the Royal
Residence in Shoa--Tecla Haimanout dies--Reasons for the Fabrication
of the supposed Nicene Canon_, P. 1.
IGBA SION.
From 1283 to 1312.
_Quick Succession of Princes--Memoirs of these Reigns
deficient_, 4
AMDA SION.
From 1312 to 1342.
_Licentious beginning of this King’s Reign--His rigorous Conduct
with the Monks of Debra Libanos--His Mahometan Subjects Rebel--Mara
and Adel declare War--Are defeated in several
Battles, and submit_, 5
SAIF ARAAD.
From 1342 to 1370.
_This Prince enjoys a peaceable Reign--Protects the Patriarch of
Cophts at Cairo from the Persecution of the Soldan_, 60
WEDEM ASFERI.
From 1370 to 1380.
_Memoirs of this and the following Reign defective._ 62
DAVID II.
From 1380 to 1409. 63
THEODORUS.
From 1409 to 1412.
_Memoirs of this Reign, though held in great Esteem in Abyssinia,
defective, probably mutilated by the Ecclesiastics_, 64
ISAAC.
From 1412 to 1429.
_No Annals of this, nor the four following Reigns._ 65
ANDREAS I. OR AMDA SION. 66
TECLA MARIAM, OR HASEB NANYA.
From 1429 to 1433. 67
SARWE YASOUS. ib.
AMDA YASOUS. ib.
ZARA JACOB.
From 1434 to 1468.
_Sends Ambassadors from Jerusalem to the Council of
Florence--First Entry of the Roman Catholics into Abyssinia,
Religion--King persecutes the Remnants of Sabaism and
Idolatry--Mahometan Provinces rebel, and are subdued--The
King dies_, 68
BŒDA MARIAM.
From 1468 to 1478.
_Revives the Banishment of Princes to the Mountain--War with
Adel--Death of the King--Attempts by Portugal to discover
Abyssinia and the Indies_, 78
ISCANDER, OR, ALEXANDER.
From 1478 to 1495.
_Iscander declares War with Adel--Good Conduct of the
King--Betrayed and Murdered by Za Saluce_, 114
NAOD.
From 1495 to 1508.
_Wise Conduct of the King--Prepares for a War with the
Moors--Concludes an Honourable Peace with Adel_, 120
DAVID III.
From 1508 to 1540.
_David, an Infant, succeeds--Queen sends Matthew Ambassador to
Portugal--David takes the field--Defeat of the Moors--Arrival
of an Embassy from Portugal--Disastrous War with Adel_, 124
CLAUDIUS, OR ATZENAF SEGUED.
From 1540 to 1559.
_Prosperous Beginning of Claudius’s Reign--Christopher de Gama
lands in Abyssinia--Prevented by the Rainy Season from joining
the King--Battle of Ainal--Battle of Offalo--Christopher de Gama
Slain--Battle of Isaacs Bet--Moors defeated, and their General
Slain--Abyssinian Army defeated--Claudius Slain--Remarkable
Behaviour of Nur, Governor of Zeyla General of the
Moors_, 173
MENAS, OR ADAMAS SEGUED.
From 1559 to 1563.
_Baharnagash rebels, proclaims Tascar King--Defeated by the
King--Cedes Dobarwa to the Turks, and makes a League with the
of Masuab_, 206
SERTZA DENGHEL, OR MELEC SEGUED.
From 1563 to 1595.
_King crowned at Axum--Abyssinia invaded by the Galla--Account
of that People--The King defeats the Army of Adel--Beats the
Falasha, and kills their King--Battle of the Mareb--Basha slain,
and Turks expelled from Dobarwa--King is poisoned--Names Za
Denghel his Successor_, 214
ZA DENGHEL.
From 1595 to 1604.
_Za Denghel dethroned--Jacob a Minor succeeds--Za Denghel is
Restored--Banishes Jacob to Narea--Converted to the Romish
Religion--Battle of Bartcho, and Death of the King_, 238
JACOB.
From 1604 to 1605.
_Makes Proposals to Socinios, which are rejected--Takes the
Field--Bad Conduct and Defeat of Za Selasse--Battle of Debra
Zeit--Jacob defeated and Slain_, 252
SOCINIOS OR MELEC SEGUED.
From 1605 to 1632.
_Socinios embraces the Romish Religion--War with Sennaar--With
the Shepherds--Violent Conduct of the Romish Patriarch--Lasta
rebels--Defeated at Wainadega--Socinios restores the Alexandrian
Religion--Resigns his Crown to his Eldest Son_, 262
BOOK IV.
CONTINUATION OF THE ANNALS, FROM THE DEATH OF SOCINIOS,
TILL MY ARRIVAL IN ABYSSINIA.
FACILIDAS OR SULTAN SEGUED,
From 1632 to 1665.
_The Patriarch and Missionaries are Banished--Seek the
Protection of a Rebel--Delivered up to the King, and sent
_Claudius rebels--Sent to Wechné--Death and Character of
the King_, 401
HANNES I. OR ŒLAFESEGUED.
From 1665 to 1680.
_Bigotry of the King--Disgusts his Son Yasous, who flies
from Gondar_, 423
YASOUS I.
From 1680 to 1704.
_Brilliant Expedition of the King to Wechné--Various Campaigns
against the Agows and Galla--Comet appears--Expedition against
Zeegam and the Eastern Shangalla--Poncet’s Journey--Murat’s
Embassy--Du Roule’s Embassy--Du Roule murdered at Sennaar--The
King is assassinated_, 425
TECLA HAIMANOUT I.
From 1704 to 1706.
_Writes in Favour of Du Roule--Defeats the Rebels--Is
Assassinated while Hunting_, 517
TIFILIS.
From 1706 to 1709.
_Dissembles with his Brother’s Assassins--Execution of the
Regicides--Rebellion and Death of Tigi_, 533
OUSTAS.
From 1709 to 1714.
_Usurps the Crown--Addicted to Hunting--Account of the
Shangalla--Active and Bloody Reign--Entertains Catholic sick
and dies, but how, uncertain_, 538
DAVID IV.
From 1714 to 1719.
_Convocation of the Clergy--Catholic Priests executed--A Second
Convocation--Clergy insult the King--His severe Punishment--King
dies of Poison_, 577
BACUFFA.
From 1719 to 1729.
_Bloody Reign--Exterminates the Conspirators--Counterfeits
Death--Becomes very Popular_, 595
YASOUS II. OR, ADIAM SEGUED.
From 1729 to 1753.
_Rebellion in the Beginning of this Reign--King addicted to
hunting--To building, and the Arts of Peace--Attacks Sennaar--Loses
his Army--Takes Samayat--Receives Baady King of Sennaar under
his Protection_, 608
JOAS.
From 1753 to 1769.
_This Prince a favorer of the Galla his Relations--Great
dissentions on bringing them to Court--War of Begemder--Ras
Michael brought to Gondar--Defeats Ayo--Mariam Barea refuses to
be accessary to his Death--King favours Waragna Fasil--Battle of
Azazo--King Assassinated in his Palace_, 660
HANNES II.
1769.
_Hannes, Brother to Bacuffa, chosen King--Is brought from
Wechné--Crowned at Gondar--His horrid Behaviour--Refuses to
march against Fasil--Is poisoned by Order of Ras Michael_, 707
TECLA HAIMANOUT II.
1769.
_Succeeds his Father Hannes--His Character and prudent
Behaviour--Cultivates Michael’s Friendship--Marches willingly
against Fasil--Defeats him at Fagitta--Description of that
Battle_, 709
TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
BOOK III.
ANNALS OF ABYSSINIA,
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL:
CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF THE ABYSSINIANS, FROM THE
RESTORATION OF THE LINE OF SOLOMON TO THE DEATH OF
SOCINIOS, AND THE DOWNFALL OF THE ROMISH RELIGION.
[Illustration]
ICON AMLAC.
From 1268 to 1283.
_Line of Solomon restored under this Prince--He continues the
Royal Residence in Shoa--Tecla Haimanout dies--Reasons for the
Fabrication of the supposed Nicene Canon_.
Although the multiplicity of names assumed by the kings of Abyssinia,
and the confusion occasioned by this custom, has more than once been
complained of in the foregoing sheets, we have here a prince that is
an exception to this practice, otherwise almost general. Icon Amlac
is the only name by which we know this first prince of the race of
Solomon, restored now fully to his dominions, after a long exile his
family had suffered by the treason of Judith. The signification of his
name is, “Let him be made our sovereign,” and is apparently that which
he took upon his inauguration or accession to the throne; and his name
of baptism, and bye-name or popular name given him, are both therefore
lost.
Although now restored to the complete possession of his ancient
dominions, he was too wise all at once to leave his dutiful kingdom of
Shoa and return to Tigré. He continued to make Tegulat, the capital of
Shoa, his seat of the empire, and there reigned fifteen years.
In the 14th year of the reign of this prince, his great benefactor,
Abuna Tecla Haimanout, founder of the Order of Monks of Debra Libanos,
and restorer of the Royal family, died at that monastery in great
reputation and very advanced age. He was the last Abyssinian ordained
Abuna; and this sufficiently shews the date of that canon I have
already spoken of, falsely said to be a canon of the council of Nicea.
Though Le Grande and some others have pretended to be in doubt at what
time, and for what reason, this canon could have been made, I think
the reason very plain, which fixes it to the time of Tecla Haimanout,
as well as shews it to be a forgery of the church of Alexandria,
no doubt with the council and advice of this great statesman Tecla
Haimanout. Egypt was fallen under the dominion of the Saracens; the
Coptic patriarch, and all the Christians of the church of Alexandria,
were their slaves or servants; but the Abyssinians were free and
independent, both in church and state, and a mortal hatred had followed
the conquest from variety of causes, of which the persecution of the
Christians in Egypt was not one of the least. As it was probable that
these reasons would increase daily, the consequence which promised
inevitably to follow was, that the Abyssinians would not apply to
Alexandria, or Cairo, for a metropolitan sent by the Mahometans, but
would choose a head of their own, and so become independent altogether
of the chair of St Mark. As they were cut off from the rest of the
world by seas and deserts almost inaccessible, as they wanted books,
and were every day relaxing in discipline, total ignorance was likely
to follow their separation from their primitive church, and this could
not end but in a relapse into Paganism, or in their embracing the
religion of Mahomet.
This prohibition of making any of their countrymen Abuna, secured them
always a foreigner, and a man of foreign education and attachments, to
fill the place of Abuna, and by this means assured the dependence of
the Abyssinians upon the patriarch of Alexandria. This is what I judge
probable, for I have already invincibly shewn, that it is impossible
this canon could be one of the first general Council; and its being in
Arabic, and conceived in very barbarous terms, sufficiently evinces
that it was forged at this period.
[Illustration]
IGBA SION.
From 1283 to 1312.
_Quick Succession of Princes--Memoirs of these Reigns deficient._
To Icon Amlac succeeded Igba Sion, and after him five other princes,
his brothers, Bahar Segued, Tzenaf Segued, Jan Segued, Haseb Araad,
and Kedem Segued, all in five years. So quick a succession in so few
years seems to mark very unsettled times. Whether it was a civil war
among themselves that brought these reigns to so speedy a conclusion,
or whether it was that the Moorish states in Adel had grown in power,
and sought successfully against them, we do not know. One thing only
we are certain of, that no molestation was offered by the late royal
family of Lasta, who continued in peace, and firm in the observation
of their treaty. I therefore am inclined to think, that a civil war
among the brothers was the occasion of the quick succession of so many
princes; and that in the time when the kingdom was weakened by this
calamity, the states of Adel, grown rich and powerful, had improved
the occasion, and seized upon all that territory from Azab to Melinda,
and cut off the Abyssinians entirely from the sea-coast, and from an
opportunity of trading directly with India from the ports situated upon
the ocean. And my reason is, that, in a reign which speedily follows,
we find the kingdom of Adel increased greatly in power, and Moorish
princes from Arabia established in little principalities, exactly
corresponding with the southern limits of Abyssinia, and placed between
them and the ocean; and we see, at the same time, a rancour and hatred
firmly rooted in the breasts of both nations, one of the causes of
which is constantly alledged by the Abyssinian princes to be, that the
Moors of Adel were anciently their subjects and vassals, had withdrawn
themselves from their allegiance, and owed their present independence
to rebellion only.
To these princes succeeded Wedem Araad, their youngest brother, who
reigned fifteen years, probably in peace, for in this state we find the
kingdom in the days of his successor; but then it is such a peace that
we see it only wanted any sort of provocation from one party to the
other, for both to break out into very cruel, long, and bloody wars.
[Illustration]
AMDA SION.
From 1312 to 1342.
_Licentious beginning of this King’s Reign--His rigorous
Conduct with the Monks of Debra Libanos--His Mahometan Subjects
rebel--Mara and Adel declare War--Are defeated in several
Battles, and submit._
Amda Sion succeeded his father, Wedem Araad, who was youngest brother
of Icon Amlac, and came to the crown upon the death of his uncles.
He is generally known by this his inauguration name; his Christian
name was Guebra Mascal. His reign began with a scene as disgraceful
to the name of Christian as it was new in the annals of Ethiopia,
and which promised a character very different from what this prince
preserved ever afterwards. He had for a time, it seems, privately loved
a concubine of his father, but had now taken her to live with him
publicly; and, not content with committing this sort of incest, he, in
a very little time after, had seduced his two sisters.
Tegulat[1] (the capital of Shoa) was then the royal residence; and
near it the monastery of Debra Libanos, founded by Tecla Haimanout
restorer of the line of Solomon. To this monastery many men, eminent
for learning and religion, had retired from the scenes of war that
desolated Palestine and Egypt. Among the number of these was one
Honorius, a Monk of the first character for piety, who, since, has been
canonized as a saint. Honorius thought it his duty first to admonish,
and then publicly excommunicate the king for these crimes.
It should seem that patience was as little among this prince’s virtues
as chastity, as he immediately ordered Honorius to be apprehended,
stripped naked, and severely whipped through every street of his
capital. That same night the town took fire, and was entirely consumed,
and the clergy lost no time to persuade the people, that it was the
blood of Honorius that turned to fire whenever it had dropt upon the
ground, and so had burnt the city. The king, perhaps better informed,
thought otherwise of this, and supposed the burning of his capital was
owing to the Monks themselves. He therefore banished those of Debra
Libanos out of the province of Shoa. The mountain of Geshen had been
chosen for the prison wherein to guard the princes of the male-line of
the race of Solomon, after the massacre by Esther[2], upon the rock
Damo in Tigré.
Geshen is a very steep and high rock, in the kingdom of Amhara,
adjoining to, and under the jurisdiction of Shoa. Hither the king
sent Philip the Itchegué, chief of the monastery of Debra Libanos,
and he scattered the rest through Dembea, Tigré, and Begemder, (whose
inhabitants were mostly Pagans and Jews), where they greatly propagated
the knowledge of the Christian religion.
This instance of severity in the king had the effect to make all ranks
of people return to their duty; and all talk of Honorius and his
miracles was dropt. The town was rebuilt speedily, more magnificently
than ever, and Amda Sion found time to turn his thoughts to correct
those abuses, to efface the unfavourable impression which they had made
upon the minds of his people at home, and which, besides, had gained
considerable ground abroad.
It has been before mentioned, and will be further inculcated in the
course of this history as a fact, without the remembrance of which
the military expeditions of Abyssinia cannot be well understood, that
two opposite seasons prevail in countries separated by a line almost
imperceptible; that during our European winter months, that is, from
October to March, the winter or rainy season prevails on the coast of
the ocean and Red Sea, but that these rains do not fall in our summer,
(the rainy season in Abyssinia), which was the reason why Amda Sion
said to his mutinous troops, he would lead them to Adel or Aussa, where
it did not rain, as we shall presently observe.
The different nations that dwell along the coast, both of the Red Sea
and of the ocean, live in fixed huts or houses. We shall begin at the
northmost, or nearest Atbara. The first is Ageeg, so named from a small
island on the coast, opposite to the mountains of the Habab, Agag, or
Agaazi, the principal district of the noble or governing Shepherds,
as is before fully explained, different in colour and hair from the
Shepherds of the Thebaid living to the northward. Then follow the
different tribes of these, Tora, Shiho, Taltal, Azimo, and Azabo, where
the Red Sea turns eastward, towards the Straits, all woolly-headed,
the primitive carriers of Saba, and the perfume and gold country. Then
various nations inhabit along the ocean, all native blacks, remnants of
the Cushite Troglodyte, but who do not change their habitations with
the seasons, but live within land in caves, and some of them now in
houses.
In Adel and Aussa the inhabitants are tawny, and not black, and have
long hair; they are called Gibbertis, which some French writers of
voyages into this country say, mean Slaves, from Guebra, the Abyssinian
word for slave or servant. But as it would be very particular that a
nation like these, so rich and so powerful, who have made themselves
independent of their ancient masters the Abyssinians, have wrested so
many provinces from them, and, from the difference of their faith, hold
them in such utter contempt, should nevertheless be content to call
themselves their slaves, so nothing is more true, than that this name
of Gibberti has a very different import. Jabber, in Arabic, the word
from which it is derived, signifies the _faith_, or the _true faith_;
and Gibberti consequently means the _faithful_, or the _orthodox_,
by which name of _honour_ these moors, inhabiting the low country of
Abyssinia, call each other, as being constant in their faith amidst
Christians with whom they are at perpetual war.
There is no current coin in Abyssinia. Gold is paid by weight; all
the revenues are chiefly paid in kind, viz. oxen, sheep, and honey,
which are the greatest necessaries of life. As for luxuries, they are
obtained by a barter of gold, myrrh, coffee, elephants teeth, and a
variety of other articles which are carried over to Arabia; and in
exchange for these is brought back whatever is commissioned.
Every great man in Abyssinia has one of these Gibbertis for his
factor. The king has many, who are commonly the shrewdest and most
intelligent of their profession. These were the first inhabitants of
Abyssinia, whom commerce connected with the Arabians on the other side
of the Straits of Babelmandeb, with whom they intermarry, or with one
another, which preserves their colour and features, resembling both
the Abyssinians and Arabians. In Arabia, they are under the protection
of some of their own countrymen, who being sold when young as slaves,
are brought up in the Mahometan religion, and enjoy all the principal
posts under the Sherriffe of Mecca and the Arabian princes. These are
the people who at particular times have appeared in Europe, and who
have been straightway taken for, and treated as Ambassadors.
More southward and westward are the kingdoms of Mara, Worgla, and
Pagoma, small principalities of fixed habitations by the sea, at times
free, at others dependent upon Adel; and, to the south of these, in the
same flat country, is Hadea, whose capital is Harar, and governed by a
prince, who is a Gibberti likewise; and who, by marrying a Sherriffa,
or female descendant of Mahomet, is now reckoned a Sherriffe or noble
of Mahomet’s family, distinguished by his wearing habits, for the most
part green, and above all a grass-green turban, a mark of hatred to
Christianity.
The Gibbertis, then, are the princes and merchants of this country,
converted to the Mahometan faith soon after the death of Mahomet, when
the Baharnagash (as we have already stated) revolted from the empire
of the Abyssinians, in whose hands all the riches of the country are
centered. The black inhabitants are only their subjects, hewers of wood
and drawers of water, who serve them in their families at home, take
care of their camels when employed in caravans abroad, and who make the
principal part of their forces in the field.
But there are other inhabitants still besides these Gibbertis and
native blacks, whom we must not confound with the indigenous of this
country, how much soever they may resemble them. The first of these are
by the Portuguese historians called _Moors_, who are merchants from
the west of Africa. Many of these, expelled from Spain by Ferdinand
and Isabella, fixed their residence here, and were afterwards joined
by others of their Moorish brethren, either exiles from Spain, or
inhabitants of Morocco, whom the desire of commerce induced first to
settle in Arabia, till the great oppressions that followed the conquest
of Egypt and Arabia, under Selim and Soliman, interrupted their
trade, and scattered them here along the coast. These are the Moors
that Vasques de Gama[3] met at Mombaza, Magadoxa, and Melinda; at all
places, but the last of which, they endeavoured to betray him. These
also were the Moors that he found in India, having no profession but
trade, in every species of which they excelled.
The fourth sort are Arabian merchants, who come over occasionally to
recover their debts, and renew correspondences with the merchants of
this country. These are the richest of all, and are the bankers of the
Gibbertis, who furnish them funds and merchandise, with which they
carry on a most lucrative and extensive trade into the heart of Africa,
through all the mountains of Abyssinia to the western sea, and through
countries which are inaccessible to camels, where the ass, the mule,
and, in some places, oxen, are the only beasts used in carriage.
There is a fifth sort, almost below notice, unless it is for the
mischief they have constantly done their country; they are the
Abyssinian apostates from Christianity, the most inveterate enemies it
has, and who are employed chiefly as soldiers. While in that country
they are not much esteemed, though, when transported to India, they
have constantly turned out men of confidence and trust, and the best
troops those eastern nations have.
There is a sixth, still less in number than even these, and not
known on this Continent till a few years before. These were the
Turks who came from Greece and Syria, and who were under Selim, and
Soliman his son, the instruments of the conquest of Egypt and Arabia;
small garrisons of whom were everywhere left by the Turks in all
the fortresses and considerable towns they conquered. They are an
hereditary kind of militia, who, marrying each other’s daughters,
or with the women of the country, continue from father to son to
receive from Constantinople the same pay their forefathers had from
Selim. These, though degenerate in figure and manners into an exact
resemblance to the natives of the countries in which they since lived,
do still continue to maintain their superiority by a constant skill
and attention to fire-arms, which were, at the time of their first
appearance here, little known or in use among either Abyssinians or
Arabians, and the means of first establishing this preference.
It has been already observed, that the Mahometan Moors and Arabs
possessed all the low country on the Indian Ocean, and opposite to
Arabia Felix; and being, by their religion, obliged to go in pilgrimage
to Mecca, as also by their sole profession, which was trade, they
became, by consequence, the only carriers and directors of the commerce
of Abyssinia. All the country to the east and north of Shoa was
possessed and commanded chiefly by Mahometan merchants appointed by
the king; and they had established a variety of marts or fairs from
Ifat, all the way as far as Adel.
Adel and Mara were two of the most powerful kingdoms which lie on the
Indian Ocean; and, being constantly supported by soldiers from Arabia,
were the first to withdraw themselves from obedience to the king of
Abyssinia, and seldom paid their tribute unless when the prince came
to raise it there with an army. Ifat, Fatigar, and Dawaro, were indeed
originally Christian provinces; but, in weak reigns, having been ceded
to Moorish governors, for sums of money, they, by degrees, renounced
both their religion and allegiance.
From what has been observed, the reader will conceive, that where it
is said the king, from his capital in Shoa, marched down into Dawaro,
Hadea, or Adel, that he then descended from the highest mountains down
to the flat country on the level with the sea. That this country, from
Hadea to Dawaro, having been the seat of war for ages, was, partly
by the soldier for the use of the camp, partly by the husbandman
for the necessaries of life, cleared of wood, where the water stood
constantly in pools throughout the year; and, being all composed of
fat black earth, which the torrents bring down from the rainy country
of Abyssinia, was sown with millet and different kinds of grain in the
driest ground, while, nearer the mountains, they pastured numerous
herds of cattle. Notwithstanding, however, the country was possessed
of these advantages, the climate was intensely hot, feverish, and
unhealthy, and, for the most part, from these circumstances, fatal to
strangers, and hated by the Abyssinians.
Again, when it is said that the king had marched to Samhar, it is meant
that he had passed this fruitful country, and is come to that part of
the zone, or belt, (nearest the sea) composed of gravel; which, though
it enjoys neither the water nor the fruitfulness of the black earth,
is in a great measure free from its attendant diseases, and here the
cities and towns are placed, while the crop, oxen, and cattle, are in
the cultivated part near the mountains, which in the language of the
country is called _Mazaga_, signifying _black mould_.
Lastly, when he hears the army murmuring at being kept during the
rainy season in the Kolla below, he is to remember, that all was
cool, pleasant, and safe in Upper Abyssinia. The soldiers, therefore,
languished for the enjoyment of their own families, without any other
occupation but merriment, festivity, and every species of gratification
that wine, and the free and uncontrouled society of the female-sex,
could produce.
Having now sufficiently explained and described the various names and
inhabitants, the situation, soil, and climate of those provinces about
to be the theatre of the war, I shall proceed to declare the occasion
of it, which was nothing more than the fruit of those prejudices which,
I have already said, the loose behaviour of the king in the beginning
of his reign had produced among his neighbours, and the calamities
which had enfeebled the kingdom in the preceding reigns.
It happened that one of those Moorish factors, whom I have already
described, having in charge the commercial interests of the king,
had been assassinated and robbed in the province of Ifat, when the
King was busied with Honorius and his Monks. Without complaining or
expostulating, he suddenly assembled his troops, having ordered them to
rendezvous at Shugura upon the frontiers, and, to shew his impatience
for revenge, with seven[4] horsemen he fell upon the nearest Mahometan
settlements, who were perfectly secure, and put all he found in his way
to the sword without exception. Then placing himself at the head of his
army, he marched, by a long day’s journey, straight to Ifat, burning
Hungura, Jadai, Kubat, Fadise, Calise, and Argai, towns that lye in
the way, full of all sorts of valuable merchandise, and, finding no
where a force assembled to oppose him, he divided his army into small
detachments, sending them different ways, with orders to lay the whole
countries, where they came, waste with fire and sword, while he himself
remained in the camp to guard the spoil, the women, and the baggage.
The Moors, astonished at this torrent of desolation, which so suddenly
had broken out under a prince whom they had considered as immersed
in pleasure, flew all to arms; and being informed that the king was
alone, and scarcely had soldiers to guard his camp, they assembled
in numbers under the command of Hak-eddin, governor of Ifat, who had
before plundered and murdered the king’s servant. They then determined
to attack Amda Sion early in the morning, but luckily two of his
detachments had returned to the camp to his assistance, and joined him
the very night before.
It was scarcely day when the Moors presented themselves; but, far from
surprising the Abyssinians buried in sleep, they found the king with
his army ranged in battle, who, without giving them time to recover
from their surprise, attacked them in person with great fury; and
singling out Derdar, brother to Hak-eddin, animating his men before
the ranks, he struck him so violently with his lance that he fell
dead among his horse’s feet, in the sight of both armies; whilst the
Abyssinian troops pressing every where briskly forward, the Moors took
to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter into the woods and
fastnesses.
After this victory, the king ordered his troops to build huts for
themselves, at least such as could not find houses ready built. He
ordered, likewise, a great tract of land contiguous to be plowed and
sown, meaning to intimate, that his intention was to stay there with
his army all the rainy season.
The Mahometans, from this measure, if it should be carried into
execution, saw nothing but total extirpation before their eyes;
they, therefore, with one consent, submitted to the tribute imposed
upon them; and the king having removed Hak-eddin, placed his brother
Saber-eddin in his stead, and the rainy season being now begun,
dismissed his army, and returned to Tegulat in Shoa.
Though the personal gallantry of the king was a quality sufficient of
itself to make him a favourite of the soldiers, his liberality was not
less; all the plunder got by his troops in the field was faithfully
divided among those who had fought for him; nor did he ever pretend to
a share himself, unless on occasions when he was engaged in person,
and then he shared upon an equal footing with the principal officers.
When returned to the capital, he shewed the same disinterestedness and
generosity which he had done in the field, and he distributed all he
had won for his share among the great men, whom the necessary duties
of government had obliged to remain at home, as also amongst the poor,
and priests for the maintenance of churches; and, as well by this, as
by his zeal and activity against the enemies of Christianity, he became
the greatest favourite of all ranks of the clergy, notwithstanding the
unpromising appearances at the beginning of his reign.
The rainy season in Abyssinia generally puts an end to the active part
of war, as every one retires then to towns and villages to screen
themselves from the inclemency of the climate, deluged now with daily
rain. The soldier, the husbandman, and, above all, the women, dedicate
this season to continued festivity and riot. These villages and
towns are always placed upon the highest mountains. The valleys that
intervene are soon divided by large and rapid torrents. Every hollow
foot-path becomes a stream, and the valleys between the hills become
so miry as not to bear horse; and the waters, both deep and violent,
are too apt to shift their direction to suffer any one on foot to
pass safely. All this season, and this alone, people sleep in their
houses in safety; their lances and shields are hung up on the sides of
their hall, and their saddles and bridles taken off their horses; for
in Abyssinia, at other times, the horses are always bridled, and are
accustomed to eat and drink with this incumbrance. It is not, indeed,
the same sort of bridle they use in the field, but a small bit of iron
like our hunting-bridles, on purpose merely to preserve them in this
habit. The court, and the principal officers of government, retire to
the capital, and there administer justice, make alliances, and prepare
the necessary funds and armaments, which the present exigencies of the
state require on the return of fair weather.
Amda Sion was no sooner returned to Tegulat, than the Moors again
entered into a conspiracy against him. The principal were Amano king
of Hadea, Saber-eddin, whom the king had made governor of Fatigar,
and privately, without any open declaration, Gimmel-eddin governor in
Dawaro. But this conspiracy could not be hid from a prince of Amda
Sion’s vigilance and penetration. He concealed, however, any knowledge
of the matter, lest it should urge the Moors to commence hostilities
too early. He continued, therefore, with diligence, and without
ostentation of any particular design, to make the ordinary preparations
to take the field on the approaching season. This, however, did not
impose upon the enemy. Whether from intelligence, or impatience of
being longer inactive, Saber-eddin began the first hostilities, by
surprising some Christian villages, and plundering and setting fire to
the churches before the rains had yet entirely ceased.
Those that have written accounts of Abyssinia seem to agree in
extolling the people of that country for giving no belief to the
existence or reality of witchcraft or sorcery. Why they have fixed on
this particular nation is hard to determine. But, as for me, I have no
doubt in asserting, that there is not a barbarous or ignorant people
that I ever knew of which this can be truly said; but certainly it
never was less true than when said of Abyssinians. There is scarce a
monk in any lonely monastery, (such as those in the hot and unwholesome
valley of Waldubba), not a hermit of the many upon the mountains, not
an old priest who has lived any time sequestered from society, that
does not pretend to possess charms offensive and defensive, and several
methods by which he can, at will, look into futurity. The Moors are
all, to a man, persuaded of this: their arms and necks are loaded with
amulets against witchcraft. Their women are believed to have all the
mischievous powers of fascination; and both sexes a hundred secrets of
divination. The Falasha are addicted to this in still a greater degree,
if possible. It is always believed by every individual Abyssinian,
that the number of hyænas the smell of carrion brings into the city of
Gondar every night, are the Falasha from the neighbouring mountains,
transformed by the effect and for the purposes of inchantment. Even the
Galla, a barbarous and stranger nation, hostile to the Abyssinians, and
differing in language and religion, still agree with them in a hearty
belief of the possibility of practising witchcraft, so as to occasion
sickness and death at a very great distance, to blast the harvests,
poison the waters, and render people incapable of propagating their
species.
Amano, king of Hadea, had one of these conjurers, who, by his knowledge
of futurity, was famous among all the Mahometans of the low country.
The king of Hadea himself had gone no further than to determine to
rebel; but whether he was to go up to fight with Amda Sion in Shoa, or
whether greater success would attend his expecting him in Hadea, this
was thought a doubt wholly within the province of the conjurer, who
assured Amano, his master, that if he did remain below, and wait for
Amda Sion, in Hadea, that prince would come down to him, and in one
battle lose his kingdom and his life.
The king, whose principal view was to prevent the conjunction of the
confederates, and, if possible, to fight them separately, did not stay
till his whole army was assembled, but, as soon as he got together a
body of troops sufficient to make head against any one of the rebels,
he sent that body immediately on the service it was destined for, in
order to disappoint the general combination.
A large number of horse and foot (whose post was in the van of the
royal army when the king marched at the head of it) was the first
ready, and, without delay, was sent against Amano into Hadea, under
the command of the general of the cavalry. This officer executed the
service on which he was sent with the greatest diligence possible,
having the best horses, and strongest and most active men in the army;
by long marches, he came upon the king of Hadea, surprised him before
his troops were all assembled, gave him an entire defeat, and made him
prisoner. However ill the conjurer had provided for the king’s safety,
he seems to have been more attentive to his own; great search was made
for him by order of Amda Sion, but he was not to be found, having very
early, upon the first sight of the king’s troops, fled and hid himself
in Ifat.
The next detachment was sent against Saber-eddin in Fatigar. The
governor of Amhara commanded this, with orders to lay the whole
country waste, and by all means provoke Saber-eddin to risk a battle,
either before or after the junction of the troops which were to march
thither from Hadea. But when the king was thus busy with the Moors,
news were brought him that the Falasha had rebelled, and were in arms,
in very great numbers. The king ordered Tzaga Christos, governor of
Begemder, to assemble his troops with those of Gondar, Sacalta, and
Damot, and march against these rebels before they had time to ruin the
country; and having thus made provision against all his enemies, Amda
Sion proceeded with the remainder of his army to Dawaro.
Hydar was governor in this province for the king, who, though he shewed
outwardly every appearance of duty and fidelity, was, notwithstanding,
deep in the conspiracy with Saber-eddin, and had close correspondence
with the king of Adel, whose capital, Aussa, was not at a great
distance from him.
The king kept his Easter at Gaza, immediately upon the verge of the
desert; and, being willing to accustom his troops to action and
hardship, he left his tents and baggage behind with the army; and,
secretly taking with him but twenty-six horsemen, he made an incursion
upon Samhar, destroying all before him, and staying all night, tho’ he
had no provisions, in the middle of his enemies, without so much as
lying down to sleep, slacking his belt, or taking off any part of his
armour.
The king was no sooner gone than the army missed him, and was all in
the greatest uproar. But, having finished his expedition, he joined
them in the morning, and encamped again with them. On his arrival, he
found waiting for him a messenger from Tzaga Christos, with accounts
that he had fought successfully with the Falasha, entirely defeated
them, slain many, and forced the rest to hide themselves in their
inaccessible mountains. Immediately after this intelligence, Tzaga
Christos, with his victorious army, joined the king also.
These good tidings were followed by others equally prosperous from
Hadea and Fatigar. They were, that the king’s army in those parts had
forced Saber-eddin to a battle, and beaten him, taken and plundered his
house, and brought his wife and children prisoners; and that the troops
had found that country full of merchandise and riches of all kinds;
that they were already laden and incumbered with the quantity to such a
degree, that they were all speaking of disbanding and retiring to their
houses with riches sufficient for the rest of their lives, although a
great part of the country remained as yet untouched, and, therefore,
it was requested of the king in all diligence to enter it on his side
also, and march southward till both armies met. Immediately upon this
message, the king, having refreshed his troops, and informed them of
the good prospects that were before them, decamped with his whole army,
and entered the province of Ifat.
When Saber-eddin saw the king’s forces were joined, that he had
no allies, and that it was, in the situation of his army, equally
dangerous to stay or to fly, he took a resolution of submitting himself
to the king’s mercy; but, first, he endeavoured to soften his anger,
and obtain some assurances through the mediation of the queen. The
king, however, having publicly reproved the queen for offering to
intermeddle in such matters, and growing more violent and inflexible
upon this application, there remained no alternative but that of
surrendering himself at discretion. Whereupon Saber-eddin threw himself
at the king’s feet. The soldiers and by-standers, far from being moved
at such a sight, with one voice earnestly besought the king, that the
murderer of so many priests, and the profaner and destroyer of so many
Christian churches, should instantly meet the death his crimes had
merited. The king, however, whose mercy seems to have been equal to his
bravery, after having reproved him with great asperity, and upbraided
him with his cruelty, presumption, and ingratitude, ordered him only to
be put in irons, and committed to a close prison. At the same time, he
displaced Hydar, governor of the province of Dawaro, of whose treason
he had been long informed; and he invested Gimmel-eddin, Saber-eddin’s
brother, with the government of the Mahometan provinces, who, as he
pretended, had not been present at the beginning of the war, but had
preserved his allegiance to the king, and dissuaded his brother from
the rebellion.
While the king was thus settling the government of the rebellious
provinces, he received intelligence that the kings of Adel and Mara had
resolved to march after him into Shoa when he returned, and give him
battle.
At this time the king was encamped on the river Hawash, at the head
of the whole army, now united. This news of the hostile intentions of
the kings of Adel and Mara, so exasperated him, that he determined
to enlarge his scheme of vengeance beyond the limits he had first
prescribed to it. With this view, he called the principal officers
of his army together, while he himself stood upon an eminence, the
soldiers surrounding him on all sides. Near him, on the same eminence,
was a monk, noted for his holiness, in the habit in which he celebrated
divine service. The king, in a long speech pronounced with unusual
vehemence, described the many offences committed against him by the
Mahometan states on the coast. The ringleaders of these commotions,
he declared, were the kings of Adel and Mara. He enumerated various
instances of cruelty, of murder, and sacrilege, of which they had been
guilty; the number of priests that they had slain, the churches that
they had burned, and the Christian women and children that they had
carried into slavery, which was now become a commerce, and a great
motive of war. They, and they only, had stirred up his Mahometan
subjects to infest the frontiers both in peace and war. He said, that,
considering the immense booty which had been taken, it might seem that
avarice was the motive of his being now in arms, but this, for his
own part, he totally disclaimed. He neither had nor would apply the
smallest portion of the plunder to his own use, but considered it as
unlawful, as being purchased with the blood and liberty of his subjects
and brethren, the meanest of whom he valued more than the blood and
riches of all the infidels in Adel. He, therefore, called them together
to be witnesses that he dedicated himself a soldier to Jesus Christ;
and he did now swear upon the holy eucharist, that, though but twenty
of his army should join with him, he would not turn his back upon Adel
or Mara, till he had either forced them to tribute and submission, or
extirpated them, and annihilated their religion.
He then entered the tent-door, and took the sacrament from the hands
of the monk, in presence of the whole army. All the principal officers
did the same, and every individual of the army, with repeated shouts,
declared, that they acceded to, and were bound by, the oath the king
then had made. A violent fury spread in this instant through the whole
army; they considered that part of the king’s speech as a reproach,
which mentioned the spoils they had taken to have been bought by the
blood of Christians, their brethren. Every hand laid hold of a torch,
and, whether the plunder was his own or his fellow-soldiers, each
man set fire, without interruption, to the merchandise that was next
him. The whole riches of Ifat and Hadea, Fatigar and Dawaro, were
consumed in an instant by these fanatics, who, satisfied now that they
were purged from the impurity which the king had attributed to their
plunder, returned poor to their standards, but convinced in their own
conscience of having now, by their sacrament and expiation, become the
soldiers of Christ, they thirsted no longer after any thing but the
blood of the inhabitants of Adel and Mara.
Soon after, Amda Sion heard that the Moors had attacked his army in
Ifat two several nights, and that his troops had suffered greatly, and
with difficulty been able to maintain themselves in their camp. The
king was then upon his march when he heard these disagreeable news; he
hastened, therefore, immediately to their relief, and encamped at night
in an advantageous post, short of his main army, with a view of taking
advantage of this situation, if the Moors, as he expected, renewed
their attack that night for the third time.
The Abyssinians, to a man, are fearful of the night, unwilling to
travel, and, above all, to fight in that season, when they imagine
the world is in possession of certain genii, averse to intercourse
with men, and very vindictive, if even by accident they are ruffled or
put out of their way by their interference. This, indeed, is carried
to so great a height, that no man will venture to throw water out
of a bason upon the ground, for fear that, in ever so small a space
the water should have to fall, the dignity of some elf, or fairy,
might be violated. The Moors have none of these apprehensions, and
are accustomed in the way of trade to travel at all hours, sometimes
from necessity, but often from choice, to avoid the heat. They laugh,
moreover, at the superstitions of the Abyssinians, and not unfrequently
avail themselves of them. A verse of the Koran, sewed up in leather,
and tied round their neck or their arms, secures them from all
these incorporeal enemies; and, from this known advantage, if other
circumstances are favourable, they never fail to fight the Abyssinians
at or before the dawn of the morning, for in this country there is no
twilight.
The Moors did not, in this instance, disappoint the king’s expectation;
as they, with all possible secrecy, marched to the attack of the camp,
while the king, having refreshed his troops, put himself in motion
to intercept them; and they were now arrived, and engaged in several
places with very great vigour. The camp was in apparent danger, though
vigorously defended. At this moment the king, with his fresh troops,
fell violently upon their rear; and, it being known to the Moors that
this was the king, they withdrew their army with all possible speed,
carrying with them a very considerable booty.
The success which had followed these night expeditions, above all,
the small loss that had attended the pursuit, even after they were
defeated, from the perfect knowledge they had of the country, inspired
them with a resolution to avoid pitched battles, but to distress and
harrass the king’s army every night. They accordingly brought their
camp nearer than usual to the king’s quarters. This began to be felt by
the army, which was prevented from foraging at a great distance; but
provisions could not be dispensed with. The king, therefore, detached
a large body of horse and foot that had not been engaged or fatigued.
The greatest part of the foot he ordered to return with the cattle
they should have taken, but the horse, with each a foot-soldier behind
him, he directed to take post in a wood near a pool of water, where
the Moorish troops, after an assault in the night, retired, and took
refreshments and sleep by the time the sun began to be hot. The Moors
again appeared in the night, attacked the camp in several places, and
alarmed the whole army; but, by the bravery and vigour of the king, who
every where animated his troops by his own example, they were obliged
to retreat a little before morning, more fatigued, and more roughly
handled, than they had hitherto been in any such expedition.
The king, as if equally tired, followed them no further than the
precincts of his camp; and the Moors, scarcely comforted by this
forbearance after so great a loss, retreated to receive succour of
fresh troops as usual, and enjoy their repose in the neighbourhood of
shade and water. They had, however, scarce thrown aside their arms,
disposed of their wounded in proper places, and begun to assuage their
thirst after the toils of the assault, when the Abyssinian horse,
breaking through the covert, came swiftly upon them, unable either to
fight or to fly, and the whole body of them was cut to pieces without
one man escaping.
The king, upon return of his troops, began to consider, and, by
combining various circumstances in his mind, to suspect strongly, that,
from the Moors attacking him, as they had for some time lately done,
always in the most unfavourable circumstances, there must be some
intelligence between his camp and that of the enemy. Upon examining
more particularly into the grounds of this suspicion, three men of
Harar (who had long attended the army as spies) were discovered, and
being convicted, were carried out, and their heads cut off at the
entrance of the camp; after which the king, who now found himself
without an enemy in these parts, struck his tents, and returned to Gaza
in Dawaro.
This movement of Amda Sion’s had more the appearance of opening a
campaign than the closing of one, and occasioned great discontent among
the soldiers, who had done their business, and were without an enemy,
just at that time that the rains fall so heavy, and the country becomes
so unwholesome as to make it unadvisable to keep the field. They,
therefore, remonstrated by their officers to the king, that they must
return to their houses for the several months of winter which were to
follow; and that, after the fatigues, dangers, and hardships they had
undergone for so many months, to persist in staying longer at such a
season in this country was equal to the condemning them to death.
Gimmel-eddin, moreover, the new-appointed governor, insisted with
Amda Sion, that he was able enough himself to keep all the tributary
provinces in peace, and true allegiance to the king; but if, on the
contrary, the king chose to eat them up with a large army living
constantly among them, as well as upon every pretence laying them
waste with the sword in the manner he was now doing, he could not be
answerable for, nor did he believe they would be able to pay him,
the tribute he expected from them. But the king, who saw the motives
both of his officers and of the Moorish governor, continued firm in
his resolutions. He sharply reproved both Gimmel-eddin and his army
for their want of discipline, and desire of idleness, and ordered the
officers to acquaint their men, that, if they were afraid of rains,
he would carry them to _Adel_, where there were _none_; that, for his
part, he made a resolution, which he would keep most steadily, never
to leave his camp and the field while there was one village in his own
dominions that did not acknowledge him for its sovereign.
Accordingly on the 13th day of June 1316, immediately after this
declaration, he struck his tents, and marched into Samhar, to
disappoint, if possible, the confederacy that some of the principal
Moorish states had entered into against him, which were agreed, one by
one, to harrass his camp by night, and, after having obliged him to
retreat to Shoa in disorder, to give him battle there before he had
time to refresh his troops. The authors of this conspiracy were seven
in number, Adel, Mara, Tico, Agwama, Bakla[5], Murgar, and Gabula,
and they had already collected a considerable army. The king, who saw
they persisted in their nightly attacks, rode out, thinly accompanied,
to choose a post for an encampment that was to give him the greatest
advantage over his enemy; and, whilst thus occupied, he was suddenly
surrounded by a body of troops of Adel lying in ambush for him. A
soldier (in appearance an Abyssinian) came so close to the king as to
strike him with his sword on the back with such violence that it cut
his belt in two, and, having wounded him thro’ his armour, was ready to
repeat the blow, when the king pierced him through the forehead with
his lance, upon which his party fled.
But the Moors, for five successive nights, did not fail in their
attempts upon his camp, which wearied and greatly contributed to
discontent his men; and the more so, because the enemy declined coming
to any general engagement, though the king frequently offered it to
them. Amda Sion, therefore, decamped the 28th of June, and, leaving
this disadvantageous station, advanced a day’s march nearer Mara,
pointing, as it were, to the very center of that kingdom. But here,
again, he was stopt by the discontent of his soldiers, who absolutely
refused to go farther, or spend the whole season in arms, in this
inclement climate, while the rest of his subjects, in full enjoyment of
health and plenty, were rioting at home.
This disposition of his army was no sooner known to the king than he
called the principal of them together, and, planting himself on a
rising ground, he began to harangue his soldiers with so much eloquence
and force of reasoning, that they who before had only learned to
admire their king as a soldier, were obliged to confess that, as an
orator, he as much excelled every man in his state, as he did the
lowest man of his kingdom in dignity. He put his soldiers in mind,
“that this was not a common expedition, like those of his predecessors,
marching through the country for the purpose of levying their revenue;
that the intention of the present war was to avenge the blood of so
many innocent Christians slain in security and full peace, from no
provocation but hatred of their religion: that they were instruments
in the hand of God to revenge the death of so many priests and monks
who had been wantonly offered as sacrifices upon their own altars: that
they were not a common army, but one confederated upon oath, having
sworn upon the sacrament, at the passage of the river Hawash, that they
would not return into Abyssinia till they had beat down and ruined the
strength of the Mahometans in those kingdoms; so that now, when every
thing had succeeded to their wishes, when every Mahometan army had
been defeated as soon as it presented itself, and the whole country
lay open to the chastisements they pleased to inflict, to talk of a
retreat or forbearance was to make a mockery at once of their oath, and
the motive of their expedition. He shewed, by invincible reasonings,
the great hardships and danger that would attend his retreat through a
country already wasted and unable to maintain his army; what an alarm
it would occasion in Shoa, to find him returning with an enemy at his
heels, following him to his very capital; that such, however, must be
the consequence; for it was plain, that, though the enemy declined
fighting, yet there was no possibility of hindering them from following
him so near as to give his retreat every appearance of flight, and to
bring an expedition, begun with success, to an ignominious and a fatal
end.
“He upbraided them with his own example, that early their prophets had
foretold he was a prince fond of luxury and ease, which, in the main,
he did not deny, but confessed that he was so; and that they all should
have an attachment to their pleasures and enjoyments, he thought but
reasonable. He desired, however, in this, they would do as much as he
did, and only suspend their love of ease and rest as long as their duty
to God, to their country, and their murdered brethren, required; for,
till these duties were fulfilled, ease and enjoyment to a Christian,
and especially to them bound by oath to accomplish a certain purpose,
was, in his eyes, little short of apostacy.” A loud acclamation now
followed from the whole army. They declared again, that they renewed
their sacrament taken at the passage of the Hawash, that they were
Christ’s soldiers, and would follow their sovereign unto death.
Though the great personal merit of the king, and the grace, force,
and dignity with which he spoke, had, of themselves, produced a very
sudden change in the mind of the soldiers, yet, to the increase of this
good disposition it had very much contributed, that a monk, of great
holiness and austerity of manners, living in a cell on the point of
a steep rock, had come down from Shoa to the camp, declaring that he
had found it written in the Revelation of St John, that this year the
religion of Mahomet was to be utterly extirpated throughout the world.
Full of this idea, on the feast of Ras Werk, in the month of July,
the army passed the Yass, a large river of the kingdom of Mara, and
encamped there. The troops were alarmed, the night after their arrival,
by a piece of intelligence which proved a falsehood.
A woman, whose father had been a Christian, said, that she had very
lately left the Moorish camp; that the enemy were at no great distance,
and only waited a night of storm and rain to make a general attack
upon the king’s army; and the clouds threatening then a night of
foul weather, it was not doubted but the engagement was thereupon
immediately to follow. It blew, then, so violent a storm, that the
king’s tent, and most of those in the camp, were thrown down, and the
soldiers were in very great confusion, imagining, every moment, the
Moors ready to fall on them. But whether the story was a falsehood, or
the storm too great for the Moors to venture out, nothing happened that
night, nor, indeed, during their stay in that station.
At this time a number of priests and others came out of curiosity to
see their king making conquests of provinces and people till then
unknown to them even by name: several large detachments of fresh troops
from Abyssinia also arrived, and joined the army. Upon this, Amda Sion
advanced a day’s journey farther into Mara, and took a strong post,
resolving to maintain himself there, and, by detachments, lay the whole
country desolate. This place is called _Dassi_. There was neither
river, however, nor spring near it, but only water procured by digging
in the sand, being what comes down from the sides of the mountains in
the rainy season, and, having filtered through the loose earth, has
reached the sand and gravel, where it stagnates, or finds slowly its
level to the sea. Here the king was taken dangerously ill with the
fever of the Kolla.
The altercations between Amda Sion and his soldiers, and the
resolutions taken in consequence of these, were faithfully carried to
the king of Adel. The march of the king forward at such a season of
the year, the slow pace with which he advanced towards the very heart
of the country, the care he took of providing all necessaries for his
army, and his reinforcing it at such a season, all shewed this was no
partial, sudden incursion, but that it was meant as a decisive blow,
fatal to the independence of these petty sovereigns and states. To this
it may be added, that Gimmel-eddin, whom the king had released from
prison, and set over the Moorish provinces of Abyssinia, conveyed to
them, in the most direct manner, that such were the king’s purposes. He
told them, moreover, this march into their country was not either to
increase their tribute, or for the sake of plunder, or to force them
to be his subjects; that Amda Sion’s main design was against their
religion, which he and his soldiers had vowed they were to destroy;
that it was not their time to think of peace or tribute upon any terms;
for, were they even to sell their wives and children, the price would
not be accepted, unless they forsook the religion of their fathers,
and embraced Christianity. He further added, that _his_ resolution was
already taken, that he would die firm in the faith, a good Mahometan,
as he had lived; not tamely, however, but in the middle of his enemies;
and that he was now making every sort of preparation to resist to the
latest breath.
No sooner was this intelligence from Gimmel-eddin published, than a
kind of frenzy seized the people of Adel; they ran tumultuously to
arms, and, with shrieks and adjurations, demanded to be led immediately
against the Abyssinians, for they no longer desired to live upon such
terms.
There was among the leading men of the Moors one Saleh, chief of a
small district called Cassi, by birth a Sherriffe, _i. e._ one of the
race of Mahomet, and who, to the nobility of his birth, joined the
holiness of his character. He was _Imam_, as it is called, or _high
priest_ of the Moors, and, for both these reasons, held in the greatest
estimation among them. This man undertook, by his personal influence,
to unite all the Moorish states in a common league. For it is to be
observed, that, though religion was very powerful in uniting these
Moors against the Christians, yet the love of gain, and jealousies of
commerce, perpetually kept a party alive that favoured the king for
their own interest, in the very heart of the Moorish confederacies and
councils. To overcome this was the object of Saleh, and he succeeded
beyond expectation, as sixteen kings brought 40,000 men into the field
under their several leaders; but the chief command was given to the
king of Adel.
I MUST put the reader in mind that I am translating an Abyssinian
historian. These, then, whom this chronicle stiles Kings, must be
considered as being only hereditary and independent chiefs, not
tributary to Abyssinia. Their names are Adel, Mara, Bakla, Haggara,
Fadise, Gadai, Nagal, Zuba, Harlar, Hobal, Hangila, Tarshish, Ain,
Ilbiro, Zeyla, and Eftè. Now, when we consider that these sixteen kings
brought only 40,000 men, and that they were commanded under these
sixteen by 2712 leaders, or governors of districts, all which are set
down by name, we must have a very contemptible opinion of the extent
and populousness of these newly-erected kingdoms.
It appears to me unnecessary to repeat, after my historian, the names
of each of these villages, which probably do not now exist, and are,
perhaps, utterly unknown. I shall only observe in passing, that here
we find Tarshis, or Tarshish, a kingdom on the coast of the ocean,
directly in the way to Sofala; another strong presumption that Sofala
and Ophir were the same, and that this is the Tarshish where Solomon’s
fleet stopt when going to Ophir.
Amda Sion’s fever hindering him to march forward, and being unwilling
to risk a battle where he was not able himself to command, he continued
close in his strong camp at Dassi, waiting his recovery; but, in the
mean time, he made considerable detachments on all sides to lay the
country waste around him, till he should be able to advance farther
into it.
Of all the royal army, as it stood upon the establishment, the king had
only with him the troops from the provinces of Amhara, Shoa, Gojam,
and Damot, and these were what composed the rear, when the whole,
called the royal army, was assembled; all his troops were regularly
paid, well armed, and cloathed, and were not only provided with every
necessary, but were become exceedingly rich, and, therefore, the more
careless of discipline, and difficult to manage, on account of the
repeated conquests that had followed one another ever since the king
had crossed the river Hawash, and come into the desert kingdom of
Mara, unfruitful in its soil, but flourishing by trade, and rich in
India commodities. The soldiers had here so loaded themselves with
spoils and merchandise, that they began rather to think of returning
home, and enjoying what they had got, than of pushing their conquests
still farther to the destruction of Adel and Mara. The putrid state of
the water, in this sultry and unwholesome climate, had afflicted the
king with the fever of the country, which he thought not by any means
to remedy or prevent. No consideration could keep him from exposing
himself to the most violent sun-beams, and to the more noxious vapours
of the night; and it was now the seventh day his fever had been
increasing, although he neither ate nor drank. The army expecting, from
the king’s illness, a speedy order to return, conversed of nothing else
within their camp, with that kind of security as if they had already
received orders to return home.
The Mahometan army had assembled, and no news had been brought of it
to the king. Saleh’s influence had united them all; and the king’s
sickness had made this easier than it otherwise would have been. It
happened, then, that, the king’s fever abating the ninth day, he sent
out to procure himself venison, with which this country abounds, and
which is believed, by people of all ranks in Abyssinia, to be the
only proper food and restorative after sickness. After having killed
sufficiently for the king’s immediate use, the huntsmen returned; two
only remained, who continued the pursuit of the game through the woods,
till they were four days journey distant from their camp, when, being
in search of water for their dogs, they met a Moor engaged in the
same business with themselves, who shewed them his army encamped at
no considerable distance, and in very great numbers. Upon this they
returned in all haste to the king to apprize him of his danger, and
he sent immediately some horse to discover the number, situation, and
designs of the enemy; above all, if possible, to take a prisoner, for
the huntsmen had put theirs to death, that he might be no incumbrance
to them upon their return.
The king’s fever was now gone, but his strength was not returned; and,
the necessity of the case requiring it, he attempted to rise from his
bed and put on his armour, but, fainting, fell upon his face with
weakness, while his servant was girding his sword.
The horse now returned, and confirmed the tidings the huntsmen had
brought; they had found the Moorish army in the same place it was
first discovered, by the water-side; but the account of their number
and appearance was such that the whole army was struck with a panic.
The king’s wives (as the historian says, by which it should appear he
had more than one) endeavoured to persuade him not to risk a battle
in the weak state of health he then was, but to retire from this
low, unwholesome country, and occupy the passes that lead into Upper
Abyssinia, so as to make it impossible for the enemy to follow him into
Shoa.
The king having washed and refreshed himself, with a countenance full
of confidence, sat down at the door of his tent: whilst officers and
soldiers crowded about him, he calmly, in the way of conversation, told
them,--“That, being men of experience as they were, he was surprised
they should be liable, at every instant, to panic and despondency,
totally unworthy the character of a veteran army. You know,” said he,
“that I came against the king of Adel, and to recover that province,
one of the old dependencies of my crown. And though it has happened
that, in our march, you have loaded yourselves with riches, which I
have permitted, as well out of my love to you, as because it distresses
the enemy, yet my object was not to plunder merchants. If in battle
to-morrow I be beaten, for God forbid that I should decline it when
offered, I shall be the first to set you the example how to die like
men in the middle of your enemies. But while I am living, it never
shall be said that I suffered the standard of Christ to fly before
the profane ensigns of infidels. As to what regards our present
circumstances, my sickness, and the number of the Moorish troops, these
make no alteration in my good hopes that I shall tread upon the king
of Adel’s neck to-morrow. For as it was never my opinion that it was
my own strength and valour, or their want of it, which has so often
been the means of preserving me from their hands, so I do not fear at
present that my accidental weakness will give them any advantage over
me, as long as I trust in God’s strength as much as ever I have done.”
The army, hearing with what confidence and firmness the king spake,
began to look upon his recovery as a miracle. They all, therefore,
with one accord, took to their arms, and desired to be led forward to
the enemy, without waiting till they should come to them. They only
beseeched the king that he would not expose his person as usual, but
trust to the bravery of his troops, eager for action, without being
lavish of that life, the loss of which would be to the Mahometans
a greater victory than the regaining all he had conquered. The king
hereon, bidding his troops to be of good courage, take rest and
refreshment, sent away the women, children, and other incumbrances, to
a small convent on the side of the mountain, called _Debra Martel_[6];
and, being informed of the situation of the country in general, and
the particular posts where he could get water in greater plenty, he
advanced with his army by a slow march towards the enemy.
The next day he received intelligence by a Moor, that the Mahometans
had not only thrown poison into all the wells, but had also corrupted
all the water in the front of the army by various spells and
inchantments; that they were not advancing, but were waiting for troops
from some of the small districts of Adel that had not yet joined the
army. Hereupon the king ordered his Fit-Auraris to advance a day
before him, and sent a priest, called _Tecla Sion_, with him, that he
might bless and consecrate the water, and thereby free it from the
inchantments of the Moors. He himself followed with his army, and sat
down by a small river a short way distant from the enemy.
The Fit-Auraris is an officer that commands a party of men, who go
always advanced before the front of an Abyssinian army, at a greater or
smaller distance, according as circumstances require. His office will
be described more at large in the sequel.
The king being arrived at the river, the army began to bathe
themselves, their mules, and their horses, in the same manner as is
usual throughout all Abyssinia on the feast of the Epiphany. This
lustration was in honour of Tecla Sion, who had consecrated the water,
broken all the magic spells, and changed its name to that of the river
Jordan. But, while they were thus employed, the Fit-Auraris had come
up with a large party of the enemy, and, with them, a number of women,
provided with drugs to poison and inchant the water; and this numerous
body of fanatics had fallen so rudely on the Fit-Auraris that it beat
him back on the main body, to whom he brought the news of his own
defeat.
A violent panic immediately seized the whole Abyssinian army, and they
refused to advance a step farther. The tents had been left standing
on the side of the river they first came to, and they then passed to
the other side. But, upon sight of the Fit-Auraris, they returned to
the tents, that, having the river on their front, they might fight the
enemy with more advantage if they came to attack them. They did not
continue long in this resolution; the greatest part of them were for
leaving their tents, and retiring to Abyssinia for assistance, and,
when the numbers should be more upon an equality, return to fight the
enemy. The Moorish army at this instant coming in sight, increased the
number of converts to this opinion.
The king, in the utmost agony, galloping through the ranks, continued
to use all manner of arguments with his mutinous soldiers. He told
them, that retiring to their camp was to put themselves in prison;
that, being mostly composed of horse, their advantage was in a plain
like that before them; that retreating to join the main body, at such a
distance, was a vain idea, as the enemy was so close at their heels.
Finally, all he desired of them was, that those who would not fight
should only stand as spectators, but not leave their places. As no sign
of content or conviction was returned, the king, seeing that all was
lost if they disbanded, the enemy being just ready to engage, ordered
his master of the horse, and five others, to attack the left wing of
the enemy, while he, with a small part of his servants and household,
did the same on the right.
The Abyssinian history, seldom just to the memory of individuals, hath
yet, in this instance, (almost a single one), preserved the names of
these brave men. The first was Zana Asferi; the second, Tecla; the
third, Wanag Araad; the fourth, Saif Segued, (one of the king’s sons;)
the fifth, Badel Waliz; and the sixth, Kedami. These, as is supposed
with their attendants and servants, (though history is silent but as to
the six) fell furiously on the left of the Mahometan army.
The king, at the first onset, killed, with his own hand, the two
leaders of the right wing; and his son, Saif Segued, having also slain
another considerable officer on the left, a panic seized both these
bodies of Moors, and the army apparently began, at one and the same
time, to waver: On which the Abyssinians, now ashamed of their conduct,
and perceiving the king’s danger, with a great shout fell furiously
upon the enemy. The whole Moorish army having, by this time, joined,
the battle was fought with great obstinacy on both sides, till first
the center, then the left wing of the Moors, was broken and dispersed;
but the right, consisting chiefly of strangers from Arabia, kept
together, and, not knowing the country, retired into a narrow deep
valley surrounded by steep perpendicular rocks, covered thick with
wood.
The Abyssinian army, thinking all at an end by the flight of the
Moors, began, after their usual custom, to plunder, by stripping and
mangling the bodies of the killed and wounded. But the king, who,
from the mistake of the Arabians, saw the destruction of this right
wing certain, if immediately pursued, ordered it every where to be
proclaimed through the field, that the whole army should repair to
the royal standard, which he had set up on an eminence, and give over
plundering, under pain of death. Finding this order, however, slackly
obeyed, he himself, scouring the field at the head of a few horse,
with his own hand slew two of his soldiers whom he found stripping the
dead without regard to his proclamation. This example from a prince,
exceedingly sparing of the blood of his soldiers, had the effect to
recal them all to the royal standard displayed on a rising ground.
He then separated his army into two divisions; all the foot, and those
of his horse that had principally suffered in the severe engagement of
the day, he led up to the mouth of the valley where the right wing of
the Arabians had shut themselves up; and, having beset all access to
the entrance of it, he ordered the foot to climb up through the woods,
and on every side surround the valley above the heads of those unhappy
people thus devoted to certain destruction.
While this was doing, the king ordered those of the cavalry that had
suffered least in the fatigue of the day, to refresh themselves and
their horses. He knew no time was lost by this, as the Moorish army
that escaped from the engagement, worn out with fatigue, thirst, and
hunger, would only retire a short day’s march to the water, where,
finding themselves not pursued, and incumbered with the number of their
wounded, they would necessarily rest themselves; and this was precisely
the situation, in which his huntsmen first found them by the side of a
large pool of water.
The king gave the command of this part of his army to the master of
the horse, with orders to pursue them one day farther; whilst he,
having taken a short refreshment, began to attack the right wing of
the Arabians shut up in the valley. The king, dismounting, led the
attack against the front of the Arabians, who, seeing their situation
now desperate, began to make every effort to get from the valley into
the plain. But they did not know yet upon what disadvantageous ground
they were engaged, till the soldiers from the rocks above, every way
surrounding them, rolled down immense stones which passed through them
in all directions. Pressed, therefore, violently, by the king in their
front, and in the rear destroyed by an enemy they neither could see
nor resist, they fell immediately into confusion, and were, to a man,
slaughtered upon the spot; upon which the king, giving to his troops
orders for a general plunder, retired himself to his camp, and in his
tent received from the master of the horse an account of his expedition.
This officer had proceeded slowly, spreading his troops as wide as
possible upon the tract of the retreating enemy, to give a smaller
chance for any to escape. All directed their flight towards the pool
of water, and were there destroyed without mercy, till a little after
sun-set. The pursuers had then advanced to the ground where Saleh king
of Mara had gathered the scattered remains of his once powerful army,
but now overcome with heat, dispirited by their defeat, and worn out
by the fatigues of a long and obstinate engagement, all that remained
of these unfortunate troops were strowed upon the ground, lapping
water like beasts, their only comfort that remained, equally incapable
of fighting or flying. The master of the horse, in great vigour and
strength from his late refreshments and recent victory, had no trouble
with these unfortunate people but to direct their execution, and this
was performed by the soldiers with all the rage and cruelty that a
difference of religion could possibly inspire. For, after the king’s
speech of the 9th of June, in which he upbraided them with breach of
their oath, and that they were slow in avenging the blood of their
brethren and priests wantonly slain by the Moors, every man in the army
measured the exactness with which he acquitted himself of the sacrament
at the Hawash, only by the quantity of blood that he could shed. Weary
at last with butchery, a few were taken prisoners, and among these was
Saleh king of Mara. It was evening before the king returned from the
slaughter of the right wing; and it was night when the soldiers, as
fatigued with plundering as with fighting, returned to the camp.
The next morning, he heard of the success of his cavalry under the
master of the horse, who joined him before mid-day. The unfortunate
Saleh was, in sight of the whole army, brought before the king,
cloathed in the distinguished habit and marks of his dignity in which
he had fought the day before at the head of his troops; gold chains
were about his arms, and a gold collar, enriched with precious stones
about his neck. The king scarcely deigned to speak to him, whilst the
royal prisoner likewise observed a profound silence. When the army had
satisfied their curiosity with the sight of this prince, (once the
object of their fear), the king, by a motion of his hand, ordered him
to be hanged upon a tree at the entrance of the camp, with all the
ornaments he had upon him. After this the queen of Mara, concerning
whom so many surprising stories had been told of her poisoning the
waters by drugs and inchantments, was, notwithstanding the known
partiality of this king for the fair sex, ordered to be hewn in pieces
by the soldiers, and her body given to the dogs.
Amda Sion then dispatched a messenger with the news of his victory to
the queens his wives, and the rest of the ladies he had left with the
main army at Debra Martel, when the monks of the convent immediately
began a solemn procession and thanksgiving, attended by the exercise of
every sort of work of charity and piety.
It was now the end of July, when the rains in Abyssinia become both
constant and violent, that the king called a council of the principal
nobility, officers, and priests, to determine whether he should go
straight home, or send their wives, children, and baggage before them
the direct road, when the light and unincumbered army should take a
compass, and lay waste a part of the kingdom of Adel they had already
invaded, and return in another direction. The majority of the army, and
the priests above all, were for the first proposal; but the king and
principal officers thought the advantages gained by so much blood were
to be followed, and not deserted, till they should either have reduced
the Mahometans to a state of weakness that should make them no longer
formidable to Abyssinia, or, if prosperous fortune still attended them
further, extirpate the people and religion together.--This opinion
prevailed.
The king, therefore, dismissed his baggage, his women, children,
servants, and useless people. He retained an army of veteran soldiers
only, more formidable than six times the number that could be brought
against them; and, trusting now to the country into which he marched
for support, he advanced, and entered a town called Zeyla, and there
took up his quarters. He had scarce taken possession of the town, when
that very night he sent a detachment to surprise a large and rich
village called Taraca, where he put all the men to the sword, making
the women slaves for the service of the army, instead of those whom he
had sent home.
The king’s views, by such small expeditions, were to accustom his
soldiers to fight out of his presence, and wean them from a persuasion,
now become general, that victory could not be obtained but where he
commanded.
On the 10th of July, the king continued his march, without opposition,
to Darbè, whence, the next morning, he sent different parties to the
right and left, to burn and destroy the country. They accordingly laid
waste all the province of Gassi, slaying Abdullah the Sherriffe, who
was the governor and son of Saruch the Imam, author of the conspiracy
against him. From thence he fell suddenly upon Abalgé and Talab, a
large district belonging to the king of Adel.
This prince, hearing that Amda Sion, instead of returning, as was
usual in the rainy season, into Abyssinia, had determined to continue
to ravage his whole country, had not, on his part, been remiss in
preparing means to resist him; and he had assembled, from every
province, all the forces they could raise, to make one last effort
against their common enemy.
Amda Sion, therefore, had scarcely retired from the destruction of
Talab, when the king of Adel (become now desperate by being so long a
spectator of the ruin of his kingdom) marched hastily to meet him, with
much less precaution than his own situation, and the character of his
enemy, required. Amda Sion, whose whole wish was to bring the Moors to
an engagement as often as occasion presented, left off his plundering
upon the first news that the king of Adel had taken the field, and,
allowing him to choose the ground on which he was to fight, the next
day he marched against him, having (as sure of victory) first detached
bodies of horse to intercept those of the Moors that should fly when
defeated; For no general was more provident than this king for the
destruction of his enemy. He then led his troops against the king of
Adel, and, spurring his horse, was already in the midst of the Moorish
army before the most active of his soldiers had time to follow him. The
Abyssinians, as usual, threw themselves like madmen upon the Moors,
at the sight of the king’s danger. The king of Adel was defeated with
little resistance: that unfortunate prince himself was slain upon the
spot, and the greatest part of his army destroyed (after they thought
themselves safe) by the ambushes of fresh horse the king had placed in
their rear before the battle.
The three children of the king of Adel, and his brother, who had all
been in the engagement, seeing the great inferiority of their troops,
and terrified at the approaching fate of their country, loading
themselves with the most valuable of their effects, (which, in token
of humility, they carried upon their heads, shoulders, and in their
hands,) came with these presents before the king, who was sitting armed
at the door of his tent, and, without further apology, or assurance
given, threw themselves, as is the custom of Abyssinia, at his feet,
with their foreheads in the dust, intreating pardon for what had
hitherto been done amiss; submitting to him as his subjects, professing
their readiness to obey all his commands, provided only that he would
proceed no further, nor waste and destroy their country, but spare what
still remained, which was, for the most part, the property of Arabian
merchants who had done him no injury.
But the king seemed little disposed to credit these assurances. He told
them plainly, “That they, and all Ethiopia, knew the time was when they
were under his dominion, paid him the same tribute, and owed him the
same allegiance with the rest of his subjects; that neither he, nor
his predecessors, at that time, had ever oppressed them, but returned
them present for present, gold for gold, apparel for apparel, and
dismissed them contentedly home whenever they came to pay their duty
to them: That lately, from supposed weakness in him, when he was young
in the beginning of his reign, and encouraged by the great addition
of their brethren, who flocked to them from Arabia, they had, without
provocation, thrown off their allegiance to him, upbraiding him as a
eunuch, fit only to take care of the women of their seraglio, with many
such taunting messages, equally unworthy the majesty and memory of a
prince like him: That, could this be passed over, still there was a
crime that all the blood of Adel could not atone for: They had, without
provocation, murdered his priests, burnt their churches, and destroyed
his defenceless people in their villages, merely from a vain belief
that they were too far to be under his protection: That, to punish them
for this, he was now in the midst of their country, and, if his life
was spared, never would he turn his back upon Adel while he had ten men
with him capable of drawing their swords. He, therefore, ordered them
to return, and expect the approach of his army.”
The two eldest children and the brother were so struck with the fierce
manner and countenance with which the king spoke, that they remained
perfectly silent. But the youngest son (a youth of great spirit, and
who, with the utmost difficulty, had been forced by his parents to fly
after the battle) answered the king with great resolution:--
“It is a truth known to the whole kingdom, that Adel has never belonged
to any sovereign on earth but to ourselves. Violence and power, which
destroy and set up kingdoms, have at times done so with ours; but that
you are not otherwise, than by these means, king of our country, our
colour, stature[7], and complexion sufficiently shew. We have been
free, and were conquered; we now have attempted to regain our freedom,
and we have failed: We have not been inferior to you in every kind of
civility, receiving you and your predecessors when you came into our
country, singing before you, and rejoicing, because we knew that you
had always among you men of great worth and bravery.
“As to the accusation against us, that we robbed the Christians,
you yourself see the riches of our country, which we get by our own
industry and commerce, whilst the Abyssinians were naked shepherds and
robbers. In the days of your predecessors, a handful of us would have
chased an army of them, and it would be so now, were it not for the
personal valour and conduct of you their prince. But you, better than
any one, can be the judge of this; and I can appeal to you, how often
they have been upon the point of deserting you, in return for all the
victories and riches they have shared with you; while there is not a
Moor in Adel but would have willingly died in the presence of such a
prince as you. It is then _you_, not your army, that we fear; we know
perfectly the value of both. You have already enjoyed all the merit
and profit of conquest; but utterly destroying defenceless people is
unworthy of any king, and still more of a prince of your character.”
The king, without any sign of displeasure at the freedom of this
speech, answered him calmly: “Words and resolutions like these
occasioned your father to lose his life in battle. I come not to argue
with you what you are to do, nor did I send for you to preach to you;
but if the queen your mother, the rest of your father’s family, and the
principal people who, after your father’s death, are now to govern
Adel, do not, by to-morrow evening, surrender themselves to me at my
tent-door, as you have done, I will lay the province of Adel waste,
from the place where I now sit, to the borders of the ocean.”
This unpromising interview with the king was faithfully communicated by
the young princes to their mother, earnestly desiring her to trust the
king’s mercy, and to throw herself at his feet the next morning without
reserve. But those who had been the persuaders of the war (for the late
king of Adel was but a weak prince) reckoned themselves in much greater
danger with Amda Sion than was the royal family. They, therefore,
agreed to try their fortune again in battle, binding themselves to
live and die with each other, by mutual oaths and promises. They also
sent to the princes this resolution, by an old enemy of Amda Sion,
persuading them to make their escape as soon as possible, and come and
head their forces that were then raised, and ready to conquer or die
together, when the family should be out of the enemy’s hands.
The king, well informed of what had passed, decamped immediately from
the station where he was, exceedingly irritated; and, having passed
the great river called Aco, he took post in the town of Marmagab;
and the next day, dividing his army, he sent two bodies by different
routes into the enemy’s territories, with a strict command to leave
nothing undestroyed that had the breath of life; he himself, with the
third division, burning and laying waste the whole country before him,
proceeded straight to the place where he heard the chiefs of Adel were
assembling an army. There he found some troops, mostly infantry, who
kept a good countenance, and seemed perfectly prepared and disposed
to engage him. But an immense multitude of useless people covered the
plain, old men, women, and children, with the parents, wives, and
families of those he had already slain; and these were determined, with
the remnant of their countrymen, to conquer this invader, or to perish.
The king, upon perceiving this strange mixture, halted for a time in
great surprise and astonishment. He could not penetrate into the motive
of assembling such an army; and sending a party of horse, as it were,
to disperse them, he found everywhere a stout resistance; soldiers
well provided with swords and shields, and a multitude of archers, who
rained showers of arrows upon him, while the women, with clubs, poles,
stakes, and stones, damped the ardour of his soldiers, who, when they
first charged, scarcely expected resistance. The king, seeing the
battle every minute become more doubtful, and having but few troops,
began to repent that he had weakened his army by detachments; he
instantly dispatched orders to them to advance, and fall upon the enemy
in the nearest direction possible. At the same time, he himself made an
extraordinary effort with his horse, but all in vain; and he found, on
every side, people who presented themselves willingly to death, but who
would not quit their station while they had power to defend themselves
in it.
Conspicuous above all these for his dress, his youth, his many acts
of valour, and his graceful figure, was the young king of Wypo, who,
encouraging his troops, presented himself wherever Amda Sion was in
person. The remarkable resistance that this young prince made, soon
drew the attention of the king of Abyssinia; who, sheathing his
sword, took a bow in his hand, and, as my historian says, choosing the
broadest arrow he could find, struck this young hero through the middle
of his neck, so that, half being cut through, his head inclined to one
shoulder, and soon after he fell dead among his horse’s feet.
This sight was one just calculated to strike such an army as this with
terror. They immediately turned their backs, and, unluckily falling in
with the two detachments marching to the king’s relief, they were all
cut to pieces to the number of 5000; a great proportion of which were
women and aged persons, unskilled in war, further than as they were
prompted by a long sufferance of injuries, accumulated now to a mass,
that made them weary of life. My historian further says, that three
only of the Moorish army escaped. On the king’s side many principal
officers were killed; and there was scarce one horseman that was not
wounded. Amda Sion, therefore, when speaking of this campaign, after
his return, among his nobility at Shoa, used to say, “Deliver me from
fighting with old women;” alluding to this battle, where he was in
the greatest danger. The fate of the unfortunate king of Wypo was
particularly hard. He had lately married the king of Adel’s daughter;
and it was the staying for him, and his marriage, that lost the
favourable opportunity of fighting the Abyssinians, when the army was
in despondency upon the king’s being taken ill of the fever.
The next campaign the king began, by a march first to Sassogade, where
he assisted at the celebration of the feast of St John the Baptist; and
he gave orders, that day, to raze all the Mahometan mosques to the
ground, to destroy all the grain, burn the villages, and put the people
to the sword, which was executed accordingly. The king then decamped
the fourth of July; and, passing the great river (Zorat) came to the
country of the Oritii, and took up his quarters there. The people of
this province were in the very worst reputation for cruelty, and hatred
of the Christian name. They were perpetually making incursions into the
Christian villages, and those that fell alive into their hands, they
either castrated, cut off their nose or ears, or otherwise mangled them.
The king, to vindicate the severity he was about to exercise, ordered
all those people, who had suffered in this manner, to be collected and
brought before him. The number appeared very considerable; and, having
inquired in what occupations they had been employed, they answered,
that their business was to cut down wood, draw and fetch water, and
some of them to take care of the Moorish women. Violently affected with
this, he called his principal officers, and commanded them, that, when
he decamped with his army the next day, small parties should remain
in ambush on each side of the town. The king, early in the morning,
marched out with sound of trumpet; and the Moors, thinking the army
gone, returning to their houses, were set upon by the parties, and
destroyed.
The next place the king came to was Haggara, where he staid eight
days, and celebrated there the feast of the Cross; surrounding his
camp with palisades, as if he was to stay there a considerable time.
Here he made his soldiers deposit all their plunder, leaving it under
the care of a weak guard, and marched out with sound of trumpet, as
if he was going upon some expedition. There was a large body of troops
in ambush, and the Moors, concealed in woods, and hiding-places,
attacked the intrenchment as soon as the king was gone, and had forced
the palisades, when they were every where surrounded by the parties
left behind, and were all cut to pieces, excepting the old men and
women, whose noses and lips the king ordered to be cut off, by way of
retaliation, and then dismissed them. Great store of bows, good arms
and cloathing, were taken here, lately brought from Arabia for the use
of the confederates.
The king now turned his face homewards, marched off in seven days to
Begul in the Sahara, and thence sent a message to the governor of Ifat,
commanding him to send to him all those Christians who had apostatized
from their faith in his or his brother’s time; with notice, that, if
he did not comply, he would put him and all his family to death, and
give his command to another family. The king ordered these apostates,
when delivered, to be severely whipped, and, fettering them with heavy
irons, imprisoned them.
From Begul the army marched to Waz, thence to Gett, and from Gett to
Harla, still laying waste the country. From Harla they marched five
days to Delhoya, being determined to make a severe example of this
place, because the inhabitants had killed the governor the king had
left with them, and, making large fires for the purpose, had burnt and
tormented the Christians residing there. He came, therefore, upon this
town, and surrounded it in the night; and, after putting men, women,
and children to the sword, he razed it to the ground.
From Delhoya he proceeded to Degwa, from thence to Warga, which he
treated in the same manner as Delhoya, and then entered the province
of Dawaro, where he understood that Hydar, governor of that province,
with Saber-eddin, and a very valuable convoy coming to him, under their
conduct, from Shoa, were intercepted by Hydar’s people, and their
guard cut to pieces. Instead, therefore, of proceeding to Shoa, as
his intention was, he encamped at Bahalla, and there kept the feast
of Christmas, laying the whole province, by parties, under military
execution; and hearing there that Joseph, governor of Serca, was in
understanding with those of Dawaro, he put him in prison, carrying
off all his horses, asses, mules, and a prodigious quantity of other
cattle, which he drove before him, and ended his expedition by his
entry into Shoa.
This is the Abyssinian account of the reign of their prince Amda Sion,
a little abridged, and made more conformable to the manner of writing
English history. The historian, contrary to the usual practice, gives
no account of himself; but he seems to have lived in the time of Zara
Jacob, the third reign after this. Though he wrote in Shoa, his book is
in pure Geez, there being scarcely an Amharic word in it.
There are three things which I would now observe; not because they are
single instances, but, on the contrary, because, though first mentioned
here, they are uniformly confirmed throughout the whole Abyssinian
history.
The first is, that the king of Abyssinia is, in all matters
ecclesiastical and civil, supreme; that he punishes all offences
committed by the clergy in as absolute and direct a manner as if these
offences were committed by a layman. Of this the treatment of Honorius
is an example, who made use only of spiritual weapons against offences,
that surely deserved the censure of all churches.
With whatever propriety this sentence might have been inflicted upon
individuals, and, perhaps, without any bad consequence to the public in
general, the law of the land, in Abyssinia, could not suffer this to be
inflicted on their king, because very bad effects must have followed it
towards the common-weal; for excommunication there is really a capital
punishment if executed with rigour. It is a kind of _interdictio aquæ
et ignis_, for you yourself are expressly prohibited from kindling a
fire, and every body else is laid under a prohibition from supplying
either fire or water. No one can speak, eat, or drink with you, enter
your house, or suffer you to enter theirs. You cannot buy nor sell, nor
recover debts. If under this situation you should be violently slain by
robbers, no inquisition is made into the cause of your death, and your
body is not suffered to be buried.
I would submit now to the judgment of any one, what sort of government
there would be in Abyssinia, if a priest was suffered to lay the king
under such interdict or restriction. The kings of that country do
not pretend to be saints; indeed, it may be said, they are the very
contrary, leading very free lives. Pretences are never wanting, and it
is only necessary to find a fanatic priest (which, God knows, is not a
rarity in that country) to unhinge government perpetually, and throw
all into anarchy and confusion. But nothing of this kind occurs in
their history, though the bigotted Le Grande, and some of the Jesuits,
less bigotted than him, have asserted, that such a practice prevailed
in the Abyssinian church, to shew its conformity with the church
of Rome; which we shall see, however, contradicted almost in every
prince’s reign.
The second thing I shall observe is, that there is no ground for that
prejudice, so common in the writers concerning this country, who say
that these people are Nomades, perpetually roving about in tents. If
they had ever so little reflected upon it, there is not a country in
the world where this is less possible than in Abyssinia, a country
abounding with mountains, where every flat piece of ground is, once
a-day, during six months rain, cut through by a number of torrents,
sweeping cattle, trees, and every thing irresistibly before them; where
no field, unless it has some declivity, can be sown, nor even passed
over by a traveller, without some danger of being swept away, during
the hours of the day when the rain is most violent; in such a country
it would be impossible for 30 or 40,000 men to encamp from place to
place, and to subsist without some permanent retreat. Accordingly they
have towns and villages perched upon the pinnacles of sharp hills and
rocks, and which are never thought safe if commanded by any ground
above them; in these they remain, as we do in cities, all the rainy
season: Nor is there a private person (not a soldier) who hath a tent
more than in Britain. In the fair season, the military encamp in all
directions cross the country, either to levy taxes, or in search of
their enemy; but nothing in this is particular to Abyssinia; in most
parts of Africa and Asia they do the same.
The third particular to be observed here is, that, in this prince’s
reign, the king’s sons were not imprisoned in the mountain. For Saif
Araad was present with his father at the defeat of Saleh king of Mara,
and yet the mountain of Geshen was then set apart as a prison. For
the Itchegué of Debra Libanos was banished there; from which I infer,
that after the massacre of the royal family by Judith, on the mountain
of Damo, and the flight of the prince Del Naad, to Shoa, the king’s
children were not confined, nor yet till long after their restoration
and return to Tigré, as will appear in the sequel.
Amda Sion died of a natural death at Tegulat in Shoa, after a reign of
30 years, which were but a continued series of victories, no instance
being recorded of his having been once defeated.
[Illustration]
SAIF ARAAD.
From 1342 to 1370.
_This Prince enjoys a peaceable Reign--Protects the Patriarch of Cophts
at Cairo from the Persecution of the Soldan._
Saif Araad succeeded his father Amda Sion; and it should seem that,
in his time, all was peaceable on the side of Adel, as nothing is
mentioned relative to that war. Indeed, if the increase of trade and
power in that corner of Abyssinia arose from the troubles and want of
security which the merchants laboured under in Arabia, we cannot but
suspect, from a parity of reasoning, that the violent manner in which
war had been carried on by Amda Sion, must have occasioned a great many
inhabitants to repass the Straits, and return to their own homes.
At this time, news were brought from Cairo, that the Soldan had thrown
the Coptic patriarch, Marcus, into prison. There was then a constant
trade carried on between Cairo and Abyssinia, through the desert; and
also from Cairo and Suakem on the Red Sea. Besides, great caravans,
formerly composed of Pagans, now of Mahometans, passed from west to
east, in the same manner as in ancient times, to buy and disperse India
goods through Africa. Saif Araad, not having it in his power to give
the patriarch other assistance, seized all the merchants from Cairo,
and sent horse to interrupt and terrify the caravans. As the cause of
this was well known, and that the patriarch was in prison for the sake
only of extorting money from him, people on all sides cried out upon
the bad policy of the Soldan, who thereupon ordered Abuna Marcus to be
set at liberty, without any other condition, than that he should make
peace with Saif Araad on the part of Egypt, which was done through the
mediation of that prelate.
[Illustration]
WEDEM ASFERI.
From 1370 to 1380.
_Memoirs of this and the following Reign defective._
We know nothing of this prince, only that he succeeded his father Saif
Araad, and reigned ten years; yet his name, which signifies _lover
of war_, seems to indicate an active reign. It is remarkable, that
in this reign is first mentioned an æra of Abyssinian chronology,
which has very much puzzled several learned writers, and the origin
of which is not, perhaps, yet fully known. This is that epoch, called
that of Maharat, or Mercy, which Scaliger and Ludolf have called the
æra of grace. Scaliger says, he has toiled much before he found out
what it was; and I doubt his toil has not been blessed with all the
success we could wish. That it is not the æra of redemption, is plain
upon a hundred trials, nor of the conversion, nor of Dioclesian. What
it alludes to we know not, but it is first quoted in the Abyssinian
history in this reign, and answers to the year 1348 of Christ; but
from what event it had its origin we cannot positively say, nor
further, than that all which Scaliger has said concerning it is merely
visionary.
[Illustration]
DAVID II.
From 1380 to 1409.
Wedem Asferi was succeeded by his brother David, Saif Araad’s second
son. This prince’s reign is remarkable in the annals of the church of
Abyssinia, because, at this time, a piece of the true cross, on which
our Saviour died, was brought hither from Jerusalem; and, in memory of
this great event, the king ordered the sacerdotal vest, or capa, which
was before plain, to be embroidered with flowers.
This king, after reigning twenty-nine years, one day viewing a
favourite, but vicious horse, received so violent a kick upon his head
that it fractured his skull, so that he died upon the spot, and was
buried in the great island of Dek in the lake Dembea, or Tzana.
[Illustration]
THEODORUS.
From 1409 to 1412.
_Memoirs of this Reign, though held in great Esteem in Abyssinia,
defective; probably mutilated by the Ecclesiastics._
David was succeeded by his eldest son Theodorus. He is called Son of
the Lion, by the poet, in the Ethiopic encomium upon him, still extant
in the liturgy. A miracle is mentioned to have happened, (which would
lead us to suspect that he was a saint), during the celebration of
his festival, by his mother, who is called Mogessa[8]. This lady had
contented herself with providing great quantity of flesh for the feast;
but, to make it more complete, the heavens in a shower supplied it with
store of fine fish, ready roasted.
He was buried in the church of Tedba Mariam in Amhara, after having
reigned three years. There must have been something very brilliant
that happened under this prince, for though the reign is so short,
it is before all others the most favourite epoch in Abyssinia. It is
even confidently believed, that he is to rise again, and to reign in
Abyssinia for a thousand years, and in this period all war is to cease,
and every one, in fulness, to enjoy happiness, plenty, and peace.
Foolish as these legends are, and distant the time, this one was the
source of great trouble and personal danger to me, as will be seen in
the sequel. What we know certain in this prince’s history is, that he
abrogated the treaty of partition made by Icon Amlac in favour of the
Abuna Tecla Haimanout and his successors, by which one third of the
kingdom of Abyssinia was for ever to be set apart as a revenue for the
Abuna. This wise prince modified so excessive a provision, reserving to
the Abuna for his maintenance a sufficient territory in every province
of the kingdom. It is still judged immoderate, and has suffered many
defalcations under later princes, who, perhaps, not acting upon the
principles of Theodorus, have not been commended by posterity in the
manner he has been.
[Illustration]
ISAAC.
From 1412 to 1429.
_No Annals of this nor the four following Reigns._
Theodorus was succeeded by Isaac his brother, second son of David.
In his reign the Falasha, who, since their overthrow in the time of
Amda Sion, had been quiet, broke out into rebellion. We do not know
the particulars, but apprehend some injustice was at that time done,
or attempted, against the Jews; for 24 Judges, 12 from Shoa and 12
from Tigré, (the number having been doubled when there were two kings
reigning[9]), were of a different opinion, and would not comply with
the king’s will, who thereupon deprived them all of their office. The
king, coming upon the army of the Falasha in Woggora, entirely defeated
them at Kossogué, and, in memory thereof, built a church on the place,
and called it Debra Isaac, which remains there to this day.
Isaac reigned near 17 years, was a prince of great piety and courage.
The annals of his reign, probably during the troublesome time that
followed, have been lost, and with them great part of his atchievements.
[Illustration]
ANDREAS I. OR AMDA SION.
Isaac was succeeded by his son Andreas, who reigned only seven months,
and they were both buried at Tedba Mariam.
[Illustration]
TECLA MARIAM, OR HASEB NANYA.
From 1429 to 1433.
This prince was third son of David, and succeeded his nephew. He
reigned four years, and took for his inauguration name, Haseb Nanya.
[Illustration]
SARWE YASOUS.
This prince was son of Tecla Mariam, he reigned only four months; his
inauguration name was Maharak Nanya. He has been omitted in some of the
lists of kings.
[Illustration]
AMDA YASOUS.
Sarwe Yasous was succeeded by his brother Amda Yasous, whose
inauguration name was Badel Nanya. He was second son of Tecla Mariam,
and reigned nine months.
[Illustration]
ZARA JACOB.
From 1434 to 1468.
_Sends Ambassadors from Jerusalem to the Council of
Florence--First Entry of the Roman Catholics into Abyssinia,
and Dispute about Religion--King persecutes the Remnants of
Sabaism and Idolatry--Mahometan Provinces rebel, and are
subdued--The King dies._
These very short reigns were followed by one of an extraordinary
length. Zara Jacob, fourth son of David II. succeeded his nephew,
and reigned 34 years, and, at his inauguration, took the name of
Constantine. He is looked upon in Abyssinia to have been another
Solomon; and a model of what the best of sovereigns should be. From
what we know of him, he seems to have been a prince who had the best
opportunity, and with that the greatest inclination to be instructed in
the politics, manners, and religion of other countries.
A convent had been long before this established at Jerusalem for the
Abyssinians, which he in part endowed, as appears by his letters still
extant[10], written to monks of that convent. He also obtained from
the Pope[11] a convent for the Abyssinians at Rome, which to this day
is appropriated to them, though it is very seldom that either there,
or even at Jerusalem, there are now any Abyssinians. By his desire,
and in his name, ambassadors (_i. e._ priests from Jerusalem) were
sent by Abba Nicodemus, the then Superior, who assisted at the council
of Florence, where, however, they adhered to the opinion of the Greek
church about the proceeding of the Holy Ghost, which created a schism
between the Greek and Latin churches. This embassy was thought of
consequence enough to be the subject of a painting in the Vatican, and
to this picture we owe the knowledge of such an embassy having been
sent.
The mild reign of the last Soldan of Egypt seems greatly to have
favoured the disposition of Zara Jacob, in maintaining an intercourse
with Europe and Asia. And it is for the first time now in this reign
that we read of a dispute upon religion with the Franks, or Frangi,
a name which afterwards became more odious and fatal to whomsoever
it was applied. Abba George is said to have disputed before the king
upon some point of his religion, and to have confuted his opponent
even to conviction. We are not informed of the name of Abba George’s
antagonist, but he is thought to have been a Venetian painter[12], who
lived many years after in Abyssinia, and, it is believed, died there.
From this time, however, in almost every reign, there appear marks of
a party formed in favour of the church of Rome, which probably had its
first rise from the Abyssinian embassy to the council of Florence.
Although the established religion in Abyssinia was that of the Greek
church of Alexandria, yet many different superstitions prevailed in
every part of the country. On the coast of the Red Sea, as well as
the Ocean, that is in the low provinces adjoining to the kingdom of
Adel, the greatest part of the inhabitants were Mahometans; and the
conveniencies of trade had occasioned these to disperse themselves
through many villages in the high country, especially in Woggora, and
in the neighbourhood of Gondar. Dembea on the south, and the rugged
district of Samen on the east, were crowded with many deformed sects,
while the people of the low valleys, towards Nubia, the Agows at the
head of the Nile, and those of the same name, though of a different
nation and language, at the head of the Tacazzé, in Lasta, were, for
the greatest part, Pagans, _i. e._ of the old religion of Sabeans,
worshipping the planets, stars, the wind, trees, and such like. But a
more abominable worship than this seemed especially predominant among
some of the Agows at the source of the Nile, and the people bordering
upon Nubia, as they adored the cow and serpents for their gods, and
supposed that, by the latter, they could divine all that was to happen
to them in futurity.
Whether it was that a long war had thrown a veil over these abuses,
or whether (which is more probable) a spirit of toleration had still
prevailed in this country, which had at first been converted to
Christianity without blood-shed, it is not easy at this time to say.
Only their history does not mention, that, before the reign of this
prince, idolatry had been considered as a capital crime, or judicially
inquired into, and tried as such. An accusation, however, at this time,
being brought against some families for worshipping the cow and the
serpent, they were, by the king’s orders, seized and brought before
himself sitting in judgment, with the principal of his clergy, and
with his officers of state, with whom he associated some strangers,
lately come from Jerusalem; a custom which prevails to this day. These
criminals were all capitally convicted, and executed. A proclamation
from the king followed, declaring, That any person who did not, upon
his right hand, carry an amulet, with these words, _I renounce the
devil for Christ our Lord_, should forfeit his personal estate, and be
liable to corporal punishment.
It has been the custom of all Pagan nations to wear amulets upon their
arms, and different parts of their bodies. From the Gentiles this usage
was probably first learned by the Jews. Amulets were adopted by the
Mahometans, but, till now, not worn in Abyssinia by any Christians.
These executions, which at first consisted of seven people only, began
to be repeated in different places, and at different times. The person
employed as inquisitor, and the manner this examination was made,
tended to make it still more odious. Amda Sion, the Acab Saat, was the
man to whom this persecution was committed. He was the king’s principal
confident; of very austere manners: he neither shaved his head nor
changed his cloaths; had no connection with women, nor with any great
man in court; never saw the king but alone, and, when he appeared
abroad, was constantly attended by a number of soldiers, with drums and
trumpets, and other equipage, not at all common for a clergyman. He
had under him a number of spies, who brought him intelligence of any
steps taken in idolatry or treason; and, after being, as he supposed,
well informed, he went to the house of the delinquent, where he
first refreshed himself and his attendants, then ordered those of the
house he came for, and all that were with them, to be executed in his
presence.
Among those that suffered were the king’s two sons-in-law, married to
his daughters Medehan Zamidu, and Berhan Zamidu, having been accused
by their wives, the one of adultery, the other of incest: they were
both put to death in their own houses, in a very private and suspicious
manner. This execution being afterwards declared by the king in an
assembly of the clergy and states, certain priests, or others, from
Jerusalem, in public, condemned this procedure of the king, as contrary
to law, sound policy, and the first principles of justice, which seems
to have had such an effect that we hear no more of these persecutions,
nor of Amda Sion the persecutor, during the whole of this reign.
The king now turned his thoughts upon a nobler object, which was that
of dividing his country into separate governments, assigning to each
the tax it should pay, at what time, and in what manner, according to
the situation and capacity of each province. The prosperity of the
Moorish states, from the extensive trade constantly carried on there,
the bad use they made of their riches by employing them in continual
rebellions, made it necessary that the king should see and inquire into
each person’s circumstances, which he proposed to do, as was usual,
before the time of their several investitures.
The chief of the rich district of Gadai, was the first called on by the
king, as it is on this occasion that considerable presents (seldom
less than two years rent of the province) are given, about one half to
the king, the other among his courtiers. There was, at this period, a
Moorish woman of quality in court, called the queen of Zeyla. She had
been brought to the palace with a view that the king should marry her,
but he disliking her for the length, as is said, or some other defect,
in her foreteeth, had married her to a nobleman.
This injury had sunk very deep in the breast of the queen of Zeyla,
though she was only nominally so, having been expelled from her kingdom
before her coming into Abyssinia. But it happened that she was sister
to Mihico son of Mahomet, chief of Gadai, whom she earnestly persuaded
to stay at home, and she succeeded so far, as not only to prevail
upon him to be absent, but also to withdraw himself entirely from his
allegiance.
At this very time, the king was informed by a faithful servant, a
nobleman of Hadea, that the chief of Gadai had long been meditating
mischief, and endeavouring to prevail with the king of Adel to march
with his army, while great part of the principal people of Hadea, whom
he had seduced, were to fall, on the opposite side, upon Dawaro and
Bali.
The king, however, received certain accounts from Adel, that all was
quiet there; and inquiring who of his Moorish servants were of the
conspiracy in Hadea, he found them to be Goodalu, Alarea, Ditho, Hybo,
Ganzè, Saag, Gidibo, Kibben, Gugulé, and Haleb. As there were still
forces enough in the province to resist this confederacy, the king,
instead of levying an army against them, thought the proper way was
to send them a governor, who should divide the interest and strength
of the enemy. There was then an uncle of Mihico remaining in exile at
Dejan[13], whither he had been sent formerly into banishment at the
instance of his nephew, but he still preserved the command of a small
district called Bomo, as well as the good inclinations of his own
subjects of Gadai, who held his memory in great veneration. The king,
therefore, sent for this governor of Bomo, and, setting before him the
behaviour of his nephew, he gave him the investiture of his government,
with many presents both useful and honourable; and, having ordered some
troops from Amhara to attend him, he dismissed him, to punish and expel
his nephew from the province of Gadai.
The fair of Adel was nigh, and thither all the inhabitants of Bali
and Dawaro go. It was at this time the conspirators of Hadea had
agreed to fall upon the provinces; while, probably, those at the fair
had been likewise destined to cut off the inhabitants which might be
found there. To counteract these designs, the king, by proclamation,
expressly forbade any of the inhabitants of Bali or Dawaro to go to the
fair, but all to join the governor of Bomo, who no sooner presented
himself in his district, than the people of all ranks flocked to him
and submitted.
Mihico saw himself undone by this address of the king, of which he was
quite uninformed. He fled immediately with his family, endeavouring,
if possible, to reach Adel; and having come the length of Bawa Amba,
a high mountain, where is one of the narrowest and most difficult
passes between the high country and the Kolla, here he strowed about,
in different places, all the riches that he had brought along with
him, in hopes that his pursuers, wearied by the time they came there,
should, by the difficulty of the ground, and the booty everywhere to
be found, be induced to proceed no further. But this stratagem did
not succeed; for he was so closely followed that he was overtaken and
slain, his head, hands, and feet were cut off, and immediately sent
to the king, who, after public rejoicings, gave the government of
Gadai to the person who first informed him of Mihico’s conspiracy, and
confirmed the governor of Bomo in the province of Hadea likewise, which
he made hereditary in his family. In order also to be more in readiness
to suppress such insurrections for the future, he gave his Christian
soldiers lands adjacent to each other, forming a line all along the
frontiers of the Mahometan provinces of Bali, Fatigar, Wadge, and
Hadea, that they might be ready at an instant to suppress any tumult in
the provinces themselves, or resist any incursions from the kingdom of
Adel.
The king now set about fulfilling another duty of his reign, that of
repairing the several churches in Abyssinia which had been destroyed
in the late war by the Mahometans, and of building new ones, which it
is their constant custom to vow and to erect where victories had been
obtained over an infidel enemy. While thus employed, news were sent him
from the patriarch of Alexandria, that the church of the Virgin had
been destroyed at that city by fire. Full, therefore, of grief for this
misfortune, he immediately founded another in Abyssinia, to repair
that loss which Christianity had suffered in Egypt.
Being now advanced in life, he would willingly have dedicated the
remainder of it to these purposes, when he was awakened from his
religious employments by an alarm of war. The rebels of Hadea, by
changing their chief, had not altered their dispositions to rebel,
and, seeing the king given to other pursuits, they began to associate
and to arm. The governor, whom the king had created after the death of
Mihico, gave the king a very late notice of this, which he dissembled,
as he was the queen Helena’s father: but having, under pretence of
consecrating the church of St Cyriacos, assembled a sufficient number
of men whom he could trust, he made a sudden irruption into the rebel
provinces before they had united their forces. The first that the king
met to oppose him was an officer of the rebel governor of Fatigar,
who imagined he was engaging only the van of a separate body of Zara
Jacob’s troops, not believing him to be yet come up in person with
so small a number: But being undeceived, he bestirred himself so
courageously, that he reached the king’s person, and broke his lance
upon him; but, in return, received a blow from the lance of the king
which threw him to the ground; at the sight of which his whole party
took flight, but were overtaken and put to the sword almost to a man;
nor was the king’s loss considerable, his number being so small.
Upon this defeat, Hiradin, the governor’s brother, declared his revolt,
and advanced to fight the king at the passage of the river Hawash. Zara
Jacob, much offended at this fresh delinquency, sent an officer, called
Han Degna, who found him at the watering-place unsuspecting an enemy;
and, before he could put his army in order, he was surrounded, slain,
and his head sent to the king, who rejoiced much at the sight, it being
brought him on Christmas day.
After this the king collected his dead, and buried them with great
honour and shew of grief. He then summoned the governor of Hadea,
who professed himself willing to submit his loyalty and conduct to
the strictest inquiry. Above all the reasons which hindered him from
attending the king, one was known to be, that the queen was not without
reason suspected to favour the Mahometans, being originally of that
faith herself, and, therefore, for fear of revealing his secret to the
enemy, the king did not choose to make her father, the governor of
Hadea, partaker in his expedition, but, from jealousy to the queen,
ordered him to stay at home. Notwithstanding which it was found, that
all in his government were in their allegiance, and ready to march upon
the shortest notice had the king required it; therefore he extended his
command over the conquered provinces, in room of the rebel governors
whom he had removed.
[Illustration]
BÆDA MARIAM.
From 1468 to 1478.
_Revives the Banishment of Princes to the Mountain--War with
Adel--Death of the King--Attempts by Portugal to discover
Abyssinia and the Indies._
Bæda Mariam succeeded to the throne (as his historian says) against his
father’s inclination, after having received much ill usage during the
earlier part of his life, of which this was the occasion. His mother
took so violent and irregular a longing to see her son king, that
she formed a scheme, by the strength of a party of her relations and
friends, trusting to the weakness of an old man, to force him into a
partnership with his father. Examples of two kings, at the same time,
and even in this degree of relation, were more than once to be found
in the Abyssinian annals, but those times were now no more. A strong
jealousy had succeeded to an unreasonable confidence, and had thrown
both the person and pretensions of the heirs-apparent of this age to as
great a distance as was possible.
The queen, whose name was Sion Magass, or the Grace of Sion, first
began to tamper with the clergy, who, though they did not absolutely
join her in her views, shewed her, however, more encouragement than was
strictly consistent with their allegiance. From these she applied to
some of the principal officers of state, and to those about the king,
the best affected to her son and his succession. These, aware of the
evil tendency of her scheme, first advised her, by every means, to lay
it aside; and afterwards, seeing she still persisted, and afraid of a
discovery that would involve her accomplices in it, they disclosed the
matter to the king himself, who resented the intention so heinously,
that he ordered the queen to be beaten with rods till she expired.
Her body afterwards was privately buried in a church dedicated to the
Virgin Mary, not far from Debra Berhan[14].
Nothing had hitherto appeared to criminate the young prince. But it
was soon told the king, that, after the death of the queen, her son
Bæda Mariam had taken frankincense and wax-tapers from the churches,
which he employed, at stated times, in the observation of the usual
solemnities over his mother’s grave. The king, having called his son
before him, began to question him about what he had heard; while
the prince, without hesitation, gave him a full account of every
circumstance, glorying in what, he said, was his duty, and denying that
he was accountable to any man on earth for the marks of affection which
he shewed to his mother.
The king, considering his son’s justification as a reproach made to
himself for cruelty, ordered the prince, and, with him, his principal
friend Meherata Christos, to be loaded with irons, and banished to
the top of a mountain; and it is hard to say where this punishment
would have ended, had not the monks of Debra Kosso and Debra Libanos,
and all those of the desert, (who thought themselves in some measure
accomplices with his mother), by exhortations, pretended prophecies,
dreams and visions, convinced the king, that Providence had decreed
unalterably, that none but his son, Bæda Mariam, should succeed him.
To this ordinance the old king bowed, as it gave him a prospect of the
long continuance of his family on the throne of Abyssinia.
Zara Jacob was no sooner dead, than his son, Bæda Mariam, who succeeded
him, began to apply himself seriously to the affairs of government.
From the reign of Judith, (in the tenth century), when so many of the
princes of the royal family were massacred, the custom of sending
the royal children to confinement on the top of a mountain had been
discontinued. These children all lived at home with their respective
fathers and mothers, like private persons; and the kings seemed to
connive at abolishing their former practice, for no mountain had been
yet chosen as a substitute to the unfortunate Damo. The disagreement
between Zara Jacob and his queen, with the cause of it, and the
prince’s frankness and resolution, seemed to point out the necessity of
reviving the salutary severity of the ancient laws. Bæda Mariam gave
orders, therefore, to arrest all his brethren, and send them prisoners
for life to the high mountain of _Geshen_, on the confines of Amhara
and Begemder, which ever after continued the state-prison for the royal
children, till a slaughter, like to that made upon mount Damo, was the
occasion, as we shall see, of deserting Geshen likewise.
The king applied himself next to measures for the better government
of his country. He ordered a general pardon to be proclaimed to all
who, by the severity of the late reign, lay under sentence of death,
banishment, or any other punishment; and, convoking the states of the
kingdom, he met them with a chearfulness and openness which inspired
confidence into every rank, while, at the same time, he filled all the
places he found vacant, or that he thought proper to change, with men
of the greatest integrity. He then reviewed the whole cavalry that were
in his service, which he distributed into bodies, and stationed them in
places where they could be readiest called, to execute those designs he
had then in contemplation.
The next year the king went to Debra Libanos in Shoa. It was, however,
observed, that his preparations were not such as were usual in these
short journies, nor such as were made in peaceable times. On the
contrary, orders were sent to the borders of Tigré to receive the
royal army, which was soon to arrive in those parts. The rumour of
this was quickly spread abroad, and affected all the neighbouring
states, according to their several interests. Mahomet king of Adel was
the first that took the alarm. Tho’ a kind of peace had subsisted for
several years between Adel and Abyssinia, yet inroads had been made
from each country into the other; and these might have served them as
pretexts for war, had that been the inclination of the times. Yet, as
both countries happened to be disposed for peace, these outrages passed
unnoticed.
But, to prevent surprise upon this last movement of the troops, the
king of Adel thought he had a right to be informed of Bæda Mariam’s
intentions, and, with this view, he sent some of the principal people
of his country as ambassadors, under pretext of congratulating the king
upon his accession to the throne. They met the king in Shoa, and had
carried with them very considerable presents. They were received in a
very distinguished manner; and the presents which Bæda Mariam returned
to the king of Adel were nothing inferior to those he accepted. After
having entertained the ambassadors several days with feasting and
diversions, he confirmed a peace under the same duties upon trade that
had formerly subsisted.
The king of Dancali also, old, infirm, yet constant in his attachment
to the Abyssinians, was not without his inquietudes, though he was
not afraid they intended to attack his poor territory with an army.
He dreaded lest the army in its march should drink up that little
quantity of water which remained to him in summer, and, without which,
his kingdom would become uninhabited. It is a low, sandy district,
lying on the Red Sea, just where the coast, after bearing a little to
the east of north from Suez to Dancali, makes an elbow, and stretches
nearly east, as far as the Straits of Babelmandeb. It has the mines of
fossile-salt immediately on the north and north-west, a desert part of
the province of Dawaro to the south, and the sea on the north. But it
has no port, excepting a spacious bay, with tolerable anchorage, called
_the Bay of Bilur_[15], in lat. 13° 3´, and, corruptly in vulgar maps
and writings, the Bay of Bayloul.
The kingdom of Dancali is bounded on the east at Azab by part of the
kingdom of Adel, and the myrrh country. The king is a Mahometan, as
are all his subjects. They are called Taltal, are all black, and only
some of them woolly-headed; a circumstance which probably arises from
a mixture with the Abyssinians, whose hair is long. There are but two
small rivers of fresh water in the whole kingdom; and even these are
not visible above ground in the hot season, but are swallowed up in the
sand, so as to be dug for when water is wanted. In the rainy season,
these are swollen by rain falling from the sides of the mountains and
from the high lands of Abyssinia, and then only they run with a current
into the sea. All the rest of the water in this country is salt, or
brackish, and not fit for use, unless in absolute necessity and dry
years. Even these sometimes fail, and they are obliged to seek, far off
in the rainy frontiers of Abyssinia, water for themselves, and pasture
for their miserable goats and sheep.
When the Indian trade flourished, this prince’s revenue arose chiefly
from furnishing camels for the transport of merchandise to all parts
of Africa. Their commerce is now confined to the carrying bricks of
solid, or fossile salt, dug from pits in their own country, which,
in Abyssinia, pass instead of silver currency; these they deliver at
the nearest market in the high lands at a very moderate profit, after
having carried them from the sea-side through the dry and burning
deserts of their own country, at the great risk of being murdered by
Galla.
The presents sent to Bæda Mariam from Dancali did not make a great
figure when compared with those of Adel. They consisted of one horse,
a mule, a shield of elephant’s hide, a poisoned lance, two swords, and
some dates. Poor as these presents were, they were much more respected
than those of Adel, because they came from a loyal heart; while the
others were from a nation distinguished every year by some premeditated
action of treachery and bloodshed. The king, having first sent for
the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, and called the ambassadors of Dancali
and Adel into his presence, declared to them, that neither of these
states was to be the scene of war, but that he was instantly to march
against the Dobas[16], whose constant inroads into his country, and
repeated cruelties, he was resolved no longer to suffer. He required
the ambassadors to warn their masters to keep a strict neutrality,
otherwise they would be infallibly involved in the same calamities with
that nation.
Lent being now near, the king returned to Ifras, there to keep his
fast, and distributed his horse on the side of Ambasanet, having sent
orders to the governor of Amhara to join him immediately, who was
then at Salamat besieging a party of rebels upon Mount Gehud, which
signifies the _Mountain of Manifestation_. It was the intention of the
king, that the troops of Amhara, Angot, and Tigré should press upon
the enemy from the high country, while he with his own troops (chiefly
horse) should cut off their retreat to the plains of salt; and it was
here that the king of Dancali was afraid that they would interfere with
his fresh water.
This prince kept strictly his promise of secrecy made to Bæda Mariam,
while the king of Adel observed a very different line of conduct; for
he not only discovered the king’s intention, but he invited the Dobas
to send their wives, children, and effects into Adel, while his troops
should cut off the king’s provision, and fight him wherever they saw
that it could be done with advantage. The plan was speedily embraced.
Twelve clans of Dobas marched with their cattle, as privately as
possible, for Adel; but the king’s intelligence was too good, and his
motions too rapid, to allow their schemes to be carried into execution.
With a large body of horse, he took possession of a strong pass, called
Fendera; and when that unhappy people, fatigued with their march, and
incumbered with baggage, arrived at this spot, they were cut to pieces
without resistance, and without distinction of age or sex.
The king, at the beginning of this campaign, declared, that his
intention was not to carry on war with the Dobas as with an ordinary
enemy, but totally to extirpate them as a nuisance; and, to shew
himself in earnest in the declaration, he now made a vow never to
depart from the country till he had plowed and sown the fields, and ate
the crop on the spot with his army. He, therefore, called the peasants
of two small neighbouring districts, Wadge and Ganz, and ordered them
to plow and sow that part; which having seen done, the king went to
Axum, but returned again to the Dobas, by the feast of the Epiphany.
That cruel, restless nation, saw now the king’s real intent was their
utter destruction, and that there was no possibility of avoiding it
but by submission. This prudent conduct they immediately adopted; and,
great part of them renouncing the Pagan religion, they so satisfied
Bæda Mariam that he decamped from their country, after having, at his
own expence, restored to them a number of cattle equal to that which
he had taken away, having also given up, untouched, the crop which had
been sown, and recompensed the peasants of Wadge and Ganz for their
corn and labour.
Having resolved to chastise the king of Adel for his treacherous
conduct, he retired southward into the provinces Dawaro and Ifat; and,
as if he had had no other views but those of peace, he crossed over
to Begemder, where he directed the Abuna to meet him with his young
son Iscander, of whom his queen, Romana Werk[17], had been lately
delivered. From this he proceeded to Gojam, everywhere leaving orders
with the proper officers to have their troops in readiness against his
return; and having delivered the young prince to Ambasa David, governor
of that province, he proceeded to Gimbota, a town lying on the banks
of the Nile, which, in honour of his son’s governor, he changed to
David Harasa[18]. Having thus settled the prince to his mind, he sent
orders to the army in Tigré and Dawaro to advance into the southernmost
frontier of Adel. He himself returned by the way he went to Gojam, and
collecting the troops, and the nobility who flocked to him on that
occasion, he marched straight for the same country.
Whilst the king was occupied in these warlike preparations, a violent
commotion arose among his clergy at home. In the reign of Zara Jacob,
a number of strangers, after the council of Florence, had come into
Abyssinia with the Abuna Imaranha Christos. Among these were some monks
from Syria, or Egypt, who had propagated a heresy which had found many
disciples. They denied the consubstantiality of Christ, whom they
admitted to be perfect God and likewise perfect man, but maintained
that what we call his _humanity_ was a precious substance, or nature,
not composed of flesh, blood, and arteries, (like ours), but infinitely
more noble, perfect, peculiar to, and only existing in himself. An
assembly of the clergy was called, this heresy condemned, and those
who had denied the perfect manhood of our Saviour were put to death by
different kinds of torture. Some were sent to die in the Kolla, others
exposed, without the necessaries of life, to perish with cold on the
tops of the highest mountains.
There was another motive of discontent which appeared in that assembly,
and which affected the king himself. A Venetian, whose name was
Branca Leon, was one of the strangers that arrived in Ethiopia at the
time above mentioned. He was a limner by profession, and exceedingly
favoured by the late king, for whom he had painted, with great
applause, the pictures of Abyssinian saints for the decoration of the
churches. It happened that this man was employed for an altar-piece of
Atronsa Mariam; the subject was a common one in Italy, Christ in his
mother’s arms; where the child, according to the Italian mode, is held
in his mother’s left arm. This is directly contrary to the usage of
the East, where the left hand is reserved for the purpose of washing
the body when needful, and is therefore looked upon with dishonour, so
much, indeed, that at table the right hand only is put into the plate.
The fanatic and ignorant monks, heated with the last dispute, were
fired with rage at the indignity which they supposed was offered to
our Saviour. But the king, struck with the beauty of the picture, and
thinking blood enough had been already shed upon religious scruples,
was resolved to humour the spirit of persecution no farther. Some of
the ringleaders of these disturbances privately disappearing, the
rest saw the necessity of returning to their duty; and the picture
was placed on the altar of Atronsa Mariam, and there preserved,
notwithstanding the devastation of the country by the Moors under the
reigns of David III. and Claudius, till many years afterwards, together
with the church, it was destroyed by an inroad of the Galla.
In the mean time, the army from Dawaro had entered the kingdom of Adel
under Betwudet[19] Adber Yasous, and, expecting to find the Moors quite
unprepared, they had begun to waste every thing with fire and sword.
But it was not long before they found the inhabitants of Adel ready to
receive them, and perfectly instructed of the king’s intentions, from
the moment he left Dawaro, to go to meet his son in Gojam. Indeed,
it could not be otherwise, from the multitude of Moors constantly in
his army, who, though they put on the appearance of loyalty, never
ceased to have a warm heart towards their own religion and countrymen.
Advanced parties appeared as soon as the Abyssinian army entered the
frontiers; and these were followed by the main body in good order,
determined to fight their enemy before they had time to ravage the
country.
A battle immediately followed, very bloody, as might be expected from
the mutual hatred of the soldiers, from the equality in numbers, and
the long experience each had in the other’s manner of fighting. The
battle, often on the point of being lost, was as often retrieved by
the personal exertion of the Moorish officers, upon whom the loss
principally fell. Sidi Hamet, the king’s son, the chiefs of Arar,
Nagal, Telga, Adega, Hargai, Gadai, and Kumo, were slain, with
several other principal men, who had either revolted from the king of
Abyssinia, or whom friendship to the king of Adel had brought from the
opposite coast of Arabia.
The king was still advancing with diligence, when he was overtaken
by an express, informing him that his queen Romana was delivered of
another prince, christened by the name of Anquo Israel. Upon which
good tidings he halted at once to rest and feast his army; and, in
the middle of the festivity, an express from Adber Yasous brought him
news of the complete victory over the Moors, and that there was now
no army in Adel of consequence enough to keep the field. Hereupon the
king detached a sufficient number of troops to reinforce Adber Yasous
in Adel, and continued himself recruiting his army, and making greater
preparations than before, that, during the first of the season, he
might utterly lay waste the whole Moorish country, or so disable them
that they might, for many years, be content to enjoy peace under the
condition of becoming his tributaries.
While planning these great enterprises, the king was seized with a pain
in his bowels, whether from poison or otherwise is not known, which
occasioned his death. Having, a few moments before he died, recollected
that his face was turned on a different side from the kingdom of Adel,
he ordered himself to be shifted in his bed, and placed so as to look
directly towards it, (a token how much his heart was set upon its
destruction) and in that posture he expired.
He was a prince of great bravery and conduct; very moderate in all his
pleasures; of great devotion; zealous for the established church, but
steady in resisting the monks and other clergy in all their attempts
towards persecution, innovation, and independency. Many stories have
been propagated of his inclination to the Catholic religion, and of his
aversion to having an Abuna from Egypt; and it is said, that, during
his whole reign, he obstinately persisted in refusing to suffer any
Abuna in his kingdom. But these are fables invented by the Portuguese
priests, who came into Abyssinia some time afterwards, and forged
anecdotes to serve their own purposes; for, unless we except the
story of the Venetian, Branca Leon, there is not a word said of any
connection Bæda Mariam ever had with the few Catholics that then were
in his country, and even that was a connection of his father’s. And
as to the other story, we find in history, that the Abuna had been in
the country ever since his father Zara Jacob’s time; and that, at his
desire, the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, came and received, in the field
of battle, large donations in gold, almost as often as the king gained
a victory. Bæda Mariam died at the age of forty, after reigning ten
years, which were spent in continual war; during the whole course of
which he was successful, and might (if he had lived) have very much
weakened the Moorish states, and prevented the terrible retaliation
that fell afterwards from that quarter upon his country.--It will be
proper now to look back into the transactions in Europe, which are
partly connected with the history of this kingdom.
The conquest of the north part of Africa followed the reduction of
Egypt, and the whole coast of Barbary was crowded with Mahometans, from
Alexandria to the western ocean, and from the Mediterranean to the edge
of the desert. Even the desert itself was filled with them; and trade,
security, and good faith, were now everywhere disseminated in regions,
a few years before the seat of murder and pillage.
Tarik and his Moors had invaded Spain; Musa followed him, and conquered
it. The history of Count Julian is in every one’s hand; unfortunate
in having had the provocation, still more so in having had the power
to revenge it, by sacrificing at once his sovereign, his country,
religion, and life, to the private injuries done to his daughter. As
often as I have read the history of this catastrophe, so often have I
regretted to see with how little ceremony this young lady hath been
treated by authors of all languages and nations. They call her _Caaba_,
with the same ease and indifference as they would have called her Anne,
or Margaret. This must be from mere ignorance. Caaba could not be
the name of the daughter of Count Julian before her seduction. Caaba
means _Harlot_, in the broadest way possible to express the term, and
very cruelly and improperly, it seems to be given her, even after her
misfortune; for she was a daughter of the first family in Spain, of
unexceptionable virtue. She was not seduced, but _forced_ by the king,
while in the palace, and under protection of the queen.
A great influx of trade followed the conquest; and the religion, that
contained little restraint and great indulgence, was every where
embraced by the vanquished, who long had been Christians in name only.
On the other side, the conquerors were now no longer that brutish set
of madmen, such as they were under the Khalifat of the fanatic Omar.
They were now men eminent for their rank and attainments in every
species of learning. This was a dangerous crisis for Christianity,
and nothing else was threatened than its total subversion. The whole
world, without the help of England, had not virtue enough to withstand
this torrent. That nation, the favourite weapon in the hand of Heaven
for chastising tyranny and extirpating false religion, now lent its
assistance, and the scale was quickly turned.
At that time Europe saw with surprise an inconsiderable number of
fishermen, very inconveniently placed at the farthest end of the
Adriatic Gulf, applying themselves with unwearied care and patience to
cultivate, gather together, and improve the remnants and gleanings of
the Indian trade by Alexandria, under all the cruelties and oppressions
of those ignorant and barbarous conquerors the Turks, whom no prospect
of gain, no change of place, no frequency of commerce, could ever
civilize or subject to the rules of justice. Venice became at once
the great market for spices and perfumes, and consequently the most
considerable maritime power that had appeared in Europe for ages.
Genoa followed, but sunk, after great efforts, under the power of her
rival; while Venice remained mistress of the sea, of a large dominion
upon the continent, and of the Indian spice trade, the origin and
support of all her greatness.
Rhodes, and the ships of the Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, to
whom that island belonged, greatly harrassed the maritime trade carried
on by the Moors in their own vessels from Alexandria, who were every
day more discouraged by the unexpected progress of these _once petty_
Christian states. Trade again began to be carried on by caravans in the
desert. Large companies of merchants from Arabia, passed in safety to
the western ocean, and were joined by other traders from the different
parts of Barbary while passing to the southward of them, and that with
such security and expedition, that the Moors began to set little value
on their manner of trading by sea, content now again with the labours
and conveniencies of their ancient, faithful friend, and servant, the
camel.
Ormus, a small island in the Persian Gulf, had, by its convenient
situation, become the market for the spice trade, after the
discouragements it had received in the Mediterranean. All Asia was
supplied from thence, and vessels, entering the Straits of Babelmandeb,
had renewed the old resort to the temple of Mecca. From hence all
Africa, too, was served by caravans, that never since have forsaken
that trade, but continue to this day, and cross the continent, in
various directions.
John I. king of Portugal, after many successful battles with the Moors,
had at last forced them to cross the sea, and return vanquished to
their native country. By this he had changed his former dishonourable
name of _bastard_ to the more noble and much more popular one of John
the _avenger_. This did not satisfy him. Assisted by some English
navigators, he passed over to Barbary, laid siege to Ceuta, and
speedily after made himself master of the city. This early connection
with the English arose by his having married Philipina of Lancaster,
sister of Henry IV. king of England, by whom he had five sons, all
of them heroes, and, at the taking of Ceuta, capable of commanding
armies. Henry, the youngest, scarce twenty years of age, was the first
that mounted the walls of that city in his father’s presence, and was
thereupon created Master of the Order of Christ, a new institution,
whose sole end and view was the extirpation of the Mahometan religion.
Although every thing promised fair to John in the war of Africa, yet
it early occurred to prince Henry, that a small kingdom like Portugal
never could promise to do any thing effectual against the enormous
power of the Mahometans, then in possession of extensive dominions in
the richest parts of the globe. The sudden rise of Venice was before
his eyes, and almost happened in his own time. By applying to trade
alone, she had acquired a power sufficient to cope with the stoutest of
her enemies. Portugal, small as it was, merited quite another degree of
respect; but poverty, ignorance, pride, and idleness prevailed among
the poor people; even agriculture itself was in a manner abandoned
since the expulsion of the Moors.
Prince Henry, from his early years, had been passionately addicted to
the study of what is generally known by the name of _mathematics_,
that is, geometry, astronomy, and consequently arithmetic. He was of a
liberal turn of mind, devoid of superstition, haughtiness, or passion;
the Arab and the Jew were admitted to him with great freedom, as the
only masters who were capable of instructing him in those sciences.
It was in vain to attempt to rival Venice in possession of the
Mediterranean trade: no other way remained but to open the commerce to
India by the Atlantic Ocean, by sailing round the point of Africa to
the market of spices in India. Full of this thought, he retired to a
country palace, and there dedicated the whole of his time to deliberate
inquiry. The ignorance and prejudices of the age were altogether
against him. The only geography then known was that of the poets. It
was the opinion of the Portuguese, that the regions within the tropics
were totally uninhabited, scorched by eternal sun-beams, while boiling
oceans wasted these burning coasts; and, therefore, they concluded,
that every attempt to explore them was little better than downright
madness, and a braving, or tempting, of Providence.
But, on the other hand, he found great materials to comfort him, and
to make him persist in his resolution. For Greek history, to which he
then had access, had recorded two instances, which shewed that the
voyage was not only possible, but that it had been actually performed,
first by the Phœnicians, under Necho king of Egypt, then by Eudoxus,
during the time of Ptolemy Lathyrus, who, after doubling the southern
Cape of Africa, arrived in safety at Cadiz. Hanno, too, had sailed from
Carthage through the Straits, and reached to 25° of north latitude
in the Atlantic Ocean. In more modern times, even in the preceding
century, Macham, an Englishman, returning from a voyage on the west
coast of Africa, was shipwrecked on the island of Madeira, together
with a woman whom he tenderly loved. After her death he became weary
of solitude; and having constructed a bark, or canoe, with which he
paddled over to the opposite coast, he was taken by the natives, and
presented to the Caliph as a curiosity. And the Normans of Dieppe had,
as a company, traded in 1364, not fourscore years from prince Henry’s
time, as far as Sierra de Leona, only 7° from the Line.
The prince’s humanity to his Moorish prisoners had likewise been
rewarded by substantial information; they reported that some of their
countrymen of the kingdom of Sus had advanced far into the desert,
carrying their water and provisions along with them on camels; that,
after many days travel, they came to mines of salt, and, having loaded
their cargoes, they proceeded till they came within the limits of the
rains; there they found large and populous towns, inhabited by a people
totally black and woolly-headed, who reported that there were many
countries even beyond them, occupied by numerous and warlike tribes.
To complete all, Don Pedro, Henry’s brother, returning from Venice,
brought along with him from that city a map, on which the whole coast
of the Atlantic Ocean was distinctly traced, and the southern extremity
of Africa was represented to be a cape surrounded with the sea, which
joined with the Indian Ocean.
No sooner was the prince thus satisfied of the possibility of a passage
to India round Africa, than he set about constructing the necessary
instruments for navigation. He corrected the solar tables of the Arabs,
and made some alterations in the astrolabe: For, strange to tell!
the quadrant was not then known in Portugal, though, a hundred years
before, Ulughbeg had measured the sun’s height at Samarcand in Persia,
with a quadrant of about 400 feet radius, the largest ever constructed,
if, indeed, the size of this be not exaggerated.
Henry, who, by his liberality and affability, had drawn together the
most learned mathematicians and ablest pilots of the age, now proposed
to reduce his speculations to practice. Many ships had sailed in the
course of his disquisitions, and ten years had now elapsed before
the prince, after all his encouragement, could induce the captains
to proceed farther than Cape Non, or, thirty leagues further, to
Cape Bojador. To this their courage held good; after which, the fear
of fiery oceans reviving in their minds, they returned exceedingly
satisfied with their own perseverance and abilities. Henry, though
greatly hurt at this behaviour, dissembled the low opinion which
he had formed of both. He contented himself with proposing to them
different reasons and rewards; and urged them to repeat their voyages,
which, however, constantly ended in the same disappointment. And
it is probable a much longer time might have been spent in these
miscarriages, had not accident, or rather providence, stept in to his
assistance.
John Gonsalez, and Tristan Vaz, two gentlemen of his bed-chamber,
seeing the impression this behaviour had made on the prince, and having
obtained a small ship from him, resolved to double Cape Bojador, and
discover the coast beyond it. Whether the fiery oceans might not have
presented themselves to these gentlemen, I know not; but a violent
storm forced them to sea. After being tossed about in perpetual fear
of shipwreck for several days, they at last landed on a small island,
which they called Port Santo. These two navigators possessed the true
spirit of discovery. Far from giving themselves up for lost in a new
world, or content with what they had already done, they set about
making the most diligent observation of every thing remarkable in this
small spot. The island itself was barren; but, examining the horizon
all around, they observed a black fixed spot there, which never either
changed its place or dimensions. Satisfied, therefore, that this
was land, they returned to the Infant with the news of this double
discovery.
Three vessels were speedily equipped by the prince; two of them given
to Vaz and Arco, and the third to Bartholomew Perestrello, gentleman
of the bed-chamber to Don John his brother. These adventurers were
far from disappointing his expectations; they arrived at Port Santo,
and proceeded to the fixed spot, which they found to be the island of
Madeira, wholly covered with wood; an island that has ever since been
of the greatest use to the trade of both Indies, and which has remained
to the crown of Portugal, after the greatest part of their other
conquests in the east are lost. John I. was now dead, and Edward had
succeeded him. The infant Henry, however, still continued the pursuit
of his discoveries with the greatest ardour.
Giles D’Anez, stimulated by the success of the last adventures, put
to sea with a resolution to double Cape Bojador close in shore, so as
to make his voyage a foundation for pushing farther the discovery;
and, being lucky in good weather, he fairly doubled the Cape; and,
continuing some leagues farther into the bay to the south of it, he
returned with the same good fortune to Portugal, after having found
the ocean equally as navigable on the other side as on this; and that
there was no foundation for those monstrous appearances or difficulties
mariners till now had expected to find there.
The successful expedition round Cape Bojador being soon spread abroad
through Europe, excited a spirit of adventure in all foreigners;
the most capable of whom resorted immediately to prince Henry, from
their different countries, which further increased the spirit of the
Portuguese, already raised to a very great height. But there still
was a party of men, who, not susceptible of great actions themselves,
dedicated their time with some success to criticising the enterprises
of others. These blamed prince Henry, because, when Portugal was
exhausted both of men and money by a necessary war in Africa, he
should have chosen that very time to launch out into expences and vain
discoveries of countries, in an immense ocean, which must be useless,
because incapable of cultivation. And though they did not advance,
as formerly, that the ocean was boiling among burning sands, they
still thought themselves authorised to assert, that these countries
must, from their situation under the sun, be so hot as to turn all
the discoverers black, and also to destroy all vegetation. Futile as
these reasons were, at another time they would have been sufficient to
have blasted all the designs of prince Henry, had they made half the
impression upon the king that they did upon the minds of the people.
Portugal was then only _growing_ to the pitch of heroism to which it
soon after arrived, their spirit being continually fostered by a long
succession of wise, brave, and well-informed princes.
Edward, the reigning prince, disdained to give any answer to such
objections, otherwise than by doubling his respect and attention for
his uncle Henry. To encourage him still further, he conferred upon
him for life the sovereignty of Madeira, Port Santo, and all the
discoveries he should make on the coast of Africa; and the spiritual
jurisdiction of the island of Madeira, upon his new Order of Christ,
for ever.
These voyages of discovery were constantly persevered in. Nugno Tristan
doubled Cape Blanco, and came to a small river, which, from their
finding gold in the hands of the natives, was afterwards called _Rio
del Oro_; and here a fort was afterwards built by the Portuguese,
called _Arguim_. I would not, however, have it supposed, that gold is
the produce of any place in the latitude of Cape Blanco. It was brought
here from the black nations, far to the southward, to purchase salt
from the mines which are in this desert near the Cape. The sight of
gold, better than any argument, served to calm the fears, and overcome
the scruples, of those who hitherto had been adversaries to these
discoveries.
In the year 1445, Denis Fernandes first discovered the great river
Senega, the northern banks of which are inhabited by Asenagi Moors,
whose colour is tawny, while the southern, or opposite banks, belong
to the Jaloffes, or Negro nation, the chief market for the gum-arabic.
Passing this river he discovered Cape Verde; and, to his inexpressible
satisfaction, though now in the midst of the torrid zone, he found
the country abounded with large rivers, and with the most luxuriant
verdure. He found a civil war in the nation of Jaloffes. Bemoy, a
prince of that nation, had, in a minority, intruded himself into
the throne of his brothers, (to whom he was but half blood), by the
address of his mother. The eldest of the three brothers preserved the
shadow of government, and seemed to favour the usurpation. Bemoy had
improved that interval by cultivating the Portuguese friendship to the
uttermost. He promised every thing; a place to build their city on the
continent, which the king very much desired; and to be a convert to
Christianity, the only thing the king wished still more. His eldest
brother dying, the king was briskly pressed by the two younger, and
steadily supported by the Portuguese, from whom he had borrowed large
sums; but still appearing to trifle with the day of his conversion, and
the day of his payment, the king ordered the Portuguese to withdraw
from his country, and leave him to his fortune. The loss of a battle
with his brothers soon reduced him to the necessity of flying across
the deserts to Arguim, and thence to Portugal, with a number of his
followers. He was received by the king of Portugal with all the honours
due to a sovereign prince, and baptised at Lisbon, the king and queen
being his sponsors.
Great festivals and illuminations were made at this acquisition to
Christianity; and Bemoy appeared at those festivals as the greatest
ornament of them, performing feats of horsemanship never before
practised in Portugal. The modesty and propriety of his conversation
and behaviour in private, and the great dignity and eloquence which he
displayed in public, began to give the Portuguese a very different idea
of his clan from that which they had formerly entertained.
In the mean time the king went rapidly on with the preparations
that were to establish Bemoy in his kingdom; and the festivals
were no sooner terminated, than Bemoy found a large army and fleet
ready to sail with him, the command of which, unhappily for him
and the expedition, was given to Tristan d’Acugna, a soldier of
great experience and courage, but proud, passionate, and cruel; the
disagreeable name of Bisagudo[20] had already been fixed upon him by
his countrymen.
The fleet performed the voyage, and the troops landed happily.
They were, by their number and valour, far from any apprehension
of opposition. The general began immediately to lay the foundation
of a fort, without having sufficiently attended to its unhealthy
situation. The spot which was chosen being low and marshy, fevers began
early to make havock among his men, and the work of course went on
proportionably slower. The murmurs of the army against his obstinacy
in adhering to the choice of this place, and his fear that he himself
should be left alone governor of it, made D’Acugna desperate; when one
day, taking his pleasure on board a ship, and having had some words
with Bemoy, he stabbed him with his dagger to the heart, so that he
fell dead without uttering a word. The fort was abandoned, and the army
returned to Portugal, after having cost little less than all prince
Henry’s discoveries together had done.
But Heaven rewarded the wisdom of the king by a discovery, the
consequences of which more than overpaid him, in his mind, for his
loss. Prince Henry’s principal view was to discover the way to India
by the southern Cape of Africa; but this as yet was not known to be
possible. In order to remedy a disappointment, if any such happened
in this sea-voyage, another was attempted by land. We have seen that
the common track for the Indian trade was from the east to the west
sea, through the desert, the whole breadth of Africa. Prince Henry
had projected a route parallel to this to the southward, through a
Christian country: For it had been long reported by the Christians
from Jerusalem, that a number of monks resorted thither, subjects of
a Christian prince in the very heart of Africa, whose dominions were
said to reach from the east to the west sea. Several of these monks had
been met at Alexandria, whose patriarch had the sole right to send a
metropolitan into that country. These facts, though often known, had
been as often forgot by the western Christians. Marco Paulo[21], a
Venetian traveller, had much confused the story, by saying he had met,
in his travels through Tartary, with this prince, who they all agreed
was a priest, and was called Joannes Presbyter Prete Janni, or Prester
John.
The king of Portugal, therefore, chose Peter Covillan and Alphonso
de Paiva for his ambassadors. Covillan was a man qualified for the
undertaking. He had several times been employed by the late king in
very delicate affairs, out of which he extricated himself with great
credit by his address and secrecy. He was, besides this, in the
vigour of his age, bold, active, and perfectly master of all sorts of
arms; modest and chearful in conversation, and, what crowned all, had
happily a great readiness in acquiring languages, which enabled him to
explain himself wherever he went, without an interpreter; an advantage
to which, above all others, we are to ascribe the success of such a
journey.
It was at the court of Bemoy that the first certain account of the
existence of this Christian prince was procured. This people, on the
west coast of Africa, reported, that, inland to the eastward, were many
powerful nations and cities, governed by princes totally independent
of each other; that the eastermost of these princes was called prince
of the Mosaical people, who were neither Pagans nor Idolaters, but
professed a religion compounded of the Christian and Jewish.
It seems plain that this intelligence must have been brought by the
caravans; or, indeed, the case may have been that the language of the
Negroes had, of old, been a dialect of Abyssinian. The black Ethiopians
above Thebes are reported to have bestowed much care upon letters; and
they certainly reformed the hieroglyphics, and probably invented the
Syllabic alphabet, which we know is used in Abyssinia to this day,
and which was probably the first among the nations. Be that as it
will, the various names which the Senega went by were all Abyssinian
words. Senega comes from Asenagi, which is Abyssinian, and signifies
_carriers_, or _caravans_; Dengui, _a stone_, or _rock_; Angueah, a
tree of that name; Anzo, _a crocodile_; and, at the same time, all
these are names of Abyssinian rivers.
It was at Benin, another Negro country, that the king again received
a confirmation of the existence of a Christian prince, who was said
to inhabit the heart of Africa to the south-east of this state. The
people of Benin reported him to be a prince exceedingly powerful; that
his name was Ogané, and his kingdom about 250 leagues to the eastward.
They added, that the kings of Benin received from him a brass cross and
a staff as their investiture. It should seem that this Ogané is but a
corruption of Jan, or Janhoi, which title the eastern Christians had
given to the king of Abyssinia. But it is very difficult to account for
the knowledge of Abyssinia in the kingdom of Benin, not only on account
of the distance, but likewise, because several of the most savage
nations of the world, the Galla and Shangalla, occupy the intervening
space.
The court of Abyssinia, as we shall see afterwards, did, indeed,
then reside in Shoa, the south-east extremity of the kingdom, and,
by its power and influence, probably might have pushed its dominion
through these barbarians, down to the neighbourhood of Benin on the
western ocean. But all this I must confess to be a simple conjecture
of mine, of which, in the country itself, I never found the smallest
confirmation.
Amha Yasous (prince of Shoa) being at court, on a visit to the king
at Gondar, in the years 1770 and 1771, and the strictest friendship
subsisting between us, every endeavour possible was used on my part to
examine this affair to the bottom. A number of letters were written,
and messengers sent; and, at this prince’s desire, his father directed,
that all the records of government should be consulted to satisfy me.
But never any thing occurred which gave room to imagine the prince of
Shoa had ever been sovereign of Benin, nor was the western ocean, or
that state, known to them in my time. Yet the country alluded to could
be no other than Abyssinia; and, indeed, the crooked staff, as well as
the cross, corroborate this opinion, unless the whole was an invention
of the Negroes, to flatter the king of Portugal.
That prince was resolved no longer to delay the discovery of the
markets of the spice-trade in India, and the passage over land,
through Abyssinia, to the eastern ocean. He, therefore, as has been
before said, dispatched Covillan and de Paiva to Alexandria, with the
necessary letters and credit. They had likewise a map, or chart, given
them, made under the direction of prince Henry, which they were to
correct, or to confirm, according as it needed. They were to enquire
what were the principal markets for the spice, and particularly the
pepper-trade in India; and what were the different channels by which
this was conveyed to Europe; whence came the gold and silver, the
medium of this trade; and, above all, they were to inform themselves
distinctly, whether it was possible to arrive in India by sailing round
the southern promontory of Africa.
From Alexandria these two travellers proceeded to Cairo, thence to
Suez, the port on the bottom of the Red Sea, where joining a caravan
of western Moors, they continued their route to Aden, a rich trading
town, without the Straits of Babelmandeb. Here they separated:
Covillan set sail for India, De Paiva for Suakem, a small trading
town and island in Barbaria, or Barabra of the ancients. What other
circumstances occurred we know not, only that De Paiva, attempting his
journey this way, lost his life, and was never more heard of.
Covillan, more fortunate, passed over to Calicut and Goa in India;
then crossed the Indian Ocean to Sofala, to inspect the mines; then
he returned to Aden, and so to Cairo, where he expected to meet his
companion De Paiva; but here he heard of his death. However, he was
there met by two Jews with letters from the king of Abyssinia, the one
called Abraham, the other Joseph. Abraham he sent back with letters,
but took Joseph along with him again to Aden, and thence they both
proceeded to Ormus in the Persian Gulf. Here they separated, and the
Jew returned home by the caravans that pass along the desert to Aleppo.
Covillan, now solely intent upon the discovery of Abyssinia, returned
to Aden, and, crossing the Straits of Babelmandeb, landed in the
dominions of that prince, whose name was Alexander, and whom he found
at the head of his army, levying contributions upon his rebellious
subjects. Alexander received him kindly, but rather from motives of
curiosity than from any expectation of advantage which would result
from his embassy. He took Covillan along with him to Shoa, where the
court then resided.
Covillan returned no more to Europe. A cruel policy of Abyssinia
makes this a favour constantly denied to strangers. He married, and
obtained large possessions; continued greatly in the favour of several
succeeding princes, and was preferred to the principal offices, in
which, there is no doubt, he appeared with all the advantage a polished
and instructed mind has over an ignorant and barbarous one. Frequent
dispatches from him came to the king of Portugal, who, on his part,
spared no expence to keep open the correspondence. In his journal,
Covillan described the several ports in India which he had seen; the
temper and disposition of the princes; the situation and riches of the
mines of Sofala: He reported that the country was very populous, full
of cities both powerful and rich; and he exhorted the king to pursue,
with unremitting vigour, the passage round Africa, which he declared
to be attended with very little danger; and that the Cape itself was
well known in India. He accompanied this description with a chart, or
map, which he had received from the hands of a Moor in India, where the
Cape, and cities all around the coast, were exactly represented.
Upon this intelligence the king fitted out three ships under
Bartholomew Dias, who had orders to inquire after the king of Abyssinia
on the western ocean. Dias passed on to lat. 24½ deg. south, and there
set up the arms of the king of Portugal in token of possession. He then
sailed for the harbour of the Herdsmen, so called from the multitude
of cows seen on land; and, as it should seem, not knowing whither he
was going, came to a river which he called _Del Infante_, from the
captain’s name that first discovered it, having, without dreaming of
it, passed that formidable Cape, the object so much desired by the
Portuguese. Here he was tossed for many days by violent storms as he
came near land, being more and more in the course of variable winds,
but, obstinately persisting to discover the coast, he at last came
within sight of the Cape, which he called the _Cape of Tempests_, from
the rough treatment his vessel had met in her passage round it.
The great end was now obtained. Dias and his companions had really
suffered much, and, upon their return, they did not fail to do ample
justice to their own bravery and perseverance; in doing this, they had
conjured up so many storms and dreadful sights, that, all the remaining
life of king John, there was no more talk but of this Cape: Only the
king, to hinder a bad omen, instead of the Cape of Tempests, ordered it
to be called the Cape of Good Hope.
Although the discovery now was made, there were not wanting a
considerable number of people of the greatest consequence who were for
abandoning it altogether; one of their reasons was curious, and what,
if their behaviour afterwards had not been beyond all instance heroic,
would have led us to imagine their spirit of religion and conquest
had both cooled since the days of prince Henry. They were afraid,
lest, after having discovered a passage to India, the depriving the
Moorish states of their revenues from the spice-trade, should unite
these powers to their destruction. Now, to destroy their revenues
effectually, and thereby ruin their power, was the very motive which
set prince Henry upon the discovery, as worthy the Grand Master of the
Order of Christ; an order founded in the blood of unbelievers, and
devoted particularly to the extirpation of the Mahometan religion.
Don Emmanuel, then king, having no such apprehensions, resolved to
abide the consequences of a measure the most arduous ever undertaken
by any nation, and which, though it had cost a great deal of time and
expence, had yet succeeded beyond their utmost expectations. It was not
till after long deliberation that he fixed upon Vasques de Gama, a man
of the first distinction, remarkable for courage and great presence of
mind. Before his departure, the king put into his hands the journal
of Peter Covillan, with his chart, and letters of credit to all the
princes in India of whom he had obtained any knowledge.
The behaviour of Vasques de Gama, at parting, was far from being
characteristic of the soldier or great man: his processions and
tapers favoured much more of the ostentatious devotion of a bigotted
little-minded priest, and was much more calculated to depress the
spirits of his soldiers, than to encourage them to the service they
were then about to do for their country. It served only to revive in
their minds the hardships that Dias had met off the Terrible Cape,
and persuade them there was in their expedition much more danger than
glory. I would not be understood as meaning to condemn all acts of
devotion before military expeditions, but would have them always short,
ordinary, and uniform. Every thing further inspires in weak minds a
sense of danger, and makes them despond upon any serious appearance of
difficulty.
July 4th, 1497, Vasques, with his small fleet, sailed from Lisbon; and,
as the art of navigation was considerably improved, he stood out to sea
till he made the Canary Islands, and then those of Cape de Verde, where
he anchored, took in water and other refreshments. After which he was
four months struggling with contrary winds and blowing weather, and at
last obliged, through perfect fatigue, to run into a large bay called
_St Helena_[22], in lat. 32° 32´ south. The inhabitants of this bay
were black, of low stature, and their language not understood, though
it afterwards was found to be the same with that of the Cape. They were
cloathed with skins of antelopes, which abounded in the country, since
known to be that of the Hottentots; their arms were the horns and bones
of beasts and fishes, for they had no knowledge of iron.
The Portuguese were unacquainted with the trade-winds in those southern
latitudes; and Vasques had departed for India, in a most unfavourable
season of the year. The 16th of November they sailed for the Cape with
a south-west wind; but that very day, the weather changing, a violent
storm came on, which continued increasing; so, although on the 18th
they discovered their long-desired Cape, they did not dare or attempt
to pass it. Then it was seen how much stronger the impressions were
that Dias had left imprinted in their minds, than those of duty,
obedience, and resignation, which they had so pompously vowed at the
chapel, or hermitage. All the crew mutinied, and refused to pass
farther; and it was not the common sailors only; the pilots and masters
were at their head. Vasques, satisfied in his mind that there was
nothing extraordinary in the danger, persevered to pass the Cape in
spite of all difficulties; and the officers, animated with the same
ardour, seized the most mutinous of their masters and pilots, and
confined them close below in heavy irons.
Vasques himself, taking hold of the rudder, continued to steer the ship
with his own hand, and stood out to sea, to the astonishment of the
bravest seaman on board. The storm lasted two days, without having in
the least shaken the resolution of the admiral, who, on the 20th of
November, saw his constancy rewarded by doubling that Cape, which he
did, as it were, in triumph, sounding his trumpets, beating his drums,
and permitting to his people all sorts of pastimes which might banish
from their minds former apprehensions, and induce them to agree with
him, that the point had very aptly been called the Cape of Good Hope.
On the 25th they anchored in a creek called _Angra de Saint Blaze_.
Soon after their arrival there appeared a number of the inhabitants on
the mountains, and on the shore. The general, fearing some surprise,
landed his men armed. But, first, he ordered small brass bells, and
other trinkets, to be thrown out of the boats on shore, which the
blacks greedily took up, and ventured so near as to take one of them
out of the general’s own hand. Upon his landing, he was welcomed with
the sound of flutes and singing. Vasques, on his part, ordered his
trumpets to sound, and his men to dance round them.
ALL along from St Blaze, for more than sixty leagues, they found the
coast remarkably pleasant, full of high and fair trees. On Christmas
day they made land, and entered a river which they called _the river of
the kings_; and all the distance between this and St Blaze they named
_Terra de Natal_. The weather being mild, they took to their boats
to row along the shore, on which were observed both men and women of
a large stature, but who seemed to be of quiet and civil behaviour.
The general ordered Martin Alonzo, who spoke several languages of
the Negroes, to land; and he was so well received by the chief, or
king, that the admiral sent him several trifles, with which he was
wonderfully pleased, and offered, in return, any thing he wanted of the
produce of his country.
On the 15th of January, in the year 1498, having taken in plenty of
water, which the Negroes, of their own accord, helped them to put on
board, they left this civil nation, steering past a length of coast
terminated by a Cape called the _Cape of Currents_. There the coast of
Natal ends, and that of Sofala begins, to the northward of the Cape. At
this place, Gama from the south joined Covillan’s track from the north,
and these two Portuguese had completely made the circuit of Africa.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ISCANDER, OR ALEXANDER.
From 1478 to 1495.
_Iscander declares War with Adel--Good Conduct of the King--Betrayed
and murdered by Za Saluce._
As soon as the king Bæda Mariam was dead, the history of Abyssinia
informs us, that a tumultuous meeting of the nobles brought from the
mountain of Geshen the queen Romana, with her son Iscander, who upon
his arrival was crowned without any opposition.
It is to be observed in the Abyssinian annals, that very frequent
minorities happen. A queen-mother, or regent, with two or three of the
greatest interest at court, are, during the minority, in possession of
the king’s person, and govern in his name. The transactions of this
minority, too, are as carefully inserted in the annals of the kingdom
as any other part of the subsequent government, but as the whole of
these minorities are but one continued chain of quarrels, plots, and
treachery, as soon as the king comes of age, the greatest part of this
reign of his ministers is cancelled, as being the acts of subjects,
and not worthy to be inserted in their histories; which they entitle
_Kebra Za Negust_, the greatness or atchievements of their kings.
This, however political in itself, is a great disadvantage to history,
by concealing from posterity the first cause of the most important
transactions.
For several years after Iscander ascended the throne, the queen his
mother, together with the Acab Saat, Tesfo Georgis, and Betwudet Amdu,
governed the kingdom despotically under the name of the young king.
Accordingly, after some years sufferance, a conspiracy was formed,
at the head of which were two men of great power, Abba Amdu and Abba
Hasabo, but the conspirators proving unsuccessful, some of them were
imprisoned, some put to death, and others banished to unwholesome
places, there to perish with hunger and fevers.
The king from his early age had shewn a passionate desire for a war
with Adel, and that prince, whose country had been so often desolated
by the Abyssinian armies, omitted no opportunity of creating an
interest at that court, that should keep things in a quiet state. In
this, however, he was much interrupted at present by a neighbouring
chief of Arar, named Maffudi. This man, exceedingly brave, capable
of enduring the greatest hardships, and a very great bigot to the
Mahometan religion, had made a vow, that, every Lent, he would spend
the whole forty days in some part of the Abyssinian kingdom; and
to this purpose he had raised, at his own expence, a small body of
veteran troops, whom he inspired with the same spirit and resolution.
Sometimes he fell on one part of the frontier, sometimes upon another;
slaying, without mercy, all that made resistance, and driving off
whole villages of men, women, and children, whom he sent into Arabia,
or India, to be sold as slaves.
It was a matter of great difficulty for the king of Adel to persuade
the Abyssinians that Maffudi acted without his instigation. The young
king was one who could not distinguish Adel from Arar, or Mahomet’s
army from Maffudi’s. He bore with very great impatience the excesses
every year committed by the latter; but he was over-ruled by his
nobility at home, and his thoughts turned as much as possible to
hunting, to which he willingly gave himself up; and, tho’ but fifteen
years of age, was the person, in all Abyssinia, most dexterous at
managing his arms. At last, being arrived at the age of seventeen,
and returning from having observed a very successful expedition made
by Maffudi against his territories, he ordered Za Saluce, his first
minister, commander in chief, and governor of Amhara, to raise the
whole forces to the southward, while he himself collected the nobility
in Angot and Tigré. With those, as soon as the rainy season was over,
he descended into the kingdom of Adel.
The king of Adel had been forced into this war, yet, like a wise
prince, he was not unprepared for it. He had advanced directly towards
the king, but had not passed his frontiers. Some inhabitants of a
village called _Arno_, all Mahometans, but tributary to the king of
Abyssinia, had murdered the governor the king had set over them.
Iscander marched directly to destroy it, which he had no sooner
accomplished, than the Moorish army presented itself. The battle was
maintained obstinately on both sides, till the troops under Za Saluce
withdrew in the heat of the engagement, leaving the king in the midst
of his enemies. This treason, however, seemed to have inspired the
small army that remained with new courage, so that the day was as yet
dubious, when Iscander, being engaged in a narrow pass, and seeing
himself close pressed by a Moor who bore in his hand the green standard
of Mahomet, turned suddenly upon him, and slew him with a javelin; and,
having wrested the colours from him as he was falling, he, with the
point of the spear that bore the ensign, struck the king of Adel’s son
dead to the ground, which immediately caused the Moors to retreat.
The young prince was too prudent to follow this victory in the state
the army then was; for that of Adel, though it had retreated, did not
disperse. Za Saluce was returning by long marches to Amhara, exciting
all those in his way to revolt; and it was high time, therefore, for
the king to follow him. But, unequal as he was in strength to the
Moors, he could not reconcile it with his own honour to leave their
army masters of the field. He, therefore, first consulted the principal
officers of his troops, then harangued his men, which, the historian
says, he did in the most pathetic and masterly manner; so that, with
one voice, they desired instantly to be led to the Moors. The king
is said to have ranged his little army in a manner that astonished
the oldest officers. He then sent a defiance to the Moors, by several
prisoners whom he released. They, however, more desirous to keep him
from ravaging the country than to fight another battle, continued
quiet in their tents; and the king, after remaining on the field till
near noon, drew off his troops in the presence of his enemy, making a
retreat which would not have been unworthy of the hero whose name he
bore.
The king, in his return to Shoa, left his troops, which was the
northern army, in the northern provinces, as he passed; so that he
came to Shoa with a very small retinue, hearing that Za Saluce had
gone to Amhara. This traitor, however, had left his creatures behind
him, after instructing them what they were to do. Accordingly, the
second day after Iscander’s arrival in Tegulat, the capital of Shoa,
they set upon him, during the night, in a small house in Aylo Meidan,
and murdered him while he was sleeping. They concealed his body for
some days in a mill, but Taka Christos, and some others of the king’s
friends, took up the corpse and exposed it to the people, who, with one
accord, proclaimed Andreas, son of Iscander, king; and Za Saluce and
his adherents, traitors.
In the mean time, Za Saluce, far from finding the encouragement he
expected in Amhara, was, upon his first appearance, set upon by the
nobility of that province; and, being deserted by his troops, he was
taken prisoner; his eyes were put out, and, being mounted on an ass, he
was carried amidst the curses of the people through the provinces of
Amhara and Shoa.
Iscander was succeeded by his son Andreas, or Amda Sion, an infant, who
reigned seven months only.
A wonderful confusion seems to be introduced at this time into history,
by the Portuguese writers. Iscander is said to die in the 1490. He
began, as they say, to reign in 1475, and this is confirmed by Ludolf;
and, on all hands, it is allowed he reigned 17 years, which would
have brought the last year of his reign to 1492. It seems also to be
agreed by the generality of them, that Covillan saw and conversed with
this prince, Iscander, some time before his death: this he very well
might have done, if that prince lived to the 1492, and Peter Covillan
came into Abyssinia in 1490, as Galvan says in his father’s memoirs.
But then Tellez informs us expressly, that Iscander was dead 6 months
before the arrival of Peter Covillan in that country: If Peter Covillan
arrived 6 months after the death of Iscander, it must have been in the
end of his son’s reign, Amda Sion, who was an infant, and reigned only
7 months.
Alvarez omits this king, Amda Sion, altogether, and so does Tellez; and
there is a heap of mistakes here that shew these Portuguese historians
paid very little attention to the chronology of these reigns. They
call Alexander the father of Naod, when he was really but his brother;
and Helena, they say, was David’s mother, when, in fact, she was his
grandmother, or rather his grandfather’s wife; for Helena, who was
Iteghé in the time of David the III. had never either son or daughter.
So that if I differ, as in fact I do, 4 years, or thereabout, in this
account, I do not think in those remote times, when the language and
manner of accounting was so little known to these strangers, that I,
therefore, should reject my own account and servilely adopt theirs,
and the more so, because, as we shall see in its proper place, by the
examination and comparison made by help of an eclipse of the sun in
the 13th year of Claudius’ reign in the 1553, and counting from that
downwards to my arrival in Abyssinia, and backwards to Iscander, that
that prince must have begun his reign in 1478, and reigning 17 years,
did not die till the year 1495, and therefore must have seen Peter
Covillan, and conversed with him, if he had arrived in Abyssinia so
early as the 1490.
[Illustration]
NAOD.
From 1495 to 1508.
_Wise Conduct of the King--Prepares far a War with the Moors--Concludes
an honourable Peace with Adel._
After the unfortunate death of the young king Alexander, the people
in general, wearied of minorities, unanimously chose Naod for their
king. He was Alexander’s younger brother, the difference of ages
being but one year, though he was not by the same mother, but by the
king’s second wife Calliope. He was born at a town called Gabargué,
the day the royal army was cut off in his father’s time, when both the
Betwudets perished. From this circumstance, the Empress Helena and her
party had used some underhand means to set him aside as unfortunate,
and in his place to put Anquo Israel, Bæda Mariam’s youngest son, that
they might govern him and the kingdom during his non-age. But Taka
Christos, their man of confidence, being, on his first declaration of
such intentions, cut off by the army in Dawaro, Naod was immediately
proclaimed, and brought from the mountain of Geshen.
Although Naod was in the prime of life, and vigorous both in body and
mind, yet such were the circumstances of the kingdom at his accession,
that it seemed a task too arduous for any one man. The continual
intrigues of the empress, the quantity of Mahometan gold which was
circulating on every occasion throughout the court, the little success
the army had in Adel, as also the treachery of Za Saluce, and the
untimely end of the young prince, who seemed to promise a remedy to the
misfortunes, had so disunited the principal people in the government,
that there did not seem a sufficient number of men worthy of trust
to assist the king with their councils, or fill, with any degree of
dignity, the places that were vacant.
Naod was no sooner seated on the throne than he published a very
general and comprehensive amnesty. By proclamation he declared, “That
any person who should upbraid another with being a party in the
misfortunes of past times, or say that he had been privy to this or to
that conspiracy, or had been a favourite of the empress, or a partizan
of Za Saluce, or had received bribes from the Moors, should, without
delay, be put to death.” This proclamation had the very best effect, as
it quieted the mind of every guilty person when he saw the king, from
whom he feared an inquiry, cutting off all possible means by which it
could be procured against him. Andreas a monk, a man of quality, and of
very great consequence in that country, a relation of the king by his
mother, having affected to talk lightly of the proclamation, the king
sent for him, and ordered the tip of his tongue to be cut off in his
presence. This man, whose fault seems only to have been in his tongue,
and of whom a very great character is given, lived in the succeeding
reign to give the king a very distinguished proof of his attachment to
his family, and love of his country.
Naod having thus prudently quieted disturbances at home, turned his
thoughts to the war with Maffudi; for the king of Adel himself had
made his peace through mediation of the empress Helena; and this king,
more politic than Alexander his brother, was willing to dissemble with
the king of Adel, that he might fight his two adversaries singly: He,
therefore, prepared a smaller army than was usual for the king to head,
without suffering a Moor of any kind to serve in it.
It was known to a day when Maffudi was to enter upon his expeditions
against Abyssinia. For near thirty years he had begun to burn the
churches, and drive off the people and cattle on the first day of
Lent; and, as Lent advanced, he with his army penetrated farther up
the country. The Abyssinians are the strictest people in the world in
keeping fasts. They are so austere that they taste no sort of animal
food, nor butter, eggs, oil, or wine. They will not, though ever so
thirsty, drink a cup of water till six o’clock in the evening, and then
are contented, perhaps, with dry or sour leaven bread, the best of them
only making use of honey; by which means they become so weak as to be
unable to bear any fatigue. This was Maffudi’s reason for invading the
country in Lent, at which time scarce a Christian, through fasting, was
able to bear arms.
Naod, like a wise prince who had gained the confidence of his army,
would not carry with him any man who did not, for that time, live
in the same free and full manner he was used to do in festivals. He
himself set the example; and Andreas the monk, after taking upon
himself a vow of a whole year’s fasting for the success of the army,
declared to them, that there was more merit in saving one Christian
village from slavery, and turning Mahometan, than in fasting their
whole lives.
The king then marched against Maffudi; and having taken very strong
ground, as if afraid of his army’s weakness, the Moors, contrary to
advice of their leader, attacked the king’s camp in the most careless
and presumptuous manner. They had no sooner entered, however, by ways
left open on purpose for them, than they found the king’s army in
order to receive them, and were so rudely attacked, that most of those
who had penetrated into the camp were left dead upon the spot. The
king continued the pursuit with his troops, retook all the prisoners
and cattle which Maffudi was driving away, and advanced towards the
frontiers of Adel, where ambassadors met him, hoping, on the part of
the king, that his intention was not to violate the treaty of peace.
To this the king answered, That, so far from it, he would confirm the
peace with them, but with this condition, that they must deliver up to
him all the Abyssinians that were to be found in their country taken by
Maffudi in his last expedition, adding, that he would stay fifteen days
there to expect his answer. The king of Adel, desirous of peace, and
not a little terrified at the disaster of Maffudi, hitherto reckoned
invincible, gathered together all the slaves as soon as possible, and
returned them to the king.
Naod having now, by his courage and prudence, freed himself from fear
of a foreign war, returned home, and set himself like a wise prince to
the reforming of the abuses that prevailed everywhere among his people,
and to the cultivation of the arts of peace. He died a natural death,
after having reigned 13 years.
[Illustration]
DAVID III.
From 1508 to 1540.
_David, an Infant, Succeeds--Queen sends Matthew Ambassador to
Portugal--David takes the Field--Defeat of the Moors--Arrival
of an Embassy from Portugal--Disastrous War with Adel._
The vigorous reign of Naod had at least suspended the fate of the whole
empire; and, had it not been that they still persisted in that ruinous
and dangerous measure of following minority with minority, by the
election of children to the throne, it is probable this kingdom would
have escaped the greatest part of those dismal calamities that fell
upon it in the sequel. But the Iteghé Helena, and the Abuna Marcos,
(now become her creature) had interest enough, notwithstanding the
apparent necessities of the times, to place David son of Naod upon
the throne, a child of eleven years old, that they might take upon
themselves the government of the kingdom; whereas Anquo Israel (third
son of Bæda Mariam) was of an age proper to govern, and whom they would
have preferred to Naod for the same reason, merely because he was then
a child.
Besides the desire of governing, another motive operated, which,
however good in itself, was very criminal from the present
circumstances. A peace with Adel was what the empress Helena constantly
desired; for she could not see with indifference the destruction of
her own country, far less contribute to it. She was herself by origin
a Moor, daughter of Mahomet, governor for the king in Dawaro; had been
suspected, so early as her husband’s time, of preferring the welfare of
her own country to that of the kingdom of Abyssinia.
This princess, perfectly informed of the interests of both nations,
seems, in her whole conduct, to have acted upon the most judicious and
sensible principles. She knew the country of Adel to be, by situation
and interest, perfectly commercial; that part of Africa, the opposite
Arabia, and the peninsula of the Indies, were but three partners
joined in one trade; they mutually consumed each other’s produce; they
mutually contributed to export the joint produce of the three countries
to distant parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa; which three continents
then constituted the whole known world. When Adel was at peace with
Abyssinia, then the latter became rich, from the gold, ivory, coffee,
cattle, hides, and all manner of provision, procured by the former
from every part of the mountainous tract above it. Trade flourished
and plenty followed it. The merchants carried every species of goods
to the most distant provinces in safety, equally to the advantage of
Abyssinia and Adel. These advantages, so sensibly felt, were maintained
by bribery, and a constant circulation of Mahometan gold in the court
of Abyssinia; the kingdom, however, thus prospered. A war with Adel, on
the contrary, had its origin in a violent desire of a barbarous people,
such as the Abyssinians were, to put themselves in possession of riches
which their neighbours had gained by trade and industry.
She saw that, even in this the worst of cases, nothing utterly
destructive could possibly happen to the Abyssinians; in their inroads
into that country, they plundered the markets and got, at the risk of
their lives, India stuffs of every kind, for which else they would have
paid money. On the other hand, the people of Adel, when conquerors,
acquired no stuffs, no manufactures, but the persons of the Abyssinians
themselves, whom they carried into slavery, and sold in Arabia, and
all parts of Asia, at immense profits. Next to gold they are the most
agreeable and valuable merchandise in every part of the east; and
these again, being chiefly the idle people who delighted in war, their
absence promoted the more desirable event of peace.
In this state we see that war was but another species of commerce
between the two countries, though peace was the most eligible state
for them both; and this the empress Helena had constantly endeavoured
to maintain, but could not succeed among a people fond of war, by any
other means, but by giving them a minor for their king, who was by the
law of the land under her direction, as the country was, during his
minority, under her regency.
Although this, the ordinary state of the empress’s politics, had
hitherto answered well between the kingdoms, when no other parties
were engaged, the introduction of a third power, and its influence,
totally changed that system. The Turks, an enemy not yet known in any
formidable line by the southern part of Africa, or Asia, now appeared
under a form that made all those southern states tremble.
Selim, emperor of Constantinople, had defeated Canso el Gauri, Soldan
of Egypt, and slain him in the field. After a second battle he had
taken Cairo, the capital of that country; and, under the specious
pretence of a violation of the law of nations, by Tomum Bey, the
successor, who was said to have put his ambassadors to death, he had
hanged that prince upon one of the principal gates of his own capital;
and, by this execution, had totally destroyed the succession of the
Mamalukes. Sinan Basha, the great general and minister of Selim, in a
very few months over-ran all the peninsula of Arabia, to the verge of
the Indian Ocean.
These people, trained to war, Mahomet had inspired with enthusiasm,
and led them to the conquest of the East. Trade and luxury had, after
that, disarmed and reduced them to much the same situation as, in a
former age, they had been found by Augustus Cæsar. Sinan Basha, with
a troop of veterans, had, by degrees extirpated the native princes of
the country; those that resisted, by force; and those that submitted
to him, by treachery; and in their place, in every principal town, he
had substituted Turkish officers of confidence, strongly supported by
troops of Janizaries, who knew no other government but martial law.
War had now changed its form entirely under these new conquerors.
Muskets, and large trains of artillery, were introduced against
javelins, lances, and arrows, the only arms then known in Arabia, and
in the opposite continent of Abyssinia. A large fleet, crowded with
soldiers, and filled with military stores, the very name of which, as
well as their destructive qualities, were till now unknown in these
southern regions, were employed by the Turks to extend their conquest
to India, where, though by the superior valour of the Portuguese
they were constantly disappointed in their principal object, they
nevertheless, in their passage outward and homeward, reinforced their
several posts in Arabia, from which they looked for assistance and
protection, had any enemy placed himself in their way, or a storm, or
other unexpected misfortune, overtaken them in their return.
These Janizaries lived upon the very bowels of commerce. They had,
indeed, for a shew of protecting it, established customhouses in their
various ports; but they soon made it appear, that the end proposed
by these was only to give them a more distinct knowledge who were
the subjects from whom they could levy the most enormous extortions.
Jidda, Zibid, and Mocha, the places of consequence nearest to Abyssinia
on the Arabian shore, Suakem, a sea-port town on the very barriers
of Abyssinia, in the immediate way of their caravan to Cairo, on the
African side, were each under the command of a Turkish basha, and
garrisoned by Turkish troops sent thither from Constantinople by the
emperors Selim and Soliman, his successors.
The peaceable Arabian merchants, full of that good faith which
successful commerce inspires, fled everywhere from the violence and
injustice of these Turkish tyrants, and landed in safety their riches
and persons on the opposite shore of the kingdom of Adel. The trade
from India, flying from the same enemy, took refuge in Adel among
its own correspondents, the Moorish merchants, during the violent
and impolitic tyranny that everywhere took place under this Turkish
oppression.
Zeyla is a small island, on the very coast of Adel, opposite to Arabia
Felix without the Straits of Babelmandeb, upon the entrance of the
Indian Ocean. The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to the cause,
were sensible of the great influx of trade into the opposite kingdom.
They took possession, therefore, of Zeyla, where they established what
they called a Customhouse, and by means of that post, and gallies
cruising in the narrow Straits, they laid the Indian trade to Adel
under heavy contributions, that might, in some measure, indemnify them
for the great desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned in
Arabia.
This step threatened the very existence both of Adel and Abyssinia; and
considering the vigorous government of the one, and the weak politics
and prejudices of the other, it is more than probable the Turks would
have subdued both Adel and Abyssinia, had they not, in India their
chief object, met the Portuguese, strongly established, and governed
by a succession of kings who had not in any age their equals, and
seconded by officers and soldiers who, for discipline, courage, love to
their country, and affection to their sovereign were, perhaps, superior
to any troops, or any set of individuals, that, as far as we can judge
from history, have ever yet appeared in the world.
It was not now a time for a woman to reign, nor, which was the same
thing, to place a child upon the throne. The empress Helena saw this
distinctly; but her ambition made her prefer the love of reigning
to the visible necessities and welfare of her country. She knew the
progress and extent of the Portuguese power in India; and saw plainly
there was no prospect, but in their assistance, at once to save both
Abyssinia and Adel.
Peter Covillan, sent thither as ambassador by John king of Portugal,
had, for two reigns, been detained in Abyssinia, with a constant
refusal of leave to return. He was now become an object of curiosity
rather than use. However, except his liberty, he had wanted nothing.
The empress had married him nobly in the country; had given him large
appointments, both as to profit and dignity. She now began to be
sensible of the consequence of having with her a man of his abilities,
who could open to her the method of corresponding effectually both with
India and Portugal in their own language, to which, as well as to the
persons to whom her letters were to be addressed, she was then an utter
stranger.
She had about her court an Armenian merchant named Matthew, a person
of great trust and discretion, who had been long accustomed to go
to the several kingdoms of the East upon mercantile commissions for
the king and for his nobles. He had been at Cairo, Jerusalem, Ormus,
Ispahan, and in the East Indies on the coast of Malabar; both in places
conquered by the Portuguese, and in those that yet held out under
their native Pagan princes. He was one of those factors which, as I
have already said, are employed by the king and great men in Abyssinia
to sell or barter, in the places above mentioned, such part of their
revenue as are paid them in kind.
These men are chiefly Greeks, or Armenians, but the preference is
always given to the latter. Both nations pay caratch, or capitation,
to the Grand Signior, (whose subjects they are) and both have, in
consequence, passports, protections, and liberty to trade wherever they
please throughout the empire, without being liable to those insults and
extortions from the Turkish officers that other strangers are.
The Armenians, of all the people in the East, are those most remarkable
for their patience and sobriety. They are generally masters of most
of the eastern languages; are of strong, robust constitutions; of all
people, the most attentive to the beasts and merchandise they have in
charge; exceedingly faithful, and content with little. This Matthew,
queen Helena chose for her ambassador to Portugal, and joined a young
Abyssinian with him, who died in the voyage. He was charged with
letters to the king, which, with the other dispatches, as they are
long, and abound with fiction and bombast rather than truth and facts,
I have not troubled myself to transcribe; they are, besides, in many
printed collections[23].
It appears clearly from these letters, that they were the joint
compositions of Covillan, who knew perfectly the manner of
corresponding with his court upon dangerous subjects, and of the simple
Abyssinian confidents of the empress Helena, who, unacquainted with
embassies or correspondence with princes, or the ill consequence that
these letters would be of to their ambassador and his errand, if they
happened to be intercepted by an enemy, told plainly all they desired
and wished to execute by the assistance of the Portuguese. Thus, in the
first part of the letter, (which we shall suppose dictated by Covillan)
the empress remits the description of her wants, and what is the
subject of the embassy, to Matthew her ambassador, whom she qualifies
as her confidential servant, instructed in her most secret intentions;
desiring the king of Portugal to believe what he shall report from her
to him in private, as if they were her own words uttered immediately
from her to him in person. So far was prudent; such a conduct as we
should expect from a man like Covillan, long accustomed to be trusted
with the secret negociations of his sovereign.
But the latter end of his dispatches (the work, we suppose, of
Abyssinian statesmen) divulges the whole secret. It explains the
motives of this embassy in the clearest manner, desiring the king of
Portugal to send a sufficient force to destroy Mecca and Medina; to
assist them with a sufficient number of ships, and to annihilate the
Turkish power by sea; while they, by land, should extirpate all the
Mahometans on their borders; and it stigmatizes these Mahometans, both
Turks and Moors, with the most opprobrious names it was possible to
devise.
With the first part of these dispatches, it is plain, Matthew, as
an envoy, might have passed unmolested; he had only to give to the
secret wishes of the empress, with which he was charged, what kind
of mercantile colour he pleased. But the last part of the letter
brought home to him a charge of the deepest dye, both of sacrilege
and high-treason, that he meditated against the Ottoman empire, whose
Raya[24] he was; and, there can be no doubt, had these letters been
intercepted and read, Matthew’s embassy and life would have ended
together under some exquisite species of torture. This, indeed,
he seems to have apprehended; as, after his arrival in India, he
constantly refused to shew his dispatches, even to the Portuguese
viceroy himself, from whom, in the instant, he had received very
singular favour and protection.
The king, when of age, never could be brought to acknowledge this
embassy by Matthew; but, as we shall see, did constantly deny it. If
we believe the Portuguese, the despair of the empress was so great,
that she offered one-third of the kingdom to the king of Portugal if he
relieved her. Nothing of this kind appears in the letters; but, if this
offer was part of Matthew’s private dispatches, we may see a reason why
David did not wish to own the commission and offer as his.
Matthew had a safe passage to Dabul in India, but here his misfortunes
began. The governor, taking him for a spy, confined him in close
prison. But Albuquerque, then viceroy of India, residing at Goa, who
had himself a design upon Abyssinia, hearing that such a person, in
such a character, was arrived, sent and took him out of the hands
of the governor of Dabul, where his sufferings else would not have
so quickly ended. All the Portuguese cried out upon seeing such an
ambassador as Matthew sent to their master; sometimes they pretended
that he was a spy of the Sultan, at other times he was an impostor, a
cook, or some other menial servant.
Albuquerque treated with him privately before he landed, to make his
commissions known to him; but he expressly refused shewing any letter
unless to the king himself in Portugal. This behaviour hurt him in the
eyes of the viceroy, who was therefore disposed, with the rest of his
officers, to slight him when he should come ashore. But Matthew, now
out of danger, and knowing his person to be sacred, would no longer
be treated like a private person. He sent to let the viceroy, bishop,
and clergy know, that, besides his consequence as an ambassador, which
demanded their respect, he was the bearer of a piece of wood of the
true cross, which he carried as a present to the king of Portugal;
and, therefore, he required them, as they would avoid an imputation
of sacrilege, to shew to that precious relict the utmost respect, and
celebrate its arrival as a festival. No more was necessary after this.
The whole streets of Goa were filled with processions; the troops
were all under arms; the viceroy, and the principal officers, met
Matthew at his landing, and conveyed him to the palace, where he was
magnificently lodged and feasted. But nothing could long overcome the
prejudices the Portuguese had imbibed upon the first sight of him; and,
notwithstanding he carried a piece of the true cross, both he and it
soon fell into perfect oblivion: Nor was it till 1513, after he had
staid three years in India, that he got leave to proceed to Portugal by
a fleet returning home loaded with spices.
Damianus Goez the historian, though apparently a man of good sense and
candour, cannot conjecture why this Armenian was sent as an ambassador,
and wishes to be resolved why not an Abyssinian nobleman. But it is
obvious from the character I have already given of him, there could
be nobody in the empress’s power that had half his qualifications;
and, besides, an Abyssinian nobleman would not have ventured to go, as
knowing very well that everywhere beyond the limits of his own country
he would have been without protection, and the first Turk in whose
power he might have fallen would have sold him for a slave. In no other
character is any of his nation seen, either in Arabia or India, and
his master has no treaty with any state whatever. Add to this, that an
Abyssinian speaks no language but his own, which is not understood out
of his own country; and is absolutely ignorant even of the existence of
other far distant nations.
But, besides, there was an Abyssinian sent with Matthew, who died; and
here Damianus Goez’s wonder should cease.
The same ill-fortune, which had attended Matthew in India, followed
him in his voyage to Portugal. The Captains of the ships contended
with each other who should behave worst to him; and, in the midst of
all this ill-treatment, the ship which he was on board of arrived at
Lisbon. The king, upon hearing the particulars of this ill usage,
immediately put the offenders in irons, where they had, probably, lain
during their lives, had they not been freed by the intercession of
Matthew.
David (as I have before observed) was only eleven years old[25] when
he was placed upon the throne; and, at his inauguration, took the name
of Lebna Denghel, or the Virgin’s Frankincense; then that of Etana
Denghel, or the Myrrh of the Virgin; and after that, of Wanag Segued,
which signifies Reverenced, or Feared, among the Lions, with whom,
towards the last of his reign, he resided in wilds and mountains more
than with men.
During this minority, there was peace with Mahomet king of Adel.
Maffudi still continued his depredations; and, by his liberality, had
formed strong connections with the Turks in Arabia. In return for the
number of slaves whom he had sent to Mecca, a green silk standard,
(that of Mahomet and of the Faith), and a tent of black velvet,
embroidered with gold, were sent him by the Sherriffe, the greatest
honour a Mahometan could possibly receive, and he was also made Shekh
of the island of Zeyla, which was delivering the key of Abyssinia to
him.
It was not till David had arrived at sixteen years of age that the
constant success of Maffudi, the honours bestowed upon him, and the
gain which accrued from all his expeditions, had at last determined
the king of Adel to break the peace with Abyssinia, and join him.
These princes, with the whole Mahometan force, had fallen together
upon Dawaro, Ifat, and Fatigar; and, in one year, had driven away,
and slain, above nineteen thousand Christians, subjects to the king.
A terror was now spread over the whole kingdom, and great blame laid
both upon the empress and the king, for sitting and looking timidly on,
while the Turks and Moors, year after year, ravaged whole provinces
without resistance.
These murmurs at last roused David, who, for his own part, had not
suffered them willingly so long. He determined immediately to raise an
army, and to command it in person: In vain the empress admonished him
of his danger, and his absolute want of experience in matters of war;
in vain she advised him to employ some of the old officers against the
veteran Moorish troops.
The king answered, That every officer of merit had been tried already,
and baffled from beginning to end, so that the army had no confidence
in them; that he was resolved to take his trial as the others had done,
and leave the event where it ought to be left. Though the diviners all
prophesied ill from this resolution of the king, the generality of the
kingdom, and young nobility, flocked to his standard, rejoicing in a
leader so near their own age. The middle-aged had great hopes of the
vigour of that youth; and the old were not more backward, satisfied of
the weight their years and experience must give them in the councils of
a young king.
Seldom a better army took the field; and the empress, from her own
treasures, furnished every thing, even to superfluity, engaging all
the people of consequence by giving them in the most affable manner,
presents in hand, and magnificent promises of recompence hereafter.
Great as these preparations were, they had not made much impression
among the confederates in Adel; and already the king had put himself at
the head of his army, before the Moors seemed to think it worth their
while to follow him. They were, indeed, at that very time, laying waste
a part of the kingdom of Abyssinia. The king, then, by quick marches,
advanced through Fatigar, as if he was going to Aussa, the capital of
Adel.
Between Fatigar and the plain country of Adel there is a deep large
valley, through which it was necessary the army should pass. Very steep
mountains bound it on every side, whilst two openings (each of them
very narrow) were the only passages by which it was possible to enter
or go out. The king divided his army into two; he kept the best troops
and largest body with himself, and sent Betwudet with the rest, as if
they intended to fight the enemy before they gained the defiles. The
Moors, on the other hand, terrified at what must happen if the king
with his army marched into their defenceless country, accounted it a
great escape to get into these very defiles before they were forced
to an engagement. Betwudet, who desired no more, gave them their way,
and, entering the valley behind them, encamped there. The king, at the
other end, had done the same, unseen by the enemy, who thought he was
advanced on his march to Aussa. The Moors were thus completely hemmed
in, and the king’s army vastly superior. He had ordered his tents to
be left standing, with a body of troops in them, and these completely
covered the only outlet to the valley, whilst Betwudet and his party
had advanced considerably, and made much the same disposition.
The king drew up his troops early in the morning, and offered the
enemy battle, when the whole Abyssinian army was surprised to discover
a backwardness in the Moors so unlike their behaviour at former
times; well they might, when they were informed from whom that panic
among the Moors came. Maffudi, a fanatic from the beginning, whether
really deceived by such a prophecy, or raised to a pitch of pride
and enthusiasm by the honours he had received, and desirous, by a
remarkable death, to deserve the rank of martyr among those of his own
religion, or from whatever cause it arose, came to the king of Adel,
and told him, that his time was now come; that it had been prophesied
to him long ago, that if, that year, he fought the king of Abyssinia in
person, he was there to lose his life: That he knew, for certain, David
was then present, having, with his own eyes, seen the scarlet tent,
(a colour which is only used by the king); he desired, therefore, the
king of Adel to make the best of his way through a less steep part of
the mountain, which he shewed him; to take his family and favourites
along with him, and leave under his command the army to try their
fortune with David. Mahomet, at no time very fond of fighting, never
found himself less so than upon this advice of Maffudi’s. He resolved,
therefore, to follow his council; and, before the battle began,
withdrew himself through the place that was shewn him, and was followed
by a few of his friends.
It was now 9 o’clock, and the sun began to be hot, before which the
Abyssinians never choose to engage, when Maffudi, judging the king of
Adel was beyond danger, sent a trumpet to the Abyssinian camp, with a
challenge to any man of rank in the army to fight him in single combat,
under condition that the victory should be accounted to belong to that
army whose champion was victorious, and that, thereupon, both parties
should withdraw their troops without further bloodshed. It does not
appear whether the conditions were agreed to, but the challenge was
accepted as soon as offered. Gabriel Andreas the monk, who, in the
reign of Naod, had, by the king’s order, lost a part of his tongue
for giving it too much licence, offered himself first to the king,
beseeching him to trust to him that day, his own honour, and the
fortune of the army. The king consented without hesitation, with the
general applause of all the nobility; for Andreas, though a monk, was
a man of great family and distinction; the most learned of the court;
liberal, rich, affable, and remarkable for facetious conversation;
he was, besides, a good soldier, of tried skill and valour, and, in
strength and activity, surpassed by no man in the army.
Maffudi was not backward to present himself; nor was the combat longer
than might be expected from two such willing champions. Gabriel
Andreas, seeing his opportunity, with a two-handed sword struck Maffudi
between the lower part of the neck and the shoulder, so violently, that
he nearly divided his body into two, and felled him dead to the ground.
He then cut his head off, and threw it at the king’s feet, saying,
“There is the Goliath of the Infidels.”
This expression became instantly the word of battle, or signal to
charge. The king, at the head of his troops, rushed upon the Moorish
army, and, throwing them into disorder, drove them back upon Betwudet,
who, with his fresh troops, forced them again back to the king.
Seeing no hopes of relief, they dispersed to the mountains, and were
slaughtered, and hunted like wild beasts by the peasants, or driven
to perish with thirst and hunger. About 12,000 of the Mahometan army
are said to have been slain upon the field, with no very considerable
loss on the side of the conquerors. The green standard of Mahomet was
taken, as also the black velvet tent embroidered with gold; which
last, we shall see, the king gave to the Portuguese ambassador some
time afterwards, to consecrate and say mass in. A vast number of
cattle was taken, and with them much rich merchandise of the Indies.
Nor did the king content himself with what he had got in battle. He
advanced and encamped at a place where was held the first market of
Adel[26]. The next day he proceeded to a town where was a house of the
king, and, going up to the door, and finding it locked, he struck the
door with his lance, and nobody answering, he prohibited the soldiers
from plundering it, and retired with his army home, leaving his lance
sticking in the door as a sign of his having been there, and having had
it in his power.
Though the king was received on his return amidst the greatest
acclamations of his subjects, as the saviour of his country, the eyes
of the whole nation and army were first fixed on Andreas, whose bravery
had at last delivered them from that constant and inveterate scourge,
Maffudi. Every body pressed forward to throw flowers and green branches
in his way; the women celebrating him with songs, putting garlands on
his head, and holding out the young children to see him as he passed.
The battle was fought in the month of July 1516; and, the same day,
the island of Zeyla, in the mouth of the Red Sea, was taken, and its
town burned by the Portuguese armament, under Lopez Suarez Alberguiera.
Neither the suspicions transmitted from India, nor the mean person of
Matthew the ambassador, seem to have made any impression upon the king
of Portugal. He received him with every sort of honour, and testified
the most profound respect for his master, and attention to the errand
he came upon. Matthew was lodged and maintained with the utmost
splendour; and, considering the great use of so powerful a friend on
the African coast of the Red Sea, where his fleets would meet with
all sort of provision and protection, while they pursued the Turkish
squadrons, he prepared an embassy on his part, and sent Matthew home on
board the fleet commanded by Lopez Suarez for India.
Edward Galvan, a man of capacity and experience, who had filled the
offices of secretary of state and ambassador in Spain, France, and
Germany, arrived at that time of life when he might reasonably expect
to pass the rest of his days in ease, wealth, and honour, found himself
unexpectedly chosen, at the age of eighty-six, to go ambassador from
his sovereign to Abyssinia. Goez had much more reason to wonder at the
ambassador fixed upon by his master, than at that of Abyssinia sent by
the empress Helena to Portugal. The fleet under Suarez entered the Red
Sea, and anchored at the flat island of Camaran, close on the coast of
Arabia Felix, one of the most unwholesome places he could have chosen.
Here Edward Galvan died; and here Suarez, most ignorantly, resolved to
pass the winter, which he did, suffering much for want of every sort
of provision but water; whereas twenty-four hours of any wind would
have carried him to Masuah, to his journey’s end; where, if he had lost
the monsoon, he would still have had great abundance of necessaries,
and been in the way every moment of promoting the wishes of his master.
Lopez de Segueyra succeeded the ignorant Suarez, who had returned to
India. He fitted out a strong fleet at Goa, with which he entered the
Red Sea, and sailed for the island of Masuah, where he arrived the 16th
of April 1520, having Matthew along with him. Upon the first approach
of the fleet, the inhabitants, both of the island and town, abandoned
them, and fled to Arkeeko on the main land. Segueyra having remained
before Masuah a few days without committing any hostilities, there came
at last to him a Christian and a Moor from the continent; who informed
him that the main-land, then before him, was part of the kingdom of
Abyssinia, governed by an officer called Baharnagash: they added,
that the reason of their flying at the sight of the fleet was, that
the Turks frequently made descents, and ravaged the island; but that
all the inhabitants of the continent were Christians. The Portuguese
general was very joyful on this intelligence, and began to treat
Matthew more humanely, finding how truly and exactly he had described
these places. He gave, both to the Christian and Moor that came off to
him, a rich vest; commended them for having fled to Arkeeko rather than
expose themselves to an attack from the Turks, but directed them to
assure the people on the continent, that they too were all Christians,
and under the command of the king of Abyssinia; being arrived there
purposely for his service, so that they might return, whenever they
should please, in perfect safety.
The next day, came down to the shore the governor of Arkeeko,
accompanied with thirty horsemen, and above two hundred foot. He was
mounted on a fine horse, and dressed in a kind of shirt resembling
that of the Moors. The governor brought down four oxen, and received
in return certain pieces of silk, with which he was well pleased. A
very familiar conversation followed; the governor kindly inviting the
Portuguese general ashore, assuring him that the Baharnagash, under
whose command he was, had already intelligence of his arrival.
In answer to his inquiries about the religion of the country, the
governor told him, that in a mountain, then in sight, twenty-four miles
distant, there was a convent called _the Monastery of Bisan_, (which
Matthew had often described in the voyage) whose monks, being informed
of his arrival, had deputed seven of their number to wait upon him,
whom the Portuguese general went to meet accordingly, and received them
in the kindest manner.
These monks, as soon as they saw Matthew, broke out into the warmest
expressions of friendship and esteem, congratulating him with tears in
their eyes upon his long voyage and absence. The Portuguese general
then invited the monks on board his vessel, where he regaled them, and
gave to each presents that were most suitable to their austere life. On
his side, Segueyra chose seven Portuguese, with Peter Gomez Tessera,
auditor of the East Indies, who understood Arabic very well, to return
the visit of the monks, and see the monastery of Bisan. This short
journey they very happily performed. Tessera brought back a parchment
manuscript, which he received as a present from the monks, to be sent
to the king of Portugal.
It was on the 24th of April that the Baharnagash arrived at Arkeeko,
having before sent information of his intended visit. The Portuguese
general, who never doubted but that he would come to the sea-side,
pitched his tents, and spread his carpets and cushions on the ground to
receive him. But it was signified to him from the Baharnagash, who was
probably afraid of putting himself under the guns of the fleet, that
he did not intend to advance so far, and that the governor should meet
him half way. This being agreed to on both sides, they sat down on the
grass.
The Baharnagash began the conversation, by telling the Portuguese,
they had, in virtue of certain prophecies, been long expected in this
country; and that he, and all the officers of Abyssinia, were ready to
do them every service and kindness. After the Portuguese general had
returned a proper answer, the priests and monks concluded the interview
with certain religious services. Segueyra then made the Baharnagash
a present of a very fine suit of complete armour with some pieces of
silk; while the Baharnagash, on his side, made the return with a very
fine horse and mule.
All doubt concerning Matthew was removed at this interview; he was
acknowledged as a genuine ambassador. The Portuguese now flocked to
Segueyra, beseeching him to choose from among his men, who should
accompany him to the court. The first step was to name Roderigo de
Lima ambassador from the king of Portugal, instead of Galvan, who was
dead; and, for his suite, George de Breu, Lopez de Gama, John Scolare
secretary to the ambassador, John Gonsalvez his factor and interpreter,
Emmanuel de Mare organist, Peter Lopez, Master John his physician,
Gaspar Pereira, and Lazarus d’Andrad a painter. The three chaplains
were John Fernandes, Peter Alphonso Mendez, and Francisco Alvarez. In
this company also went Matthew, the Abyssinian ambassador returned from
Portugal, and with him three Portuguese, one called Magailanes, the
other Alvaremgo, and the third Diego Fernandes.
It seemed probable, the severe blow which David had given to the king
of Adel, by the total destruction of his army on the death of his
general Maffudi, would have procured a cessation of hostilities to
the Abyssinian frontiers, which they had not experienced during the
life of that general; but it appeared afterwards, that, increased in
riches and population by the great accession of power which followed
the interruption of the Indian trade in Arabia by the Turkish conquest,
far from entertaining thoughts of peace, they were rather meditating a
more formidable manner of attack, by training themselves to the use of
fire-arms and artillery, of which they had provided a quantity, and to
which the Abyssinians were as yet strangers.
The king was encamped in Shoa, covering and keeping in awe his
Mahometan provinces, Fatigar and Dawaro; besides which he seemed to
have no object but the conquest of the Dobas, that bordered equally
upon the Moorish and Christian frontiers, and who (though generally
gained by the Mahometans) were, when occasion offered, enemies to
both. The Shum[27] of Giannamora, a small district belonging to
Abyssinia, full of brave soldiers, and considerably reinforced by David
for the very purpose, had the charge of bringing these barbarians to
subjection, as being their immediate neighbour.
The king had afterwards advanced eastward to the frontiers of Fatigar,
but was still in the southern part of his dominions. The ambassador
and his retinue were landed on the north. They were to cross the
whole extent of the empire through woods and over mountains, the
like of which are not known in Europe, full of savage beasts, and
men more savage than the beasts themselves; intersected by large
rivers, and what was the worst circumstance, swelling every day by the
tropical rains. Frequently deserts of no considerable length, indeed,
intervened, where no sustenance was to be found for man or beast, nor
relief for accidental misfortunes. Yet such was the bravery of that
small company, that they hesitated not a moment to undertake this
enterprise. Every thing was thought easy which contributed to the glory
of their king, and the honour of their country.
It was not long before this gallant company found need of all their
constancy and courage; for in their short journey to the convent of St
Michael (the first they attempted) they found the wood so thick that
there was scarcely passage for either man or beast. Briers and thorns,
too, of a variety of species, which they had never before seen, added
greatly to the fatigue which the thickness of the woods had occasioned.
Mountains presented themselves over mountains, broken into terrible
precipices and ravines, by violent torrents and constant storms; their
black and bare tops seemed as it were calcined by the rays of a burning
sun, and by incessant lightnings and thunder. Great numbers of wild
beasts also presented themselves everywhere in these dark forests,
and seemed only to be hindered from devouring them by their wonder
at seeing so many men in so lonely a situation. At last the woods
began to grow thinner, and some fields appeared where the people were
sitting armed, guarding their small flocks of half-starved goats and
kine, and crops of millet, of which they saw a considerable quantity
sown. The men were black, their hair very gracefully plaited, and were
altogether naked, excepting a small piece of leather that covered their
middle. At this place they were met by twelve monks, four of whom were
distinguished by their advanced years and the respect paid to them by
the others.
Having rested their mules and camels a short time, they again began
their journey by the side of a great lake, near which was a very high
mountain, and this they were too weary to attempt to pass. Full of
discontent and despondency, they halted at the foot of this mountain,
where they passed the night, having received a cow for supper, a
present from the convent. Here Matthew (the ambassador) separated
his baggage from that of the caravan, and left it to the care of
the monks. He had probably made some little money in Portugal; and,
distrusting his reception with the king, wisely determined to place it
out of danger. The precaution, however, proved superfluous; for, a
few days after, an epidemical fever began to manifest itself, which,
in eight-and-forty hours, carried off Matthew, and soon after Pereira,
the servant of Don Roderigo; so that no opportunity now offered for an
explanation with the king about his or the empress’s promise of ceding
one-third of the kingdom to the Portuguese in case the king would send
them succour. Terrified by the fever, and the bad prospect of the
weather, they resumed their journey.
The monastery of Bisan (to which they were now going) is so called from
the great quantity of water which is everywhere found about it. The
similitude of sound has made Poncet[28], and several other travellers,
call it the Monastery of the Vision; but Bisan (water) is its true
name, being plentifully supplied with that most valuable element. A
number of lakes and rivers are interspersed through its plains; while
abundant springs, that are never dry, flow from the top of each rock,
dashing their rills against the rugged projections of the cliffs below.
The monastery of Bisan, properly so called, is the head of six others
in the compass of 26 miles; each convent placed like a tower on the top
of its own rock. That upon which Bisan is situated is very high, and
almost perpendicular; and from this rises another still higher than it,
which, unless to its inhabitants, is perfectly inaccessible. It is, on
every side, surrounded with wood, interspersed with fruit-trees of many
different kinds, as well of those known as of those unknown in Europe.
Oranges, citrons, and limes are in great abundance; wild peaches and
small figs of a very indifferent quality; black grapes, on loaded
branches, hang down from the barren timber round which they are twined,
and afford plentiful supply to man and beast: The fields are covered
with myrtles and many species of jessamin; with roses too of various
colours; but fragrance is denied to them all, except one sort, which is
the white one, single-leafed[29].
The monks of these convents were said once to be about a thousand
in number. They have a large territory, and pay a tribute in cows
and horses to the Baharnagash, who is their superior. Their horses
are esteemed good, as coming from the neighbourhood of the Arabs.
However, though I had the absolute choice of them all during the time
I commanded the king’s guard, I never could draw from that part of the
country above a score of sufficient strength and size to bear a man in
complete armour.
I shall now leave Don Roderigo to pursue his journey towards the king
at Shoa. The history of it, and of his embassy, published at large
by Alvarez his chaplain, has not met, from the historians of his
own country, with a reception which favours the authenticity of its
narrative. There are, indeed, in the whole of it, and especially where
religion is concerned, many things very difficult of belief, which seem
to be the work of the Jesuits some years posterior to the time in which
Alvarez was in Abyssinia. Tellez condemns him, though a writer of those
times; and Damianus Goez, one of the first historians, says, that he
had seen a journal written in Alvarez’s own name, very different from
the journal that is gone forth to the public. For my part, I can only
say, that what is related of the first audience with the king, and many
of the following pages, seem to me to be fabrications of people that
never have been in Abyssinia; and, if this is the case, no imputation
can be laid against Francisco Alvarez, as, perhaps, he is not the
author of the misrepresentation in question. But, as to the cordiality
with which the Catholic religion was received by the monks and people
in general, during the long stay and bad reception Don Roderigo met
with, I have no sort of doubt that this is a falsehood, and this must
be charged directly to his account.
We have already seen that, early as Zara Jacob’s time, the religion
of the Franks was held in the utmost detestation, and that in Bæda
Mariam’s reign the whole country was in rebellion, because the king had
directed the Virgin Mary to be painted by one Branca Leon, a Venetian
painter, then alive, and in court, when Don Roderigo de Lima was with
the king in Shoa. Iscander and Naod were both strict in the tenets of
the church of Alexandria; and two Abunas, Imaranha Christos, who lived
till Iscander’s time, and Abuna Marcus, alive in Alvarez’s, had given
no allowance for strange or foreign worship to be introduced. How the
Catholic could be so favourably and generally received in the time of
Alvarez is what I cannot conceive. Blood enough was spilt immediately
afterwards, to shew that this affection to the Roman Catholic religion,
if any such there was in Alvarez’s time, must have been merely
transitory. When, therefore, I find any thing in this journal plainly
misunderstood, I explain and vindicate it; where I see there is a fact
deliberately misrepresented, such as the celebration of the Epiphany,
I refute it from ocular demonstration. The rest of the journal I
leave _in medio_ to the judgment of my reader, who will find it at
his bookseller’s; only observing, that there can be no doubt that the
journey itself was made by Don Roderigo, and the persons named with him.
I have preserved the several stations of these travellers in my map,
though a great part of the countries through which they passed is now
in the hands of the Galla, and is as inaccessible to Abyssinians as it
is to strangers.
There are two particulars in Alvarez’s account of this journey which
very much surprise me. The first is, the daily and constant danger this
company was in from tigers, so daring as to present themselves within
pike-length. Of this I have taken notice in the appendix when speaking
of the hyæna.
The other particular relates to the field of beans through which they
passed. I never yet saw this sort of grain, or pulse, in Abyssinia.
The lupine, a wild plant, somewhat similar, chiefly infects those
provinces from which the honey comes, and is regarded there with the
utmost aversion. The reason of which will be seen in the sequel. But
as these Mahometans, through whose country Don Roderigo passed, are
not indigenous, and never had any connection with the ancient state
of manners or religion of this country, it is more than probable the
cultivation of the bean is no older than the settlement of these
Mahometans here, long after the Pythagorean prejudices against that
plant were forgotten.
It was on the 16th of April 1520 that Don Roderigo de Lima landed
in Abyssinia; and it was the 16th of October of the same year when
he arrived within sight of the king’s camp, distant about three
miles. The king had advanced, as hath been said, into Fatigar, about
twenty-five miles from the first fair in the kingdom of Adel, and
something less than two hundred from the port of Zeyla. The ambassador,
after so painful a journey, expected an immediate admission into the
king’s presence. Instead of which, a great officer, called _the Hadug
Ras_[30], which is chief or commander of the asses, was sent to carry
him three miles farther distant, where they ordered him to pitch
his tent, and five years passed in the embassy afterwards before he
procured his dismission.
Alvarez accounts very lamely for this prodigious interval of time; and,
excepting the celebration of the Epiphany, he does not mention one
remarkable occurrence in the whole of this period. One would imagine
their stay had not been above a month, and that one conversation only
passed upon business, which I shall here set down as a specimen of the
humour the parties were in the one with the other.
The king carried the ambassador to see the church Mecana Selassé, the
church of the Trinity, which was then repairing, where many of the
kings had been buried while the Royal family resided in Shoa. All the
churches in Abyssinia are thatched. Some of Roderigo’s own retinue, who
bore him ill-will, had put it into the king’s head how elegant this
church would be if covered with lead, a thing he certainly could have
no idea of. He asked Don Roderigo, whether the king of Portugal could
not send him as much sheet-lead as would serve to cover that church?
To which the ambassador replied, That the king of Portugal, upon bare
mentioning the thing, would send him as much sheet-lead[31] as would
cover not only that church, but all the other churches he should ever
build in Abyssinia; and, after all, the present would be but a trifling
one.
Immediately upon this the king changed his discourse; and observed to
the ambassador, in a very serious tone of voice, “That, since they
were now upon the subject of presents, he could not help letting the
king of Portugal know, that, if ever he sent an ambassador again into
that country, he should take care to accompany him with presents of
value, for otherwise stranger ambassadors that ventured to come before
him without these were very ill received.” To which the ambassador
returned warmly, “That it was very far from being the custom of the
king of Portugal to send presents to any king upon earth; that, having
no superior, it was usual for him, only to receive them from others,
and to accept them or not, according to his royal pleasure; for it was
infinitely below him to consider what was the value of the present
itself. He then desired the king of Abyssinia might be informed, that
he, Don Roderigo, came ambassador from the general of the Indies, and
not from the king of Portugal; nevertheless, when the king of Portugal
had lately dispatched Galvan, who had died upon the road, ambassador
to his highness, he had sent with him presents to the value of 100,000
ducats, consulting his own greatness, but not considering himself as
under any obligation to send any presents at all; and as to the many
scandalous aspersions that had been thrown upon him by mean people,
which the king had given credit to, and were made constantly part of
his discourse, he wished his highness, from the perusal of the letters
which he had brought from the general of the Indies, to learn, that the
Portuguese were not accustomed to use lying and dissimulation in their
conversations, but to tell the naked truth; to which he the ambassador
had strictly confined himself in every circumstance he had related to
his highness, if he pleased to believe him; if not, that he was very
welcome to do just whatever he thought better in his own eyes. Yet
he would, once for all, have his highness to know, that, though he
came only as ambassador from the general of the Indies, he could, as
such, have presented himself before the greatest sovereign upon earth,
without being subjected to hear such conversation as he had been daily
exposed to from his highness, which he, as a Portuguese nobleman and
a soldier, though he had been no ambassador at all, was not any way
disposed to suffer, and therefore he desired his immediate dismission.”
Upon this the king said, “That the distinction he had shewn him was
such as he would never have met with from any of his predecessors,
having brought no present of any value.” To which the ambassador
replied in great warmth, “That he had received no distinction in this
country whatever, but only injuries and wrongs; that he should think he
became a martyr if he died in this country where he had been robbed
of every thing, except the clothes upon his back; that Matthew, who
was but a pretended ambassador, had been much otherwise treated by
the king of Portugal; but for himself he desired nothing but a speedy
dismission, having delivered his letters and done his errand: Till that
time, he should expect to be treated like a man of honour, above lying
or falsehood.” To this the king answered, “That he believed him to be
a man of honour, worth, and veracity, but that Matthew was a liar: at
the same time he wished Don Roderigo to know, that he was perfectly
informed what degree of respect and good usage Matthew had met with
from the king of Portugal’s officers and captains, but that he did not
impute this to Don Roderigo.”
There was a rumour at court which very much alarmed the ambassador; it
was, that the king intended to detain him according to the invariable
custom and practice of his country. Two Venetians, Nicholas Branca Leon
and Thomas Gradinego, had been forcibly detained since the reign of
Bæda Mariam. But what terrified Don Roderigo still more, as a case most
similar to his, was the sight of Peter Covillan then in court, who had
been sent ambassador by John king of Portugal to Iscander, and ever
since was detained without being able to get leave to return, but was
obliged to marry and settle in the country.
What was the emperor’s real intention is impossible now to know;
but, having resolved to send an Abyssinian ambassador to the king of
Portugal, it was necessary to dismiss Don Roderigo likewise. However,
he did not entirely abandon the whole of his design, but forcibly
detained Master John the secretary, and Lazarus d’Andrad the painter,
and obliged Don Roderigo to depart without them. Zaga Zaab, an
Abyssinian monk, who had learned the Portuguese language by waiting on
Don Roderigo during his stay in Abyssinia, was chosen for the function;
and they set out together for Masuah, plentifully furnished with every
thing necessary for the journey, and arrived safely there without
any remarkable occurrence, where they found Don Hector de Silveyra,
governor of the Indies, with his fleet, waiting to carry Don Roderigo
de Lima home. Whether the king had changed his mind or not is doubtful;
but, on the 27th of April 1526, arrived four messengers from court
with orders for Don Roderigo to return, and also to bring Don Hector
along with him. This was immediately and directly refused; but it was
left in the power of Zaga Zaab to return if he pleased, who however
declared, that, if he staid behind, he should be thrown to the lions.
He, therefore, went on board with great readiness, and they all sailed
from Masuah on the 28th of April of the year just mentioned, in their
return to India.
These frequent intercourses with the Portuguese had given great alarm
to the Mahometan powers, though neither the king of Abyssinia, nor the
Portuguese themselves, had reaped any profit from them, or the several
fleets that had arrived at Masuah, which had really no end but to seek
the ambassador Don Roderigo. The six years spent in wrangling and
childish behaviour, both on the part of the king and the ambassador,
had an appearance of something serious between the two powers; and
what still alarmed the Moors more was, that no part of the secret had
transpired, because no scheme had really been concerted, only mere
proposals of vain and idle enterprises, without either power or will
to put them in execution. Such were the plans of a joint army, to
attack Arabia, and to conquer it down to Jerusalem. The Turks[32] were
on their progress southward in great force; they had conquered Arabia
in less than half the time Don Roderigo had spent quarrelling with
the king about pepper and mules; and a storm was ready to break in a
quarter least expected.
In the gentle reigns of the Mamalukes, before the conquest of Egypt
and Arabia by Selim[33], a caravan constantly set out from Abyssinia
directly for Jerusalem. They had then a treaty with the Arabs. This
caravan rendezvoused at Hamazen, a small territory abounding in
provisions, about two days journey from Dobarwa, and nearly the same
from Masuah; it amounted sometimes in number to a thousand pilgrims,
ecclesiastics as well as laymen. They travelled by very easy journies,
not above six miles a-day, halting to perform divine service, and
setting up their tents early, and never beginning to travel till
towards nine in the morning. They had, hitherto, passed in perfect
safety, with drums beating and colours flying, and, in this way,
traversed the desert by the road of Suakem.
The year after Selim had taken possession of Cairo, Abba Azerata
Christos, a monk famous for holiness, had conducted fifteen hundred
of these pilgrims with him to Jerusalem, and they had arrived without
accident; but, on their return, they had fallen in with a body of
Selim’s troops, who slew a great part of them, and forced others to
take refuge in the desert, where they perished with hunger and thirst.
In the year 1525, another caravan assembled at Hamazen, consisting of
336 friars and priests, and fifteen nuns. They set out from Hamazen on
the 12th day after leaving this place, travelling slowly; and, being
loaded with provisions and water, they were attacked by the Moors of
that district, and utterly defeated and robbed. Of the pilgrims taken
prisoners, all the old men were put to the sword, and the young were
sold for slaves; so that of 336 persons fifteen only escaped, but
three of which lived to return to Shoa at the time the ambassador was
there. This was the first vengeance the Moors to the northward had
yet taken for the alliance made with the Portuguese; and, from this
time, the communication with Cairo through the desert ceased as to the
Christians, and was carried on by Mahometans only.
Since the time of Peter Covillan’s arrival in Abyssinia, the views of
all parties had very much changed. The Portuguese at first coveted
the friendship of Abyssinia, for the sake of obtaining through it a
communication with India. But they now became indifferent about that
intercourse, since they had settled in India itself, and found the
convenience of the passage of the Cape of Good Hope. David, freed
from his fears of the Moors of Adel, whom he had defeated, and seeing
the great power of the Turks, so much apprehended after the conquest
of Egypt, disappointed in India in all their attempts against the
Portuguese settlements there; being, moreover, displeased with the
abrupt behaviour of the ambassador Don Roderigo, and the promises the
empress Helena had made by Matthew without his knowledge, he wished
no further connection with the Portuguese, for whose assistance, he
thought, he should have no use.
Selim, whose first object was the conquest of India, had met there so
rude a reception that he began to despair of further success in his
undertaking; but, having conquered Arabia on one side of the Red Sea,
he was desirous of extending his dominions to the other also, and
for three reasons: The first was, that the safety of the holy place
of Mecca would be much endangered should a Portuguese army and fleet
rendezvous in Abyssinia, and be joined by an army there. The second,
that his ships and gallies could not be in security at the bottom of
the Gulf, should the Portuguese obtain leave to fortify any island
or harbour belonging to the Abyssinians. The third, that the king of
Abyssinia being, as he was taught to believe, the prince whom the
prophet Mahomet had honoured with his correspondence, he thought it
a duty incumbent upon him to convert this prince and kingdom to the
Mahometan religion by the sword, a method allowable in no religion but
that of Mahomet and of Rome.
The ancient and feeble arms of lances and bows, carried by half-naked
peasants assembled in haste and at random for an occasion, were now
laid aside. In place of these, Selim had left garrisons of veteran
troops in all the sea-coast towns of Arabia, exercised in fire-arms,
and furnished with large trains of artillery, supported by a large
fleet which, though destined against the Portuguese in India, and
constantly beat by them, never failed, both going and coming, to
reinforce their posts in Arabia with stores and fresh soldiers.
The empress Helena died in 1525, the year before the Portuguese embassy
ended, after having brought about an interview between the two nations,
which, by the continual disavowal of Matthew’s embassy, it is plain
that David knew not how to turn to his advantage. Soon after her death,
the king prepared to renew the war with the Moors, without having
received the least advantage from the Portuguese. But very differently
had the people of Adel employed this interval of peace. They had
strengthened themselves by the strictest friendship with the Turkish
officers in Arabia, especially with the basha of Zibit, a large trading
port nearly opposite to Masuah. A Turkish garrison was put into Zeyla;
and a Turk, with a large train of artillery, commanded in it. All was
ready against the first invasion the king was to make, and he was now
marching directly towards their country.
The first retaliation, for the Portuguese friendship, (as we have
already observed) had been the cutting off the caravan for Jerusalem.
In revenge for this, the king had marched into Dawaro, and sent a body
of troops from that province to see what was the state of the Moorish
forces in Adel. These were no sooner arrived on the frontiers of that
kingdom, than they were met by a number of the enemy appointed to
guard those confines, and, coming to blows, the Abyssinians defeated,
and drove them into the desert parts of their own country. The king
still advanced till he met the Mahometan army, and a battle was fought
at Shimbra Coré, where the Abyssinian army was totally defeated; the
Betwudet, Hadug Ras, the governor of Amhara, Robel, governor of the
mountain of Geshen, with the greatest part of the nobility, and four
thousand men, were all slain.
Mahomet, called Gragnè, (which signifies _left-handed_) commanded this
army. He was governor of Zeyla, and had promoted the league with the
Turkish bashas on the coast of Arabia; and, having now given the king
a check in his first enterprise, he resolved to carry on the war with
him in a way that should produce something decisive. He remained then
quiet two years at home, sent all the prisoners he had made in the
last expedition to Mecca, and to the Turkish powers on the coast, and
required from them in return the number of troops stipulated, with a
train of portable artillery, which was punctually furnished, while a
large body of janizaries crossed over and joined the Moorish army.
Mahomet led these troops straight into Fatigar, which he over-ran, as
he did the two other neighbouring provinces Ifat and Dawaro, burning
and laying waste the whole country, and driving, as was his usual
manner, immense numbers of the inhabitants, whom the sword had spared,
back with him to Adel.
The next year, Mahomet marched from Adel directly into Dawaro,
committing the same excesses. The king, who saw in despair that total
ruin threatened his whole country, and that there were no hopes but in
a battle, met the Moorish army at Ifras, very much inferior to them in
every sort of appointment. The battle was fought 1st May 1528; the king
was defeated, and Islam Segued, his first minister, who commanded the
army that day, with many of his principal officers, were slain upon the
spot, and the Moorish army took possession of Shoa. David retreated
with his broken army into Amhara, and encamped at Hegu, thinking to
procure reinforcements during the bad weather, but Gragnè was too near
to give him time for this. He entered Amhara, destroying all before
him. The second of November he burnt the church of Mecana Selassé of
the holy sepulchre, and Atronsa Mariam; and, on the 8th of the same
month, Ganeta Georgis; on the 2d of December, Debra Agezia-beher; the
6th of the same month, St Stephen’s church; after which he returned to
Adel with his booty.
The following year Gragnè returned in April, plundered and burnt
Warwar, and wintered there. In the year 1530 Gragnè invaded the
province of Tigré in the month of October, while the king, who had
wintered in Dembea, marched up to Woggora; thence, in December, he went
to Tsalamet, and returned to Tigré to keep the feast of the Epiphany.
The king, next year, marched through Tzegadé, and Gragnè close followed
him, as if he had been hunting a wild beast rather than making war.
The 2d of January he burnt Abba Samuel, then went down into Mazaga
the borders of Sennaar to a conference with Muchtar, one of his
confederates, when it was resolved that they should fight the king
wherever they could meet him, and attach themselves to his person
alone. Gragnè by forced marches overtook the king upon the Nile at
Delakus, the 6th of February, and offered him battle, knowing the
proud spirit of David, that he would not refuse, however great the
disproportion was.
The event was such as might be expected. Fortune again declared against
the king. Negadé Yasous, Acab Saat, and many others of the nobility
perished, fighting to the last, in the sight of their sovereign. In
this battle the brave monk, Andreas[34], much advanced in years, was
slain, behaving with the greatest gallantry, unwilling to survive the
ruin of his country.
The Moors now found it unnecessary to keep together an army. They
divided into small parties, that they might more effectually and
speedily ruin the country. Part of Gragnè’s army was detached to burn
Axum; the other under Simeon continued in Amhara to watch the king’s
motions; and, while he attempted to relieve Axum, dispersed his army,
on which the town was burnt, and with it many of the richest churches
in Abyssinia, Hallelujah, Banquol, Gaso, Debra Kerbé, and many others.
And, on the 7th of April, Saul, son of Tesfo Yasous, fought another
detachment of the Moorish army, and was cut to pieces.
The 28th year of his reign, 1536, the king crossed the Tacazzé, and had
many disastrous encounters with the people of Siré and Serawé. Tesfo
l’Oul, who commanded in this latter province for the king, surprised
a Turkish party under Adli, whom he slew, and met with the same fate
himself from Abbas, Moorish governor of Serawé, when a great many of
the principal people of that province were there slain. Galila, a large
island in the lake Tzana, was plundered, and the convent upon it burnt.
It was one of the principal places where the Abyssinians hid their
treasure, and a great booty was found there.
In the following year, Gragnè, in a message represented to him, that
he might see he was fighting against God, exhorting him to be wise,
and make his peace in time, which he should have upon the condition of
giving him his daughter in marriage, and he would then withdraw his
army, otherwise he would never leave Abyssinia till he had reduced
it to a condition of producing nothing but grass. But the king,
nothing daunted, returned him for answer, That he was an infidel, and
a blasphemer, used as an instrument to chastise him and his people
for their many sins; that it was his duty to bear the correction
patiently; but that it would soon happen, when this just purpose was
answered, that he would be destroyed, and all those with him, as such
wicked instruments had always been; that he the king, and Abyssinia
his kingdom, would be preserved as a monument of the mercy of God, who
never entirely forsook his people, though he might chastise them.
Indeed, the condition of the country was now such that a total
destruction seemed to be at hand; for a famine and plague, its constant
companion, raged in Abyssinia, carrying off those that the sword had
spared.
Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Jews, in the high country of
Samen, after having suffered much from Gragnè, had at last rebelled and
joined him; and the king, who it seems continued to shew an inclination
to the Catholic church, which he had imbibed during the embassy of Don
Roderigo, by this had occasioned many to fall off from him, he and the
court observing Easter according to the Roman kalendar, while the rest
of the clergy and kingdom continued firm to that of Alexandria.
At this time Osman of Dawaro, Jonadab, Kefla, Yousef, and other rebel
Abyssinians, part of Ammer’s army, one of Gragnè’s generals, surprised
the king’s eldest son, Victor, going to join his father the 7th day of
March; slew him, and dispersed his army. Three days after, the king
himself came to action, with Ammer at Zaat in Waag, but he was there
again beaten, and his youngest son Menas was taken prisoner. The king
had scarce now an attendant, and, being almost alone, he took refuge
among the rocks and bushes in a high mountain called _Tsalem_, in the
district of Tsalamet. But he had not remained above a day there, when
he was followed by Joram, (rebel-master of that district) and narrowly
escaped being taken as he was crossing the Tacazzé on foot and alone;
whence he took refuge on mount Tabor, a very high mountain in Siré, and
there he passed the winter.
The amazing spirit and constancy of the king, who alone seemed not to
forsake the cause of his kingdom, who now, without children or army,
still singly, made war for the liberty of his country, astonished all
Abyssinia as well friends as enemies. Every veteran soldier, therefore,
that could escape the small parties of the Moors which surrounded the
king, joined him at Tabor, and he was again at the head of a very
small, but brave body of troops, though it was scarcely known in what
part of the kingdom he was hid. When Achmet-eddin, lieutenant of Ammer,
passed through Siré, loaded with the spoils of the churches and towns
he had plundered, the king, finding him within his reach, descended
from the mountain, and, by a sudden march, surprised and slew him with
his own hand, leaving the greatest part of his army dead on the field.
After which he distributed the booty among his small army.
Ammer, the king’s mortal enemy, who had taken upon himself the
destruction of the royal family, descended into the province of Siré,
and neighbourhood of Tabor, and there indulged himself in the most
wanton cruelties, torturing and murdering the priests, burning churches
and villages, hoping by this the king would lose his temper, and leave
his strong-hold in the mountain. But hearing at the same time, that a
large quantity of plate, and other treasure, belonging to the church
Debra Kerbé, had been carried into an island in the lake Tzana for
safety, he left the king, and seized his booty in the lake to a very
great amount.
However, he there fell ill of a fever; but, on his return, was so
far advanced in his recovery as to resume his schemes of destroying
the king; when, the night of the 10th of February 1538, while he was
sleeping in bed in his tent, a common soldier, from what quarrel or
cause is not known, went secretly and stabbed him several times in the
belly with a two-edged knife, so that he died instantly, to David’s
great relief, and much to the safety of the whole kingdom.
It was now 12 years since Don Roderigo de Lima had sailed from Masuah,
carrying with him Zaga Zaab ambassador from the king of Abyssinia.
This embassy arrived safe in Lisbon, and was received with great
magnificence by king John; but, as the circumstances of the kingdom
when he left Masuah were really flourishing, and as the treatment he
met in Portugal was better than he had, probably, ever experienced at
home, he seems to have been in no haste to put an end to this embassy.
On the other side, the king of Portugal’s affairs in India were arrived
at that degree of prosperity and power, that little use remained for
such an ally as the king of Abyssinia.
The Moorish trade and navigation to India had already received a fatal
blow, as well from the Portuguese themselves, as from the fall of the
Mamalukes in Egypt; and Soliman, and his servant Sinan Basha, by their
conquest, and introducing soldiers who had not any idea or talent for
trade, but only plunder and rapine, had given a finishing stroke to
what the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope began. The filling Arabia
with fire-arms and Turks was now of consequence to none but to David;
and of such a consequence it had been, that, as we have seen, in the
course of 12 years it had left him nothing in Abyssinia but the bare
name of king, and a life so precarious that it could not be counted
upon from one day’s end to the other.
David had detained in Abyssinia two Portuguese, one called Master John,
the other Lazarus d’Andrad a painter, being two of Don Roderigo’s train
that came from the Indies with him. The Abuna (Mark) was become old and
incapable, and, since the Turkish conquest of Egypt, very indifferent
to, and unconnected with, what passed at Cairo. Before he died, at the
king’s desire he had appointed John his successor, and accordingly
ordained him Abuna, as well as having first given him all the inferior
orders at once; for John was a layman and student in physic; a very
simple creature, but a great bigot; and we shall from henceforward call
him John Bermudes.
John very willingly consented to his ordination, provided the pope
approved of it; and he set out for Rome, not by the usual way of
India, but through Arabia and Egypt; and, arriving there without
accident, was confirmed by Paul III. the then pope, not only as
patriarch of Abyssinia, but of Alexandria likewise; to which he added,
as Bermudes says, the most unintelligible and incomprehensible title
of Patriarch of the Sea. Bermudes, to this variety of charges, had
this other added to him, of ambassador from King David to the court
of Portugal; and for this he was certainly very fit, however he might
be for his ecclesiastical dignities; for he had been now 12 years in
Abyssinia, knew the country well, and had been witness of the variety
of distresses which, following close one upon another, had brought this
country to its then state of ruin.
While these things passed in the north of Abyssinia, a terrible
catastrophe happened in the south. A Mahometan chief, called Vizir
Mudgid, governor of Arar, having an opportunity from his situation to
hear of the riches which were daily carried from churches, and other
places, for safety into the mountain of Geshen, took a resolution to
attempt that natural fortress, though in itself almost impregnable, and
strengthened by an army constantly encamped at the foot of it.
When Mudgid arrived near the mountain he found it was forsaken by the
troops destined to guard it; and led by a Mahometan, who was a menial
servant to the princes above, he ascended with his troops without
opposition, putting all the royal family that were prisoners, and
indeed every individual of either sex resident there, indiscriminately
to the sword.
The measure of David’s misfortunes seems to have been now full, and he
died accordingly this very year 1540.
It will be necessary here to remind the reader, that Alvarez, the
chaplain and historian of the first Portuguese embassy, was (as he
said) on his return appointed by king David to make his submission
to the pope. Leaving Zaga Zaab, therefore, in Portugal, he proceeded
to Bologna, where the emperor Charles V. was then in person, before
whom and the pope himself he delivered his credentials framed by Peter
Covillan, and afterwards, in a long speech, the reasons of his embassy.
The pope received this submission of David with infinite pleasure,
at a time when so many kingdoms in the west were revolting from his
supremacy. He considered it as a thing of the greatest moment to be
courted before the emperor by so powerful a prince in Africa. But as
for the emperor himself, though he was then preparing for an expedition
against the Mahometans, and though it was his favourite war, he seems
to have been perfectly indifferent either to the embassy itself, or
to the person that sent it; a great proof that he believed there was
nothing real in it.
Many other people have doubted whether this embassy, or that of
John Bermudes, actually came from the Abyssinian court, as the king
would scarcely have abandoned the form of the Alexandrian church in
which he had been brought up by Abuna Mark, then alive. Abuna Mark,
moreover, could scarcely be believed to have promoted embassies which
were intended to strike at the root of his own religion, and the
patriarchal power with which he was endowed.
But to this it is easily answered, That the Abyssinian historian of
David’s reign, through the whole course of it, readily admits his
constant attachment to the see of Rome. He gives a striking example
of it during the war with Gragnè, when the king celebrated Easter
after the manner of the Roman Catholics, though it was to have this
certain effect of dividing his kingdom, and alienating the minds of
his subjects, of whose assistance he was then in the utmost need.
And as for the Abuna, we are to consider that Cairo had been taken,
and the government, which Abuna Mark owned for the lawful one, had
been overturned by the Turks who then possessed it, and were actually
persecuting the Alexandrian church.
The Abuna, then, and the king also, had the same reason for not
applying to Cairo, the seat of the Turks their enemies; and, therefore,
they more readily accommodated matters with a people from whom only
their assistance could come; and without whom, it was probable, that
both the Christian religion and civil government of Abyssinia would
fall together.
It has been said of this king by the European writers who have touched
upon the history of his reign, that he was a prince who had began it in
the most promising manner, but after the death of the empress Helena,
he had abandoned himself to all sort of debauchery, and especially that
of women; insomuch, as Mr Ludolf says, he suffered his concubines to
have idols in his palace. This I take to be a calumny copied from the
Portuguese priests, who never forgave him the denial of his writing
the letters by Matthew, in which it was said he gave the Portuguese,
or rather king of Portugal, one-third of the kingdom; for he succeeded
to the crown at 11 years of age, defeated and slew Maffudi when he
was about sixteen; and, when Don Roderigo and the Portuguese embassy
were with him, he was then something more than twenty, a very devout,
prudent prince, according to the account Alvarez, an eye-witness, gives
of him; and all this time empress Helena was alive.
Again, the very year after the Portuguese embassy left Abyssinia,
that is, in the year 1526, the king was defeated by the Moors, and,
from that time to his death, was hunted about the country like a wild
beast, from rock to rock, very often alone, and at all times slenderly
attended, till he died, in 1540, at the age of 46; so there is no
period during his life in which this calumny can be justly fixed upon
him.
As for the idolatry he is accused of suffering in his palace among his
Pagan mistresses, I cannot recollect any place in the adjoining nations
from which he could have brought these idolatrous rites or mistresses.
The Pagan countries around him profess a remnant of ill-understood
Sabaism, worshipping the stars, the moon, and the wind; but I do not,
as I say, recollect any of these bordering on Abyssinia who worship
idols.
[Illustration]
CLAUDIUS, OR ATZENAF SEGUED.
From 1540 to 1559.
_Prosperous Beginning of Claudius’s Reign--Christopher de Gama
lands in Abyssinia--Prevented by the rainy Season from joining
the King--Battle of Ainal--Battle of Offalo--Christopher
de Gama slain--Battle of Isaac’s Bet--Moors defeated, and
their General slain--Abyssinian Army defeated--Claudius
slain--Remarkable Behaviour of Nur, Governor of Zeyla, General
of the Moors._
Claudius succeeded his father David III. being yet young, and found the
empire in circumstances that would have required an old and experienced
prince. But, though young, he possessed those graceful and affable
manners which, at first sight, attached people of all sorts to him.
He had been tutored with great care by the empress Helena, was expert
in all warlike exercises, and brave beyond his years.--So say the
Abyssinian annals; and though I have not thought myself warranted to
depart from the letter of the context, yet it is my duty to the reader
to shew him how this could not be.
Claudius was born about the 1522; the empress Helena died in 1525. From
this it is plain, the first three years of his life was all that he
could be under the tutelege of the empress Helena; and, at so early
a period, it is not possible he could receive much advantage. The
princess, to whom he was indebted for his education, was Sabel Wenghel,
celebrated in the Abyssinian history for wisdom and courage equal to
the empress Helena herself. She was relict of David. We shall hereafter
see her called Helena likewise upon another occasion; but the reader is
desired to have in mind, that this confusion of persons is owing only
to that of names to be met with almost in every reign in the Abyssinian
history.
Claudius is said likewise in these annals to have been a child at
the time of his accession; but, having been born in the 1522, and
succeeding to the throne in 1540, he must have been eighteen years of
age; and this cannot be called childhood, especially in Abyssinia,
unless, as I have before said, this observation of age was relative to
the arduous task he had in hand, by succeeding to a kingdom arrived at
the very eve of perdition.
The Moors, notwithstanding the constant success they had against David,
still feared the consequences of his long experience and undaunted
resolution in the most adverse fortune. They were happy, therefore,
in the change of such an enemy, however unfortunate, for a young man
scarcely yet out of the influence of female government, which had
always been favourable to them, and their religion.
A general league was formed without delay among all the Mahometan
chiefs to surround Claudius, and fall upon him before he was in a
situation to defend himself, and by one stroke to put an end to the
war. They accordingly set about collecting troops from all quarters,
but with a degree of inattention and presumption that sufficiently
shewed they thought themselves in no danger. But the young king having
good intelligence that vizir Asa, Osman, Debra Yasous, and Joram,
(who had so nearly taken his father prisoner in the mountain Tsalem)
had their quarters near him, and neglected a good look-out, fell upon
them, without their knowing what his force was, entirely defeated them,
dispersed their army, and struck a panic into the whole confederacy by
the manner this victory was followed up; the king himself on horseback
continued the pursuit all that day and night, as also the next day, and
did not return to his camp till the second evening after his victory,
having slain without mercy every one that had fallen into his hands,
either in the flight, or in the field of battle.
Claudius’s behaviour, on this first occasion, raised the soldiers
confidence to a degree of enthusiasm. Every man that had served under
his father repaired to him with the greatest alacrity. Above all, the
Agows of Lasta came down to him in great troops from their rugged and
inaccessible mountains, the chief of that warlike nation being related
to him by his mother.
The king in person at the head of his army became now an object of
such consideration as to make the Mahometan chiefs no longer retire
as usual to winter in Adel, but canton themselves in the several
districts they had conquered in Abyssinia, and lay aside the thoughts
of farther wasting the country, to defend themselves against so active
and spirited an assailant. They agreed then to join their whole forces
together, and march to force the king to a battle. Osman of Ganzé,
vizir Mudgid who had settled in Amhara, Saber-eddin[35], and all the
lesser rebel officers of Siré and Serawé, effected a junction about
the same time without opposition. Jonathan alone, a rebel of great
experience, had not yet appeared with his troops. The king, on the
other hand, did not seem over anxious to come to an engagement, though
his army was every day ready for battle; and his ground was always
taken with advantage, so that it was almost desperate to pretend to
force him.
Jonathan at last was on his way to join the confederates; but the king
had as early intelligence of his motions as his friends: and, while
he was yet two days march distant from the camp, the king, leaving
his tents standing and his fires lighted, by a forced march in the
night came upon him, (while he thought him blocked up by his rebel
associates at a distance) and, finding Jonathan without preparation or
defence, cut his whole army to pieces, slew him, and then returned to
his own tents as rapidly as he went, having ordered small detachments
to continue in the way between him and his camp, patroling lest some
ambush should be laid for him by the enemy, who, if they had been
informed of his march, though they were too late to prevent the success
of it, might still have attempted to revenge it.
But intelligence was now given to the Moors with much less punctuality
and alacrity than formerly. So generally did the king possess the
affections of the country-people, that no information came to the
confederate army till the next day after his return, when, early in the
morning, he dispatched one of the Moorish prisoners that he had taken
three days before, and spared for the purpose, carrying with him the
head of Jonathan, and a full account of the havock to which he had been
a witness.
This messenger bore also the king’s defiance to the Moors, whom he
challenged, under the odious epithets they deserved, to meet him; and
then actually to shew he was in earnest, marched towards them with his
army, which he formed in order of battle. But tho’ they stood under
arms for a considerable time, whilst several invitations to single
combat were sent from the Christian horsemen, as their custom is,
before they engage, or when their camps are near each other, yet the
Moors were so astonished at what had happened, and what they saw now
before them, that not one officer would advise the risking a battle,
nor any one soldier accept of the challenge offered. The king then
returned to his camp, distributed the whole booty among his soldiers,
and refreshed them, preserving a proper station to cover the wounded,
whom he sent off to places of security.
The king was in the country of Samen in the neighbourhood of Lasta.
He then decamped and passed the river Tacazzé, that he might be
nearer those districts of which the Turks had possessed themselves.
In this march all sorts of people joined the victorious army. Those
that had revolted, and many that had apostatized, came without fear
and surrendered themselves, trusting to the clemency of the prince.
Many of the Moors, natives of Abyssinia, did the same, after having
experienced the difference between the mild Christian government, and
that of their new masters, the Moors and Turks of Adel.
The king encamped at Sard, there to pass his Easter; and, as is usual
in the great festivals, many of the nobility obtained leave to attend
the religious offices of the season at home with their families. Ammer,
governor of Ganzé, who knew the custom of the country, thought this
was the time to surprise the king thinly attended; and it might have
succeeded, if intelligence of the enemy’s designs had not been received
almost as soon as they were formed. Claudius, therefore, drawing
together some of the best of his forces, placed himself in ambush in
Ammer’s, way, who, not suspecting, fell into it with his army, which
was totally destroyed on the 24th of April 1541. After which the king
left his own quarter at Sard and came to Shume.
While things were taking this favourable turn in Abyssinia, the
ambassador, John Bermudes, had passed from Rome to Lisbon, where he
was acknowledged by the king as patriarch of Alexandria, Abyssinia,
and, as he will have it, of the Sea. The first thing he did was to give
the Portuguese a sample of Abyssinian discipline, by putting Zaga Zaab
in irons for having wasted so much time without effecting any of the
purposes of his embassy; but, by the interposition of the king, he was
set at liberty in a few days. Bermudes then fell roundly to the subject
of his embassy, and drew such a picture of the distresses of Abyssinia,
and insisted in his own blunt way so violently with the king of
Portugal, and the nobility in general, that he procured an order from
the king for Don Garcia de Noronha, who was then going out viceroy of
the Indies, to send 400 Portuguese musqueteers from India to the relief
of Abyssinia, and to land them at Masuah.
John Bermudes, to secure the assistance promised, resolved to embark
in the same fleet with Don Garcia; but he fell sick, from poison given
him, as he apprehends, by Zaga Zaab, and this delayed his embarkation a
year. The next year, being recovered of his illness, he arrived safely
at India. In the interim Don Garcia died, and Don Stephen de Gama, who
succeeded him, did not embrace the scheme of the intended succour with
such eagerness as Bermudes could have wished.
After some delay, however, it was resolved that Don Stephen should
himself undertake an expedition from India, to burn the Turkish gallies
that were at Suez. In this, however, Don Stephen was disappointed.
Upon intelligence of the intended visit, the Turkish gallies had been
all drawn ashore. He came after this to the port of Masuah, where
the fleet intended to water; and, for that purpose, their boats were
sent to Arkeeko, a small town and fortress upon the main-land, where
good water may be found. But the Moors and Turks from Zeyla and Adel
were now masters there, who took the 1000 webs of cotton-cloth the
captain had sent to exchange for water and provisions, and sent him
word back, that his master, the king of Adel, was now king of all
Ethiopia, and would not suffer any further trade to be carried on, but
through his subjects; if, therefore, the captain of the fleet would
make peace with him, he should restore the cotton-webs which had been
taken, supply him plentifully with provisions, and make amends for the
sixty Portuguese slain on the coast near Zeyla: For, upon the fleet’s
entering the Red Sea, this number of Portuguese had run away with a
boat; and, landing in the kingdom of Adel, where they could procure
no water, they were decoyed to give up their arms, and were then all
massacred.
The captain, Don Stephen, saw the trap laid for him by the Moors, and,
resolving to pay them in their own coin, he returned this answer to
their message, “That he was very willing to trade with the Moorish
officer, but did not demand restitution of the clothes, as they were
taken in fair war. As for the sixty Portuguese, they had met the death
they deserved, as being traitors and deserters: That he now sent a
thousand more clothes, desiring water and provisions, especially live
cattle; and that, as it was now the time of their festival, he would
treat with them for peace, and bring his goods ashore as soon as the
holidays were over.”
This being agreed to on both sides, with equal bad faith and intention
towards each other, and Don Stephen having obtained his refreshments,
he strictly forbade any further communication with the shore. He then
selected a body of six hundred men, the command of whom he gave to
Martin Correa, who, in light boats, without shewing any fire, landed
undiscovered below Arkeeko, and took possession of the entrances to
the town, putting all that they met to the sword. Nur, governor of
the province for the king of Adel, fled as soon as he had heard the
Portuguese were in the town: He was already in the fields, when Martin
Correa shot him with a musquet, and cut off his head, which was
sent before them to the queen, Sabel Wenghel, then in a strong-hold
of the province of Tigré, and with her Degdeasmati (which, in common
discourse, is called _Kasmati_) Robel. This was the person of that name
who had met Don Roderigo in his journey to find the king, and who was
now governor of the province. The queen received the Moorish general’s
head with great demonstrations of joy, considering it as an early
pledge of future victories.
In the mean time, Don Stephen de Gama, captain of the fleet, began to
inrol the men destined to march to join Claudius. Four hundred and
fifty musqueteers was the number granted by the king to Bermudes; but
an ardent desire of glory had seized all the Portuguese, and every
one strove to be in the nomination for that enterprise. All that Don
Stephen could do was to choose men of the first rank for the officers;
and these, of necessity, having many servants whom they carried with
them, greatly, by this means, encreased the number beyond the 450. Don
Christopher de Gama, Don Stephen’s youngest brother, a nobleman of
great hopes, was chosen to command this small army of heroes.
A very great murmuring, nevertheless, prevailed among those that
were refused, which was scarcely kept in due bounds by the presence
and authority of the governor Don Stephen himself. And from this
honourable emulation, and the discontent these brave soldiers who were
left behind shewed, the bay where the galley rode in the harbour of
Masuah, on board which this council was held, is called to this day
_Bahia dos Agravados_, the Bay of Wronged, or Injured People, sometimes
misinterpreted the Bay _of the Sick_.
The army under Don Christopher marched to Arkeeko, where the next day
came the governor Don Stephen, and the principal officers of the fleet,
and took leave of their countrymen; and, after receiving the blessing
of Don John Bermudes, _Patriarch of the Sea_, the governor and rest of
the Portuguese embarked, and returned to India.
Don Christopher, with the greatest intrepidity, began his march towards
Dobarwa, the easiest entrance into Abyssinia, though still over rugged
and almost inaccessible mountains. The Baharnagash had orders to attend
him, and furnish this little army with cattle both for their provision
and carriages; and this he actually performed. But the carriages of the
small train of artillery giving way in this bad road, and there being
nobody at hand to assist them with fresh ones in case the old failed,
Gama made certain carriages of wood after the pattern of those they
had brought from Portugal; and, as iron was a very scarce commodity in
Abyssinia, he made them split in pieces some barrels of old and useless
firelocks for the wheels with which they were to draw their artillery.
The queen, without delay, came forward to join Don Christopher;
who, hearing she was at hand, went to meet her a league from the
city with drums beating and colours flying, and saluted her with a
general discharge of fire-arms, which terrified her much. Her two
sisters accompanied her, and a number of attendants of both sexes. Don
Christopher, at the head of his soldiers, paid his compliments with
equal gallantry and respect. The queen was covered from head to foot,
but lifted up her veil, so that her face could be seen by him; and he,
on the other hand, appointed a hundred musqueteers for her guard; and
thus they returned to Dobarwa mutually satisfied with this their first
interview.
Don Christopher marched from Dobarwa eight days through a very rugged
country, endeavouring, if possible, to bring about a junction with the
king. And it was in this place, while he was encamped, that he received
a message from the Moorish general, full of opprobrious expressions,
which was answered in much the same manner. Don Christopher continued
his march as much as he could on account of the rains; and Gragnè,
whose greatest desire was to prevent the junction, followed him into
Tigré. Neither army desired to avoid the other, and they were both
marching to the same point; so that on the 25th of March 1542, they
came in sight of each other at Ainal, a small village in the country of
the Baharnagash.
The Moorish army consisted of 1000 horsemen, 5000 foot, 50 Turkish
musqueteers, and a few pieces of artillery. Don Christopher, besides
his 450 musqueteers, had about 12,000 Abyssinians, mostly foot, with
a few bad horse commanded by the Baharnagash, and Robel governor of
Tigré. Don Christopher, whose principal view was a junction with the
king, though he did not decline fighting, yet, like a good officer, he
chose to do it as much as possible upon his own terms; and, therefore,
as the enemy exceeded greatly in the number of horse, he posted himself
so as to make the best of his fire-arms and artillery. And well it was
that he did so, for the Abyssinians shewed the utmost terror when the
firing began on both sides.
Gragne, mounted on a bay horse, advancing too near Don Christopher’s
line that he might see if in any part it was accessible to his cavalry,
and being known by his dress to be an officer of distinction, he was
shot at by Peter de Sa, a Portuguese marksman, who killed his horse,
and wounded the rider in the leg. This occasioned a great confusion,
and would probably have ended in a defeat of the Moors, had not the
Portuguese general also been wounded immediately after by a shot.
Don Christopher, to shew his confidence of victory, ordered his men
forthwith to pitch their tents, upon which the Moors retired with
Gragnè (whom they had mounted on another horse) without being pursued,
the Abyssinians having contented themselves with being spectators of
the battle.
Don Christopher, with his army and the empress, now entered into
winter-quarters at Affalo; nor did Gragnè depart to any distance from
him, but took up his quarters at Zabul, in hopes always to fight the
Portuguese before it was possible for them to effect a junction with
the king. The winter passed in a mutual intercourse of correspondence
and confidence between the king and Don Christopher, and in determining
upon the best scheme to pursue the war with success. Don Christopher
and the queen were both of opinion, that, considering the small number
of Portuguese first landed, and their diminution by fighting, and a
strange climate, it was risking every thing to defer a junction till
the winter was over.
The Moorish general was perfectly of the same opinion; therefore,
as soon as the king began his march from Dembea, Gragnè advanced to
Don Christopher’s camp, and placed himself between the Portuguese
army and that of the king, drawing up his troops before the camp, and
defying the Portuguese to march out, and fight, in the most opprobrious
language. Don Christopher, in a long catalogue of virtues which he
possessed to a very eminent degree, had not the smallest claim to
that of patience, so very necessary to those that command armies. He
was brave to a fault; rash and vehement; jealous of what he thought
military honour; and obstinate in his resolutions, which he formed in
consequence. The defiance of this barbarian, at which an old general
would have laughed, made him utterly forget the reasons he himself
frequently alledged, and the arguments used by the queen, which the
king’s approach daily strengthened, that it was risking every thing to
come to a battle till the two armies had joined. He had, however, from
no other motive but Gragnè’s insolence, formed his resolution to fight,
without waiting a junction; and accordingly the 30th of August, early
in the morning, having chosen his ground to the best advantage, he
offered battle to the Moorish army.
Gragne, by presents sent to the basha of Zibid, had doubled his number
of horse, which now consisted of 2000. He had got likewise 100 Turkish
musqueteers, an infinite number of foot, and a train of artillery more
numerous and complete than ever had been seen before in Abyssinia. The
queen, frightened at the preparation for the battle, fled, taking with
her the Portuguese patriarch, who seemed to have as little inclination
as she had to see the issue of the day. But Don Christopher, who knew
well the bad effects this example would have, both on Abyssinians and
Portuguese, sent twenty horse, and brought them both back; telling
the patriarch it was a breach of duty he would not suffer, for him
to withdraw until he had confessed him, and given the army absolution
before the action with the Infidels.
The battle was fought on the 30th of August with great fury and
obstinacy on both sides. The Portuguese had strewed, early in the
morning, all the front of their line with gun-powder, to which, on
the approach of the Turks, they set fire by trains, which burnt
and disabled, a great many of them; and things bore a prosperous
appearance, till the Moorish general ordered some artillery to be
pointed against the Abyssinians, who, upon hearing the first explosion,
and seeing the effect of some balls that had lighted among them, fled,
and left the Portuguese to the number only of 400, who were immediately
surrounded by the Moorish army. Nor did Gragnè pursue the fugitives,
his affair being with the Portuguese, the smallness of whose number
promised they would fall an easy and certain sacrifice. He therefore,
attacked their camp upon every side with very little success, having
lost most of his best officers, till, unfortunately, Don Christopher,
fighting and exposing himself everywhere, was singled out by a Turkish
soldier, and shot through the arm. Upon this all his men turned their
thoughts from their own preservation to that of their general, who
obstinately refused to fly, till he was by force put upon a litter, and
sent off, together with the patriarch and queen.
Night now coming on, Don Christopher had got into a wood in which there
was a cave. There he ordered himself to be set down to have his wounds
dressed; which, being done, he was urged by the queen and patriarch to
continue his flight. But he had formed his resolution, and, without
deigning to give his reasons, he obstinately refused to retreat a step
farther. In vain the queen, and those that knew the country, told him
he was just in the tract of the Moorish horsemen, who would not fail
soon to surround him. He repeated his resolution of staying there
with such a degree of firmness, that the queen and patriarch, who had
no great desire for martyrdom, left him to his fate, which presently
overtook him.
In one of Don Christopher’s expeditions to the mountains, he had taken
a very beautiful woman, wife to a Turkish officer, whom he had slain.
This lady had made a shew of conversion to Christianity; lived with him
afterwards, and was treated by him with the utmost tenderness. It was
said, that, after he was wounded and began to fly, this woman had given
him his route, and promised to overtake him with friends that would
carry him to a place of safety. Accordingly, some servants left by
the queen, hidden among the rocks, to watch what might befal him, and
assist him if possible, saw a woman, in the dawn of the morning, come
to the cave, and return into the wood immediately, whence there rushed
out a body of Moorish horse, who went straight to the cave and found
Don Christopher lying upon the ground sorely wounded. Upon the first
question that was asked him, he declared his name, which so overjoyed
the Moors, that they gave over further pursuit, and returned with the
prisoner they had taken. Don Christopher was brought into the presence
of the Moorish general, Gragnè, who loaded him with reproaches; to
which he replied with such a share of invectives, that the Moor, in the
violence of his passion, drew his sword and cut off his head with his
own hand. His head was sent to Constantinople, and parts of his body to
Zibid and other quarters of Arabia.
The Portuguese camp was now taken, and all the wounded found in it
were put to death. The women, from their fear, having retired all into
Don Christopher’s tent, the Turks began to indulge themselves in their
usual excesses towards their captives, when a noble Abyssinian woman,
who had been married to a Portuguese, seeing the shocking treatment
that was awaiting them, set fire to several barrels of gun-powder that
were in the tent, and at once destroyed herself, her companions, and
those that were about to abuse them.
The queen and the patriarch, after travelling through most difficult
ways, and being hospitably entertained whereever they passed, at last
took up their residence in the Jews mountain, a place inaccessible in
point of strength, having but one entrance, and that very difficult,
being also defended by a multitude of inhabitants who dwell on a large
plain on the top of that mountain, where there is plenty of space to
plow and sow, and a large stream of water that runs through the whole
of it. Here they staid two months, as well to repose themselves as
to give the king time to relieve them. After hearing that he was in
motion, they left the mountain of the Jews, and met him on his march
towards them.
Claudius shewed great signs of sorrow for the death of Don Christopher,
and mourned three days. He then sent 3000 ounces of gold to be divided
among the Portuguese, who, in the place of Don Christopher, had elected
Alphonso Caldeyra for their captain. These all flocked about the king,
demanding that he would lead them to battle, that they might revenge
the death of Don Christopher. Soon after which, Alphonso Caldeyra,
exercising a horse in the field, was thrown off and died of the fall.
In his place was elected Arius Dias, a Portuguese, born at Coimbra,
whose mother was a black; he was very much favoured by the king, who
now began to cultivate particular parties among the Portuguese, in
order to divide them, and loosen their attachment for their patriarch,
religion, and country.
The king marched from Samen to Shawada, where the Moorish army came
in full force to meet him. They were not, however, those formidable
troops that had defeated and taken Don Christopher: For the Turkish
soldiers, who were the strength of the army, expecting to have shared
a great sum each for Don Christopher’s ransom, thought themselves
exceedingly injured by the manner in which he was put to death; and
they had accordingly all to a man returned into Arabia, leaving Gragnè
to fight his own battles for his own profit. Nor was Claudius ignorant
of this; and having collected all his army he gave the Moors battle on
the 15th of November in a plain called Woggora, on the top of Lamalmon,
in which the Moors, notwithstanding their recent victory, were not long
in yielding to the superiority of the king’s troops.
The loss of the day was not inconsiderable. Mahomet, Osman, and Talil,
three Moorish leaders, famous for their successes against David the
king’s father, were this day slain in the field.
Claudius now descended into the low country of Derseguè, a very
plentiful province, to which the Moors always retreated to strengthen
themselves after any misfortune. This the king utterly destroyed;
while Gragnè did the same with those countries in Dembea that had been
recovered by the king. Claudius then returned to Shawada, and Gragnè to
Derseguè. After that the king marched to Wainadega, and Gragnè, leaving
Derseguè, advanced so near the king’s army, that the outposts were
nearly in sight of each other. In such a position of two such armies a
battle became inevitable.
Accordingly, on the 10th of Feb. 1543, in the morning, the king, whose
quarters were at Isaac’s Bet, having well refreshed his army, marched
out of his camp, and offered the enemy battle. The Portuguese, ever
mindful of Don Christopher, fought with a bravery like to desperation,
and the presence of the king keeping the Abyssinians in their duty,
the van of Gragnè’s army was pushed back upon the center, and much
confusion was like to follow, till Gragnè advanced alone before them,
waving and beckoning with his hands to his men that they should follow;
and he was already come so near the Portuguese line as to be easily
known and distinguished by them.
Peter Lyon, a man of low stature, but very active and valiant, who had
been valet-de-chambre to Don Christopher, having crept unseen along
the course of a river a considerable space nearer, to make his aim
more certain, shot Gragnè with his musquet, so that the ball went
through his body in the moment that both armies joined. Gragnè, finding
that his wound was mortal, rode aside from the pressure of the troops
towards a small thicket, and was closely followed by Peter Lyon, who
saw him fall dead from his horse; and, desirous still to do further
service in the battle, he would not incumber himself with his head,
but, cutting off one of the ears, he put it in his pocket, and returned
to the action. The Moorish army no sooner missed the presence of their
general, than concluding all lost, they fell into confusion, and were
pursued by the Portuguese and Abyssinians, with a great slaughter, till
the evening.
The next morning, in surveying the dead, the body of Gragnè was found
by an Abyssinian officer, who cut his head off, and brought it to the
king, who received him with great honour and promise of reward. Peter
Lyon stood a silent spectator of the impudence of his competitor; but
Arius Dias, who knew the fact, desired the king’s attention; saying, at
the same time, “That he believed his majesty knew Gragnè well enough to
suppose that he would not suffer any man to cut off his ear, without
having it in his power to sever his head also; and consequently, that
the ear must be in possession of a better man than he that had brought
his head to the camp.” Upon this, Peter Lyon pulled the ear out of his
pocket, and laid it at the king’s feet, amidst the acclamations of all
present, for his bravery in revenging his old master’s death, and his
modesty in being content with having done so, without pretending to any
other reward.
In this battle, a son of Gragnè was taken prisoner, with many other
considerable officers; and Del Wumbarea, wife of Gragnè, with Nur son
of Mudgid, and a few troops, were obliged to throw themselves, for
safety, among the wilds and woods of Atbara, thereby escaping with
great difficulty.
The king had now ample revenge of all the Moorish leaders who had
reduced his father to such extremities, excepting Joram, who had driven
the king from his hiding-place on mount Tsalem, and forced him to cross
the Tacazzé on foot, with equal danger of being drowned or taken. This
leader had, much against his will, been detained from the last battle,
but, hoping to be still in time, was advancing by forced marches. The
king, informed of his route, detached a party of his army to meet him
before the news of the battle could reach him. They having placed them
selves in ambush, he fell into it with his army, and was cut to pieces:
this completed Claudius’s account with his father’s enemies.
During the late war with Gragnè, the provinces of Tigré and Siré had
been the principal seat of the war. They were immediately in the way
between Dembea, Masuah, and the other Moorish posts upon the Red Sea;
the enemy had crossed them in all directions, and a proportionable
devastation had been the consequence. Gragnè had burnt Axum, and
destroyed all the churches and convents in Tigré. The king, now
delivered from this enemy, had applied seriously to repair the ravages
which had been made in the country. For this purpose he marched with a
small army towards Axum, intending afterwards an expedition against the
Galla.
It was in the 13th year of the reign of Claudius, while he was at
Siré, that there happened a very remarkable eclipse of the sun, which
threw both court and army into great consternation. The prophets and
diviners, ignorant monks of the desert, did not let slip so favourable
an opportunity of increasing their consequence by augmenting this
panic, and declaring this eclipse to portend nothing less than the
renewal of the Moorish war. The year, however, passed in tranquillity
and peace. Two old women, relations of the king, are said to have died;
and it was in this great calamity that these diviners were to look for
the completion of their prophecies. It is from this, however, that
I have taken an opportunity to compare and rectify the dates of the
principal transactions in the Abyssinian history. Siré, where the king
then resided, was a point very favourable for this application; for,
in my journey from Masuah to Gondar, I had settled the latitude and
longitude of that town by many observations.
On the 22d of January 1770, at night, by a medium of different passages
of stars over the meridian, and by an observation of the sun the noon
of the following day, I found the latitude to be 14° 4´ 35´´ north, and
the evening of the 23d, I observed an emersion of the first satellite
of Jupiter, and by this I concluded the longitude of Siré to be 38° 0´
15´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich.
The 13th year of the reign of Claudius falls to be in the 1553, and I
find that there was a remarkable eclipse of the sun that did happen
that same year on the 24th of January N. S. which answers to the 18th
of the Ethiopic month Teir. The circumstances of this eclipse were as
follow:
_H._ _M._ _S._
Beginning, 7 21 0 A. M.
Middle, 8 40 0
End 10 1 0
The quantity of the sun’s disk obscured was 10 digits; so that this
was so near to a total eclipse, it must have made an impression on
the spectators minds that sufficiently accounts for the alarm and
apprehensions it occasioned.
In the month of January, nothing can be more beautiful than the sky in
Siré; not a cloud appears; the sky is all of a pale azure, the colour
lighter than an European sky, and of inexpressible beauty. The manner
of applying this eclipse I shall mention hereafter.
Eclipses of the moon do not seem to be attended to in Abyssinia. The
people are very little out in the night, insomuch that I do not find
one of these recorded throughout their history. The circumstances of
the season make even those of the sun seldomer visible than in other
climates, for in the rainy season, from April to September, the heavens
are constantly overcast with clouds, so that it is mere accident if
they can catch the moment it happens. But in the month of Teir, that
is December and January, the sky is perfectly serene and clear, and at
this time our eclipse above mentioned happened.
The king now took into his consideration the state of the church. He
had sent for an Abuna from Cairo to succeed Abuna Marcus, and he was
now in his way to Abyssinia, while Bermudes, not able to bear this
slight, on the other hand, publicly declared to the king, that, having
been ambassador from his father, and made his submission to the Roman
pontiff, for himself and for his kingdom, he now expected that Claudius
would make good his father’s engagements, embrace the Roman Catholic
religion himself, and, without delay, proclaim it as the established
religion in Abyssinia. This the king positively refused to do, and
a conversation ensued, which is repeated by Bermudes himself, and
sufficiently shews the moderation of the young king, and the fiery,
brutal zeal of that ignorant, bigotted, ill-mannered priest. Hitherto
the Abyssinians heard the Portuguese mass with reverence and attention;
and the Portuguese frequented the Abyssinian churches with complacency.
They intermarried with each other, and the children seem to have been
christened indifferently by the priests of either church. And this
might have long continued, had it not been for the impatience of
Bermudes.
The king, seeing the danger of connecting himself with such a man,
kept up every appearance of attachment to the Alexandrian church. Yet,
says the Abyssinian historian who writes his life, it was well known
that Claudius, in his heart, was a private, but perfect convert, to
the Romish faith, and kept only from embracing it by his hatred to
Bermudes, the constant persuasion of the empress Sabel Wenghel, and
the recollection of the misfortunes of his father. Upon being required
publicly to submit himself to the See of Rome, he declared that he had
made no such promise; that he considered Bermudes as no patriarch,
or, at best, only patriarch of the Franks; and that the Abuna of
Abyssinia was the chief priest acknowledged by him. Bermudes told him,
that he was accursed and excommunicated. Claudius answered, that he,
Bermudes, was a nestorian heretic, and worshipped four gods. Bermudes
answered plainly, that he lied; that he would take every Portuguese
from him, and return to India whence he came. The king’s answer was,
that he wished he would return to India; but as for the Portuguese,
neither they, nor any other person, should leave his kingdom without
his permission. Accordingly, having perfectly gained Arius Dias, he
gave him the name of Marcus, with the command of the Portuguese, and
sent him a standard with his own arms, to use instead of the king of
Portugal’s. But the Abyssinian page being met, on his return, with the
Portuguese standard in his hand, by James Brito, he wrested it from
him, felling him to the ground with a blow of his sword on the head.
From expostulations with the king, the matter of religion turned into
disputes among the priests, at which the king always assisted in
person. If we suppose they were no better sustained on the part of
the Abyssinians than they were by the patriarch Bermudes, who we know
was no great divine, we cannot expect much that was edifying from the
arguments that either of them used. The Portuguese priests say[36],
that the king, struck with the ignorance of his own clergy, frequently
took the discussion upon himself, which he managed with such force
of reasoning as often to put the patriarch to a stand. From verbal
disputes, which terminated in nothing, Bermudes was resolved to appeal
to arguments in writing; and, with the help of those that were with
him of the same faith, a fair state of the differences in question was
made in a small book, and presented to the king, who read it with so
much pleasure that he kept it constantly by him. This gave very great
offence to the Abyssinian clergy; and the Abuna being now arrived,
the king desired of him liberty to read that book, which he refusing,
put the young king into so violent a passion that he called the Abuna
Mahometan and Infidel to his face.
Things growing worse and worse between the Portuguese and Abyssinians,
by the incendiary spirit of the brutish Bermudes, from reproaches they
came to blows; and this proceeded so far, that the Portuguese one night
assaulted the king’s tent, where they slew some, and grievously wounded
others. Upon this, the king, desirous to estrange him a little from the
Portuguese, sent Bermudes to the country of the Gafats, where he gave
him large appointments, in hopes that the natural turbulence of his
temper would involve him in some difficulties. And there he staid seven
months, oppressing the poor ignorant people, and frightening them with
the noise of his fire-arms. During this period, the king went on an
expedition against the Galla; Bermudes then returned to court, where he
found that Arius Dias was dead, and a great many of the Portuguese very
well attached to the king. But he began his old work of dissention,
insomuch that the king determined to banish him to a mountain for life.
Gaspar de Suza now commanded the Portuguese instead of Arius Dias, a
man equally beloved by his own nation and the king. By his persuasions,
and that of Kasmati Robel, the banishment to the mountain was laid
aside; but Bermudes was privately persuaded to embark for India while
it was yet time; and accordingly he repaired to Dobarwa, where he
remained two years, as it should seem, perfectly quiet, neglected, and
forlorn; saying daily mass to ten Portuguese who had settled in that
town after the defeat of Don Christopher. He then went to Masuah, and
the monsoon being favourable, he embarked on board a Portuguese vessel,
carrying with him the ten Portuguese that were settled at Dobarwa, who
all arrived safely at Goa.
St Ignatius, founder of the Order of Jesuits, was then at Rome in
the dawn of his holiness. The conversion of Abyssinia seemed of such
consequence to him, that he resolved himself to go and be the apostle
of the kingdom. But the pope, who had conceived other hopes of him and
his Order more important and nearer at hand, absolutely refused this
offer. One of his society, Nugnez Baretto, was, however, fixed upon
for patriarch, without any notice being taken of Don John Bermudes. By
him Ignatius sent a letter addressed to Claudius, which is to be found
in the collections[37]. It does not, I think, give us any idea of the
ingenuity or invention of that great saint. It seems mostly to beg the
question, and to contain little else than texts of scripture for his
future missionaries to preach and write on, relative to the difference
of tenets of the two churches.
With this letter, and a number of priests, Baretto came to Goa. But
news being arrived there of king Claudius’s steady aversion to the
Catholic church, it was then thought better, rather than risk the
patriarchal dignity, to send Andrew Oviedo bishop of Hierapolis,
and Melchior Carneyro bishop of Nice, with several other priests,
as ambassadors from the governor of India to Claudius, with proper
credentials. They arrived safely at Masuah in 1558, five days before
the Turkish basha came with his fleet and army, and took possession of
Masuah and Arkeeko, though these places had been occupied by the Turks
two years before.
When the arrival of these Portuguese was intimated to Claudius, he was
exceedingly glad, as he considered them as an accession of strength.
But when, on opening the letter, he saw they were priests, he was
very much troubled, and said, that he wondered the king of Portugal
should meddle so much with his affairs; that he and his predecessors
knew no obedience due but to the chair of St Mark, or acknowledged
any other patriarch but that of Alexandria; nevertheless, continued
he with his usual goodness and moderation, since they are come so
far out of an honest concern for me, I shall not fail to send proper
persons to receive and conduct them. This he did, and the two bishops
and their companions were immediately brought to court. It was at this
time that the dispute about the two natures began, in which the king
took so considerable a part. He was strenuous, eloquent, and vehement
in the discussion; when that was ended, he still preserved his usual
moderation and kindness for the Portuguese priests.
Nugnez died in India, and Oviedo succeeded him as patriarch to
Abyssinia, it having been so appointed by the pope from the beginning
of their mission.
Claudius had no children; a treaty was therefore set on foot, at the
instance of the empress Sabel Wenghel, for ransoming the prince Menas
who had been taken prisoner in his father David’s time, and ever since
kept in confinement among the Moors, upon a high mountain in Adel.
The same had happened to a son of Gragnè likewise, made prisoner at
the battle of Wainadega, when his father was slain by Claudius. The
Moors settled in Abyssinia, as well as all the Abyssinian rebels who
had forsaken their allegiance or religion during the war, were to a man
violently against setting Menas at liberty, for he was the only brother
Claudius had, and a disputed succession was otherwise probable, which
was what the Moors longed for. Besides this, Menas was exceedingly
brave, of a severe and cruel temper, a mortal enemy to the Mahometans,
and at this time in the flower of his age, and perfectly fit to govern.
It was not, then, by any means, an eligible measure for those who were
naturally the objects of his hatred, to provide such an assistant and
successor to Claudius.
Del Wumbarea thought, that, having lost her husband, to be deprived of
her son likewise, was more than fell to her share in the common cause.
She, too, had therefore applied to the basha of Masuah, who looked no
farther than to a ransom, and cared very little what prince reigned in
Abyssinia. He, therefore, undertook the management of the matter, and
declared that he would send Menas to the Grand Signior, as soon as an
answer should come from Constantinople, while Claudius protested, that
he would give up Gragnè’s son to the Portuguese, if the ransom for his
brother was not immediately agreed on. This resolution, on both sides,
quickly removed all objections. Four thousand ounces of gold were
paid to the Moors and the basha; Menas was released and sent home to
Claudius, who thereupon, in his turn, set Ali Gerad, son of Gragnè by
Del Wumbarea, at liberty, and with him Waraba Guta brother of the king
of Adel, and this finished the transaction.
I must here observe, that what Bermudes[38] says, that Del Wumbarea was
taken prisoner and given in marriage to Arius Dias, was but a fable,
as appears both from the beginning and sequel of the narrative. Del
Wumbarea having thus obtained her son, took a very early opportunity
of shewing she had not yet forgot the father. Nur, governor of Zeyla,
son of Mudgid, who had slain the princes imprisoned upon the mountain
of Geshen, was deeply in love with this lady, and had deserved well
of her, for he had assisted her in making her escape into Atbara that
day her husband was slain. But this heroine had constantly refused
to listen to any proposals; nay, had vowed she never would give her
hand in marriage to any man till he should first bring her the head
of Claudius who had slain her husband. Nur willingly accepted the
condition, which gave him few rivals, but rather seemed to be reserved
for him, and out of the power of every one else.
Claudius, before this, had marched towards Adel, when he received a
message from Nur, that, though Gragnè was dead, there still remained a
governor of Zeyla, whose family was chosen as a particular instrument
for shedding the blood of the Abyssinian princes; and desired him,
therefore, to be prepared, for he was speedily to set out to come to
him. Claudius had been employed in various journies through different
parts of his kingdom, repairing the churches which Gragnè and the other
Moors had burnt; and he was then rebuilding that of Debra Werk[39]
when this message of Nur was brought to him. This prince was of a
temper never to avoid a challenge; and if he did not march against Nur
immediately, he staid no longer than to complete his army as far as
possible. He then began his march for Adel, very much, as it is said,
against the advice of his friends.
That such advice should be given, at this particular time, appears
strange; for till now he had been constantly victorious, and his
kingdom was perfectly obedient, which was not the case when any one of
the former battles had been fought. But many prophecies were current
in the camp, that the king was to be unfortunate this campaign, and
was to lose his life in it. These unfortunate rumours tended much
to discourage the army, at the same time that they seemed to have a
contrary effect on the king, and to confirm him in his resolution to
fight. The truth is, the clergy, who had seen the country delivered
by him from the Mahometans in a manner almost miraculous, and the
constancy with which he withstood the Romish patriarch, and frustrated
the designs of his father against the Alexandrian church, and who had
experienced his extreme liberality in rebuilding the churches, had
wrought his young mind to such a degree of enthusiasm that he was
often heard to say, he preferred a death in the middle of an army of
Infidels to the longest and most prosperous life that ever fell to the
lot of man. It needed not a prophet to have foretold the likely issue
of a battle in these circumstances, where the king, careless of life,
rather sought death than victory; where the number of Portuguese was so
small as to be incapable, of themselves, to effect any thing; where,
even of that number, those that were attached to the king were looked
upon as traitors by those of the party of the patriarch; and where the
Abyssinians, from their repeated quarrels and disputes, heartily hated
them all.
The armies were drawn up and ready to engage, when the chief priest of
Debra Libanos came to the king to tell him a dream, or vision, which
warned him not to fight; but the Moors were then advancing, and the
king on horseback made no reply, but marched briskly forward to the
enemy. The cowardly Abyssinians, upon the first fire, fled, leaving the
king engaged in the middle of the Moorish army with twenty horse and
eighteen Portuguese musqueteers, who were all slain around his person;
and he himself fell, after fighting manfully, and receiving twenty
wounds. His head was cut off, and by Nur delivered to Del Wumbarea,
who directed it to be tied by the hair to the branch of a tree before
her door, that she might keep it constantly in sight. Here it remained
three years, till it was purchased from her by an Armenian merchant,
her first grief, having, it is probable, subsided upon the acquisition
of a new husband. The merchant carried the head to Antioch, and buried
it there in the sepulchre of a saint of the same name.
Thus died king Claudius in the 19th year of his reign, who, by his
virtues and capacity, might hold a first place among any series of
kings we have known, victorious in every action he fought, except
in that one only in which he died. A great slaughter was made after
this among the routed, and many of the first nobility were slain in
endeavouring to escape; among the rest, the dreamer from Debra Libanos,
his vision, by which he knew the king’s death, not having extended so
far as to reveal his own. The Abyssinians immediately transferred the
name of this prince into their catalogue of Saints, and he is called St
Claudius in that country to this day. Though endowed with every other
virtue that entitled him to his place in the kalendar, he seems to have
wanted one--that of dying in charity with his enemies.
This battle was fought on the 22d March 1559; and the victory gained
by Nur was a complete one. The king and most of his principal officers
were slain; great part of the army taken prisoners, the rest dispersed,
and the camp plundered; so that no Moorish general had ever returned
home with the glory that he did. But afterwards, in his behaviour, he
exhibited a spectacle more memorable, and that did him more honour
than the victory itself; for, when he drew near to Adel, he clothed
himself in poor attire like a common soldier, and bare-headed, mounted
on an ordinary mule, with an old saddle and tattered accoutrements, he
forbade the songs and praise with which it is usual to meet conquerors
in that country when returning with victory from the field. He declined
also all share in the success of that day, declaring that the whole of
it was due to God alone, to whose mercy and immediate interposition he
owed the destruction of the Christian army.
The unworthy and unfortunate John Bermudes having arrived in Portugal
from India, continued there till his death; and, in the inscription
over his tomb, is called only _Patriarch of Alexandria_. Yet it is
clear, from the history of these times, that he was first ordained by
the old patriarch Marcus; and that the pope, Paul III. only confirmed
the ordination of this heretical schismatical prelate, though we
have stated that he was ordained by the pope, according to his own
assertion, to be patriarch of Alexandria, Abyssinia, and the Sea.
Bermudes lived many years after this, and never resigned any of his
charges.
However, on his arrival in Europe, several supposed well-meaning
persons at Rome began to discourse among themselves, as if the
conversion of Abyssinia had not had a fair trial when trusted in the
hands of such a man as Bermudes. Scandalous stories as to his moral
character were propagated at Rome to strengthen this. He was said to
have stolen a golden cup in Abyssinia[40]; but this does not appear
to me in any shape probable, or like the manners of the man. He was
a simple, ill-bred zealot, exceedingly vain, but in no-wise coveting
riches or gain of any sort. Sebastian king of Portugal, hearing the
bad posture of the Catholic religion in Abyssinia, and the small hopes
of the conversion of that country, besought the pope to send all the
missionaries that were in that kingdom to preach the gospel in Japan:
but Oviedo stated such strong reasons in his letter to Rome, that he
was confirmed in the mission of Ethiopia.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MENAS, or ADAMAS SEGUED.
From 1559 to 1563.
_Baharnagash rebels, proclaims Tascar King--Defeated by the
King--Cedes Dobarwa to the Turks, and makes a League with the
Basha of Masuah._
MENAS succeeded his brother Claudius, and found his kingdom in almost
as great confusion as it had been left by his father David. His first
campaign was against Radaet the Jew. The king attacked him at his
strongest post in Samen, where he fought him with various success; and
the enterprise did not seem much advanced, when a hermit, residing
in these mountains, probably tired with the neighbourhood of such
troublesome people, came and told the king, it had been revealed to him
that the conquest of the Jews was not allotted to him, nor was their
time yet come.
While the king seemed disposed to avail himself of the hermit’s
warning, as a decent excuse to get rid of an affair that did not
succeed to his mind, an accident happened which determined him to quit
his present undertaking. Two men, shepherds of Ebenaat in Belessen,
from what injury is not known, engaged two of the king’s servants,
who were their relations, to introduce them into Menas’s tent while
sleeping, with a design to murder him in his bed. While they were
preparing to execute their intention, one of them stumbled over the
lamp that was burning, and threw it down. The king awakening, and
challenging him with a loud voice, the assassin struck at him with his
knife, but so feebly, from the fright, that he dropt the weapon upon
the king’s cloak without hurting him. They sled immediately out of
the tent, but were taken at Ebenaat the next day, and brought back to
the king, who gave orders to the judges to try them: they were both
condemned, the one to be thrust through with lances, the other to be
stoned to death; after which, both their bodies were thrown to the dogs
and to the beasts of the field, as is practised constantly in all cases
of high-treason.
The second year of the reign of Menas was ushered in by a conspiracy
among the principal men of his court, at the head of which was Isaac
Baharnagash, an old and tried servant of his brother Claudius. This
officer had been treated ill by Menas in the beginning of his reign;
and, knowing the prince’s violent and cruel disposition, he could not
persuade himself that he was yet in safety.
Menas, to suppress this rebellion in its infancy, sent Zara Johannes,
an old officer, before him, with what forces he could collect in
the instant; but Isaac, informed of the bad state of that army, and
consequently of his own superiority, left him no time to strengthen
himself, but fell furiously upon him, and, with little resistance,
dispersed his army. This loss did not discourage the king; he had
assembled a very considerable force, and, desirous still to encrease
it, he was advancing slowly that he might collect the scattered remains
of the army that had been defeated. The Baharnagash, though victorious,
saw with some concern that he could not avoid the king, whose courage
and capacity, both as a soldier and a general, left him every thing to
fear for his success.
Ever since the massacre of the princes upon mount Geshen by vizir
Mudgid, in the reign of David III. none of the remains of the royal
family had been confined as heretofore. Tascar, Menas’s nephew, was
then at liberty, and, to strengthen his cause, was proclaimed king
by the Baharnagash, soon after the defeat of Menas’s army under Zara
Johannes. He was a prince very mild and affable in his manners, in all
respects very unlike his uncle then reigning.
It was on the 1st of July 1561, that the king attacked the Baharnagash
in the plain of Woggora; and, having entirely routed his army, Tascar
was taken prisoner, and ordered by the king his uncle to be carried
to the brink of the high rock of Lamalmon, and, having been thrown
over the steep precipice, he was dashed to pieces. Isaac himself
escaped very narrowly, flying to the frontier of his government in
the neighbourhood of Masuah. The Baharnagash comprehended distinctly
to what a dangerous situation he was now reduced. No hopes of safety
remained but in a peace with the basha. This at first appeared not
easily obtained; for, while Isaac remained in his duty in the reign of
Claudius, he had fought with the basha, and lost his brother in the
engagement. But present necessity overcame the memory of past injuries.
Samur Basha was a man of capacity and temper; he had been in possession
of Masuah ever since the year 1558. He saw his own evident interest
in the measure, and appeared full as forward as the Baharnagash to
complete it. Isaac ceded Dobarwa to the basha, and put him into
immediate possession of it, and all the low country between that
and Masuah. By this acquisition, the Turks, before masters of
the sea-coast, became possessed of the whole of the flat country
corresponding thereto, as far as the mountains. Dobarwa is a large
trading town, situated in a country abounding with provisions of all
kinds which Masuah wanted, and it was the key of the province of Tigré
and the high land of Abyssinia.
Menas, at his accession, had received kindly the compliments of
congratulation made by the Portuguese patriarch, Oviedo. But hearing
that he still continued to preach, and that the effect of this was
frequent divisions and animosities among the people, he called him into
his presence, and strictly commanded him to desist, which the patriarch
positively refusing, the king lost all patience, and fell violently
upon him, beating him without mercy, tearing his clothes and beard,
and taking his chalice from him, that he might prevent him from saying
mass. He then banished him to a desert mountain, together with Francis
Lopez, where for seven months he endured all manner of hardships.
The king, in the mean time, published many rigorous proclamations
against the Portuguese. He would not permit them to marry with
Abyssinians. Those that were already married he forbade to go to the
Catholic churches with their husbands; and, having again called the
patriarch into his presence, he ordered him forthwith to leave his
kingdom upon pain of death. But Oviedo, who seems to have had an
ambition to be the proto-martyr, refused absolutely to obey these
commands. He declared that the orders of God were those he obeyed, not
the sinful ordinances of man; and, letting slip his cloak from his
shoulders, he offered his bare neck to the king to strike. This answer
and gesture so incensed Menas, that, drawing his sword, he would have
very soon put the patriarch in possession of the martyrdom he coveted,
had it not been for the interposition of the queen and officers that
stood round him.
Oviedo, after having been again soundly beaten, was banished a second
time to the mountain; and in this sentence were included all the rest
of the Portuguese priests, as well as others. But the bishop would not
submit to this punishment, but with the Portuguese, his countrymen,
joined the Baharnagash, who had already completed his treaty with Samur
Basha.
Isaac, before the Portuguese priests, had shewn a desire of becoming
Catholic, and of protecting, or even embracing, their religion; and
they, on their part, had assured him of a powerful and speedy succour
from India, which was just what he wanted; and with this view he had
placed himself to the greatest advantage, avoiding a battle, and
awaiting those auxiliaries, of the arrival of which the king was very
apprehensive. But the season of ships coming from India had passed
without any appearance of Portuguese, and the king was resolved to try
his fortune without expecting what another season might produce. On the
other hand, Isaac, strengthened by his league with the basha, thought
himself in a condition to take the field, rather than to lessen his
reputation by constantly declining battle.
In these dispositions both armies met, and the confederates were again
beaten by the king, with very little loss or resistance. This battle
was fought on the 20th of April 1562. Immediately after this victory
the king marched to Shoa, and sent several detachments of his army
before him to surprise the robbers called Dobas, and drive off their
cattle. What he intended by retiring so far from his enemies, the
Baharnagash and Basha, is what we do not know. Both of them were yet
alive, but probably so weakened by their last defeat as to leave no
apprehensions of being able to molest the country by any incursions.
The king, being advanced into the province of Ogge, was taken ill of
the Kolla, or low-country fever, and, after a few days illness, he died
there on the 13th of January 1563, leaving three sons, Sertza Denghel,
who succeeded him, Tascar, and Lesana Christos.
Some European historians[41] have advanced that Menas was defeated and
slain in this last engagement just now mentioned. This, however, is
expressly contradicted in the annals of these times, which mention the
death of the king in the terms I have here related; nor were either of
the chiefs of the rebels, the Basha or Baharnagash, slain that day. The
rebellion still continued, Isaac having proclaimed a prince of the name
of John to be king in place of Tascar, his deceased brother.
Menas was a prince of a very morose and violent disposition, but very
well adapted to the time in which he lived; brave in his person, active
and attentive to the affairs of government. He was sober, and an enemy
to all sorts of pleasure; frugal, and, in his dress or stile of living,
little different from any soldier in his army.
These qualities made him feared by the great, without being beloved
by the common soldiers accustomed to the liberality and magnificence
of Claudius; and this want of popularity gave the Romish priests
an opportunity to blacken his character beyond what in truth he
deserved. Thus, they say, that he had changed his religion during his
imprisonment, and turned Mahometan, and that it was from the Moors he
learned that ferocity of manners. But to this the answer is easy, That
the manners of his own countrymen, that is of mountaineers without any
profession but war and blood, in which they had been exercised for
centuries, were, probably of themselves, much more fierce and barbarous
than any he could learn among the people of Adel, occupied from time
immemorial in commerce and the pursuit of riches, and necessarily
engaged in an honest intercourse, and practice of hospitality, with
all the various nations that traded with them. Besides, were this
otherwise, he never had any society with these Moors. Banishment to
the top of a mountain[42] would have been his fate in Abyssinia, had
he lived a few years earlier or later than he did. Yet the mountain
upon which the royal family was confined had not yet produced one of
such savage manners; and it is not probable that he was more strictly
guarded in Adel than he would have been in his own country.
As to his religion, we can only say that he abhorred the Romish
faith, from the behaviour of those that professed it; and, that he
had abundant reason so to do, we need only appeal to their conduct in
the preceding reign, according to the accounts given by the Catholics
themselves. Let any man consider a king such as Claudius was; seated
on his throne in the midst of his courtiers and captains; cursed and
excommunicated; called heretic and liar to his face by an ignorant
peasant and stranger, such as John Bermudes; attacked in the night, and
forced to fly for his life by a body of strangers who depended upon him
for their daily bread: Next consider Menas, at his first accession,
desiring their patriarch to desist from preaching a religion that was
fatal to the quiet of his kingdom by sowing dissentions among it as it
had done in the two preceding reigns; and then figure a fanatic priest,
declaring that he would neither depart nor obey these orders; then say
what would have been done to strangers in France, Spain, or Portugal,
that had behaved in this manner to the sovereign or ministers of these
countries. Add to this, that all the Portuguese to a man appeared in
the army of a rebel subject in the last battle, supporting the cause
of a pretender to his crown. If, upon a fair review of all this, it
is any matter of surprise that he should be averse to such people and
behaviour, I am no judge of the fair feelings of man, and the duty a
prince owes to himself or posterity, his country or dignity.
As to his inclination to the Mahometan religion, the fact is, that
he opposed it even with his sword during his whole reign, and never
swerved from his attachment to the church of Alexandria, or his
friendship and respect to the Abuna Yousef, to the end of his life,
as far as we can learn from history. And least, of all people in the
world, does it become the Roman Catholics to accuse him of being
Mahometan, because a letter is still extant to Menas from pope Paul
III[43], wherein the pope stiles him beloved _son in Christ_, and the
_most holy of priests_.
[Illustration]
SERTZA DENGHEL, OR MELEC SEGUED.
From 1563 to 1595.
_King crowned at Axum--Abyssinia invaded by the Galla--Account
of that People--The king defeats the Army of Adel--Beats the
Falasha, and kills their King--Battle of the Mareb--Basha
slain, and Turks expelled from Dobarwa--King is poisoned--Names
Za Denghel his Successor._
MENAS was succeeded by his son, Sertza Denghel, who took the name of
Melec Segued. He was only twelve years old when he came to the throne,
and was crowned at Axum with all the ancient ceremonies. The beginning
of his reign was marked by a mutiny of his soldiers, who, joining
themselves to some Mahometans, plundered the town, and then disbanded.
A misunderstanding also happened with Ayto Hamelmal, son to Romana
Werk, daughter of Hatzé Naod, which threatened many misfortunes in its
consequences.
Tecla Asfadin, governor of Tigré, was ordered by the king to march
against him; and the armies fought with equal advantage. But Hamelmal
dying soon after, his party dispersed without further trouble. Fasil,
too, his cousin, who had been appointed governor of Damot, rebelled
soon after, and was defeated by the king, who this year (the fourth of
his reign) commanded his army for the first time in person, and greatly
contributed to the victory, though he was but then sixteen years of age.
The sixth year of his reign he marched against a clan of Galla, called
Azé, whom he often beat, staying in the country two whole years. Upon
his return, he found the Baharnagash, Isaac and Harla, and other
malcontents, when a sort of a pacification followed; and having
received from the rebels considerable presents, he sat down at Dobit, a
small town in Dembea, where he passed the winter.
All this time Oviedo and the Portuguese did not appear at court.
The king, however, did not molest the priests in their baptisms,
preachings, or any of their functions. He often spake favourably of
their moral characters, their sobriety, patience, and decency of
their lives; but he condemned decisively the whole of their religious
tenets, which he pronounced to be full of danger and contradiction, and
destructive of civil order and monarchical government. At this period
the Galla again made an irruption into Gojam.
It is now time we should speak of this nation, which has contributed
more to weakening and reducing the Abyssinian empire, than all their
civil wars, and all the foreign enemies put together. When I spoke of
the languages of the several nations in Abyssinia, I took occasion
merely to mention the origin of these Galla, and their progress
northward, till their first hostile appearance in Abyssinia. I shall
now proceed to lay before the reader what further I have collected
concerning them. Many of them were in the king’s service while I was in
Abyssinia; and, from a multitude of conversations I had with all kinds
of them, I flatter myself I have gathered the best accounts regarding
these tribes.
The Galla are a very numerous nation of Shepherds, who probably lived
under or beyond the Line. What the cause of their emigration was we
do not pretend to say with certainty, but they have, for many years,
been in an uniform progress northward. They were at first all infantry,
and said the country they came from would not permit horses to breed
in it, as is the case in 13° north of the Line round Sennaar. Upon
coming northward, and conquering the Abyssinian provinces, and the
small Mahometan districts bordering on them, they have acquired a breed
of horses, which they have multiplied so industriously that they are
become a nation of cavalry, and now hold their infantry in very little
esteem.
As under the Line, to the south of Abyssinia, the land is exceedingly
high, and the sun seldom makes its appearance on account of the
continual rains, the Galla are consequently of a brown complexion,
with long black hair. Some, indeed, who live in the valleys of the
low country, are perfectly black. Although the principal food of this
people at first was milk and butter, yet, when they advanced into
drier climates, they learned of the Abyssinians to plow and sow the
fields, and to make bread. They seem to affect the number seven, and
have divided their immense multitude threefold by that number. They
all agree, that, when the nation advanced to the Abyssinian frontiers,
they were then in the centre of the continent. The ground beginning to
rise before them, seven of their tribes or nations filed off to the
east towards the Indian Ocean; and, after making settlements there, and
multiplying exceedingly, they marched forward due south into Bali and
Dawaro, which they first wasted by constant incursions, then conquered
and settled there in the reign of David III. in 1537.
Another division of seven tribes went off to the west about the same
time, and spread themselves in another semicircle round the south side
of the Nile, and all along its banks round Gojam, and to the east
behind the country of the Agows, (which are on the east side of the
Nile) to that of the Gongas and Gafats. The high woody banks of this
river have hitherto been their barrier to the southward; not but that
they have often fought for, and often conquered, and still oftener
plundered, the countries on the Abyssinian side of that river; and,
from this reign downwards, the scene of action with the Abyssinians has
constantly been on the east side of the river. All I mean is, they have
never made a settlement on the Abyssinian side of the Nile, except
such tribes of them as, from wars among themselves, have gone over to
the king of Abyssinia and obtained lands on the banks of that river,
opposite to the nation they have revolted from, against which they have
ever after been the securest bulwark.
A third division of seven tribes remained in the center, due south
of the low country of Shoa; and these are the least known, as having
made, the fewest incursions. They have, indeed, possessed Walaka, a
small province between Amhara and Shoa; but this has been permitted
politically by the governor of Shoa, as a barrier between him and
Abyssinia, on whose sovereign he scarcely acknowledges any dependence
but for form’s sake, his province being at present an hereditary
government descending from father to son.
All these tribes of Galla gird Abyssinia round at all points from east
to west, making inroads, and burning and murdering all that fall into
their hands. The privities of the men they cut off, dry, and hang
them up in their houses. They are so merciless as to spare not even
women with child, whom they rip up in hopes of destroying a male. The
western part of these Galla, which surrounds the peninsula of Gojam and
Damot, are called the Boren Galla; and those that are to the east are
named Bertuma Galla, though this last word is seldom used in history,
where the Galla to the westward are called Boren; and the others Galla
merely, without any other addition. All these tribes, though the most
cruel that ever appeared in any country, are yet governed by the
strictest discipline at home, where the smallest broil or quarrel among
individuals is taken cognizance of, and receives immediate punishment.
Each of the three divisions of Galla elect a king, that is, there is
a king for every seven tribes. There is also a kind of nobility among
them, from whose families alone the sovereign can be chosen. But there
are certain degrees of merit (all warlike) that raise, from time to
time, their plebeian families to nobility, and the right of suffrage.
No one of these nobles can be elected till past forty years of age,
unless he has slain with his own hand a number of men which, added to
his years, makes up forty.
The council of each of the seven tribes first meets separately in its
own district: Here it determines how many are necessary to be left
behind for the governing, guarding, and cultivating the territory,
while those fixed upon by most votes go as delegates to meet the
representatives of the other nations at the domicil, or head-quarters
of the king, among the tribe from which the sovereign of the last
seven years was taken. Here they sit down under a tree which seems to
be sacred, and the god of all the nations. It is called Wanzey[44];
has a white flower, and great quantity of foliage, and is very common
in Abyssinia. After a variety of votes, the number of candidates is
reduced to four, and the suffrage of six of these nations go then no
farther; but the seventh, whose turn it is to have a king out of their
tribe, choose, from among the four, one, whom they crown with a garland
of Wanzey, and put a sceptre, or bludgeon, of that wood in his hands,
which they call Buco.
The king of the western Galla is stiled Lubo, the other Mooty. At this
assembly, the king allots to each their scene of murder and rapine; but
limits them always to speedy returns in case the body of the nation
should have occasion for them. The Galla are reputed very good soldiers
for surprise, and in the first attack, but have not constancy or
perseverance. They accomplish incredible marches; swim rivers holding
by the horses tail, (an exercise to which both they and their horses
are perfectly trained;) do the utmost mischief possible in the shortest
time; and rarely return by the same way they came. They are excellent
light horse for a regular army in an enemy’s country.
Iron is very scarce among them, so that their principal arms are poles
sharpened at the end, and hardened in the fire, which they use like
lances. Their shields are made of bulls hides of a single fold, so
that they are very subject to warp in heat, or become too pliable and
soft in wet weather. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, the report
of their cruelty made such an impression upon the Abyssinians, that,
on their first engagements they rarely stood firmly the Galla’s first
onset. Besides this, the shrill and very barbarous noise they are
always used to make at the moment they charge, used to terrify the
horses and riders, so that a flight generally followed the attack made
by Galla horse.
These melancholy and frantic howls I had occasion to hear often in
those engagements that happened while I was in Abyssinia. The Edjow, a
body of Galla who had been in the late king Joas’s service, and were
relations to him by his mother, who was of that clan of southern Galla,
were constantly in the rebel army, and always in the most disaffected
part, who, with the troops of Begemder and Lasta, attacked the king’s
household, where he was in person; and, though they behaved with a
bravery even to rashness, most of them lost their lives, upon the
long pikes of the king’s black horse, without ever doing any notable
execution, as these horses were too-well trained to be at all moved
with their shrieks, when they charged, though their bravery and
fidelity merited a better fate.
The women are said to be very fruitful. They do not confine themselves
even a day after labour, but wash and return to their work immediately.
They plow, sow, and reap. The cattle tread out the corn, but the men
are the herdsmen, and take charge of the cattle in the fields.
Both sexes are something less than the middle size, exceedingly light
and agile. Both, but especially the men, plait their hair with the
bowels and guts of oxen, which they wear likewise, like belts, twisted
round their middle; and these, as they putrify, occasion a terrible
stench. Both copiously anoint their heads and bodies with butter,
or melted grease, which is continually raining from them, and which
indicates that they came from a country hotter than that which they
now possess. They greatly resemble the Hottentots in this filthy taste
of dress. The rest of their body is naked; a piece of skin only covers
them before; and they wear a goat’s skin on their shoulders, in shape
of a woman’s handkerchief, or tippet.
It has been said[45], that no religion was ever discovered among them.
I imagine that the facts upon which this opinion is founded have never
been sufficiently investigated. The Wanzey-tree, under which their
kings are crowned, is avowedly worshipped for a god in every tribe.
They have certain stones also, for an object of their devotion, which
I never could sufficiently understand to give further description of
them. But they certainly pay adoration to the moon, especially the
new moon, for of this I have frequently been a witness. They likewise
worship certain stars in particular positions, and at different times
of the year, and are, in my opinion, still in the ancient religion of
Sabaism. All of them believe that, after death, they are to live again;
that they are to rise with their body, as they were on earth, to enter
into another life they know not where, but they are to be in a state of
body infinitely more perfect than the present, and are to die no more,
nor suffer grief, sickness, or trouble of any kind. They have very
obscure, or no ideas at all of future punishment; but their reward is
to be a moderate state of enjoyment with the same family and persons
with which they lived on earth. And this is very nearly the same belief
with the other Pagan nations in Africa with which I have conversed
intimately; and this is what writers generally call a belief of the
immortality of the soul. Nor did I ever know one savage that had a more
distinct idea of it, or ever separated it from the immortality of the
body.
The Galla to the south are mostly Mahometans; on the east and west
chiefly Pagans. They intermarry with each other, but suffer no
strangers to live among them. The Moors, however, by courage, patience,
and attention, have found out the means of trading with them in a
tolerable degree of safety. The goods they carry are coarse Surat
blue cloaths, called _marowty_; also myrrh and salt. This last is the
principal and most valuable article.
The Galla sometimes marry the Abyssinian women, but the issue of those
marriages are incapable of all employment. Their form of marriage is
the following: The bridegroom, standing before the parents of the
bride, holds grass in his right hand and the dung of a cow in his left.
He then says, “May this never enter, nor this ever come out, if he does
not do what he promises;” that is, may the grass never enter the cow’s
mouth to feed it, or may she die before it is discharged. Matrimonial
vows, moreover, are very simple; he swears to his bride that he shall
give her meat and drink while living, and bury her when dead.
Polygamy is allowed among them, but the men are commonly content with
one wife. Such, indeed, is their moderation in this respect, that it
is the women that solicit the men to increase the number of their
wives. The love of their children seems to get a speedy ascendency over
passion and pleasure, and is a noble part of the character of these
savages that ought not to be forgot. A young woman, having a child
or two by her husband, intreats and solicits him that he would take
another wife, when she names to him all the beautiful girls of her
acquaintance, especially those that she thinks likeliest to have large
families. After the husband has made his choice, she goes to the tent
of the young woman, and sits behind it in a supplicant posture, till
she has excited the attention of the family within. She then, with an
audible voice, declares who she is; that she is daughter of such a one;
that her husband has all the qualifications for making a woman happy;
that she has only two children by him; and, as her family is so small,
she comes to solicit their daughter for her husband’s wife, that their
families may be joined together, and be strong; and that her children,
from their being few in number, may not fall a prey to their enemies
in the day of battle; for the Galla always fight in families, whether
against one another, or against other enemies.
When she has thus obtained a wife for her husband, she carries her
home, puts her to bed with her husband, where, having left her, she
feasts with the bride’s relations. There the children of the first
marriage are produced, and the men of the bride’s family put each their
hands upon these children’s heads, and afterwards take the oath in the
usual manner, to live and die with them as their own offspring. The
children, then, after this species of adoption, go to their relations,
and visit them for the space of seven days. All that time the husband
remains at home in possession of his new bride; at the end of which
he gives a feast, when the first wife is seated by her husband, and
the young one serves the whole company. The first wife from this day
keeps her precedence; and the second is treated by the first wife like
a grown up-daughter. I believe it would be very long before the love
of their families would introduce this custom among the young women of
Britain.
When a father dies and leaves many children, the eldest succeeds to the
whole inheritance without division; nor is he obliged, at any time, or
by any circumstance, to give his brothers a part afterwards. If the
father is alive when the son first begins to shave his head, which is
a declaration of manhood, he gives two or three milk-cows, or more,
according to his rank and fortune. These, and all their produce, remain
the property of the child to whom they were given by his father; and
these the brother is obliged to pay to him upon his father’s death, in
the same number and kinds. The eldest brother, is moreover, obliged to
give the sister, whenever she is marriageable, whatever other provision
the father may have made in his lifetime for her, with all its increase
from the day of the donation.
When the father becomes old and unfit for war, he is obliged to
surrender his whole effects to his eldest son, who is bound to give him
aliment, and nothing else; and, when the eldest brother dies, leaving
younger brothers behind him, and a widow young enough to bear children,
the youngest brother of all is obliged to marry her; but the children
of the marriage are always accounted as if they were the eldest
brother’s; nor does this marriage of the youngest brother to the widow
entitle him to any part of the deceased’s fortune.
The southern Galla are called Elma Kilelloo, Elma Gooderoo, Elma
Robali, Elma Doolo, Elma Bodena, Elma Horreta, and Elma Michaeli; these
are the seven southern nations which the Mahometan traders pass through
in their way to Narea, the southernmost country the Abyssinians ever
conquered.
The western Galla for their principal clans have the Djawi, Edjow
or Ayzo, and Toluma, and these were the clans we principally fought
with when I was in Abyssinia. They are chiefly Pagans. Some of their
children, who were left young in court, when their fathers fled, after
the murder of the late king their master, were better Christians and
better soldiers than any Abyssinians we had.
It is not a matter of small curiosity to know what is their food, that
is so easy of carriage as to enable them to traverse immense deserts,
that they may, without warning, fall upon the towns and villages in the
cultivated country of Abyssinia. This is nothing but coffee roasted,
till it can be pulverised, and then mixed with butter to a consistency
that will suffer it to be rolled up in balls, and put in a leather bag.
A ball of this composition, between the circumference of a shilling
and half-a-crown, about the size of a billiard-ball, keeps them, they
say, in strength and spirits during a whole day’s fatigue, better than
a loaf of bread, or a meal of meat. Its name in Arabia and Abyssinia
is Bun, but I apprehend its true name is Caffé, from Caffa the south
province of Narea, whence it is first said to have come; it is white
in the bean. The coffee-tree is the wood of the country, produced
spontaneously everywhere in great abundance, from Caffa to the banks of
the Nile.
Thus much for this remarkable nation, whose language is perfectly
different from any in Abyssinia, and is the same throughout all the
tribes, with very little variation of dialect. This is a nation that
has conquered some of the finest provinces of Abyssinia, and of whose
inroads we shall hereafter have occasion to speak continually; and it
is very difficult to say how far they might not have accomplished the
conquest of the whole, had not providence interposed in a manner little
expected, but more efficacious than a thousand armies, and all the
inventions of man.
The Galla, before their inroads into Abyssinia, had never in their own
country seen or heard of the small-pox. This disease met them in the
Abyssinian villages. It raged among them with such violence, that whole
provinces conquered by them became half-desert; and, in many places,
they were forced to become tributary to those whom before they kept in
continual fear. But this did not happen till the reign of Yasous the
Great, at the beginning of the present century, where we shall take
fresh notice of it, and now proceed with what remains of the reign
of Sertza Denghel, whom we left with his army in the 9th year of his
reign, residing at Dobit, a small town in Dembea, watching the motion
of the rebels, Isaac Baharnagash, and others, his confederates.
The tenth year of his reign, as soon as the weather permitted him, the
king went into Gojam to oppose the inroads of the Djawi, a clan of the
western or Boren Galla, who then were in possession of the Buco, or
royal dignity, among the seven nations. But they had repassed the Nile
upon the first news of the king’s march, without having time to waste
the country. The king then went to winter in Bizamo, which is south of
the Nile, the native country of these Galla, the Djawi.
If this nation, the Galla, has deserved ill of the Abyssinians by the
frequent inroads made into their country, they must, however, confess
one obligation, that in the end they entirely ruined their ancient
enemy, the Mahometan king of Adel, and reduced him to a state of
perfect insignificance.
Sertza Denghel then returned with his army into Dembea, where, finding
the militia of that province much disaffected by communication with the
Moorish soldiers settled among them from Gragnè’s time to this day, and
that most of them had in their hearts forsaken the Christian religion,
and were all ready to fail in their allegiance, he assembled the
greatest part of them without their arms, and, surrounding them with
his soldiers, cut them to pieces, to the number of 3000 men.
In the 13th year of his reign, Mahomet king of Adel marched out of his
own country with the view of joining the Basha and Baharnagash. But
the king, ever watchful over the motions of his enemies, surprised
the Baharnagash before his junction either with Mahomet or the basha,
and defeated or dispersed his army, obliging him to fly in disguise,
with the utmost danger of being taken prisoner, to hide himself with
the basha at Dobarwa. He then appointed Darguta, governor of Tigré, an
old and experienced officer, giving him the charge of the province,
and to watch the basha; and, leaving with him his wounded, (and in
their place taking some fresh soldiers from Darguta) he, by forced
marches, endeavoured to meet Mahomet, who had not heard of his victory
over Isaac; and being informed that the king of Adel was encamped on
the hither side of the river Wali, having passed it to join Isaac,
the king, by a sudden movement, crossed the river, and came opposite
to Mahomet’s quarters, who was then striking his tents, having just
heard of the fate of the Baharnagash. Mahomet and his whole army were
struck with a panic at this unexpected appearance of the king on the
opposite side of the river, which had cut off his retreat to Adel.
Fearing, however, there might still be an enemy behind him, and that
he should be hemmed in between both, he resolved to pass, but did it
in so tumultuous a manner that the king’s army had no trouble but to
slaughter those who arrived at the opposite bank. Great part of the
cavalry, seeing the fate of their companions at the ford, attempted to
pass above and below by swimming: but, though the river was deep and
smooth, the banks were high, and many were drowned, not being able to
scramble up on the other side. Many were also destroyed by stones, and
the lances of Sertza Denghel’s men, from the banks above; some passed,
however, joining Mahomet, and leaving the rest of the army to attempt a
passage at the ford, crossed with the utmost speed lower down the river
without being pursued, and carried the news of their own defeat to Adel.
The whole Moorish army perished this day except the horse, either by
the sword or in the river; nor had the Moors received so severe a
blow since the defeat of Gragnè by Claudius. The king then decamped,
and took post at Zarroder, on the frontiers of Adel, with a design to
winter there and lay waste the country, into which he intended to march
as soon as the fair weather returned. But it was the misfortune of this
great prince, that his enemies were situated at the two most distant
extremities of the kingdom. For the Galla attacked Gojam on the west,
at the very time he prepared to enter Adel on the east. Without loss of
time, however, he traversed the whole kingdom of Abyssinia, and came up
with the Boren Galla upon the river Madge, but no action of consequence
followed. The Galla, attempting the king’s camp in the night, and
finding themselves too weak to carry it, retreated immediately into
their own country. While returning to Dembea, he met a party of the
Falasha, called Abati, at Wainadega, and entirely destroyed them, so
that not one escaped.
The king was now so formidable that no army of the enemy dared to face
him, and he obliged the Falasha to give up their king Radaet, whom he
banished to Wadge; and the four following years he spent in ravaging
the country of his enemies the Galla, in Shat and Bed, and that of the
Falasha in Samen and Serkè, where he beat Caliph king of the Falasha,
who had succeeded Radaet.
The Galla, in advancing towards Gojam and Damot, had over-run the
whole low country between the mountains of Narea and the Nile. The
king, desirous to open a communication with a country where there was
a great trade, especially for gold, crossed the Nile in his way to
that province, the Galla flying everywhere before him. He was received
with very great joy by the prince of that country, who looked upon him
as his deliverer from those cruel enemies. Here he received many rich
presents; more particularly a large quantity of gold, and he wintered
at Cutheny in that province, where Abba Hedar his brother died, having
been blown up with gun-powder, with his wife and children. The Nareans
desired, this year, to be admitted to the Christian faith; and they
were converted and baptised by a mission of priests sent by the king
for that purpose.
At the time he was rescuing the kingdom of Narea, Cadward Basha, a
young officer of merit and reputation, lately come from Constantinople
to Dawaro as basha of Masuah, had begun his command with making inroads
into Tigré, and driving off a number of the inhabitants into slavery.
The king, necessarily engaged at a distance, suffered these injuries
with a degree of impatience; and, after having provided for the
security of the several countries immediately near him, he marched with
his army directly for Woggora, committing every degree of excess in his
march, in order to provoke the Falasha to descend from their heights
and offer him battle.
A frugal œconomical people, such as the Jews are, could not bear to
see their cattle and crops destroyed in so wanton a manner before
their very faces. They came, therefore, down in immense numbers to
attack the king, one of the most excellent generals Abyssinia ever
had, at the head of a small, but veteran army. Geshen, brother of the
famous Gideon, was then king of the Jews, and commanded the army of
his countrymen. The battle was fought on the plain of Woggora on the
19th of January 1594, with the success that was to be expected. Four
thousand of the Jewish army were slain upon the spot; and, among them,
Geshen, their unfortunate king and leader.
After this victory, Sertza Denghel marched his army into Kuara,
through the country where the Jews had many strong-holds, and received
everywhere their submission. Then turning to the left, he came through
the country of the Shangalla, called Woombarea, and so to that of the
Agows. There he heard that new troubles were meditating in Damot; but
the inhabitants of that province were not yet ripe enough to break out
into open rebellion.
That he might not, therefore, have two enemies at such a distance from
each other upon his hands at once, this year, as soon as the rains
were over, he determined to march and attack the basha. The basha was
very soon informed of his designs, and as soon prepared to meet them;
so that the king found him already in the field, encamped on his own
side of the Mareb, but without having committed, till then, any act
of hostility. He marched out of his camp, and formed, upon seeing the
royal army approach; leaving a sufficient field for the king to draw up
in, if he should incline to cross the river, and attack him.
This confident, rather than prudent conduct of the basha, did not
intimidate the king, who being used to improve every advantage coolly,
and without bravado, embraced this very opportunity his enemy chose
to give him. He formed, therefore, on his own side of the Mareb, and
passed it in as good order as possible, considering it is a swift
stream, and very deep at that season of the year. He halted several
times while his men were in the water, to put them again in order, as
if he had expected to be attacked the moment he landed on the other
side. The basha, a man of knowledge in his profession, who saw this
cautious conduct of the king, is said to have cried out, “How unlike he
is to what I have heard of his father!” alluding to the general rash
behaviour of the late king Menas whilst at the head of his army.
Sertza Denghel having left all his baggage on the other side, and
passed the river, drew up his army in the same deliberate manner in
which he had crossed the Mareb, and formed opposite to the basha; as if
he had been acting under him, and by his orders, availing himself with
great attention of all the advantages the ground could afford him. The
basha, confident in the superior valour of his troops, thought, now he
had got the king between him and the river, that he would easily that
day finish Sertza Denghel’s life and reign.
The battle began with the most determined resolution and vigour on
both sides. The Abyssinian foot drove back the Turkish infantry; and
the king, dismounting from his horse, with his lance and shield in
his hand, and charging at their head, animated them to preserve that
advantage. On the other hand, the basha, who had soon put to flight
part of the Abyssinian horse with whom he had engaged, fell furiously
upon the foot commanded by the king, the Turks making a great carnage
among them with their sabres, and the affair became but doubtful, when
Robel, gentleman of the bed-chamber to the king, who commanded the
pike-men on horseback, part of the king’s household troops, seeing his
master’s danger, charged the Turkish horse where he saw the basha in
person, and, clearing his way, broke his pike upon an officer of the
basha who carried the standard immediately before him, and threw him
dead at his feet. Being without other arms, he then drew the short
crooked knife which the Abyssinians always carry in their girdle, and,
pushing up his horse close before the basha could recover from his
surprise, he plunged it in his throat, so that he expired instantly. So
unlooked-for a spectacle struck a panic into the troops. The Turkish
horse first turned their backs, and a general rout followed.
The basha’s body was carried upon a mule out of the field, and struck a
terror into all the Mahometans wherever it passed. It no sooner entered
Dobarwa than it was obliged to be carried out at the other end of the
town. Sertza Denghel was not one that slumbered upon a victory. He
entered Dobarwa sword in hand, putting all the Pagans and Mahometans
that fell in his way to death, and, in this manner, pursued them to
the frontiers of Masuah, leaving many to die for want of water in that
desert.
The king, in honour of this brave action performed by Robel, ordered
what follows to be writ in letters of gold, and inserted in the
records of the kingdom: “Robel, servant to Sertza Denghel, and son to
Menetcheli, slew a Turkish basha on horseback with a common knife.”
Sertza Denghel, having thus delivered himself from the most formidable
of his enemies, marched through Gojam again into Narea, extirpating,
all the way he went, the Galla that obstructed his way to that state.
He left an additional number of priests and monks to instruct them in
the Christian religion; though there are some historians of this reign
who pretend that it was not till this second visit that Narea was
converted.
However this may be, victory had everywhere attended his steps, and
he was now preparing to chastise the malcontents at Damot, when he
was accosted by a priest, famous for his holiness and talent for
divination, who warned him not to undertake that war. But the king,
expressing his contempt of both the message and messenger, declared his
fixed resolution to invade Damot without delay. The priest is said
to have limited his advice still further, and to have only begged him
to remember not to eat the fish of a certain river in the territory
of Giba in the province of Shat. The king, however, flushed with his
victory over the Boren Galla, forgot the name of the river and the
injunction; and, having ate fish out of this river, was immediately
after taken dangerously ill, and died on his return.
The writer of his life says, that the fatal effects of this river were
afterwards experienced in the reign of Yasous the Great, at the time
in which he wrote, when the king’s whole army, encamped along the
sides of this river, were taken with violent sickness after eating
the fish caught in it, and that many of the soldiers died. Whether
this be really fact or not, I will not take upon me to decide. Whether
fish, or any other animal, living in water impregnated with poisonous
minerals, can preserve its own life, and yet imbibe a quantity of
poison sufficient to destroy the men that should eat it, seems to me
very doubtful. Something like this is said to happen in oysters, which
are found on copperas beds, or have preparations of copperas thrown
upon them to tinge a part of them with green. I do not, however, think
it likely, that the creature would live after this metallic dose, or
preserve a taste that would make it food for man till he accumulated a
quantity sufficient to destroy him.
Sertza Denghel was of a very humane affable disposition, very different
from his father Menas. He was stedfast in his adherence to the church
of Alexandria, and seemed perfectly indifferent as to the Romish church
and clergy. In conversation, he frequently condemned their tenets, but
always commended the sobriety and sanctity of their lives. He left
no legitimate sons, but many daughters by his wife Mariam Sena; and
two natural sons, Za Mariam and Jacob. He had also a nephew called _Za
Denghel_, son of his brother Lesana Christos.
It is absolutely contrary to truth, what is said by Tellez and others,
that the illegitimate sons have no right to succeed to the crown. There
is, indeed, no sort of difference, as may be seen by many examples in
the course of this history.
Sertza Denghel at first seemed to have intended his nephew, Za Denghel,
to succeed him, a prince who had every good quality; was arrived at an
age fit for governing, and had attended him and distinguished himself
in great part of his wars. But, being upon his death-bed, he changed
his mind, probably at the instigation of the queen and the ambitious
nobles, who desired to have the government in their own hands during a
long minority. His son Jacob, a boy of seven years old, was now brought
into court, and treated as heir-apparent, which everybody thought was
but natural and pardonable from the affection of a father.
At last when he found that he was sick to death, the interest and love
of his country seemed to overcome even the ties of blood; so that,
calling his council together around his bed, he designed his successor
in this last speech: ‘As I am sensible I am at the point of death, next
to the care of my soul, I am anxious for the welfare of my kingdom.
My first idea was to appoint Jacob my son to be successor; and I had
done so unless for his youth, and it is probable neither you nor I
could have cause to repent it. Considering, however, the state of
my kingdom, I prefer its interest to the private affection I bear my
son; and do, therefore, hereby appoint Za Denghel my nephew to succeed
me, and be your king; and recommend him to you as fit for war, ripe
in years, exemplary in the practice of every virtue, and as deserving
of the crown by his good qualities, as he is by his near relation to
the royal family.’ And with these words the king expired in the end of
August 1595, and was buried in the island Roma.
As soon as Sertza Denghel died, the nobility resumed their former
resolutions. The very reasons the dying king had given them, why
Za Denghel was fitted to reign, were those for the which they were
determined to reject him; as they, after so long a reign as the last,
were perfectly weary at being kept in their duty, and desired nothing
more than an infant king and a long minority: this they found in Jacob.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ZA DENGHEL.
From 1595 to 1604.
_Za Denghel dethroned--Jacob a Minor succeeds--Za Denghel is
restored--Banishes Jacob to Narea--Converted to the Romish
Religion--Battle of Bartcho, and Death of the King._
SERTZA DENGHEL had several daughters, one of whom was married to Kefla
Wahad, governor of the province of Tigré, and another to Athanasius,
governor of Amhara. These two were the most powerful men then in
the kingdom. The empress and her two sons-in-law saw plainly, that
the succession of Za Denghel, a man of ripe years, possessed of
every requisite for reigning, was to exclude them from any share in
government but a subaltern one, for which they were to stand candidates
upon their own merits, in common with the rest of the nobility.
Accordingly, no sooner was Sertza Denghel dead, perhaps some time
before, but a conspiracy was formed to change the order of succession,
and this was immediately executed by order of this triumvirate, who
sent a body of soldiers and seized Za Denghel, and carried him close
prisoner to Dek, a large island in the lake Tzana, belonging to the
queen, where he was kept for some time, till he escaped and hid himself
in the wild inaccessible mountains of Gojam, which there form the
banks of the Nile. They carried their precautions still further; and
subsequent events after shewed, that these were well-grounded. They
sent a party of men at the same time to surprise Socinios, but he,
sufficiently upon his guard, no sooner saw the fate of his cousin, Za
Denghel, than he withdrew himself, but in such a manner that shewed
plainly he knew the value of his own pretensions, and was not to be an
unconcerned spectator if a revolution was to happen.
In order to understand perfectly the claims of those princes, who were
by turns placed on the throne in the bloody war that followed, it will
be necessary to know that the emperor David III. had three sons: The
eldest was Claudius, who succeeded him in the empire; the history of
whose reign we have already given: The second was Jacob, who died a
minor before his brother, but left two sons, Tascar and Facilidas: The
third son was Menas, called Adamas Segued, who succeeded Claudius his
brother in the empire; whose reign we have likewise given in its proper
place.
Menas had four sons; Sertza Denghel, called Melec Segued, who succeeded
his father in the empire, and whose history we have just now finished;
the second Aquieter; the third Abatè; and the fourth, Lesana Christos;
whose son was that Za Denghel of whom we were last speaking, appointed
to succeed to the throne by his uncle Sertza Denghel, when on his
death-bed.
Tascar, the son of Jacob, died a minor; he rebelled against his uncle
Menas, in confederacy with the Baharnagash, as we have already seen;
and his army being beat by his uncle and sovereign, he was, by his
order, thrown over the steep precipice of Lamalmon, and dashed to
pieces. Facilidas, the second remaining son of the same minor Jacob,
lived many years, possessed great estates in Gojam, and died afterwards
in battle, fighting against the Galla, in defence of these possessions.
This Facilidas had a natural son named Socinios, who inherited his
father’s possessions; was nephew to Sertza Denghel, and cousin-german
to Za Denghel appointed to succeed to the throne; so that Za Denghel
being once removed, as Jacob had been postponed, there could be no
doubt of Socinios’s claim as the nearest heir-male to David III.
commonly called Wanag Segued.
Socinios, from his infancy, had been trained to arms, and had undergone
a number of hardships in his uncle’s wars. Part of his estate had
been seized, after his father’s death, by men in power, favourites of
Sertza Denghel; and he hoped for a complete restitution of them from Za
Denghel his cousin, when he should succeed, for these two were as much
connected with each other by friendship and affection, as they were by
blood. Nor would any step, says the historian, have ever been taken
by Socinios towards mounting the throne, had Za Denghel his cousin
succeeded, as by right he ought.
In the mean time, he was at the head of a considerable band of
soldiers; had assisted Fasa Christos, governor of Gojam, in defeating
the Galla, who had over-run that province; and, by his courage and
conduct that day, had left a strong impression upon the minds of the
troops that he would soon become the most capable and active soldier of
his time.
The queen and her two sons-in-law being disappointed in their attempt
upon Socinios, were obliged to take the only step that remained in
their choice, which was to appoint the infant Jacob[46] king, a child
of seven years old, and put him under the tutelage of Ras Athanasius.
The empress Mariam Sena, and her two sons-in-law, had gained to their
party Za Selassé, a person of low birth, native of an obscure nation
of Pagans, called Guraguè, a man esteemed for bravery and conduct, and
beloved by the soldiers; but turbulent and seditious, without honour,
gratitude, or regard, either to his word, to his sovereign, or the
interests of his country.
Jacob had suffered patiently the direction of those that governed him,
so long as the excuse of his minority was a good one. But being now
arrived at the age of 17, he began to put in, by degrees, for his share
in the direction of affairs; and observing some steps that tended to
prolong the government of his tutors, by his own power he banished Za
Selassé, the author of them, into the distant kingdom of Narea.
This vigorous proceeding alarmed the empress and her party. They saw
that the measure taken by Jacob would presently lead all good men
and lovers of their country to support him, and to annihilate their
power. They resolved not to wait till this took place, but instantly to
restore Za Denghel, whom, with great difficulty, they found hid in the
mountains between Gojam and Damot. And, to remove every suspicion in Za
Denghel’s breast, Ras Athanasius repaired to the palace, giving Jacob
publicly, even on the throne, the most abusive and scurrilous language,
calling him an obstinate, stubborn, foolish boy; declaring him degraded
from being king, and announcing to his face the coming of Za Denghel to
supplant him. Jacob’s behaviour on so unexpected an occasion was not
such as Athanasius’s rash speech led to expect. He gave a cool and mild
reply to these invectives; but, finding himself entirely in his enemy’s
power, without losing a moment, he left his palace in the night, taking
the road to Samen, not doubting of safety and protection if he could
reach his mother’s relations among those high, rocky mountains.
Fortune at first seemed to favour his endeavours. He arrived at a small
village immediately in the neighbourhood of the country to which he was
going; but there he was discovered and made prisoner; carried back and
delivered to Za Denghel his rival, whom he found placed on his throne.
In all these cases, it is the invariable, though barbarous practice of
Abyssinia, to mutilate any such pretender to the throne, by cutting off
his nose, ear, hand, or foot, as they shall be inclined the patient
should die or live after the operation, it being an established law,
that no person can succeed to the throne, as to the priesthood, without
being perfect in all his limbs. Za Denghel, as he could not adopt so
inhuman a procedure even with a rival, contented himself with only
banishing Jacob to Narea.
Ever since that period of Menas’s reign, when Samur, basha of Masuah,
had been put in possession of Dobarwa in virtue of a treaty with
Isaac Baharnagash, then in rebellion, the Catholic religion was left
destitute of all support, the fathers that had remained in Abyssinia
being dead, and the entry into that kingdom shut up by the violent
animosity of the Turks, and the cruelties they exercised upon all
missionaries that fell into their hands. The few Catholics that
remained were absolutely deprived of all assistance, when Melchior
Sylvanus, an Indian vicar of the church of St Anne at Goa, was pitched
upon as a proper person to be sent to their relief. His language,
colour, eastern air and manners, seemed to promise that he would
succeed, and baffle the vigilance of the Turks.
He arrived at Masuah in 1597, and entered Abyssinia unsuspected; but
the power of the Turk being much lessened by the great defeat given
them by Sertza Denghel, who slew Cadward Basha, and retook Dobarwa
and all its dependencies, as has been already mentioned, a very
considerable part of their former dangers, the missionaries might
now hope to escape. But there still remained others obstructing the
communication with India, which, however, were surmountable, and gave
way, as most of the kind do, to prudence, courage, and perseverance.
Accordingly, in the year 1600, Peter Paez, the most capable, as well
as most successful missionary that ever entered Ethiopia, arrived at
Masuah, after having suffered a long imprisonment, and many other
hardships, on his way to that island; and, taking upon him the charge
of the Portuguese, relieved Melchior Sylvanus, who returned to India.
Paez, however, did not press on to court as his predecessors, and even
his successors constantly did, but, confining himself to the convent of
Fremona in Tigré, he first set himself by an invincible application to
attain the knowledge of the Geez written language, in which he arrived
to a degree of knowledge superior to that of the natives themselves.
He then applied to the instruction of youth, keeping a school, where
he taught equally the children of the Portuguese, and those of the
Abyssinians. The great progress made by the scholars speedily spread
abroad the reputation of the master. First of all, John Gabriel, one of
the most distinguished officers of the Portuguese, spoke of him in the
warmest terms of commendation to Jacob, then upon the throne, who sent
to Paez, and ordered his attendance as soon as the rainy season should
be over.
In the month of April 1604, Peter, attended only by two of his young
disciples, presented himself to the king, who then held his court at
Dancaz, where he was received with the same honours as are bestowed
upon men of the first rank, to the great discontent of the Abyssinian
monks, who easily foresaw that their humiliation would certainly
follow this exaltation of Petros; nor were they mistaken. In a dispute
held before the king next day, Peter produced the two boys, as more
than sufficient to silence all the theologians in Abyssinia. Nor can
it ever be doubted, by any who know the ignorance of these brutish
priests, but that the victory, in these scholastic disputes, would be
fairly, easily, and completely on the side of the children.
Mass was then said according to the usage of the church of Rome, which
was followed by a sermon (among the first ever preached in Abyssinia,)
but so far surpassing, in elegance and purity of diction, any thing yet
extant in the learned language, Geez, that all the hearers began to
look upon this as the first miracle on the part of the preacher.
Za Denghel was so taken with it, that, from that instant, he not only
resolved to embrace the Catholic religion, but declared this his
resolution to several friends, and soon after to Paez himself, under
an oath of secrecy that he should conceal it for a time. This oath,
prudently exacted from Peter, was as imprudently rendered useless by
the zeal of the king himself, who being of too sanguine a disposition
to temporize after he was convinced, published a proclamation,
forbidding the religious observation of Saturday, or the Jewish
sabbath, for ever after. He likewise ordered letters to be wrote to
the pope Clement VIII. and to Philip III. king of Spain and Portugal,
wherein he offered them his friendship, whilst he requested mechanics
to assist, and Jesuits to instruct his people.
These sudden and violent measures were presently known; and every
wretch that had, from other causes, the seeds of rebellion sown in his
heart, began now to pretend they were only nourished there by a love
and attachment to the true religion.
Many of the courtiers followed the king’s example; some as courtiers
for the sake of the king’s favour, and meaning to adhere to the
religion of Rome no longer than it was a fashion at court, promoted
their interest, and exposed them to no danger; others, from their
firm attachment to the king, the resolution to support him as their
rightful sovereign, and a confidence in his superior judgment, and
that he best knew what was most for the kingdom’s advantage in its
present distracted state, and for the confirmation of his own power,
so intimately connected with the welfare of his people. Few, very few
it is believed, adopted the Catholic faith, from that one discourse
only, however pure the language, however eloquent the preacher. A
hundred years and more had passed without convincing the Abyssinians in
general, or without any material proof that they were prepared to be so.
However, the Jesuits have quoted an instance of this instantaneous
conversion by the sermon, which, for their credit, I will not omit,
though no notice is taken of it in the annals of those times, where it
is not indeed to be expected, nor do I mean that it is less credible on
this account.
An Abyssinian monk, of very advanced years, came forward to Peter
Paez, and said in a loud voice before the king, “Although I have lived
to a very great age, without a doubt of the Alexandrian faith, I
bless God that he has spared me to this day, and thereby given me an
opportunity of choosing a better. The things we knew before, you have
so well explained, that they become still more intelligible; and we are
thereby confirmed in our belief. Those things that were difficult, and
which we could hardly understand, you have made so clear, that we now
wonder at our own blindness in not having seen them plainly before.
For these benefits which I now confess to have received, I here make
my declaration, that it is my stedfast purpose, with the assistance of
Almighty God, to live and die in the faith you profess, and have now
preached.”
Among those of the court most attached to the king was Laeca Mariam,
the inseparable companion of his good and bad fortune, who had followed
his master from principles of duty and affection, without designing to
throw away a consideration upon what were likely to be the consequences
to himself. He was reputed, in his character and abilities as a
soldier, to be equal to Za Selassé, but a very different man, compared
to him in his qualities of civil life; for he was sober in his general
behaviour, sparing in discourse, and much more ready to do a good
office than to promise one; very affable and courteous in his manner,
and of so humble and unassuming a deportment, that it was thought
impossible to be real in a man, who had so often proved his superiority
over others upon trial.
This man, a true royalist, was one of those that embraced the Catholic
religion that day, probably following the example of the king; and
this, in the hands of wicked men their enemies, became very soon a
pretence for the murder of both; for Za Selassé, impatient of a rival
in any thing, more especially in military knowledge, began to hold
seditious assemblies, and especially with the monks, whom he taught to
believe what the king’s conduct daily confirmed, that the Alexandrian
faith was totally reprobated, and no religion would be tolerated but
that of the church of Rome.
Gojam, a province always inveterate against any thing that bore the
smallest inclination to the church of Rome, declared against the king;
and, before he went to join his associates, the traitor, Za Selassé, in
a conference he had with the Abuna Petros, proposed to him to absolve
Za Denghel’s subjects and soldiers from their oaths of allegiance to
their sovereign. The Abuna, a man of very corrupt and bad life, very
hearty in the cause, and an enemy to the king, was staggered at this
proposal; not that he was averse to it, because it might do mischief,
but because he doubted whether any such effect would follow it as Za
Selassé expected; and he, therefore, asked what good he expected from
such a novelty? when this traitor assured him, that it would be most
efficacious for that very reason, because it was then first introduced:
the Abuna forthwith absolved the soldiers and subjects of Za Denghel
from their allegiance, declaring the king excommunicated and accursed,
together with all those that should support him, or favour his cause.
I must here observe, that, though we are now writing the history of the
17th century, this was the first example of any priest excommunicating
his sovereign in Abyssinia, except that of Honorius, who excommunicated
Amda Sion for the repeated commission of incest. And the doubt the
zealot Abuna Petros had of its effect as being a novelty, which fact
the Jesuits themselves attest, shews it was a practice that had not its
origin in the church of Alexandria. Neither had these curses of the
Abuna any visible effect, till Za Selassé had put himself at the head
of an army raised in Gojam. The king was prepared to meet him, and
ready to march from Dancaz.
Za Denghel immediately marched out into the plain of Bartcho, and
in the way was deserted, first by Ras Athanasius, then by many of
his troops; and, by this great desertion in his army, found the
first effects of the Abuna’s curses, insomuch, that John Gabriel, a
Portuguese officer of the first distinction, advised the king to retire
in time, and avoid a battle, by flying to strong-holds for a season,
till the present delusion among his subjects should cease. But the
king, thinking himself dishonoured by avoiding the defiance of a rebel,
resolved upon giving Za Selassé battle, who, being an able general,
knew well the danger he would incur by delay.
It was October 13th 1704 that the king, after drawing up his army in
order of battle, placing 200 Portuguese, with a number of Abyssinian
troops, on the right, took to himself the charge of the left, and
called for Peter Paez to give him absolution; but that Jesuit was
occupied at a convenient distance in Tigré, by his exorcisms destroying
ants, butterflies, mice, locusts, and various other enemies, of much
more importance, in his opinion, than the life of a king who had
been blindly, but directly conducted to slaughter by his fanatical
preachings.
The battle began with great appearance of success. On the right, the
Portuguese, led by old and veteran officers, destroyed and overturned
every thing before them with their fire-arms: but on the left, where
the king commanded, things went otherwise, for the whole of this
division fled, excepting a body of nobility, his own officers and
companions, who remained with him, and fought manfully in his defence.
Above all, the king himself, trained to a degree of excellence in the
use of arms, strong and agile in body, in the flower of his age, and
an excellent horseman, performed feats of valour that seemed above the
power of man: but he and his attendants being surrounded by the whole
army of Za Selassé, and decreasing in number, were unable to support
any longer such disadvantage.
Laeca Mariam, solicitous only for the king’s safety, charging furiously
every one that approached, was thrust through with a lance by a common
soldier who had approached him unobserved. The king, desirous only
to avenge his death, threw himself like lightning into the opposite
squadron, and received a stroke with a lance in his breast, which
threw him from his horse on the ground. Grievous as the wound was,
he instantly recovered himself, and, drawing his sword, continued to
fight with as much vigour as ever. He was now hemmed in by a ring of
soldiers, part of whom, afraid of encountering him, remained at a
distance, throwing missile weapons without good direction or strength,
as if they had been hunting some fierce wild beast. Others, wishing to
take him prisoner, abstained from striking him, out of regard to his
character and dignity; but the traitor, Za Selassé, coming up at that
instant, and seeing the king almost fainting with fatigue, and covered
with wounds, pointed his lance, and, spurring his horse, furiously
struck him in the middle of the forehead, which blow threw the king
senseless to the ground, where he was afterwards slain with many
wounds.
The battle ended with the death of Za Denghel; many saw him fall, and
more his body after the defeat; but no one chose to be the first that
should in any way dispose of it, or care to own that they knew it. It
lay in this abject state for three days, till it was buried by three
peasants in a corner of the plain, in a little building like a chapel
(which I have seen) not above six feet high, under the shade of a very
fine tree, in Abyssinia called _sassa_: there it lay till ten years
after, when Socinios removed it from that humble mausoleum, and buried
it in a monastery called Daga, in the lake Dembea, with great pomp and
magnificence.
The grief which the death of Za Denghel occasioned was so universal,
and the odium it brought upon the authors of it so great, that neither
Za Selassé nor Ras Athanasius dared for a time take one step towards
naming a successor, which the fear of Za Denghel, and the uncertainty
of victory, had prevented them from doing by common consent before the
battle. There was no doubt but that the election would fall upon Jacob,
but he was far off, confined in the mountainous country of Caffa in
Narea. The distance was great; the particular place uncertain; the way
to it lay through deserts, always dangerous on account of the Galla,
and often impassable.
[Illustration]
JACOB.
From 1604 to 1605.
_Makes Proposals to Socinios, which are rejected--Takes the
Field--Bad Conduct and Defeat of Za Selassé--Battle of Debra
Zeit--Jacob defeated and slain._
During the interim, Socinios appeared in Amhara, not as one
offering himself as a candidate to be supported by the strength and
interest of others, but like a conqueror at the head of a small but
well-disciplined army of veteran troops, ready to compel by force those
who should refuse to swear allegiance to him from conviction of his
right.
The first step he took was to send Bela Christos, a nobleman of known
worth, to Ras Athanasius then in Gojam, stating to him his pretensions
to succeed Za Denghel in the kingdom, desiring his assistance with his
army, and declaring that he would acknowledge the service done him as
soon as it was in his power. Without waiting for an answer, at the head
of his little army he passed the Nile, and entered Gojam. He then sent
a second message to Ras Athanasius, acquainting him that he was at
hand, and ordering him to prepare to receive him as his sovereign.
This abrupt and confident conduct of Socinios very much disconcerted
Ras Athanasius. He had as yet concerted nothing with his friend Za
Selassé, and it was now late to do it. There was no person then within
the bounds of the empire that solicited the crown but Socinios, and
he was now at hand, and very much favoured by the soldiers. For these
reasons, he thought it best to put a good face upon the matter in his
present situation. He, therefore, met Socinios as required, and joined
his army, as if it had been his free choice, and saluted him king in
the midst of repeated chearful congratulations of both armies now
united.
Having succeeded in this to his wish, Socinios lost no time to try the
same experiment with Za Selassé, who was then in Dembea, the province
of which he was governor. To him he sent this message, “That God by
his grace having called him to the throne of his ancestors, he was now
on his march to Dembea, where he requested him to prepare his troops
to receive him, and dispose them to deserve the favours that he was
ready to confer upon all of them.” Za Selassé remained for a while as
if thunder-struck by so peremptory an intimation. Of all masters he
most wished for Jacob, because, from experience, he thought he could
govern him. Of all masters he most feared Socinios, because he knew he
possessed capacity and qualities that would naturally determine him to
govern alone. After having concerted with his friends, he sent Socinios
answer, “That not having till now known any thing of his claims or
intentions, he had sent an invitation to Jacob into Narea, whose answer
he expected; but that, in case Jacob did not appear, he then would
receive Socinios with every mark of duty and affection, and hoped he
would grant him the short delay to which he had inadvertently, though
innocently, engaged himself.”
This answer did in no shape please Socinios, who dispatched the
messenger immediately with this declaration, “That he was already king,
and would never cede his right to Jacob, who was deposed and judged
unworthy to reign; no nor even to his father Melec Segued, though he
should rise again from the grave, and claim the throne he had so long
sat upon.”
Za Selasse, easily penetrating that there was no peace in Socinios’s
intentions, first imprisoned the messenger, and, instead of another
answer, marched instantly with his whole army to surprise him before he
had time to take his measures. And in this he succeeded. For Socinios
being at that instant overtaken by sickness, and not knowing what trust
to put in Athanasius’s army, retired in haste to the mountains of
Amhara; while Athanasius also withdrew his troops till he should know
upon what terms he stood both with Za Selassé and the king.
Still no return came from Jacob. The winter was nearly past, and not
only the soldiers, but people of all ranks began to be weary of this
interregnum, and heartily wished for their ancient form of government.
They said, That since Jacob did not appear, there could be no reason
for excluding Socinios, whose title was undoubted, and who had all the
qualities necessary to make a good king.
Za Selasse, seeing this opinion gained ground among his troops, and
fearing they might mutiny and leave him alone, made a virtue of
necessity: he dispatched an ambassador to acknowledge Socinios as his
sovereign, and declare that he was ready to swear allegiance to him.
Socinios received this embassy with great apparent complacency. He
sent in return a monk, in whom he confided, a person of great worth
and dignity, to be his representative, and receive the homage of Za
Selassé and his army. On the news of this monk’s approach, Za Selassé
sent on his part ten men, the most respectable in his camp, to meet
this representative of the king, and conduct him into the camp, where
Za Selassé, and all his troops, did homage, and swore allegiance
to Socinios. Feasts and presents were now given in the camp, as is
usual at the accession of a new king to the throne, and all the army
abandoned themselves to joy.
These good tidings were immediately communicated both to Socinios and
Ras Athanasius. But, in the midst of this rejoicing, a messenger came
from Jacob, informing Za Selassé that he was then in Dembea; that he
had conferred upon him the title of Ras and Betwudet, that is, had
made him the king’s lieutenant-general throughout the whole empire. Za
Selassé, in possession of the height of his wishes, and making an ample
distribution among his troops, determined immediately to march and join
Jacob in Dembea; but first he wrote privately to the ten men that had
accompanied the monk to Socinios, that they should withdraw themselves
as suddenly and privately as possible before the coming of Jacob was
known. Eight of these were lucky enough to do so; two of them were
overtaken in the flight and brought back to Socinios, who ordered them
to immediate execution.
Ras Athanasius, seeing the prosperous turn that Jacob’s affairs had
taken, renounced his oath to Socinios, and repaired to Jacob at Coga,
while Socinios retired into Amhara at the head of a very respectable
army, waiting an opportunity to repay Jacob for his ambition, and
Athanasius and Za Selassé for their treason and perjury towards him.
Although Jacob was now again seated on the throne, surrounded by the
army and great officers of the empire, his mind was always disturbed
with the apprehension of Socinios. In order to free himself from this
anxiety, he employed Socinios’s mother in an application to her son,
with an offer of peace and friendship; promising, besides, that he
would give him in property the kingdoms of Amhara, Walaka, and Shoa,
and all the lands which his father had ever possessed in any other part
of Abyssinia. Socinios shortly answered, “That what God had given him,
no man could take from him; that the whole kingdom belonged to him, nor
would he ever relinquish any part of it but with his life. He advised
Jacob to consider this, and peaceably resign a crown which did not
belong to him; and the attempting to keep which, would involve him and
his country in a speedy destruction.”
Upon this defiance, seeing Socinios implacable, Jacob took the field,
and was followed by Za Selassé. But this proud and insolent traitor,
who never could confine himself within the line of his duty, even under
a king of his own choosing, would not join his forces with Jacob, but
vain-gloriously led a separate army, subject to his orders alone. In
this manner, having separate camps, choosing different ground, and
sometimes at a considerable distance from each other, they came up
with Socinios in Begemder. Jacob advanced so near him that his tent
could be distinctly seen from that of Socinios, and, on the morrow,
Jacob and Za Selassé, drawing up their armies, offered Socinios battle.
That wise prince saw too well that he was overmatched; and, though
he desired a battle as much as Jacob, it was not upon such terms as
the present. He declined it, and kept hovering about them as near as
possible on the heights and uneven ground, where he could not be forced
to fight till it perfectly suited his own interest.
This refusal on the part of Socinios did but increase Za Selassé’s
pride. He despised Jacob as a general, and thought that Socinios
declining battle was owing only to the apprehension he had of his
presence, courage, and abilities. He continued parading with the
separate army, perfectly intoxicated with confidence and an imaginary
superiority, neglecting all the wholesome rules of war rigidly adhered
to by great generals for the sake of discipline, however distant they
may be from their enemy.
It was not long before this was told Socinios, who soon saw his
advantage in it, and thereupon resolved to fight Za Selassé singly,
and watch attentively till he should find him as far as possible
from Jacob. Nor did he long wait for the occasion; for Za Selassé,
attempting to lead his army through very uneven and stony ground,
called _the Pass of Mount Defer_, and at a considerable distance from
Jacob, Socinios attacked him while in the pass so rudely, that his
army, entangled in broken and unknown ground, was surrounded and almost
cut to pieces. Za Selassé, with a few followers, saved themselves by
the goodness of their horses, and joined the king, being the first
messengers of their own defeat.
Jacob received the news of this misfortune without any apparent
concern. On the contrary, he took Za Selassé roundly to task for
having lost such an army by his misconduct; and from that time put on
a coolness of carriage towards him that could not be bruiked by such
a character. He made direct proposals to Socinios to join him, if he
could be assured that his services would be well received. Socinios,
though he reposed no confidence in one that had changed sides so often,
was yet, for his own sake, desirous to deprive his rival of an officer
of such credit and reputation with the soldiers. He therefore promised
him a favourable reception; and, a treaty being concluded, Socinios
marched into Gojam, followed by Jacob, and there was joined by Za
Selassé whom Jacob had made governor of that province.
Jacob, not knowing how far this desertion might extend, and to shew
Socinios the little value he set upon his new acquisition, immediately
advanced towards him, and offered him battle. This was what Socinios
very earnestly wished for; but, as his army was much inferior to
Jacob’s, he seemed to decline it from motives of fear, till he had
found ground proper for his army to engage in with advantage.
Jacob, sensible of the great superiority he had, (historians say it
was nearly thirty to one) grew every day more impatient to bring
Socinios to an engagement, fearing he might retreat, and thereby
prolong the war, which he had no doubt would be finished by the first
action. Therefore he was anxious to keep him always in sight, without
regarding the ground through which his eagerness led him. Several days
the two armies marched side by side in sight of each other, till they
came to Debra Tzait, or the Mountain of Olives. There Jacob halted; he
then advanced a little further, and seeing Socinios encamped, he did
the same in a low and very disadvantageous post on the banks of the
river Lebart.
Socinios having now obtained his desire, early in the morning of the
10th of March 1607 fell suddenly upon Jacob cooped up in a low and
narrow place, which gave him no opportunity of availing himself of his
numbers. Jacob soon found that he was over-reached by the superior
generalship of his enemy. Socinios’s troops were so strongly posted,
that Jacob’s soldiers found themselves in a number of ambushes they
had not foreseen, so that, fighting or flying being equally dangerous
to them, his whole army was nearly destroyed in the field, or in the
flight, which was most ardently and vigorously followed till night,
with little loss on the part of Socinios.
This battle, decisive enough by the route and dispersion of the enemy,
became still more so from two circumstances attending it: The first was
the death of his competitor, who fell unknown among a herd of common
soldiers in the beginning of the action, without having performed, in
his own person, any thing worthy of the character he had to sustain,
or that could enable any spectator to give an account in what place
he fell; the consequence of which was, that he was thought to be
alive many years afterwards. The second was the death of the Abuna
Petros. This priest had distinguished himself in Za Denghel’s reign,
by absolving the king’s subjects and soldiers from their oaths of
allegiance, which was followed by the unfortunate death of Za Denghel
in the plain of Bartcho. Vain of the importance he had acquired by the
success of his treason, he had pursued the same conduct with regard
to Socinios, and followed Jacob to battle, where, trusting to his
character and habit for the safety of his person, he neglected the
danger that he ran amidst a flying army. While occupied in uttering
vain curses and excommunications against the conquerors, he was known,
by the crucifix he held in his hand, by a Moorish soldier of Socinios,
who thrust him through with a lance, then cut his head off, and carried
it to the king.
The Abyssinian annals state, that, immediately after seeing the head
of Abuna Peter, Socinios ordered a retreat to be sounded, and that no
more of his enemies should be slain. On the contrary, the Jesuits have
said, that the pursuit was continued even after night; for that a body
of horse, among whom were many Portuguese belonging to the army of
Jacob, flying from Socinios’s troops, fell over a very high precipice,
it being so dark that they did not discover it; and that one soldier,
called Manuel Gonsalez, finding his horse leave him, as it were flying,
lighted luckily on a tree, where, in the utmost trepidation, he sat
all night, not knowing where he was. This fear was greatly encreased
in the morning, when he beheld the horses, and the men who were his
companions, lying dead and dashed to pieces in the plain below.
Ras Athanasius, who had followed the party of Jacob, narrowly escaped
by the swiftness of his horse, and hid himself in the monastery of
Dima, at no great distance from the field of battle; and Peter Paez,
from remembrance of his former good offices, having recommended him
to Sela Christos, Socinios’s brother-in-law, he was pardoned; but
losing favour every day, his effects and lands having been taken
from him on different occasions, he is said at last to have died for
want, justly despised by all men for unsteadiness in allegiance to
his sovereigns, by which he had been the occasion of the death of two
excellent princes, had frequently endangered the life and state of
the third, and had been the means of the slaughter of many thousands
of their subjects, worthier men than himself, as they fell in the
discharge of their duty. But before his death he had still this further
mortification, that his wife, daughter of Sertza Denghel, called Melec
Segued, voluntarily forsook his bed and retired to a single life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SOCINIOS, OR MELEC SEGUED.
From 1605 to 1632.
_Socinios embraces the Romish Religion--War with Sennaar--With
the Shepherds--Violent Conduct of the Romish Patriarch--Lasta
rebels--Defeated at Wainadega--Socinios restores the
Alexandrian Religion--Resigns his Crown to his eldest Son._
Socinios, now universally acknowledged as king, began his reign with a
degree of moderation which there was no reason to expect of him. Often
as he had been betrayed, many and inveterate as his enemies were, now
he had them in his power, he sought no vengeance for injuries which
he had suffered, but freely pardoned every one, receiving all men
graciously without reproach or reflections, or even depriving them of
their employments.
Being informed, however, that one Mahardin, a Moor, had been the first
to break through that respect due to a king, by wounding Za Denghel at
the battle of Bartcho, he ordered him to be brought at noon-day before
the gate of his palace, and his head to be there struck off with an
ax, as a just atonement for violated majesty.
The king, now retired to Coga, gave his whole attention to regulate
those abuses, and repair those losses, which this long and bloody
war had occasioned. He had two brothers by the mother’s side, men of
great merit, Sela Christos, and Emana Christos, destined to share the
principal part in the king’s confidence and councils.
Bela Christos, a man of great family, who had been attached to him
since he formed his first pretensions to the crown, was called to
court to take his share in the glory and dangers of this reign, which
it was easy to see would be a very active one; for every province
around was full of rebels and independents, who had shaken off the
yoke of government, paid no taxes, nor shewed other respect to the
king than just what at the moment consisted with their own interest or
inclination.
The Portuguese soldiers, remnants of the army which came into Abyssinia
under Christopher de Gama, had multiplied exceedingly, and their
children had been trained by their parents in the use of fire-arms.
They were at this time incorporated in one body under John Gabriel a
veteran officer, who seems to have constantly remained with the king,
while his soldiers (at least great part of them) had followed the
fortune they thought most likely to prevail ever since the time of
Claudius.
Menas did not esteem them enough to keep them in his army at the
expence of enduring the seditious conversations of their priests
reviling and undervaluing his religion and government. He therefore
banished them the kingdom; but, instead of obeying, they joined the
Baharnagash, then confederated with the Turks and in rebellion against
his sovereign, as we have already mentioned. Sertza Denghel seems to
have scarcely set any value upon them after this, and made very little
use of them during his long reign. Upon the infant Jacob’s being put
upon the throne they all adhered to him; and, after Jacob’s banishment,
part of them had attached themselves to Za Denghel, and behaved with
great spirit in the battle of Bartcho.
Upon Jacob’s restoration they had joined him, and with him were
defeated at the decisive battle of Lebart, being all united against
Socinios; so that, on whatever side they declared themselves, they
were constantly beaten by the cowardice of the Abyssinians with whom
they were joined. Yet, tho’ they had been so often on the side that
was unfortunate, their particular loss had been always inconsiderable;
because, whatever was the fate of the rest of the army, none of the
country troops would ever stand before them, and they made their
retreat from amidst a routed army in nearly the same safety as if they
had been conquerors; because it was not, for several reasons, the
interest of the conquerors to attack them, nor was the experiment ever
likely to be an eligible one to the assailants.
Socinios followed a conduct opposite to that of Menas. He determined to
attach the Portuguese wholly to himself, and to make them depend upon
him entirely. For this reason he made great advances to their priests,
and sent for Peter Paez to court, where, after the usual disputes upon
the pope’s supremacy, and the two natures in Christ, mass was said,
and a sermon preached, much with the same success as it had been in the
time of Za Denghel, and with full as great offence to the Abyssinian
clergy.
The province of Dembea, lying round the lake Tzana, is the most fertile
and the most cultivated country in Abyssinia. It is entirely flat,
and seems to have been produced by the decrease of water in the lake,
which, from very visible marks, appears to have formerly been of four
times the extent of what it is at present. Dembea, however fruitful,
has one inconvenience to which all level countries in this climate are
subject: A mortal fever rages in the whole extent of it, from March to
Heder Michael, the eighth day of November, when there are always gentle
showers. This dangerous fever stops immediately upon the falling of
these rains, as suddenly as the plague does upon the first falling of
the nucta, or dew, in Egypt.
On the south side of this lake the country rises into a rocky
promontory, which forms a peninsula and runs far into the lake. Nothing
can be more beautiful than this small territory, elevated, but not
to an inconvenient height, above the water which surrounds it on all
sides, except the south. The climate is delightful, and no fevers
or other diseases rage here. The prospect of the lake and distant
mountains is magnificent beyond European conception, and Nature seems
to have pointed this place out for pleasure, health, and retirement.
Paez had asked and obtained this territory from the king, who, he says,
gave him a grant of it in perpetuity. The manner of this he describes:
“A civil officer is sent on the part of the king, who calls together
all the proprietors of the neighbouring lands, and visits the bounds
with them; they kill a goat at particular distances, and bury the heads
under ground upon the boundary line of this regality; which heads, Paez
says, it is felony to dig up or remove; and this is a mark or gift of
land in perpetuity.”
Without contradicting the form of burying the goats heads, I shall only
say, I never saw or heard of it, nor is there such a thing as a gift
of land in _perpetuum_ known in Abyssinia. All the land is the king’s;
he gives it to whom he pleases during pleasure, and resumes it when it
is his will. As soon as he dies the whole land in the kingdom (that of
the Abuna excepted) is in the disposal of the crown; and not only so,
but, by the death of every present owner, his possessions, however long
enjoyed, revert to the king, and do not fall to the eldest son. It is
by proclamation the possession and property is reconveyed to the heir,
who thereby becomes absolute master of the land for his own life or
pleasure of the king, under obligation of military and other services;
and that exception, on the part of the Abuna, is not in respect to
the sanctity of his person, or charge, but because it is founded upon
treaty[47], and is become part of the constitution.
The Abyssinians saw, with the utmost astonishment, the erection of a
convent strongly built with stone and lime, of which before they had no
knowledge, and their wonder was still increased, when, at desire of the
king, Paez undertook, of the same materials, to build a palace for him
at the southmost end of this peninsula, which is called Gorgora. It was
with amazement mixed with terror that they saw a house rise upon house,
for so they call the different storeys.
Paez here displayed his whole ingenuity, and the extent of his
abilities. He alone was architect, mason, smith, and carpenter,
and with equal dexterity managed all the instruments used by each
profession in the several stages of the work. The palace was what
we shall call wainscoted with cedar, divided into state-rooms, and
private apartments likewise for the queen and nobility of both sexes
that formed the court, with accommodations and lodgings for guards and
servants.
As the king had at that time a view to attack the rebels, the Agows
and Damots, and to check the inroads of the Galla into Gojam, he
saw with pleasure a work going on that provided the most commodious
residence where his occupation in all probability was chiefly to lie.
His principal aim was to bring into his kingdom a number of Portuguese
troops, which, joined to those already there, and the converts he
proposed to make after embracing the Catholic religion, might enable
him to extirpate that rebellious spirit which seemed now universally
to have taken possession of the hearts of his subjects, and especially
of the clergy, of late taught, he did not seem to know how, that most
dangerous privilege of cursing and excommunicating kings. He had not
seen in Peter Paez and his fellow-priests any thing but submission, and
a love of monarchy; their lives and manners were truly apostolical; and
he never thought, till he came afterwards to be convinced upon proof,
that the patriarch from Rome, and the Abuna from Cairo, tho’ they
differed in their opinion as to the two natures in Christ, did both
heartily agree in the desire of erecting ecclesiastical dominion and
tyranny upon the ruins of monarchy and civil power, and of effecting a
total subordination of the civil government, either to the chairs of St
Mark or St Peter.
In the winter, during the cessation from work, Socinios called Paez
from Gorgora to Coga, where he enlarged the territory the Jesuits
then had at Fremona. After which he declared to him his resolution
to embrace the Catholic religion; and, as Paez says, presented him
with two letters, one to the king of Portugal, the other to the pope:
the first dated the 10th of December 1607, the latter the 14th of
October of the same year. These letters say not a word of his intended
conversion, nor of submission to the see of Rome; but complain only of
the disorderly state of his kingdom, and the constant inroads of the
Galla, earnestly requesting a number of Portuguese soldiers to free
them from their yoke, as formerly, under the conduct of Christopher de
Gama, they had delivered Abyssinia from that of the Moors.
While these things passed at Coga, two pieces of intelligence were
brought to the king, both very material in themselves, but which
affected him very differently. The first was, that the traitor Za
Selassé, while making one of his incursions into Gojam, had fallen into
an ambush laid for him by the Toluma Galla, guardians of that province
on the banks of the Nile, and that these Pagans had slain him and cut
off his head, which they then presented to the king, who ordered it to
be exposed on the lance whereon it was fixed, in the most conspicuous
place in the front of his palace.
This was the end of Ras Za Selassé, a name held in detestation to
this day throughout all Abyssinia. Though his death was just such as
it ought to have been, yet, as it was in an advanced time of life, he
still became a hurtful example, by shewing that it was possible for a
man to live to old age in the continual practice of murder and treason.
He was of low birth, as I have already observed, of a Pagan nation
of Troglodytes, of the lowest esteem in Abyssinia, employed always
in the meanest and most servile occupations, in which capacity he
served first in a private family. Being observed to have an active,
quick turn of mind, he was preferred to the service of Melec Segued,
upon whose death he was so much esteemed by his son Jacob, for the
expertness and capacity he shewed in business, that he gave him large
possessions, and appointed him afterwards to several ranks in the army;
having regularly advanced through the subordinate degrees of military
command, always with great success, he was made at last general; and
being now of importance sufficient to be able to ruin his benefactor,
he joined Ras Athanasius, who had rebelled against Jacob, by whom he
was taken prisoner, and, being mercifully dealt with, only banished
to Narea. From this disgraceful situation he was freed by Za Denghel,
who conferred upon him the most lucrative important employment in
the state. In return, he rebelled against Za Denghel; and at Bartcho
deprived him of his kingdom and life. Upon Jacob’s accession he was
appointed Betwudet, the first place in Ethiopia, after the king,
and governor of Gojam, one of the largest and richest provinces in
Abyssinia. But he soon after again forsook Jacob, swore allegiance to
Socinios, and joined him.
Not content with all this, he began to form some new designs while
with the court at Coga; and, having said to some of the king’s
servants, over wine, that it was prophesied to him he should kill
three kings, which he had verified in two, and was waiting for the
third, this speech was repeated to Socinios, who ordered Za Selassé to
be apprehended; and, though he most justly deserved death, the king
mercifully commuted his punishment to banishment to the top of Oureé
Amba, which signifies the Great Mountain upon the high ridge, called
_Gusman_, near the banks of the Nile; and, though close confined in
the caves on the top of that mountain, after a year’s imprisonment he
escaped to Walaka, and there declared himself captain of a band of
robbers, with which he infested the province of Gojam, when he was
slain by a peasant, and his head cut off and sent to Socinios, who very
much rejoiced in the present, and disposed of it as we have mentioned.
The second piece of intelligence the emperor received was that in the
mountains of Habab, contiguous to Masuah, where is the famous monastery
of the monks of St Eustathius, called _Bisan_; a person appeared
calling himself Jacob, son of Sertza Denghel, and pretending to have
escaped from the battle of Lebart; thus, taking advantage of the
circumstance of Jacob’s body not having been found in the field among
the dead after that engagement, he pretended he had been so grievously
wounded in the teeth and face that it was not possible to suffer the
deformity to appear; for which reason, as he said, but, as it appeared
afterwards, to conceal the little resemblance he bore to Jacob, he
wrapped about his head the corner of his upper cloth, and so concealed
one side of his face entirely.
All Tigré hastened to join this impostor as their true sovereign;
who, finding himself now at the head of an army, came down from the
mountains of Bisan, and encamped in the neighbourhood of Dobarwa upon
the Mareb, where he had a new accession of strength.
The shape of the crown in Abyssinia is that of the hood, or capa, which
the priests wear when saying mass. It is composed of silver, sometimes
of gold, sometimes of both metals, mixed and lined with blue silk. It
is made to cover part of the forehead, both cheeks, and the hind-part
of the neck likewise to the joining of the shoulders. A crown of this
shape could not but be of great service in hiding the terrible scars
with which the impostor’s face was supposed to be deformed. He had
accordingly got one made at Masuah, beat very thin out of a few ounces
of gold which he had taken from a caravan that he had robbed. He wore
it constantly upon his head as a token that he was not a candidate for
the crown, but real sovereign, who had worn that mark of power from his
infancy.
The news of this impostor, with the usual exaggeration of followers,
soon came to Sela Christos, governor of Tigré, who, seeing that the
affair became more serious every day, resolved to attempt to check it.
He conceived, however, he had little trust to put in the troops of
his province, who all of them were wavering whether they should not
join the rebel. His sole dependence, then, was upon the troops of his
own household, veteran soldiers, well paid and cloathed, and firmly
attached to his person, and likewise upon the Portuguese. Above all,
being himself a man of consummate courage and prudence, he was far from
judging of the power of his enemy by the multitude of rabble which
composed it.
As soon as the armies came in presence of each other, Jacob offered
the governor battle. But no sooner did the impostor’s troops see the
eagerness with which the small but chosen band rushed upon them, than
they fled and dispersed; and though Sela Christos had taken every
precaution to cut off the pretended Jacob from his usual sculking
places, it was not possible to overtake or apprehend him; for he
arrived in safety in one of the highest and most inaccessible mountains
of the district, whence he looked down on Sela Christos and his army
without apprehension, having behind him a retreat to the more distant
and less known mountains of Hamazen, should his enemies press him
further.
As long as Sela Christos remained with his little army in that country,
the impostor Jacob continued on the highest part of the mountains,
accompanied only by two or three of his most intimate friends, who
being people whose families dwelt in the plain below, brought him
constant intelligence of what passed there.
Sela Christos, wishing by all means to engage the enemy, marched into
a considerable plain called _Mai-aquel_; but, seeing on every side the
top of each mountain guarded by troops of soldiers, he was afraid he
had advanced too far; and, apprehensive lest he should be inclosed in
the midst of a multitude so posted, he began to think how he could best
make his retreat before he was surrounded by so numerous enemies. But
they no sooner saw his intention by the movement of his army, than,
leaving their leader as a spectator above, they fell on all sides upon
Sela Christos’s troops, who, having no longer any safety but in their
arms, began to attack the hill that was next them, which they stormed
as they would do a castle. Finding the small resistance that each of
these posts made, the governor divided his small army into so many
separate bodies, leaving his cavalry in the plain below, who, without
fighting, were only employed in slaughtering those his troops had
dislodged from their separate posts.
The day after, the impostor assembling his scattered troops, retreated
towards the sea into the territory of Hamazen, between the country of
the Baharnagash and the mountains of the Habab.
Sela Christos, finding that, while he pursued his victory in these
distant parts, the spirit of rebellion increased nearer home, resolved
to inform the king his brother of the unpromising state of his affairs
in Tigré, and the great necessity there was of his presence there.
Nor did Socinios lose a moment after receiving this intelligence from
Sela Christos, although it had found him, in one respect, very ill
prepared for such an undertaking; for he had sent all his horse from
Coga upon an expedition against the Shangalla and Gongas, nations on
the north-west border of this kingdom; so that, when he marched from
Wainadega, his cavalry amounted to 530 men only, besides a small
reinforcement brought by Emana Christos, governor of Amhara.
It was at Aibo the king turned off the road to Tigré towards Begemder,
and that day encamped at Wainadega. From Wainadega he advanced to
Davada; and, crossing the Reb, he turned off by the way of Zang, and
encamped at Kattamè. He then proceeded to Tzamè, and arrived at Hader.
At this place some spies informed him that an advanced party of the
Galla Marawa were strongly lodged in a hill not far off. Upon receiving
this notice, Socinios ordered his army to refresh themselves, to
extinguish all lights, and march with as little noise as possible.
While it was scarce dawn of day, a strong detachment of the king’s
army surrounded the hill where the Galla were, and found there a small
number of these savages placed like piquets to give the alarm and
prevent surprise. Eleven Galla were slain, and their heads cut off and
carried to the king, the first fruits of his expedition.
Resolving to profit by this early advantage, Socinios followed with all
diligence, and came in sight of the army of the enemy, without their
having taken the smallest alarm. They were lying closely and securely
in their huts that they had made. A large ravine full of trees and
stumps divided the two armies, and in part concealed them from each
other. The king ordered Emana Christos, and Abeton Welleta Christos,
to pass the ravine with the horse, and fall upon the Galla suddenly,
throwing the heads of those of the advanced guard they had cut off on
the ground towards them.
Before the king’s horse had passed the ravine, the Galla were alarmed,
and mounted on horseback. As they never fight in order, it required no
time to form; but they received the king’s cavalry so rudely, that,
though Emana Christos and the young prince behaved with the utmost
courage, they were beat back, and obliged to fly with considerable
loss, being entangled in the bushes. No sooner did the king observe
that his horse were engaged, than he ordered his troops to pass
the ravine to support them, and was desirous to bring on a general
engagement. But a panic had seized his troops. They would not stir, but
seemed benumbed and overcome by the cold of the morning, spectators of
the ruin of the cavalry.
Emana Christos, and those of the cavalry that had escaped the massacre,
had repassed the ravine, and dispersed themselves in the front of the
foot; while the victorious Marawa, like ignorant savages, pushed their
victory to the very front of the king’s line. Socinios, ordering all
the drums of the army to beat and trumpets to sound, to excite some
spirit in his troops, advanced himself before any of his soldiers, and
slew the first Galla within his reach with his own hands. The example
and danger the king exposed himself to, raised the indignation of
the troops. They poured in crowds, without regarding order, upon the
Marawa, great part of whom had already passed the ravine, and all that
had passed it were cut to pieces.
The Galla, unable to stand this loss, fled from the field, and
immediately after left Begemder. The want of horse on the king’s part
saved their whole army from the destruction which would infallibly have
been the consequence of a vigorous pursuit, through a country where
every inhabitant was an enemy. The king after this returned to his
palace at Coga to finish the business he had in hand.
In the mean time, a report was spread through all Tigré, that the king
had been defeated by the Galla, and that Ras Sela Christos had repaired
to Gondar in consequence of that disaster. The impostor Jacob lost no
time in taking advantage of this report. He descended from his natural
fortress, and, in conjunction with the governor of Axum, slew several
people, and committed many ravages in Siré. The Ras no sooner learned
that he was encamped on plain ground, than he presented himself with
the little army he had before; and, though the odds against him were
excessive, yet by his presence and conduct, the rebels, though they
fought this time with more than ordinary obstinacy, were defeated with
great loss, and their leader, the supposed Jacob, forced again to his
inaccessible mountains.
Socinios having now finished the affairs which detained him at Coga,
and being informed that the southern Galla, resenting the defeat of
the Marawa, had entered into a league to invade Abyssinia with united
forces, and a complete army to burn and lay waste the whole country
between the Tacazzé and Tzana, and to attack the emperor in his capital
of Coga, which they were determined to destroy, sent orders to Kasmati
Julius, his son-in-law, to join him immediately with what forces
he had, as also to Kesla Christos; and, being joined by both these
officers and their troops, he marched and took post at Ebenaat in the
district of Belessen, in the way by which the Galla intended to pass to
the capital, and he resolved to await them there.
The Galla advanced in their usual manner, burning and destroying
churches and villages, and murdering without mercy all that were so
unfortunate as to fall into their hands. The king bore these excesses
of his enemy with the patience of a good general, who saw they
contributed to his advantage. He therefore did not offer to check any
of their disorders, but by not resisting rather hoped to encourage
them. He had an army in number superior, and this was seldom the case;
but in quality there was no comparison, five of the king’s troops being
equal to twenty of the enemy, and this was the general proportion in
which they fought. He, therefore, contented himself with choosing
proper ground to engage, and improving it by ambushes such as the
nature of the field permitted or suggested.
It was the 7th of January 1608, early in the morning, that the Galla
presented themselves to Socinios in battle, in a plain below Ebenaat,
surrounded with small hills covered with wood. The Galla filled the
whole plain, as if voluntarily devoting themselves to destruction, and
from the hills and bushes were destroyed by fire-arms from enemies
they did not see, who with a strong body took possession of the place
through which they entered, and by which they were to return no more.
Socinios that day, for what particular reason does not appear,
distinguished himself among the midst of the Galla, by fighting like a
common soldier. It is thought by the historians of those times, that he
had received advice while at Coga, that his son-in-law Julius intended
to rebel, and therefore he meant to discourage him by comparison of
their personal abilities. This, however, is not probable; the king’s
character was established, and nothing more could be added to it.
However that may be, all turned to the disadvantage of the Galla. No
general or other officer thought himself entitled to spare his person
more than the king; all fought like common soldiers; and, being the
men best armed and mounted, and most experienced in the field, they
contributed in proportion to the slaughter of the day. About 12,000 men
on the part of the Galla were killed upon the spot; the very few that
remained were destroyed by the peasants, whilst 400 men only fell on
the part of the king, so it was a massacre rather than a battle.
Socinios now resolved to try his fortune against the impostor Jacob,
and with that resolution he crossed Lamalmon, descending to the Tacazzé
in his way to Siré. Here, as on the frontiers of his province, he was
met by Sela Christos, who brought Peter Paez along with them. Both were
kindly received by the king, who encamped in the large plain before
Axum, in consequence of a resolution he had long taken of being crowned
with all the ancient ceremonies used on this occasion by former kings,
while the royal residence was in the province of Tigré.
It was on the 18th of March, according to their account, the day of
our Saviour’s first coming to Jerusalem, that this festival began. His
army consisted of about 30,000 men. All the great officers, all the
officers of state, and the court then present, were every man dressed
in the richest and gayest manner. Nor was the other sex behind-hand in
the splendour of their appearance. The king, dressed in crimson damask,
with a great chain of gold round his neck, his head bare, mounted upon
a horse richly caparisoned, advanced at the head of his nobility,
passed the outer court, and came to the paved way before the church.
Here he was met by a number of young girls, daughters of the umbares,
or supreme judges, together with many noble virgins standing on the
right and left of the court.
Two of the noblest of these held in their hands a crimson cord of
silk, somewhat thicker than common whip-cord, but of a looser texture,
stretched across from one company to another, as if to shut up the
road by which the king was approaching the church. When this cord was
prepared and drawn tight about breast-high by the girls, the king
entered, advancing at a moderate pace, curvetting and shewing the
management of his horse. He was stopped by the tension of this string,
while the damsels on each side asking who he was, were answered, “I am
your king, the king of Ethiopia.” To which they replied with one voice,
“You shall not pass; you are not our king.”
The king then retires some paces, and then presents himself as to
pass, and the cord is again drawn across his way by the young women
so as to prevent him, and the question repeated, “Who are you?” The
king answered, “I am your king, the king of Israel.” But the damsels
resolved, even on this second attack, not to surrender but upon their
own terms; they again answer, “You shall not pass; you are not our
king.”
The third time, after retiring, the king advances with a pace and air
more determined; and the cruel virgins, again presenting the cord and
asking who he is, he answers, “I am your king, the king of Sion;” and,
drawing his sword, cuts the silk cord asunder. Immediately upon this
the young women cry, “It is a truth, you are our king; truly you are
the king of Sion.” Upon which they begin to sing Hallelujah, and in
this they are joined by the court and army upon the plain; fire-arms
are discharged, drums and trumpets sound; and the king, amidst these
acclamations and rejoicings, advances to the foot of the stair of the
church, where he dismounts, and there sits down upon a stone, which, by
its remains, apparently was an altar of Anubis, or the dog-star: At his
feet there is a large slab of free-stone, on which is the inscription
mentioned by Poncet, and which shall be quoted hereafter, when I come
to speak of the ruins of Axum.
After the king comes the nebrit, or keeper of the book of the law in
Axum, supposed to represent Azarias the son of Zadock; then the twelve
umbares, or supreme judges, who with Azarias accompanied Menilek, the
son of Solomon, when he brought the book of the law from Jerusalem, and
these are supposed to represent the twelve tribes. After these follow
the Abuna at the head of the priests, and the Itchegué at the head of
the monks; then the court, who all pass through the aperture made by
the division of the silk cord, which remains still upon the ground.
The king is first anointed, then crowned, and is accompanied half up
the steps by the singing priests, called Depteras, chanting psalms
and hymns. Here he stops at a hole made for the purpose in one of the
steps, and is there fumigated with incense and myrrh, aloes and cassia.
Divine service is then celebrated; and, after receiving the sacrament,
he returns to the camp, where fourteen days should regularly be spent
in feasting, and all manner of rejoicing and military exercise.
The king is, by the old custom, obliged to give a number of presents,
the particulars of which are stated in the deftar, or treasury-book,
the value, the person to whom they are due, and the time of giving; but
a great part of these are gone into desuetude since the removal of the
court from Tigré, as also many of the offices are now suppressed, and
with them the presents due to them.
The nobles and the court were likewise obliged to give presents to the
king upon that occasion. The present from the governor of Axum is two
lions and a fillet of silk, upon which is wrote, “_Mo Anbasa am Nizilet
Solomon am Negadé Jude_--The lion of the tribe of Judah and race of
Solomon hath overcome;” this serves as a form of investiture of lands
that the king grants, a ribband bearing this inscription being tied
round the head of the person to whom the lands are given.
This governor was then in rebellion, so did not assist at the ceremony.
Notwithstanding the difference of expence which I have mentioned, by
suppressing places, presents, and dues, the king Tecla Haimanout told
me at Gondar, that when he was in Tigré, driven there by the late
rebellion, Ras Michael had some thoughts of having him crowned there
in contempt of his enemies; but, by the most moderate calculation that
could be made, not to turn the ceremony into ridicule by parsimony,
it would have cost 20,000 ounces of gold, or L. 50,000 Sterling; upon
which he laid aside the thoughts of it, saying to the king, “Sir,
trust to me, 20,000 ounces of Tigré iron shall crown you better; if
more is wanted, I will bestow it upon your enemies with pleasure till
they are satisfied;” meaning the iron balls with which his soldiers
loaded their musquets.
After the coronation was over, the king passed the Mareb, desiring to
finish his campaign by the death of his competitor Jacob; but that
impostor knew too well the superiority of his rival, and hid himself
in the inmost recesses, without other attendants than a few goats, who
furnished him with their milk, as well as their society.
Socinios left the affair of the rebel Jacob to be ended by Amsala
Christos, an officer of great prudence, whom he made governor of Tigré;
and, taking his brother Ras Sela Christos along with him, returned
to Coga[48]. Amsala Christos being seized with a grievous sickness,
saw how vain it was for him to pursue the suppression of a rebellion
conducted by such a head as this impostor Jacob, and therefore secretly
applied to two young men, Zara Johannes and Amha Georgis, brothers, and
sons of the Shum Welled Georgis, who had committed murder, and were
outlawed by Socinios, and, keeping hid in the mountains, had joined in
fellowship with the impostor Jacob.
These, gained by the promise of pardon given them by Amsala Christos,
chose an opportunity which their intimacy gave them, and, falling upon
Jacob unawares in his retirement, they slew him, cut his head off,
and sent it to the king at Coga, who received it very thankfully, and
returned it to Tigré to Amsala Christos, to be exposed publicly in all
the province to undeceive the people; for it now appeared, that he had
neither scars in his face, broken jaw, nor loss of teeth, but that the
covering was intended only to conceal the little resemblance he bore to
king Jacob, slain, as we have seen, at the battle of Lebart; and he was
now found to have been a herdsman, in those very mountains of Bisan to
which he had so often fled for refuge while his rebellion lasted.
The king, in his return from Tigré, passing by Fremona, sent to the
Jesuits there thirty ounces of gold, about L. 75 Sterling, for their
immediate exigency; testifying, in the most gracious manner, his
regret, “That the many affairs in which he was engaged had prevented
him from hearing mass in their convent, as he very sincerely wished to
do; but he left with them the Abuna Simon, to whom he had recommended
to study their religion, and be a friend to it.”
In this he shewed his want of penetration and experience; for though he
had seen wars between soldier and soldier, who, after having been in
the most violent state of enmity, had died in defence of each other as
friends, he was not aware of that degree of enmity which reigns upon
difference of opinion, not to say religion, between priest and priest.
It was not long, however, before he saw it, and the example was in the
person of his present friend the Abuna Simon.
While Socinios was yet in Tigré, news were brought to Coga from Woggora
to Sanuda Tzef Leham[49] of Dembea, who could not accompany the king
to Tigré on account of sickness, but was left with the charge of the
capital and palace during the king’s absence, that Melchizedec, one
of the meanest and lowest servants of the late king Melec Segued, had
rebelled, and was collecting troops, consisting of soldiers, servants,
and dependents of that prince, and had slain some of Socinios’s
servants. Sanuda was a brave and active officer; but, being without
troops, (the king having carried the whole army to Tigré) immediately
set out from Maitsha to the town of Tchelga, one of the frontiers of
Abyssinia, possessed by Wed Ageeb prince of the Arabs.
It is here to be observed, that though the territorial right of Tchelga
did then, and does still appertain to the kingdom of Abyssinia,
yet the possession of it is ceded by agreement to Wed Ageeb, under
whose protection the caravans from Egypt and Sennaar, and those from
Abyssinia to Sennaar and Egypt, were understood to be ever since they
were cut off in the last century by the basha of Suakem, for this
purpose, that a customhouse might be erected, and the duties divided
between the two kingdoms equally. The same is the case with Serké, a
town belonging to Sennaar, ceded for the same purpose to the king of
Abyssinia.
It happened that Abdelcader[50], son of Ounsa, late king of Sennaar, or
of Funge, as he is called in the Abyssinian annals, had been deposed
by his subjects in the 4th year of his reign, and remained at Tchelga
under the mutual protection of Wed Ageeb and the emperor of Abyssinia,
a kind of prisoner to them both; and had brought with him a number of
soldiers and dependents, the partakers of his former good fortune, who,
finding safety and good usage at Tchelga, were naturally well-affected
to the king. These, ready mounted and armed, joined Sanuda immediately
upon his declaring the exigency; and with these he marched straight to
Coga, to the defence of the palace with which he had been intrusted.
Melchizedec, whose design was against Coga, no sooner heard Sanuda was
arrived there than he marched to surprise him, and a very bloody and
obstinate engagement followed. The Funge, piqued in honour to render
this service to their protector, fought so obstinately that they were
all slain, and Sanuda, mounted that day upon a fleet horse belonging to
Socinios, escaped with difficulty, much wounded.
As soon as Socinios heard of this misfortune, he sent Ras Emana
Christos, who marched straight to Woggora, creating Zenobius, son of
Imael, governor of that district; and there he found Sanuda Zenobius
and Ligaba Za Denghel together, in a place called Deberasso.
As soon as the rebel Melchizedec heard Emana Christos was come, and
with him the fore-mentioned noblemen, he set himself to exert the
utmost of his power to draw together forces of all kinds from every
part he could get them, and his army was soon increased to such a
degree as, notwithstanding the presence of Emana Christos, to strike
terror into all the territory and towns of Dembea. Nothing was wanted
but a king of the royal race for whom to fight. Without a chief of this
kind, it was evident that the army, however often successful, would
at last disperse. They, therefore, brought one Arzo, a prince of the
royal blood, from his hiding-place in Begemder. Arzo, in return for a
throne, conferred the place of Ras upon Melchizedec. Za Christos, son
of Hatzir Abib, was appointed to the command of the army under him;
and, having finished this and many such necessary preparatives, they
marched straight to meet Emana Christos, with a better countenance than
rebel armies generally bear.
It was the 9th of March 1611, at 9 in the morning, when the two armies
were first in sight of each other, nor did they long delay coming to
an engagement. The battle was very obstinate and bloody; Melchizedec
re-established his character for worth, at least as a soldier; the same
did Za Christos. Of the competitor Arzo, history makes no mention; his
blood, probably, was too precious to risk the spilling of it, being so
far-fetched as from king Solomon. After a most obstinate resistance,
part of Za Christos’s army was broken and put to flight; but it rallied
so often, and sold the ground it yielded so dear, that it gave time to
Emana Christos to come up to his army’s assistance.
The Ras, who was as brave a soldier as he was a wise and prudent
general, saw it was a time when all should be risked, and threw himself
into the midst of his enemies; and he was now arrived near the place
where Melchizedec fought, when that rebel, seeing him advancing so fast
among his slaughtered followers, guessing his intention, declined the
combat, turned his horse and fled, while affairs even yet appeared in
his favour. This panic of the general had the effect it ordinarily has
in barbarous armies. Nobody considered how the prospect of the general
issue stood; they fled with Melchizedec, and lost more men than would
have secured them victory had they stood in their ranks.
A body of troops, joined by some peasants of Begemder, pursued
Melchizedec so closely that they came up with him and took him
prisoner, together with Tensa Christos, a very active partizan, and
enemy to Emana Christos. Having brought them to the camp, before
the Ras returned to Coga, they were tried and condemned to die for
rebellion, as traitors, and the sentence immediately executed, after
which their heads were sent to the king. Very soon after this, Arzo,
and his general Za Christos, were taken and sent to the king, who
ordered them to be tried by the judges in common form, and they
underwent the same fate.
The king was employed in the winter season while he resided at Coga,
in building a new church, called St Gabriel. But the season of taking
the field being come, he marched out with his army and halted at
Gogora, sending Emana Christos and Sela Christos against the rebels;
these were not in a particular clan, or province, for all the country
was in rebellion, from the head of the Nile round, eastward, to the
frontiers of Tigré. Part of them indeed were not in arms, but refused
to pay their quota of the revenue; part of them were in arms, and would
neither pay, nor admit a governor from the king among them; others
willingly submitted to Socinios, and were armed, only thereby to
exempt themselves from payment.
Sela Christos fell upon the inhabitants of the mountainous district
of Gusman, on the Nile, whose principal strong-hold, Oureé Amba, he
forced, killing many, and carrying away their children as slaves,
which, upon the intercession of Peter Paez, were given to the Jesuits
to be educated as Catholics.
The next attempt was upon the Gongas, a black Pagan nation, with which
he had the same success; the rest were the Agows, a very numerous
people, all confederates and in arms, and not willing to hear of any
composition. The king ordered one of these tribes, the Zalabassa, to
be extirpated as far as possible, and their country laid waste. But
notwithstanding this example, which met with great interruption in
the execution, the Agows continued in rebellion for several years
afterwards, but much impoverished and lessened in number by variety of
victories obtained over them.
The two next years were spent in unimportant skirmishes with the Agows
of Damot, and with the Galla, invaders of Gojam. In 1615, the year
after, Tecla Georgis made governor of Samen, and Welled Hawaryar,
shum of Tsalemat[51], were both sent against a rebel who declared
himself competitor for the crown. His name was Amdo. He pretended to
be the late king Jacob, son of Melec Segued; and this character he
gave himself, without the smallest communication with the relations
or connections of that prince. As soon as Assera Christos and Tecla
Garima, servants of Welled Hawaryat, heard of this adventurer, they
surprised him in Tsalemat, and, putting him in irons, confined him in
the house of Assera Christos.
Gideon, king of the Jews, whose residence was on the high mountain of
Samen, upon hearing that Amdo was prisoner, sent a body of armed men
who surprised Assera Christos in his own house in the night, and killed
him, bringing with them his prisoner Amdo to Samen, and delivered him
to Gideon there; who not only took him into protection, but assisted
him in raising an army by every means in his power. There were not
wanting there idle vagabonds and lawless people enough, who fled to
the standard of a prince whose sole view seemed to be murder, robbery,
and all sort of licentiousness. It was not long till Amdo, by the
assistance of Gideon, found himself at the head of an army, strong
enough to leave the mountain, and try his fortune in the plain below,
where he laid waste Shawada, Tsalemat, and all the countries about
Samen which persevered in their duty to the king.
Socinios, upon this, appointed Julius his son-in-law governor of
Woggora, Samen, Waag, and Abbergalé, that is, of all the low countries
from the borders of the Tacazzé to Dembea. Abram, an old officer of
the king, desirous to stop the progress of the rebel, marched towards
him, and offered him battle; but that brave officer had not the success
his intention deserved, for he was defeated and slain; which had such
an effect upon Julius, that, without hazarding his fortune farther,
he sent to beseech the king to march against Amdo with all possible
expedition, as his affairs were become desperate in that part of his
dominions.
The king hereupon marched straight to Woggora, and joined Julius at
Shimbra-Zuggan; thence he descended from Samen, and encamped upon
Tocur-Ohha, (the black river) thence he proceeded to Debil, and then
to Sobra; and from this last station he sent a detachment of his army
to attack a strong mountain called Messiraba, one of the natural
fortresses of Gideon, which was forced by the king’s troops after some
resistance, and the whole inhabitants, without distinction of age or
sex, put to the sword, for such were the orders of the king.
This first success very much disheartened the rebels, for Messiraba
was, by nature, one of the strongest mountains, and it, besides, had
been fortified by art, furnished with plenty of provisions, and a
number of good troops. The next mountain Socinios attacked was Hotchi,
and the third Amba Za Hancassé, where he had the like success, and
treated the inhabitants in the same manner; thence he removed his
army to Seganat, where he met with a very stout resistance; but this
mountain, too, was at last taken, Gideon himself escaping narrowly by
the bravery of his principal general, who, fighting desperately, was
slain by a musqueteer.
The constant success of the king, and the bloody manner in which he
pursued his victory, began to alarm Gideon, lest the end should be the
extirpation of his whole nation. He, therefore, made an overture to
the king, that, if he would pardon him and grant him peace, he would
deliver the rebel Amdo bound into his hands.
The king assented to this, and Amdo was accordingly delivered up; and,
being convicted of rebellion and murder, he was sentenced to be nailed
to a cross, and to remain there till he died. But the terrible cries
and groans which he made while they were fixing him to the cross, so
much shocked the ears of the king, that he ordered him to be taken
down, and his head struck off with an ax, which was executed in the
midst of the camp.
Socinios after this retired to Dancaz, and ordered Kefla governor of
Gojam, and Jonael his master of the household, to march suddenly and
surprise Belaya, a country belonging to the Gongas and Guba, Pagan
nations, on whom, every year, he made war for the sake of taking slaves
for the use of the palace. These two officers, with a large body,
mostly horse, fell unawares upon the savages at Belaya, slaying part,
and bringing away their children. But not content with doing this, they
likewise attacked the two districts of Agows, Dengui and Sankara, then
in peace with the king, and drove away an immense number of cattle,
which the king no sooner heard, than he ordered a strict search to
be made, and the whole cattle belonging to the Agows to be gathered
together, and restored to their respective owners; a piece of justice
which softened the hearts of this people more than all the severities
that had been hitherto used; and the good effects of which were soon
after seen upon the Agows, though it produced something very different
in the conduct of Jonael.
The king this year, 1616, left his capital at the usual time, in the
month of November, and ordered his whole household to attend him. His
intention was against the Galla on the west of Gojam, especially the
tribe called Libo. But this campaign was rendered fruitless by the
death of the king’s eldest son, Kennaffer Christos, a young prince
of great hopes, esteemed both by the king and the people. He had
an excellent understanding, and the most affable manners possible,
to those even whom he did not like; was very fond of the soldiers;
merciful, generous, and liberal; and was thought to be the favourite of
the king his father, who buried him with great pomp in the church of
Debra Roma, built by king Isaac, in the lake Tzana.
In the midst of this mourning, there came a very bloody order[52] from
the king. History barely tells us the fact, but does not assign any
other reason than the wanton manner in which Gideon king of the Jews
had endeavoured to disturb his reign and kingdom, which was thought a
sufficient excuse for it. However this may be, the king gave orders
to Kasmati Julius, Kasmati Welled Hawaryat, Billetana Gueta Jonael,
and Fit-Auraris Hosannah, to extirpate all the Falasha that were in
Foggora, Janfakara, and Bagenarwè, to the borders of Samen; also all
that were in Bagla, and in all the districts under their command,
wherever they could find them; and very few of them escaped, excepting
some who fled with Phineas.
In this massacre, which was a very general one, and executed very
suddenly, fell Gideon king of that people; a man of great reputation,
not only among his subjects, but throughout all Abyssinia, reputed
also immensely rich. His treasures, supposed to be concealed in the
mountains, are the objects of the search of the Abyssinians to this day.
The children of those that were slain were sold for slaves by the king;
and all the Falasha in Dembea, in the low countries immediately in
the king’s power, were ordered upon pain of death to renounce their
religion, and be baptised. To this they consented, seeing there was
no remedy; and the king unwisely imagined, that he had extinguished,
by one blow, the religion which was that of his country long before
Christianity, by the unwarrantable butchery of a number of people whom
he had surprised living in security under the assurance of peace. Many
of them were baptised accordingly, and they were all ordered to plow
and harrow upon the sabbath-day.
The king next sent orders to Sela Christos, and Kefla governor of
Gojam, that, assembling their troops, they should transfer the war into
Bizamo, a province on the south side of the Nile, called also in the
books a kingdom. Through this lies the road of the merchants leading to
Narea. It is inhabited by several clans of Pagans, which together make
the great division of these nations into Boren, and Bertuma Galla[53].
The army passed the Nile, laying waste the whole country, driving off
the cattle, collecting the women and children as slaves, and putting
all the men to the sword; without these people, though they make
constant inroads into Gojam, appearing anywhere in force to stop the
desolation of their country. The whole tract between Narea and the Nile
was now cleared of enemies, and a number of priests at that time sent
to revive drooping Christianity in those parts.
In the year 1617, a league was again made among the Boren Galla, that
part of them should invade Gojam, while the others (namely the Marawa)
should enter Begemder. Upon hearing this, the king in haste marched
to Begemder, that he might be ready in case of need to assist Tigré.
He then fixed his head-quarters at Shima, but from this he speedily
removed; and, passing Emfras, came to Dobit, a favourite residence of
the emperor Jacob, where he held a council to determine which of the
two provinces he should first assist.
It was the general opinion of his officers, that to march at that
time of the year into Tigré by Begemder, was to destroy the army,
and distress both provinces; that an army, well provided with horse,
was necessary for acting with success against the Galla, and that,
in effect, though the royal army at present was so appointed, yet
there was no grass at that time of the year in all that march for the
subsistence of the cavalry, and very little water for the use of man
or beast, an inconvenience the Galla themselves must experience if
they attempted an invasion that way. It was, moreover, urged, that,
if the king should march through Woggora and Lamalmon, they might get
more food for their beasts, and water too; but then they would throw
themselves far from the place where the Galla had entered, and would be
obliged to fall into the former road, with the inconveniencies already
stated. The consequence of this deliberation was, that it was with
very great regret the good of the common-weal obliged them to leave
Tigré to the protection of Providence alone for a time, and hasten to
meet the enemy that were then laying Gojam waste.
With this view the king left Dobit, and came to the river Gomara in
Foggora. He then passed the Nile near Dara, and came to Selalo, where
he heard that the Djawi had passed the Nile from Bizamo, and entered
Gojam at the opposite side to where he then was. He there left his
baggage, and, by a forced march, advancing three days journey in one,
he came to Bed, upon the river Sadi; but, instead of finding the enemy
there, he received intelligence from Sela Christos, that he had met
the Galla immediately after their passing the Nile; had fought them,
and cut their army to pieces, without allowing them time to ravage the
country.
Upon this good news the king turned off on the road to Tchegal and
Wainadassa, and ordered Bela Christos to assemble as great an army as
he could, and fall upon the Djawi and Galla in Walaka and Shoa, as also
Ras Sela Christos, to pass the Nile and join him there.
That general lost no time, but marched straight to Amca Ohha, or
the river Amca, where he found the Edjow, who fled upon his coming,
without giving him any opportunity of bringing them to an engagement,
abandoning their wives, children, and substance, to the mercy of the
enemy. Sela Christos, having finished this expedition as he intended,
returned to join the king, whom he found encamped upon the river Suqua,
near Debra Werk, guarding those provinces in the absence of Sela
Christos. From this the king, retreating towards Dembea, passed the
Nile near Dara, and encamped at Zinzenam, whence he marched round the
lake into Dembea to his palace at Gorgora.
This village, whose name signifies _rain upon rain_, affords us a proof
of what I have said in speaking of the cause of the overflowing of the
Nile, in contradiction to the Adulitic inscription, that no snow falls
in Abyssinia, or rather, that though snow may have fallen in the course
of centuries, it is a phænomenon so rare as not to have a name or word
to express it in the whole language, and is entirely unknown to the
people in general, at least to the west of the Tacazzé.
The Abyssinian historian, from whom these memoirs are composed, says,
“That this village, called Zinzenam, has its name from an extraordinary
circumstance that once happened in these parts, for a shower of rain
fell, which was not properly of the nature of rain, as it did not run
upon the ground, but remained very light, having scarce the weight of
feathers, of a beautiful white colour like flour; it fell in showers,
and occasioned a darkness in the air more than rain, and liker to mist.
It covered the face of the whole country for several days, retaining
its whiteness the whole time, then went away like dew, without leaving
any smell or unwholesome effect behind it.”
This was certainly the accidental phænomenon of a day; for,
notwithstanding the height of the mountains Taranta and Lamalmon, snow
never was seen there, at least for ages past; and Lasta, in whose
mountains armies have perished by cold, as far as a very particular
inquiry could go, never yet had snow upon them; and Zinzenam is not in
these mountains, or in any elevated situation. On the contrary, it is
adjoining to the plain country of Foggora, near where it borders upon
Begemder, not above 20 miles from the second cataract, or 40 miles from
Gondar; so that this must have been a short and accidental change of
the atmosphere, of which there are examples of many different kinds, in
the histories of all countries.
As soon as the weather permitted, the king left his palace at Gorgora
in the way to Tocussa, where he staid several days; removed thence to
Tenkel, where he continued also four days, and proceeded to Gunkè,
where he halted. From his head-quarters at Gunkè, the king, meditating
an expedition against Atbara, sent a messenger to Nile Wed Ageeb,
prince of the Arabs, desiring a meeting with him before he attacked
the Funge, for so they call the subjects of the new monarchy, lately
established at Sennaar by the conquest of the Arabs, under Wed Ageeb, a
very considerable part of whose territory they had taken by force, and
now enjoyed as their own possessions.
Abdelcader, son of Ounsa, was the ninth prince of the race of Funge
then reigning; a weak, and ill-inclined man, but with whom Socinios
had hitherto lived in friendship, and, in a late treaty, had sent him
as a present, a nagareet, or kettle-drum, richly ornamented with gold,
with a gold chain to hang it by. Abdelcader, on his part, returned to
Socinios a trained falcon, of an excellent kind, very much esteemed
among the Arabs.
Soon after this, Abdelcader was deposed by his brother Adelan, son of
Ounsa, and fled to Tchelga, under protection of the king of Abyssinia,
who allowed him an honourable maintenance; a custom always observed in
such cases in the East, by princes towards their unfortunate neighbours.
Baady, son of Abdelcader, an active and violent young prince, although
he deposed his uncle Adelan, took this protection of his father in
bad part. It was likewise suggested to him, that the present sent
by Socinios, a nagareet, or kettle-drum, imported, that Socinios
considered him as his vassal, the drum being the sign of investiture
sent by the king to any one of his subjects whom he appoints to
govern a province, and that the return of the falcon was likely to
be considered as the acknowledgement of a vassal to his superior.
Baady, upon his accession to the throne, was resolved to rectify this
too great respect shewn on the part of his father, by an affront he
resolved to offer. With this view, he sent to Socinios two old, blind,
and lame horses.
Socinios took this amiss, as it was intended he should, and the slight
was immediately followed by the troops of Atbara, under Nile Wed Ageeb,
sent by Baady to make an inroad into Abyssinia, to lay waste the
country, and drive off the people, with orders to sell them as slaves.
Among the most active in this expedition, were those of the town of
Serké. When Baady complained that his father and rival was protected
in his own town of Tchelga, it had been answered, That true it was,
Tchelga had been ceded and did belong to Sennaar, for every purpose of
revenue, but that the sovereignty of the place had never been alienated
or surrendered to the king of Sennaar, but remained now, as ever,
vested in the king of Abyssinia. Serkè stood precisely in the same
situation with respect to Abyssinia, as Tchelga did to Sennaar, when
Socinios demanded satisfaction for the violence committed against him
by his own town of Serkè. The same answer was given him, That for all
fiscal purposes Serkè was his, but owed him no allegiance; for, being
part of the kingdom of Sennaar, it was bound to assist its sovereign in
all wars against his enemies.
Socinios, deeply engaged in the troubles that attended the beginning of
his reign, passed over for a time both the affront and injury, but sent
into Atbara to Nile Wed Ageeb, proposing a treaty with him independent
of the king of Sennaar.
There were, at this time, three sorts of people that inhabited the
whole country from lat. 13° (the mountains of Abyssinia) to the tropic
of Cancer (the frontiers of Egypt.) The first was the Funge, or
negroes, established in Atbara since the year 1504, by conquest. The
second, the old inhabitants of that country, known in very early ages
by the name of _Shepherds_, which continues with them to this day;
and these lived under a female government. The third, the Arabs, who
came hither after the conquest of Egypt, in an army under Caled Ibn el
Waalid, or Saif Ullah, _the Sword of God_, during the Khalifat of Omar,
destined to subdue Nubia, and, still later, in the time of Salidan and
his brother.
These Arabs had associated with the first inhabitants, the Shepherds,
from a similarity of life and manners, and, by treaty, the Funge had
established a tribute to be paid them from both; after which, these
were to enjoy their former habitations without further molestation.
This prince of the Arabs, Nile Wed Ageeb, embraced the offer of the
king of Abyssinia very readily; and a treaty was accordingly made
between Socinios and him, and a territory in Abyssinia granted him on
the frontiers, to which he could retire in safety, as often as his
affairs were embroiled with the state of Sennaar.
It happened soon after this, that Alico, a Mahometan, governor of the
Mazaga for Socinios, that is, of Nara and Ras el Feel, a low country,
as the name imports, of black earth, revolted from his master, and fled
to Sennaar, carrying with him a number of the king’s horses. Socinios
made his complaint to the king of Sennaar, who took no notice of it,
neither returned any answer, which exasperated Socinios so much that it
produced the present expedition, and was a cause of much bloodshed, and
of a war which, at least in intention, lasts to this day between the
two kingdoms.
Wed Ageeb, upon Socinios’s first summons, came to Gunkè, his
head-quarters, attended by a number of troops, and some of the best
horse in Atbara. Upon his entering the king’s tent, he prostrated
himself, (as is the Abyssinian custom) acknowledged himself the king’s
vassal, and brought presents with him to a very considerable value.
Socinios received him with great marks of distinction and kindness. He
decorated him with a chain and bracelets of gold, and gave him a dagger
of exquisite workmanship, mounted with the same metal; clothed him in
silk and damask after the Abyssinian fashion, and confirmed the ancient
treaty with him. The fruit of all this was presently seen; the king and
his new ally fell suddenly upon Serké, put all the male inhabitants to
the sword, sold the women and children as slaves, and burned the town
to the ground. The same they did to every inhabited place on that side
of the frontier, west to Fazuclo. After which, the king, having sent
a sarcastic compliment to Baady, returned to Dancaz, taking Wed Ageeb
with him.
Socinios had only ravaged the frontier of the kingdom of Sennaar to
the westward, from Serkè towards Fazuclo. This was but a part of the
large scheme of vengeance he had resolved to execute progressively from
Serkè, in reparation of the affront he had received from the king of
the Funge. But he delegated what remained to the two princes his sons,
and to the governor of Tigré.
Welled Hawaryat, at the head of the Koccob horse, and another body of
cavalry reckoned equal in valour, called _Maia_, and the greatest part
of the king’s household troops, were ordered to fall upon that part of
the frontier of Sennaar which the king had left from Serké eastward.
Melca Christos, with the horse of Siré and Samen, was appointed to
attack the frontier still farther east, opposite to the province of
Siré. Tecla Georgis, governor of Tigré, was directed to lay waste that
part of the kingdom of Sennaar bordering upon the frontiers of his
province.
The whole of this expedition succeeded to a wish; only Melea Christos,
in passing through the country of Shangalla, was met by a large army of
that people, who, thinking the expedition intended against them, had
attacked him in his passage, with some appearance of advantage; but by
his own exertions, and those of his troops alarmed at their prince’s
danger, he not only extricated himself from the bad situation he was
in, but gave the Shangalla so entire an overthrow, that one of their
tribes was nearly exterminated by that day’s slaughter, and crowds of
women and children sent slaves to the king at Dancaz.
The delay that this occasioned had no bad effect upon the expedition.
The victorious troops poured immediately into Atbara under Melca
Christos, and completed the destruction made by Welled Hawaryat, and
the governor of Tigré. All Sennaar was filled with people flying from
the conquerors, and an immense number of cattle was driven away by the
three armies. Baady seems to have been an idle spectator of this havock
made in his kingdom; and the armies returned without loss to Dancaz,
loaded with plunder.
Still the vengeance of Socinios was not satisfied. The Baharnagash,
Guebra Mariam, was commanded to march against Fatima queen of the
Shepherds, called at that time Negusta Errum, queen of the Greeks. This
was a princess who governed the remnant of that ancient race of people,
once the sovereigns of the whole country, who, for several dynasties,
were masters of Egypt, and who still, among their ancient customs,
preserved that known one, of always placing a woman upon the throne.
Her residence was at Mendera[54], on the N. E. of Atbara, one of the
largest and most populous towns in it; a town, indeed, built like the
rest, of clay, straw, and reeds, but not less populous or flourishing
on that account. It was in the way of the caravans from Suakem, both
to Abyssinia and Sennaar, as also of those large caravans to and from
Sudan, the Negro country upon the Niger, which then came, and still use
that road in their way to Mecca. Its female sovereign was considered
as guardian of that communication, and the caravans passing it.
The Baharnagash had in orders from Socinios to pursue this queen till
he had taken her prisoner, and to bring her in that condition into his
presence. The enterprise was by no means an easy one. Great part of
the road was without water; but Guebra Mariam, the Baharnagash, was an
active and prudent officer, and perfectly acquainted with the several
parts of the country. With a small, but veteran army, he marched down
the Mareb, between that river and the mountains, destroying all the
places through which he passed, putting the inhabitants unmercifully
to the sword, that no one might approach him, nor any report be made
of his numbers, which were everywhere magnified by those that escaped,
and who computed them from the greatness of the desolation they had
occasioned.
On the 13th day he came before Mendera, and sent a summons to the queen
Fatima to surrender. Being told that she had fled on his approach,
he answered, That he cared not where she was; but that, unless she
surrendered herself prisoner before he entered Mendera, he would first
set the town on fire, and then quench the flames by the blood of its
inhabitants.
Fatima, though old and infirm, was too great a lover of her people
to risk the fulfilling this threat from any consideration of what
might happen to her. She surrendered herself to Guebra Mariam, with
two attendants; and he, without loss of time, marched back to his own
country, abstaining from every sort of violence or excess in his way,
from respect to his female prisoner, whom he brought in triumph before
Socinios to Dancaz, and was the first messenger of his own victory.
Socinios received this queen of the Greeks on his throne; but, in
consideration of her infirmities, dispensed with the ceremony of
prostration, constantly observed in Abyssinia on being introduced to
the presence of the king: seeing that she was unable to stand during
the time of her interrogation, he ordered a low stool to be set for
her on the ground; a piece of consideration very rarely shewn to any
stranger in Abyssinia, however great their dignity and quality.
Socinios sternly demanded of his prisoner, “Why she and her
predecessors, being vassals to the crown of Abyssinia, had not only
omitted the payment of their tribute, but had not even sent the
customary presents to him upon his accession to the throne?”
To this the queen answered with great frankness and candour, “That it
was true, such tributes and presents were due, and were also punctually
paid from old times by her ancestors to his, as long as protection
was afforded them and their people, and this was the principal cause
of paying that tribute; but the Abyssinians having first suffered the
country to be in great part conquered by the Arabs, and then again by
the Funge, without ever interfering, she had concluded a peace with the
Funge of Sennaar, and paid the tribute to them, in consequence of which
they defended her from the Arabs: That she had had no soldiers but such
as were employed in keeping a strict watch over the road through the
desert to Suakem, which was anciently trusted to her; that the other
part of her subjects was occupied in keeping and rearing great herds of
cattle for the markets of Sennaar and other towns, as well as camels
for the caravans of Mecca, Cairo, and Sudan, both employments being
of public benefit; and, therefore, as she did harm to none, she had a
greater reason to wonder what could be his motive of sending so far
from home to seek her, and her harmless subjects, in the desert, with
such effusion of innocent blood.”
The king hearing this sagacious answer, which was followed by many
others of the kind, was extremely pleased; but assured her, “That he
intended to maintain his ancient right both over her subjects, and the
Arabs under Wed Ageeb, who was now his vassal, in all the country from
Fazuclo to Suakem; that he considered the Funge as usurpers, and would
certainly treat them as such.” After this Socinios dismissed the queen,
and gave her assurances of protection, having first cloathed her as
his vassal in silk and damask, after the fashion of women in her own
country.
But it was not long before this train of success met with a
considerable check. Very soon afterwards, the king being in Gojam,
a message was brought to him from the principal people of Narea,
informing him plainly, “That Benero, having become cruel and
avaricious, put many people to death wantonly, and many more for
the sake of their money; having taken from them their wives and
daughters, either for his own pleasure, or to sell them as slaves to
the Galla--they had at last murdered him, and chosen a man in his room
distinguished for his virtue and goodness.”
The king was very much exasperated at this message. He told them,
however bad Benero might have been, he considered his murder as an
insult done to himself, and had, therefore, dispatched Mustapha Basha
with some troops, and given command to all the Mahometans in Narea to
assist him, and to inquire into the death of Benero, and the merit of
his successor.
At the same time, the Galla made an inroad into Begemder; and Welled
Hawaryat, assembling what troops he could, in haste, to stop the
desolation of that province, and having come in sight of the enemy,
he was forsaken by his army, and slain, together with the Cantiba of
Dembea, Amdo, and Nile Wed Ageeb prince of the Arabs, after fighting
manfully for the king. Socinios, upon the arrival of this news, gave
himself up to immoderate sorrow; not so much for the loss of his army
which had misbehaved, as for the death of Welled Hawaryat his favourite
son, and Amdo and Nile, the two best officers in his army.
It will now be necessary that we look back a little to the state of
religious affairs in Abyssinia, which began from this time to have
influence in every measure, and greatly to promote the troubles of
that empire; though they were by no means their only cause, as some
have said, with a view to throw greater odium upon the Jesuits, who
surely have enough to answer for, without inflaming the account by any
exaggeration.
Paez, in the course of building the palace at Gorgora, had deservedly
astonished the whole kingdom by a display of his universal genius and
capacity. If he was assiduous and diligent in raising this fabric, he
had not neglected the advancing of another, the conversion of Abyssinia
to the obedience of the see of Rome.
Ras Sela Christos (if we believe these missionaries) had converted
himself, by reading with attention the Abyssinian books only. Being
about to depart from Gojam to fight against the Galla, he wanted very
much to have made his renunciation and confession in the presence of
Peter Paez. But, as he was busied at Gorgora building a convent and
palace there, he contented himself with another Jesuit, Francisco
Antonio d’Angelis; and, being victorious in his expedition, he gave
the fathers ground and a sum of money to build a monastery at Collela,
which was now the third in Abyssinia belonging to the Jesuits.
As for the king, though probably already determined in his own mind, he
had not taken any step so decisive as could induce the compliance of
others. Disputes were constantly maintained, for the most part in his
presence, between the missionaries and the Abyssinian monks, chiefly
concerning the long-agitated question, the two natures in Christ, in
which, although the victory declared always in favour of the Jesuits,
if we may credit their representations, no conviction followed on the
part of the adversaries. At last Abuna Simon complained to the king,
that unusual and irregular things had been permitted without his
knowledge; that disputes upon articles of faith had been held without
calling him, or his being permitted to give his clergy the advantage of
his support in these controversies.
The king, who did not believe that the Abuna’s eloquence or learning
would make any great alteration, ordered the disputations to be held
a-new in the Abuna’s presence. That priest’s ignorance made the matter
worse; and the king, holding this point as now settled, made his first
public declaration, that there were two natures in Christ, perfect God
and perfect man, really distinct between themselves, but united in one
divine person, which is the Christ.
At this time, letters came by way of India, both from the king of
Spain, Philip II. dated in Madrid the 15th of March 1609, and from the
pope Paul V. of the 4th of January 1611. These letters contain nothing
but general declamatory exhortations to Socinios to persevere in the
Christian faith, assuring him of the assistance of the Holy Spirit,
instead of those Portuguese regiments which he had solicited. However,
the affair of the conversion being altogether settled between the
king and Paez, it was thought proper to make the renunciation first,
and then depend upon the king of Spain and the pope for sending the
soldiers, if their prayers were not effectual.
It was necessary that Socinios should write to the pope, notifying
his submission to the see of Rome. But letters on such a subject were
thought of too great consequence to be sent, as former dispatches to
Europe had been, without being accompanied by proper persons, who,
upon occasion, might assume the character of ambassadors, and give any
assurance or explanation needful.
It was at the same time considered, that the way by Masuah was so
liable to accidents, the intermediate province of Tigré being still as
it were in a state of rebellion, that it would be easy for the enemies
of the Catholic faith to intercept these messengers and letters by
the way, so that their contents might be published amongst the king’s
enemies in Abyssinia, without ever being made known in Europe. Some
proposed the longer, but, as they apprehended, the more secure way, by
passing Narea and the provinces south of the frontiers of that kingdom,
partly inhabited by Gentiles, partly by Mahometans, to Melinda, on the
Indian Ocean, where they might embark for Goa.
Lots were cast among the missionaries who of their number should
undertake this long and dangerous journey. The lot fell upon Antonio
Fernandes, a man of great prudence, much esteemed by the king, and by
the general voice allowed to be the properest of all the society for
this undertaking. He, on his part, named Fecur Egzie (_beloved of the
Lord_) as his companion, to be ambassador to the king of Spain and the
pope. This man had been one of the first of the Abyssinians converted
to the Catholic faith by the Jesuits, and he continued in it steadily
to his death. He was a person of tried courage and prudence, and of a
pleasant and agreeable conversation.
It was the beginning of March 1613 Antonio Fernandes[55] set out for
Gojam, where was Ras Sela Christos. Fecur Egzie had set out before,
that he might adjust his family affairs, and took with him ten
Portuguese, six of whom were to go no farther than Narea, and return,
the other four to embark with him for India.
The governor detained the small company till he procured guides from
among the Shats and Gallas, barbarous nations near Narea, and eastward
of it, from whom he took hostages for properly protecting this caravan
in their way, paying them well, as an encouragement for behaving
honestly and faithfully.
On the 15th of April they had set out from Umbarma, then the
head-quarters of Sela Christos, who gave them for guards forty
men armed with shields and javelins. Nor was it long before their
difficulties began. Travelling about two days to the west, they came
to Senaffé, the principal village or habitation of the Pagan Gongas,
very recently in rebellion, and nearly destroyed, rather than subdued.
To the first demand of safe conduct, they answered in a manner which
shewed that, far from defending the travellers from others, they were
resolved themselves to fall upon them, and rob or murder them in
the way. One Portuguese offered himself to return with Fernandes to
complain of these savages to Sela Christos; who, upon their arrival,
dispatched three officers with troops to chastise these Pagans, and
convey the ambassador and his attendants out of their territory and
reach.
The Gongas, being informed that a complaint was sent to Sela Christos,
which would infallibly be followed by a detachment of troops, gave
the ambassador the safeguard he demanded, which carried him in three
days to Minè[56]. This is the name of some miserable villages, often
rebuilt, and as often destroyed, upon a ford of the Nile, over which is
the ordinary passage for the Mahometan merchants into Bizamo, the way
to the mountainous country of Narea and Caffa. As the rains had begun
to fall here with violence, when Fernandes and his companions arrived,
they were obliged to pass the river on skins blown full of wind.
The distance from Minè to Narea is 50 leagues due south, with little
inclination to west. The road to it, and the places through which you
pass, are very distinctly set down in my map, and, I believe, without
any material error; it is the only place where the reader can find this
route, which, till now, has never been published.
The next day our travellers entered the kingdom of Bizamo, inhabited
by Pagan Galla. These people came in crowds with arms in their hands,
insisting upon being paid for liberty of passing through their country;
but, seeing the company of the ambassador take to their arms likewise,
they compounded for a few bricks of salt and coarse cotton cloaths, and
thereupon suffered them to pass. The same day, the guide, sent from
Narea to conduct them by crooked and unfrequented paths out of the way
of the Pagan Galla, made them to enter into a large thicket through
which they could scarcely force themselves; after which they came to
a river called _Maleg_, when it was nearly night. Next day they could
find no ford where they could pass. They now entertained a suspicion,
that the guard from Narea had betrayed them, and intended to leave them
in these woods to meet their death from the Galla.
The day after, they found the ford, and passed it without difficulty;
and, being on the other side, they began to be a little more composed,
as being far from the Pagans, and now near entering the territory of
Narea. After ascending a high mountain, they came to Gonea, where they
found a garrison under one of the principal officers of that kingdom,
who received them with great marks of honour and joy, on account of the
warm recommendation Sela Christos had given them, and perhaps as much
for a considerable present they had brought along with them.
Narea, the southmost province of the Abyssinian empire, is still
governed by its native princes, who are called _the Beneros_; its
territory reached formerly to Bizamo.
The Galla have quite surrounded them, especially on the south-east and
north. What is to the west is a part of Africa, the most unknown. The
people of Narea have a small trade with Melinda on the Indian Ocean,
and with Angola on the western, by means of intermediate nations. Narea
is abundantly supplied with gold from the Negro country that is nearest
them. Some have, indeed, said there is gold in Narea; but, after a
very diligent investigation, I find it comes chiefly from towards the
Atlantic.
The kingdom of Narea stands like a fortified place in the middle of a
plain. Many rivers, rising in the fourth and fifth degrees of latitude,
spread themselves, for want of level, over this flat country, and
stagnate in very extensive marshes from south by east, to the point of
north, or north-west.
The foot of the mountains, or edge of these marshes nearest Narea,
is thick overgrown with coffee-trees, which, if not the _only_, is
the _largest_ tree known there. Then comes the mountainous country of
Narea Proper, which is interspersed with small, unwholesome, but very
fertile valleys. Immediately adjoining is the more mountainous country
of Caffa, without any level ground whatever. It is said to be governed
by a separate prince: they were converted to Christianity in the time
of Melec Segued, some time after the conversion of Narea. The Galla,
having settled themselves in all the flat ground to the very edge of
the marshes, have, in great measure, cut off the communication with
Abyssinia for many years together; so that their continuance in the
Christian faith seems very precarious and uncertain, for want of books
and priests to instruct them.
The Nareans of the high country are the lightest in colour of any
people in Abyssinia; but those that live by the borders of the marshes
below are perfect blacks, and have the features and wool of negroes:
whereas all those in the high country of Narea, and still more so in
the stupendous mountains of Caffa, are not so dark as Neopolitans or
Sicilians. Indeed it is said that snow has been seen to lie on the
mountains of Caffa, as also in that high ridge called Dyre and Tegla;
but this I do not believe. Hail has probably been seen to lie there;
but I doubt much whether this can be said of a substance of so loose a
texture as snow.
There is great abundance both of cattle, grain, and all sorts of
provisions in Narea, as well in the high as in the low country. Gold,
which they sell by weight, is the medium of commerce within the country
itself; but coarse cotton cloths, stibium, beads, and incense, are the
articles with which their foreign trade to Angola, and the kingdoms on
the Atlantic, is carried on.
The Nareans are exceedingly brave. Though they have been conquered, and
driven out of the low country, it has been by multitudes--nation after
nation pouring in upon them with a number of horse to which they are
perfect strangers: But now, confined to the mountains, and surrounded
by their marshes and woods, they despise all further attempts of the
Galla, and drive them from their frontiers whenever they approach too
near.
In these skirmishes, or in small robbing parties, those Nareans are
taken, whom the Mahometan merchants sell at Gondar. At Constantinople,
India, or Cairo, the women are more esteemed as slaves than those
of any other part of the world, and the men are reckoned faithful,
active, and intelligent. Both sexes are remarkable for a chearful,
kind disposition, and, if properly treated, soon attach themselves
inviolably to their masters. The language of Narea and Caffa is
peculiar to that country, and is not a dialect of any neighbouring
nation.
Antonio Fernandes in this journey, seeking to go to India by Melinda in
company with Fecur Egzie ambassador, passed through this country; but
none of the Jesuits ever went to Narea with a view of converting the
people, at which I have been often surprised. There was enough of gold
and ignorance to have allured them. That softness and simplicity of
manners for which the Nareans are remarkable, their affection for their
masters and superiors, and firm attachment to them, would have been
great advantages in the hands of the fathers. Every Abyssinian would
have encouraged them at the beginning of this mission; and, if once
they had firmly established themselves in a country of so difficult
access, they might have bid defiance to prince Facilidas, and the
persecution that destroyed the progress of the Catholic faith in that
reign.
From Gonea, in six days they came to the residence of Benero, the
sovereign of the country; since the conquest and conversion under Melec
Segued, he is called Shum. The ambassador and Fernandes were received
by the Benero with an air of constraint and coolness, though with
civility. They found afterwards the cause of this was the insinuation
of a schismatic Abyssinian monk, then at the court of that prince, who
had told him that the errand of the ambassador and missionary to India
was to bring Portuguese troops that way into Abyssinia, which would end
in the destruction of Narea, if it did not begin with it.
Terrified at a danger so near, the Benero called a council, in which
it was resolved that the ambassador should be turned from the direct
road into the kingdom of Bali, to a much more inconvenient, longer, and
dangerous one; and, the ambassador hesitating a little when this was
proposed, the Benero told him plainly, that he would not suffer him to
pass further by any other way than that of Bali.
Bali was once a province belonging to Abyssinia, and was the first
taken from them by the Galla. It is to the north-east of Narea, to the
west of the kingdom of Adel, which separates it from the sea; of which
ample mention has been already made in the beginning of this history.
This was to turn them to Cape Gardefan, the longest journey they could
possibly make by land, and in the middle of their enemies; whereas
the direction of the coast of the Indian Ocean running greatly to the
westward, and towards Melinda, was the shortest journey they could make
by land. Melinda, too, had many rich merchants, who, though Moors, did
yet traffic in the Portuguese settlements on the coast of Malabar, and
had little intelligence or concern with the religious disputes which
raged in Abyssinia.
However, I very much doubt whether this nearest route could be
accomplished, at least by travellers, such as Fecur Egzie, Fernandes,
and their companions, all ignorant of the language, and, therefore,
constantly at the discretion of interpreters, and the malice or private
views of different people through whose hands they must have passed.
The Benero, having thus provided against the dangers with which his
state was threatened, if our travellers went by Melinda, made them
a present of fifty crusades of gold for the necessaries of their
journey; and, as their way lay through the small state of Gingiro, and
an ambassador from the sovereign of that state was then at Narea, he
dispatched that minister in great haste, recommending the Portuguese to
his protection so long as they should be in his territory.
Fecur Egzie and his company set out with the ambassador of Gingiro in a
direction due east; and the first day they arrived at a post of Narea,
where was the officer who was to give them a guard to the frontiers;
and who, after some delay, in order to see what he could extort from
them, at last gave them a party of eighty soldiers to conduct them to
the frontiers.
After four long days journey through countries totally laid waste by
the Galla, keeping scouts constantly before them to give advice of
the first appearance of any enemy, that they might hide themselves in
thickets and bushes; at mid-day they began to descend a very steep
craggy ridge of mountains, when the ambassador of Gingiro, now their
conductor, warned them, that, before they got to the foot of the
mountain, they should enter into a very thick wood to hide themselves
till night, that they might not be discovered by the Galla shepherds
feeding their flocks in the plain below; for only at night, when they
had retired, could those plains be passed in safety.
At four o’clock in the afternoon they began to enter the wood, and were
lucky in getting a violent shower of rain, which dislodged the Galla
sooner than ordinary, and sent them, and their cattle home to their
huts. But it was, at the same time, very disagreeable to our travellers
on account of its excessive coldness. Next day, in the evening,
descending another very rugged chain of mountains, they came to the
banks of the large river Zebeé, as the Portuguese call it; but its true
name is Kibbeé, a name given it by the Mahometan merchants, (the only
travellers in this country) from its whiteness, approaching to the
colour of melted butter, which that word signifies.
The river Zebeé, or Kibbeé, surrounds a great part of the kingdom of
Gingiro. It has been mistaken for the river El Aice, which runs into
Egypt in a course parallel to the Nile, but to the west of it.
Narea seems to be the highest land in the peninsula of Africa, so that
here the rivers begin to run alternately towards the Cape of Good Hope
and Mediterranean; but the descent at first is very small on either
side. In the adjoining latitudes, that is 4° on each side of the Line,
it rains perpetually, so that these rivers, though not rapid, are yet
kept continually full.
This of Zebeé, is universally allowed by the merchants of this country
to be the head of the river Quilimancy, which, passing through such
a tract of land from Narea to near Melinda, must have opened a very
considerable communication with the inland country.
This territory, called Zindero, or Gingiro, is a very small one. The
father and Fecur Egzie rested the sixth day from their setting out
from Narea. The river Zebeé, by the description of Fernandes, seems to
incline from its source in a greater angle than any river on the north
of that partition. He says it carries more water with it than the Nile,
and is infinitely more rapid, so that it would be absolutely impassable
in the season of rains, were it not for large rocks which abound in its
channel.
The passage was truly tremendous; trees were laid from the shore to the
next immediate rock; from that rock to the next another tree was laid;
then another that reached to the shore. These trees were so elastic as
to bend with the weight of a single person. At a great distance below
ran the foaming current of the river, so deep an abyss that it turned
the heads of those who were passing on the moveable elastic support or
bridge above.
Yet upon this seeming inconvenience the existence of that country
depended. The Galla that surrounded it would have over-run it in a
month, but for this river, always rapid and always full, whose ordinary
communication by a bridge could be destroyed in a moment; and which,
though it had one ford, yet this was useless, unless passengers had
assistance from both sides of the river, and consequently could never
be of service to an enemy.
The terrible appearance of this tottering bridge for a time stopped
the ambassador and missionary. They looked upon the passing upon these
trembling beams as certainly incurring inevitable destruction. But the
reflection of dangers that pressed them behind overcame these fears,
and they preferred the resolution to run the risk of being drowned in
the river Zebeé, rather than, by staying on the other side all night,
to stand the chance of being murdered by the Galla. But, after all the
men only could pass the bridge, they were obliged to leave the mules
on the other side till the next morning, with instructions to their
people, that, upon the first appearance of the Galla, they should leave
them, and make their best way over the bridge, throwing down one of the
trees after them. The next morning, two peasants, subjects of Gingiro,
shewed them the ford, where their beasts passed over with great
difficulty and danger, but without loss.
It was necessary now to acquaint the king of Gingiro of their arrival
in his kingdom, and to beg to be honoured with an audience. But he
happened at that time to be employed in the more important business of
conjuration and witchcraft, without which this sovereign does nothing.
This kingdom of Gingiro may be fixed upon as the first on this side
of Africa where we meet with the strange practice of divining from
the apparition of spirits, and from a direct communication with the
devil: A superstition this which likewise reaches down all along the
western side of this continent on the Atlantic Ocean, in the countries
of Congo, Angola, and Benin. In spite of the firmest foundation in
true philosophy, a traveller, who decides from the information and
investigation of facts, will find it very difficult to treat these
appearances as absolute fiction, or as owing to a superiority of
cunning of one man in over-reaching another. For my own part, I confess
I am equally at a loss to assign reasons for disbelieving the fiction
on which their pretensions to some preternatural information are
founded, as to account for them by the operation of ordinary causes.
The king of Gingiro found eight days necessary before he could admit
the ambassador and Fernandes into his presence. On the ninth, they
received a permission to go to court, and they arrived there the same
day.
When they came into the presence of the king he was seated in a large
gallery, open before, like what we call a balcony, which had steps from
below on the outside, by which he ascended and descended at pleasure.
When the letter which the ambassador carried was intimated to him, he
came down from the gallery to receive it, a piece of respect which he
shewed to the king of Abyssinia, though he was neither his subject nor
vassal. He inquired much after the king’s health, and stood a little by
the ambassador and Fernandes, speaking by an interpreter. Afterwards
he again returned to his balcony, sat down there, read his letter, and
then corresponded with the ambassador by messages sent from above to
them below.
It is impossible to conceive from this, or any thing that Fernandes
says, whether the language of Gingiro is peculiar to that country or
not. The king of Gingiro read Socinios’s letter, which was either in
the Tigré or Arabic language. Fernandes understood the Arabic, and
Fecur Egzie the Tigré and Amharic. It is not possible, then, to know
what was the language of the king of Gingiro, who read and understood
Socinios’s letter, but spoke to Fecur Egzie by an interpreter.
At last the king of Gingiro told them, that all contained in the king
of Abyssinia’s letter was, that he should use them well, give them good
guard and protection while they were in his country, and further them
on their journey; which he said he would execute with the greatest
pleasure and punctuality.
The next day, as is usual, the ambassador and missionary carried the
king’s present, chints, calicoe, and other manufactures of India,
things that the king esteemed most. In return to Fernandes he sent a
young girl, whom the father returned, it not being customary, as he
said, for a Christian priest to have girls in his company. In exchange
for the girl, the good-natured king of Gingiro sent him a slave of the
other sex, and a beautiful mule. With all respect to the scruples of
the father, I think it would have been fair to have kept the beautiful
mule, and given the young female Gingerite to his companion in the
journey, Fecur Egzie, who could have had no scruples.
Fernandes says he received the boy from the only view of saving his
soul by baptism. I wonder, since Providence had thrown the girl first
in his way, by what rule of charity it was he consigned her soul to
perdition by returning her, as he was not certain at the time that he
might not have got a mule or camel in exchange for the girl; and then,
upon his own principles, he certainly was author of the perdition of
that soul which Providence seemed to have conducted by an extraordinary
way to the enjoyment of all the advantages of Christianity; surely the
care of Neophytes of the female sex was not a new charge to the Jesuits
in Abyssinia.
It seems to be ridiculous for Fernandes to imagine that the sovereign
of this little state called himself Gingiro, knowing that this word
signified a monkey. His enemies might give him that name; but it is
not likely he would adopt it himself. And the reason of that name is
still more ridiculous; for he says it is because the gallery is like
a monkey’s cage. If that was the case, all the princes in Congo and
Angola give their audiences in such places. Indeed, it seems to me that
it is here the customs, used in these last-mentioned parts of Africa,
begin, although Gingiro is nearer the coast of the Indian Ocean than
that of the Atlantic. The colour of the people at Gingiro is nearly
black, still it is not the black of a negro; the features are small
and straight as in Europe or Abyssinia.
All matters in this state are conduced by magic; and we may see to
what point the human understanding is debased in the distance of a
few leagues. Let no man say that ignorance is the cause, or heat
of climate, which is the unintelligible observation generally made
on these occasions. For why should heat of climate addict a people
to magic more than cold? or, why should ignorance enlarge a man’s
powers, so that, overleaping the bounds of common intelligence, it
should extend his faculty of conversing with a new set of beings in
another world? The Ethiopians, who nearly surround Abyssinia, are
blacker than those of Gingiro, their country hotter, and are, like
them, an indigenous people that have been, from the beginning, in the
same part where they now inhabit. Yet the former neither adore the
devil, nor pretend to have a communication with him: they have no
human sacrifices, nor are there any traces of such enormities having
prevailed among them. A communication with the sea has been always
open, and the slave-trade prevalent from the earliest times; while the
king of Gingiro, shut up in the heart of the continent, sacrifices
those slaves to the devil which he has no opportunity to sell to man.
For at Gingiro begins that accursed custom of making the shedding
of human blood a necessary part in all solemnities. How far to the
southward this reaches I do not know; but I look upon this to be the
geographical bounds of the reign of the devil on the north side of the
equator in the peninsula of Africa.
This kingdom is hereditary in one family, but does not descend in
course to the eldest son, the election of the particular prince being
in the nobles; and thus far, indeed, it seems to resemble that of their
neighbours in Abyssinia.
When the king of Gingiro dies, the body of the deceased is wrapped in
a fine cloth, and a cow is killed. They then put the body so wrapped
up into the cow’s skin. As soon as this is over, all the princes
of the royal family fly and hide themselves in the bushes; while
others, intrusted with the election, enter into the thickets, beating
everywhere about as if looking for game. At last a bird of prey, called
in their country Liber, appears, and hovers over the person destined to
be king, crying and making a great noise without quitting his station.
By this means the person destined to be elected is found, surrounded,
as is reported, by tigers, lions, panthers, and suchlike wild beasts.
This is imagined to be done by magic, or the devil, else there are
everywhere enough of these beasts lying in the cover to furnish
materials for such a tale, without having recourse to the power of
magic to assemble them.
As they find their king, then, like a wild beast, so his behaviour
continues the same after he is found. He flies upon them with great
rage, resisting to the last, wounding and killing all he can reach
without any consideration, till, overcome by force, he is dragged to
a throne, which he fills in a manner perfectly corresponding to the
rationality of the ceremonies of his instalment.
Although there are many that have a right to seek after this king, yet,
when he is discovered, it does not follow, that the same person who
finds him should carry him to his coronation; for there is a family
who have a right to dispute this honour with the first possessor; and,
therefore, in his way from the wood, they set upon the people in whose
hands he is, and a battle ensues, where several are killed or wounded;
and if these last, by force, can take him out of the hands of the first
finder, they enjoy all the honours due to him that made him king.
Before he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot
of the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at
the threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the
victim. And, it is said, (I have heard this often in Abyssinia from
people coming from that country) that the particular family, whose
priviledge it is to be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in
the occasion, and offer themselves willingly to meet it.--To return to
our travellers--
The father and the ambassador, leaving the kingdom of Gingiro,
proceeded in a direction due east, and entered the kingdom of Cambat,
depending still on the empire of Abyssinia, and there halted at
Sangara, which seems to be the principal place of the province,
governed at that time by a Moor called _Amelmal_.
On the left of Cambat are the Guragués, who live in some beggarly
villages, but mostly in caves and holes in the mountains. The father
was detained two days at Sangara, at the persuasion of the inhabitants
there, who told him there was a fair in the neighbourhood, and people
would pass in numbers to accompany him, so that there would be no
danger. But, after staying that time at Sangara, he found that the
intention of this delay was only to give time to some horsemen of the
Guragués to assemble, in order to attack the caravan on the road, which
they did soon after; and, though they were repulsed, yet it was with
loss of one of the company, a young man related to Socinios, who, being
wounded with a poisoned arrow, died some days after.
In the mean time, an Abyssinian, called _Manquer_, overtook their
caravan. As he was a schismatic, his intention was very well known
to be that of disappointing their journey; and he prevailed with
Amelmal so far as to make him suspect that the recommendations which
the ambassador brought were false. He, therefore, insisted on the
ambassador’s staying there till he should get news from court. Amelmal,
Manquer, and the ambassador, each dispatched a messenger, who tarried
three months on the road, and at last brought orders from the king to
dispatch them immediately.
As Amelmal now saw the bad inclination of Manquer, he detained him
at Cambat that he might occasion no more difficulties in their way.
He gave the ambassador likewise seven horses, which were said to be
the best presents to the princes or governors that were in his road,
and dispatched the travellers with another companion, Baharo, who had
brought the letters from the king.
From Cambat they entered the small territory of Alaba, independent of
the king of Abyssinia, whose governor was called _Aliko_, a Moor. This
man, already prejudiced against the missionary and the ambassador,
was still hesitating whether to allow them to proceed, when Manquer,
who fled from Amelmal, arrived. Aliko, hearing from this incendiary,
that the father’s errand was to bring Portuguese that way from India
to destroy the Mahometan faith, as in former times, burst into such
violent rage as to threaten the father, and all with him, with death,
which nothing but the reality of the king’s letters, of which he had
got assurance from Baharo, and some regard to the law of nations,
on account of the ambassador Fecur Egzie, could have prevented. In
the mean time, he put them all in close prison, where several of the
Portuguese died. At last, after a council held, in which Manquer gave
his voice for putting them to death, a man of superior character in
that country advised the sending them back to Amelmal, the way that
they came; and this measure was accordingly adopted.
They returned, therefore, from Cambat, and thence to Gorgora, without
any sort of advantage to themselves or to us, only what arises
from that opportunity of rectifying the geography of the country
through which they passed; and even for this they have furnished but
very scanty materials, in comparison of what we might reasonably
have expected, without having occasioned any additional fatigue to
themselves.
We have already said, that though Socinios had not openly declared his
resolution of embracing the Catholic faith, yet he had gone so far as
to declare, upon the dispute held between the Catholic and schismatic
clergy, in his own presence and that of the Abuna, that the Abyssinian
disputants were vanquished, and ought to have been convinced from the
authority of their own books, especially that of Haimanout Abou, the
faith of the ancient fathers and doctors of their church received
by them from the beginning as the undoubted rule of faith: That the
doctrine of the Catholic church being only what was taught in the
Haimanout Abou concerning the two natures in Christ, this point was to
all intents and purposes settled; and, therefore, he signified it as
his will, that, for the future, no one should deny that there are two
natures in Christ, distinct in themselves, but divinely united in one
person, which was Christ; declaring at the same time, that in case any
person should hereafter deny, or call this in doubt, he would chastise
him for seven years.
The Abuna, on the contrary, supported by the half-brother of the king,
Emana Christos, (brother to Ras Sela Christos) published a sentence
of excommunication, by affixing it to the door of one of the churches
belonging to the palace, in which he declared all persons accursed who
should maintain two natures in Christ, or embrace or vindicate any of
the errors of the church of Rome.
The king had received various complaints of the Agows, who had abused
his officers, and refused payment of tribute. He had set out upon an
expedition against them, intending to winter in that country; but,
hearing of the rash conduct of the Abuna, and the leagues that were in
consequence everywhere forming against him, he returned to Gorgora,
and sent to the Abuna, that unless, without delay, he recalled the
excommunication he had published, he should be forthwith punished with
loss of his head. This language was too clear and explicit to admit a
doubt of its meaning; and the Abuna, giving way for the time, recalled
his excommunication.
A conspiracy was next formed by Emana Christos, the eunuch Kefla Wahad
master of the household to the king, and Julius governor of Tigré,
to murder Socinios in his palace; for which purpose they desired an
audience upon weighty affairs, which being granted by the king, the
three conspirators were admitted into his presence.
It was concerted that Julius should present a petition of such a nature
as probably to produce a refusal; and, in the time of the altercation
that would ensue, when the king might be off his guard, the other two
were to stab him.
Just before the conversation began, he was advised of his danger
by a page, and Julius presenting his petition, the king granted it
immediately, before Emana Christos could come up to assist in the
dispute which they expected; and this conspirator appearing in the
instant, the king, who had got up to walk, invited them all three up
to the terrace. This was the most favourable opportunity they could
have wished. They, therefore, deferred assaulting him till they should
have got up to the terrace: The king entered the door of the private
stair, and drew it hastily after him. It had a spring-lock made by
Peter Paez, which was fixed in the inside, and could not be opened from
without, so that the king was left secure upon the terrace. Upon this
the conspirators, fearing themselves discovered, retired, and from that
time resolved to keep out of the king’s power.
At that period, Socinios had determined upon an expedition against the
Funge, that is, against the blacks of Sennaar, who had entered his
country in a violent manner, destroying his people, and carrying them
off as slaves. It was, therefore, concerted, that while the king was
busied far off with the Funge, Emana Christos, Julius, and the eunuch
Kefla, at once should attack Sela Christos, at whom, next to the king,
the conspirators chiefly aimed; and the cause was, that the king had
taken the posts of Ras and the government of Gojam from Emana Christos,
who was a schismatic, and had given them to his younger brother, Sela
Christos, a violent Catholic.
Julius began by a proclamation in Woggora, in which he commanded, that
those who believed two natures in Christ should immediately leave the
province, and that all those who were friends to the Alexandrian faith
should forthwith repair to him, and fight in defence of it. He then
ordered the goods of all the Catholics in Tigré to be confiscated, and
straightway marched to surprise Sela Christos then in Gojam. But the
king received intelligence of his designs, and returned into Dembea
before it was well known that he had left it. This, at first, very much
disconcerted Julius; and the rather, that Emana Christos and Kefla
Wahad kept aloof, nor had they declared themselves openly yet, nor did
they seem inclined to do it till Julius had first tried his fortune
with the king.
This rebel, now full of presumption, advanced with his army to where
the Nile issues out of the great lake Tzana; and there he found the
Abuna Simon, who had staid for some weeks in one of the islands upon
pretence of devotion. Simon, after having confirmed Julius in his
resolution of murdering the king, his father-in-law, or of dying in
defence of the Alexandrian faith, if necessary, persuaded him to
lay aside his design of marching against Sela Christos, but rather
immediately to return back and surprise the king before these two
joined.
Julius readily adopted this advice of the Abuna; while that priest, to
shew he was sincere, offered to accompany him in person, and share his
fortune. This was accepted with pleasure by Julius, who next morning
received the Abuna’s benediction at the head of his army, and assisted
at a solemn excommunication pronounced against the king, Sela Christos,
the fathers, and all the Catholics at court.
The king’s first thought, upon hearing these proceedings, was to send
some troops to the assistance of Sela Christos, warning him of his
danger; but, upon hearing measures were changed, and that the first
design was against himself, he marched to meet Julius, and sent a
message to Sela Christos to join him with all possible speed; and, as
he was an excellent general, he took his post so judiciously that he
could not be forced to fight against his will till succour was brought
him, without great disadvantage to the enemy.
Julius, fearing the junction of Sela Christos, endeavoured to fight
the two armies separately. For which purpose he advanced and pitched
his camp close within sight of that of Socinios, resolving to force
him to an engagement. This was thought a very dangerous measure, and
was contrary to the advice of all his friends, who saw how judiciously
Socinios had chosen his ground; and it was known to the meanest
soldier on both sides, how consummate the king was in the art of war.
But the Abuna having persuaded him, that, as soon as the soldiers
should see him, they would abandon the king and join his colours, early
in the morning he put on his coat of mail, and, mounted on a strong
and fiery horse, was proceeding to the king’s camp, when Malacotawit,
his wife, (daughter to Socinios) persuaded him at least to take some
food to enable him to bear the fatigues of the day. But disdaining such
advice, he only answered furiously, “That he had sworn not to taste
meat till he had brought her her father’s head;” and, without longer
waiting for the rest of his troops, he leaped over the enemy’s lines in
a quarter where the Abuna had promised he should be well received.
Indeed, on his first appearance, no one there opposed his passage, but
seemed rather inclined to favour him as the Abuna had promised: And he
had now advanced near to a body of Tigré soldiers that were the guard
of the king’s tent, loudly crying, “Where is your emperor?” when one
of these with a stone struck him so rudely upon the forehead that it
felled him to the ground; and, being now known, another soldier (called
Amda) thrust him through with a sword, and thereafter killed him with
many wounds. His head was cut off and carried to Socinios.
The few that attended him perished likewise among the soldiers. Nor did
any of Julius’s army think of a battle, but all sought their safety
by a flight. The king’s troops being all fresh, pursued the scattered
rebels with great vigour, and many were slain, without any loss on the
part of the royalists.
The Abuna Simon had, for a considerable time, stood as an ecclesiastic,
unhurt and unheeded, among the flying troops. Being at last
distinguished by his violent vociferation, and repeated imprecations
upon the king and the conquerors, he was slain by a common soldier, who
cut his head off and carried it to Socinios, who ordered it, with the
body, to be taken from the field of battle and buried in a church-yard.
Socinios gave the spoil of the camp to his soldiers. It was said,
that no time, since the Turks were defeated under Mahomet Gragnè,
was there ever so much treasure found in a camp. The pride of Julius
induced him to carry all his riches with him. They were the fruits
of avarice and oppression in all the principal posts of the empire,
and which in their turn he had enjoyed. They were likewise the spoils
of the Catholics, newly acquired by the confiscations made since his
rebellion. A great number of cattle was likewise taken, which the king
distributed among the priests of the several churches, the judges, and
other lay-officers. Very great rejoicings were made everywhere, in the
midst of which arrived Ras Sela Christos with his army from Gojam, and
was struck with astonishment on seeing the small number of troops with
which the king had been exposed to fight Julius, and how complete a
victory he had gained with them.
In the mean time, Emana Christos had retired to a high mountain in
Gojam, called _Melca Amba_, where he continued to excite the people
of that province to rebel and join Julius, whose arrival he daily
expected, that, together, they might fight Sela Christos. But the
rashness of Julius, and the march of Sela Christos to the king’s
assistance, had very much disconcerted their whole scheme.
Af Christos, who commanded in Gojam after the departure of Ras Sela
Christos, sent to Melca Amba, “reproaching Emana Christos with
seditious practices; upbraiding him with the unnatural part he acted,
being a brother-german to Sela Christos, and brother to Socinios by
the same mother, while Julius was married to his daughter, and had
constantly enjoyed the great places of the empire. He asked him, What
they could be more? Kings they could not be, neither he nor Julius.
Ras, the next place in the empire, they both had enjoyed; and, if the
king had taken that office lately from Emana Christos, he had not given
it to a stranger, but to his brother Sela Christos, who, it was but
fair, should have his turn; and that the importance of his family was
not the less increased by it. Lastly, he represented the danger he ran,
if Julius made his peace, of falling a sacrifice as the adviser of the
rebellion.”
Emana Christos answered, “That though he rebelled with Julius, and at
the same time, yet it was not as a follower of Julius, nor against
the king; but that he took up arms in defence of the ancient faith
of his country, which was now, without reason, trodden under foot in
favour of a religion, which was a false one if they understood it, and
an useless one if they did not. He said he was satisfied of his own
danger; but neither his connection with the king, nor his being related
to Sela Christos, could weigh with him against his duty to God and
his country. The king and his brother might be right in embracing the
Romish religion, because they were convinced of the truth of it: he had
used, however, the same means, and the same application, had heard the
arguments of the same fathers, which, unluckily for him, had convinced
him their religion was not a true, but a false one. For the same
reasons he continued to be an Alexandrian, which his brother alledged
had made him a Roman. He, therefore, begged Af Christos to consider,
by a review of things since David III.‘s time, how much blood the
change would cost to the kingdom by the attempt, whether it succeeded
or not; and whether, after that consideration, it was worth trying the
experiment.”
This artful and sensible message, sent by a man of the capacity and
experience of Emana Christos, easily convinced Af Christos that it was
not by argument Emana Christos was to be brought to his duty; but, like
a good officer, he kept up correspondence with him, that he might be
master of the intelligence to what place he retired.
Soon after Sela Christos had left Gojam to join the king, by forced
marches he surrounded Melca Amba, where Emana Christos was, and had
assembled a number of troops to descend into the plain and create a
diversion in favour of Julius. The mountain had neither water in it nor
food for such a number of men, nor had Emana Christos forces enough to
risk a battle with an officer of the known experience of Af Christos,
who had chosen the ground at his full leisure, and with complete
knowledge of it.
Three days the army within the mountain held out without complaining;
but, in the evening of the third day, some monks and hermits
(_holy men_, the abettors of this rebellion) came to Af Christos
to remonstrate, that there were several convents and villages in
the mountain, also small springs, and barley enough to answer the
necessities of the ordinary inhabitants, but were not enough for such
an additional number which had taken forcible possession of the wells,
and drank up all the water, to the immediate danger of the whole
inhabitants perishing with thirst.
To this Af Christos answered, That the reducing the mountain, and the
taking Emana Christos, was what was given him in commission by the
king, to attain which end he would carefully improve all the means in
his power. He was sorry, indeed, for the distress of the convents in
the mountain, but could not help it; nor would he suffer one of them to
remove or come down into the plain, nor would he discontinue blockading
the mountain while Emana Christos was there and alive. No other
alternative, therefore, remained but the delivering up Emana Christos.
His army would have fought for him against a common enemy, but against
thirst their shields and swords were useless.
Af Christos, with his prisoner, forthwith proceeded to join the king,
and passed the Nile into Begemder. At crossing the river Bashilo, they
were informed of the defeat and death of Julius and the Abuna. The
messenger had also letters for Emana Christos, whom the king did not
know to be yet prisoner: among these was one from Sela Christos, in
which he upbraided his brother with his unnatural treason, and assured
him speedily of a fate like that of Julius. Emana Christos received
this intelligence almost dead with fear, for never was a prophecy made
which seemed to have needed less time to accomplish than this of his
brother’s.
Af Christos surrendered his prisoner to the king at Dancaz, who
immediately assembled a full convocation of judges of all degrees;
and the prisoner being ordered to answer to his charge concerning the
rebellion of Julius and his conspiracy against the king’s life, he took
the part he had been advised, and palliated the whole of his actions,
without positively denying any one of them, and submitted to the
king’s mercy. The judges, considering the defence, unanimously found
him guilty of death; but the king, whose last vote, when sitting in
judgment, supersedes and overturns all the rest, reprieved, and sent
him prisoner to Amhara.
Hitherto the king had contented himself with fixing two points in
favour of the Roman church, in contradiction to that of Alexandria.
The first denounced punishment to every one who did not believe that
there are two natures in Christ, and that he is perfect God and perfect
man, without confusion of persons. The second was rather a point of
discipline than of faith; yet it was urged as such, by declaring it to
be unlawful to observe Saturday, the ancient Jewish sabbath. The first
of these, if it was not the cause, had been assumed as the pretext for
the rebellion of Julius. The second produced that of Jonael governor of
Begemder, of which we are now to speak. But thus far only the king had
gone. He had not openly joined the church of Rome, nor as yet renounced
that of Alexandria, nor forced any one else to do so.
The first prelude to Jonael’s rebellion was an anonymous letter
written to the king, in which all the stale and lame arguments of
the Alexandrians were raked together, and stated with a degree of
presumption worthy of the ignorance and obstinacy of those from
whom they came. This, though ridiculous, and below notice in point
of argument, offended greatly both the king and the Jesuits, by the
asperity of its terms, and the personal applications contained in it.
The king was treated as another Dioclesian, thirsting after Christian
blood, and for this devoted to hell; as were also the Jesuits, whom
they called relations of Pilate, in allusion to their origin from Rome.
The king, grievously offended, added this injunction to the former
proclamation, “That all out-door work, such as plowing and sowing,
should be publicly followed by the husbandman on the Saturday, under
penalty of paying a web of cotton cloth, for the first omission, which
cloth was to be of five shillings value; and the second offence, was
to be punished by a confiscation of moveables, and the crime not to be
pardoned for seven years;”--the greatest punishment for misdemeanors in
Abyssinia. To this Socinios added, _vivâ-voce_, from his throne, that
he never _abolished_, but _explained_ and established their religion,
which always taught, as their own books could testify, that Christ
was perfect God and perfect man, two distinct natures united in one
hypostasis of the eternal word; neither was it in compliance with the
Jesuits that he abrogated the observation of the Jewish sabbath, but
in obedience to the council of Chalcedon, which was founded in the
holy scriptures, for which he was ready at all times to lose his life,
though he should endeavour first to inflict that punishment on such as
were its enemies.
In order to shew that he did not mean to trifle, he ordered the tongue
of a monk (called Abba Af Christos) to be cut out, for denying the
two natures in Christ; and Buco, one of the principal generals of his
court (who afterwards died a zealous Catholic) he ordered to be beaten
with rods, and degraded from his employment, for observing the Jewish
sabbath.
The king, having given these public, unequivocal testimonies of his
resolution, put himself at the head of his army, and marched against
Jonael; but that rebel, not daring to meet his offended sovereign,
retired into the mountains; whereupon the king laid waste the country
of the Galla, who had protected him. This occasioned a division among
the Galla themselves. One party declaring for the king, apprehended
Jonael with intention to deliver him up; but he was soon rescued out of
their hands by the contrary party, enemies to Socinios. His protectors
being once known, the manner of working his destruction was soon
known likewise. The king’s presents made their way to that faithless
people, the only barbarians with whom the right of hospitality is not
established. Upon receiving the king’s bribe, they murdered Jonael, cut
his head off, and sent it to the king.
The rebellion in Damot was not so easily quelled. Sela Christos,
a zealous Catholic, was sent against the rebels to inforce the
proclamation with regard to the sabbath. But as his connections
were very considerable among them, he chose first to endeavour, by
fair means, to induce the ignorant savages to return to reason and
obedience. With this view, he sent to expostulate with them; and to
beg that, in articles of faith, they would suffer themselves to be
examined and instructed by men of learning and good life; not by those
monks, ignorant like themselves, from whom they only could learn vice,
blasphemy, and rebellion. To this the Damots answered, as one man,
That, if his friendship for them and good intentions were real, he
should give them, for proof, the immediate burning of all the Latin
books which had been translated into the Ethiopian language, and that,
then, he should hang those Jesuits who were with him upon a high tree.
We are not, however, to consider this was really from a conviction or
persuasion of the Damots, who inhabit a province bordering upon the
Agows and Gongas, and their Christianity much upon a par with that
of either of these nations. But the fact was, that the fanatics and
zealots for the Alexandrian faith had retired in great numbers to
Damot, as to a province the worst affected to the king, from the recent
violence of Julius, who, in an expedition against the Shangalla, by
order of the king had driven off the cattle of the peaceable Damots,
who had been then guilty of no offence. And as these were ready
to rebel for a quarrel merely their own, it was very easy for the
schismatical monks to add this religious grievance to the sum of the
preceding.
Sela Christos had with him about 7000 men, most of them Catholics and
veteran soldiers; and among these 40 Portuguese, partly on foot, armed
with musquets, the others on horseback, clad in coats of mail. Very
different was the army of Damots. They were superior in number for they
exceeded 12000 men, and among these were 400 monks, well armed with
swords, lances, and shields, earnestly bent upon the obtaining a crown
of martyrdom in defence of their religion, from the innovation proposed
by Socinios. At the head of these was a fanatical monk (one Batacu) who
promised them armies of angels, with flaming swords, who should slay
their enemies, but render them invulnerable, as he declared himself to
be, either by sword or lance.
The battle was fought at the foot of the mountains of Amid Amid, on the
6th of October 1620. Sela Christos, sure of victory, and unwilling to
slaughter a people he had been used to protect, began first to shew his
superiority in slight skirmishes. After which, desiring a parley, he
sent messengers to them, begging them to consider their own danger, and
offering them a general amnesty upon their submission. These messengers
were not allowed to approach, for showers of arrows that were poured
upon them; so the battle began with great animosity on both sides. The
Damots were soon broken and put to flight by the superiority of Sela
Christos’s soldiers. But the 400 monks, already mentioned, fought most
desperately in defiance of numbers, nor did they seek their safety
by a flight. One hundred and eighty of them were killed on the place
they occupied, valiantly fighting to the very last. A rare example,
and seldom found in history, that fanatics like these, always ready to
rebel, should persist and sacrifice their lives to the follies of their
own preaching.
As for their celestial auxiliaries, whose assistance they were promised
as far as could be discovered, they neither did harm nor good. We may
suppose they stood neuter. But Batacu the hermit, ringleader of this
sedition, whose body was so miraculously armed, that neither sword
nor spear could make any impression upon it, was unfortunately thrust
through with a lance in the very beginning of the engagement, which
greatly served to discredit these supernatural aids.
It was in this year 1620, that Socinios marched into Begemder against
Jonael. At which time Peter Paez was employed at Gorgora in building
the church there. The king returned immediately to Dancaz after the
defeat of Jonael, and passed his winter at that place.
It was on the 16th of January 1621, that the dedication of the church
of Gorgora was made by Peter Paez; and at that time the king was in
Begemder. Upon his return to Dancaz he met Paez at Gorgora for the
first time. He remained at Gorgora till the 3d of October of that year,
when the news of the defeat of the Damots by Sela Christos arrived,
which he received in presence of that priest at Gorgora. In this, both
the Jesuits and Abyssinian annals agree. It is not then possible that
Peter Paez could have been with the king at Sacala, or Geesh, in the
country of the Agows on the 21st of March 1621[57]; for both Peter Paez
and Socinios were at that time in Gorgora.
At this time the Ethiopic memoirs of Socinios’s reign interrupted their
continual topics of rebellion and bloodshed, to record a very trifling
anecdote; which, however, I insert, as it serves to give some idea of
the simplicity and ignorance of those times.
The historian says, that this year there was brought into Abyssinia,
a bird called _Para_, which was about the bigness of a hen, and spoke
all languages; Indian, Portuguese, and Arabic. It named the king’s
name: although its voice was that of a man, it could likewise neigh
like a horse, and mew like a cat, but did not sing like a bird. It was
produced before the assembly of judges, of the priests, and the azages
of court, and there it spoke with great gravity. The assembly, after
considering circumstances well, were unanimously of opinion, that the
evil spirit had no part in endowing it with these talents. But to be
certain of this, it was thought most prudent to take the advice of Ras
Sela Christos, then in Gojam, who might, if he thought fit, consult the
superior of Mahebar Selassé; to them it was sent, but it died on the
road. The historian closes his narrative by this wise reflection on the
parrot’s death; “Such is the lot of all flesh.”
The king, immediately after his victory over Jonael, had resolved to
throw off the mask, and openly to profess the Catholic religion. The
success of Sela Christos against the Damots had confirmed him. He had
passed the rainy season, as I have before observed, between Gorgora
and Dancaz; and, in the usual time, in the month of November, marched
to Foggora, a narrow stripe of plain country, reaching from Emfras to
Dara, bounded on one side by the lake Dembea, and on the other by the
mountains of Begemder.
For this purpose he sent to Peter Paez, his ordinary confessor, to
come to him; and, having told him his resolution, he declared, that,
in proof of the sincerity of his conversion, he had put away all his
wives (of whom he had several of the first quality, and many children
by them) and retained only his first, by whom he had the eldest of his
sons, destined to succeed him in the empire.
Paez, having received his confession, and public renunciation of the
Alexandrian faith, returned to Gorgora singing his _nunc dimittis_,
as if the great end of his mission was now completed; nor was he
deceived in his prognostication. For, having too much heated himself
with zeal in travelling, he was, upon his arrival, taken with a violent
fever; and, tho’ every sort of remedy was administered to him by
Antonio Fernandes, yet he died on the third of May 1623, with great
demonstrations of piety and resignation, and firm conviction, that he
had done his duty in an active, innocent, and well-spent life.
He had been seven years a captive in Arabia in the hands of the Moors,
and nineteen years missionary in Abyssinia, in the worst of times, and
had always extricated himself from the most perilous situations, with
honour to himself and advantage to his religion. In person, he was very
tall and strong; but lean from continual labour and abstinence. He was
red faced; which, Tellez says, proceeded from the religious _warmth_ of
his heart. He had a very good understanding, which he had cultivated,
every hour of his life, by study or practice.
Besides possessing universal knowledge in scholastic divinity, and the
books belonging to his profession, he understood Greek, Latin, and
Arabic well, was a good mathematician, an excellent mechanic, wrought
always with his own hands, and in building was at once a careful,
active labourer, and an architect of refined taste and judgment. He
was, by his own study and industry, painter, mason, carver, carpenter,
smith, farrier, quarrier, and was able to build convents and palaces,
and furnish them without calling one workman to his assistance; and in
this manner he is said to have furnished the convent at Collela, as
also the palace and convent at Gorgora.
With all these accomplishments, he was so affable, compassionate, and
humble in his nature, that he never had opportunity of conversing, even
with heretics, without leaving them his friends. He was remarkably
chearful in his temper; and the most forward always in promoting
innocent mirth, of that puerile species which we in England call _fun_,
in great request among the young men in Abyssinia, who spend much
of their time in this sort of conversation, whether in the city or
the camp. Above all, he was a patient, diligent instructor of youth;
and the greatest part of his disciples died in the persecution that
soon followed, resolutely maintaining the truths of that religion
their preceptor first had taught them. In a word, he was the hinge
upon which the Catholic religion turned. He had found the seeds of it
sown in the country for a hundred years before his time, which had
borne little fruit, and was then apparently on the decline. Nineteen
years of this most active missionary, and the death of three kings,
had advanced it only so far as to be embraced publicly by one of
them; after Paez’s death, in six years it fell, though supported most
strenuously by a king prodigal of the blood of his subjects in this
cause, by a patriarch sent from Rome, and by above 20 very zealous and
active missionaries; and, as far as my foresight can carry me, it is
so entirely fallen, that, unless by a special miracle of Providence
wrought for that purpose, it never will rise again.
The king’s renunciation of the Alexandrian faith was followed by a
very strong, or rather violent manifesto, and we need not be at a loss
to guess whom he employed to draw it up. It begins by asserting the
supremacy of the church of Rome, as the see of St Peter; it mentions
the three first general councils, which condemned Arius, Macedonius,
and Nestorius; next quotes the council of Chalcedon, as the fourth
general council, as having justly condemned Dioscurus; but says not
a word of the council of Ephesus, which the Abyssinians receive
instead of that of Chalcedon; insists largely upon the two natures in
Christ; then, leaving the patriarchs of Alexandria, it attacks not
the doctrine, but the morals of the Abunas, sent from Alexandria into
Abyssinia, accuses the ecclesiastics in general of simony and paying
money to the Abuna for their ordination, (a well-founded part of the
charge) which I fear continues to this day.
The Abuna Marcus was, it is there said, convicted by Socinios, or
Melec Segued, of a crime of such turpitude that the name of it should
never stain paper. He was degraded and banished to the island of Dek.
His successor Christodulus had many concubines. Abuna Petros, who
succeeded, took the wife of a poor Egyptian, and lived with her; he
then excommunicated his sovereign Jacob, after he had reigned seven
years, and died in battle in the actual commission of treason, fighting
against the prince.
Simon, the last Abuna, besides living in adultery with the wife of an
Egyptian called Matti, kept several young women with him as concubines;
and being detected in having a daughter by one of them, with a view to
conceal it, he caused the child to be exposed to be devoured by the
hyæna. After living in constant disobedience to God’s law, he joined
the crime of rebellion to the repeated breach of every command in the
decalogue; and appearing in battle, and excommunicating his sovereign,
God (says the manifesto) delivered him into our victorious hands, and
he was slain by a common soldier in the very commission of his crime.
It must be owned, we cannot have a worse picture of any Christian
church than that here given of the bishop’s church of Alexandria.
Charity should induce us to hope some exaggeration had crept into it.
Yet when we consider that the facts mentioned were all within the space
of forty years, and consequently must have been within the knowledge,
not only of Socinios, but of many people then alive and at court, we
cannot, with the impartiality of an historian, deny our apprehensions,
that these charges were but too-well founded.
However this may be, neither the king’s example, nor his manifesto,
had the effect he desired. A rebel, whom the annals call the son of
Gabriel, declared himself against the king in Amhara, just at the time
that Socinios, misled by the enemies of Sela Christos, had begun
to entertain suspicion of his loyalty, and had deprived him of the
government of Gojam and the Agows. Finding, after an examination, there
was no person that was qualified to bring this affair to a happy issue
but Sela Christos, he replaced him in his government of Gojam, giving
him, at the same time, orders to march against the son of Gabriel, into
Amhara.
This command of the king, Ras Sela Christos soon complied with, and,
upon his first appearance in that province, the rebel retired to a
high mountain which he made his place of arms, the top producing both
provisions and water sufficient to maintain a large garrison.
The Ras, seeing that force availed nothing, had recourse to the usual
trap these rebels fall into. Weary of confinement on the mountain,
sensible that he was by himself too weak to leave it, while such
an enemy expected him below, he accepted the friendship of the
neighbouring Galla, who offered to join him in such numbers as to
enable him to descend from the mountain, and try his fortune in a
battle. The treaty was concluded, and the junction no sooner effected,
than the faithless Galla, before gained by the Ras, fell upon the son
of Gabriel with their clubs, and killed him on the spot, having so
mangled his body that scarce a piece was reserved to send to his enemy.
The joy this victory occasioned at court met with a great addition
by the arrival of the Romish patriarch. It has been before observed,
that the king had himself wrote letters to the pope and king of
Spain, declaring his intentions to turn Catholic. Peter Paez, Antonio
Fernandes, and the other priests, had given a much more favourable
prospect of religious affairs than had as yet been conveyed to Rome;
the wiser part of the conclave, however, had doubted. But now, the king
had voluntarily made his recantation, it was no longer thought time for
delay, and accordingly Alphonso Mendez, a Jesuit doctor of divinity, a
man of great learning, by birth a Portuguese, was ordained at Lisbon
the 25th of May 1624.
From thence he proceeded to India by the way of Goa, attended by
several fresh missionaries; and finding there letters from Socinios,
and a passport from the king of Dancali, a Mahometan prince in alliance
with the Abyssinians, he arrived at Bilur, an open bay in the small and
barren state of Dancali, on the second of May 1625, and was received,
by the brother of the reigning prince, with every token of friendship
that so poor a state and sovereign could afford; the king of Dancali
himself was at the distance of six days journey, in a place where there
was greater plenty of water and provisions. The following day the king
sent four mules for the fathers to join him, and received them in a
room of a round figure, surrounded and covered with bundles of straw,
but so low they scarce could raise themselves after having made their
bows.
In this miserable kingdom, which I shall not describe, as, since that
period, it has been conquered by the Galla, the patriarch and fathers
staid almost in want of necessaries for sixteen days. At last they
set out, having, with much difficulty, mustered sufficient beasts of
burden to carry their baggage. The road lay through part of the country
wherein are the mines of fossile-salt, hot, barren, and absolutely
without water, and exposed greatly to the incursions of the Galla.
After two days journey, they arrived in the morning of the third, at
the foot of Senaffé, where there was water. It is the frontier (as the
name imports) of the province of Enderta, now united to the government
of Tigré. It is part of that ridge of mountains which separates the
seasons, occasioning summer on the one side, while rain and cold
prevail on the other.
On the night before they came to the mountain, while dubious of
their way, a star of more than ordinary magnitude, and of surprising
brightness, appeared over the patriarch, giving so strong a light
that it illuminated the heavens down to the horizon. It was not,
in its place or manner of appearing, like a common star, but stood
stationary, in the way leading to Senaffé, for above six minutes, and
disappeared[58]. This star, the patriarch and his followers modestly
say, was probably the same that conducted the Magi to the cradle of
Christ, and was now sent to shew them the way into Abyssinia.
While they were at the foot of this mountain, the Muleteers, all
Mahometans, thought the occasion a proper one to plunder them, by
obliging them to pay an additional hire for their beasts, which they
pretended were not able to ascend so steep a mountain. The camels
certainly could not pass; but mules and asses have a more practicable
road, for the sake of carrying the salt. They insisted to leave the
company till they should bring them fresh mules. The caravan consisted
of the patriarch and six ecclesiastics, priests, and friars, and
thirteen laymen, three of whom were musicians. It was very probably
their intention to have sent to them people who would very soon have
put a fatal period to the mission, had not Emanuel Baradas, with
a number of Abyssinians, and officers, and plenty of all things
necessary, joined the patriarch on the 16th of June 1625; while their
late conductors, conscious of misbehaviour, fled without seeking their
hire.
In five days they came to Fremona, where they staid till November; and,
in December, arrived at Gorgora, where they were introduced to the
king in his palace. Socinios ordered the patriarch to be placed on a
seat equal in height to his own, on his right hand; and at that very
audience, which was on the 11th of February 1626, it was settled that
the king should take an oath of submission to the see of Rome.
This useless, vain, ridiculous ceremony, was accordingly celebrated
on the 11th of February, with all the pageantry of a heathen festival
or triumph. The palace was adorned with all the pomp and vanity that
the church of Rome, and especially that part of it, the Order of
the Jesuits, had solemnly abjured. The patriarch, as a mark of his
superiority over the Abunas, preached a sermon in the Portuguese
language upon the primacy of the chair of St Peter, full of Latin
quotations, which is said to have had a wonderful effect upon the king
and Sela Christos, neither of whom understood one word either of Latin
or Portuguese.
That part of the patriarch’s discourse, which was applicable to
Socinios’s conversion, was answered by Melca Christos, governor
of Samen, (himself a schismatic) in the language of Amhara, which
neither the patriarch nor his retinue understood, and concluded with
these words, “That as the king thought himself obliged to fulfil
those promises of submitting himself to the see of Rome which his
predecessors had made, the time was now come in which he should do
that, if such was his pleasure. These last words of the orator seem not
to have satisfied the zeal of Socinios. He interrupted Melca Christos
by saying, that it was not now, but a long time since, that he had
submitted to the church of Rome, as true successor of St Peter; and
the present occasion was only a confirmation of what he had formerly
professed.”
The patriarch answered by a few words, prudently and sensibly, I
suppose to save time, seeing that, short or long, his discourse would
not be understood. But proceeding to facts, he opened a new testament,
while Socinios, upon his knees, took the following oath: “We, sultan
Segued, emperor of Ethiopia, do believe and confess that St Peter,
prince of the apostles, was constituted, by Christ our Lord, head of
the whole Christian church, and that he gave him the principality and
dominion over the whole world, by saying to him, _You are Peter, and
upon this rock will I build my church; and I will give you the keys of
the kingdom of heaven_. And again when he said, _Keep my sheep_. Also
we believe and confess, that the pope of Rome, lawfully elected, is the
true successor of St Peter the apostle, in government; that he holdeth
the same power, dignity, and primacy, in the whole Christian church:
and to the holy father Urban VIII. of that name, by the mercy of God,
pope, and our lord, and to his successor in the government of the
church, we do promise, offer, and swear true obedience, and subject,
with humility at his feet, our person and empire: so help us God and
these holy gospels before us.”--After this, each man swore personal
obedience, officers, priests, and monks, according to their several
orders or conditions.
The prince royal Facilidas, purely and simply in the form prescribed,
took this oath, without any addition or alteration. But Ras Sela
Christos, heated with zeal, after repeating the formula, drawing his
sword in violent passion, uttered these words, “What has passed let it
be past; but, from this day forward, he that falls from his duty this
shall be his judge[59].”
This hasty speech, not well understood, was thought by some to reflect
on those he had discovered to be in the confederacy with the rebel son
of Gabriel. As the court was full of parties and discontent, every one
applied the threat to himself, and all joined in a league to undo Sela
Christos, who had so wantonly declared himself the leader and champion
of persecution.
To this oath of obedience to the pope, he likewise added one to the
king, and to the prince his successor, Facilidas, with a strange
clause, or qualification, which made what he said formerly still
worse:--“I likewise swear to the prince, as heir of his father in this
empire, as long as he shall hold favour, and defend the holy Catholic
faith; and if he shall fail in this, I hereby swear to be his greatest
enemy.” This extravagant addition he insisted should be imposed
upon all the officers of state, and of the army then at court, and
therefore did most deservedly seal his own condemnation and punishment,
which overtook him in the end, though it did not follow till long
afterwards.
To these violent proceedings were added others still more violent. A
solemn excommunication was pronounced against all such as did not keep
that oath, and a proclamation was forthwith made, “That all people, in
the line of being ordained priests, should first embrace the Catholic
religion upon pain of death; that all should observe the form of the
church of Rome in the celebration of Easter and Lent, under the same
penalty; and with that the ceremonies of the day ended.”
_Tempus erit cum magno optaverit emptum,_
_Intactum Pallanta._
It was a day ever to be marked with black, not only in the annals of
Ethiopia, but in those of Rome.
Although the arrival of the patriarch at Bilur had been happily
effected, both as to himself and those that attended him, it was not
so with some of his brethren sent to assist him in that mission. Two
Jesuits, Francisco Machado and Bernard Pereira, had received the king’s
letters in India for their safe conduct to Bilur in Dancali. Whether by
malice, or inadvertency, the king’s secretary, instead of Bilur, had
mentioned Zeyla in the letter.
Zeyla, an island belonging to the king of Adel, was of all other
places that where the people were most inveterate against the Catholic
religion. No sooner did the Shekh know the quality and errand of these
missionaries, than he confined them to close prison, where, after
great suffering, they were both put to death; and, to aggravate this,
a letter was written to Socinios stigmatizing him with the name of
apostate from the religion of his forefathers, and applying to him many
opprobrious names.
This letter, at another time, would not have failed to have been
followed by the chastisement it deserved. But Adel, formerly a
flourishing and commercial kingdom, was now fallen, and reduced to
a multitude of banditti. Trade had left it. A garrison of nominal
janizaries, since the reign of Sultan Selim, had kept the little island
of Zeyla for the pretended purpose of a customhouse; but, in fact, it
was a post of robbers, who only maintained themselves there for the
sake of plundering merchants who came by sea; while the Galla poured in
numbers upon the prince from the continent, and of the ancient kingdom
of Adel, had left him nothing but Aussa the capital, a town situated
upon a rock, on the banks of the river Hawash, Azab, and Raheeta, and
a few other miserable villages upon the sea; and even part of these
were daily falling into the hands of that enemy, destined very soon to
over-run them all. This abject state to which they had been reduced, we
may suppose, was the only reason that protected them from the vengeance
of a high-spirited prince, such as Socinios certainly was.
This violent conduct of Socinios in his abjuration was followed by that
of the patriarch Alphonso Mendes, perfectly in the same spirit. The
clergy were re-ordained, their churches consecrated anew, grown men
as well as children again baptised, the moveable feasts and festivals
reduced to the forms and times of the church of Rome; circumcision,
polygamy, and divorce were abrogated for ever; and the many questions
that thereupon arose, and which were understood to belong to the civil
judge, the patriarch called to his own tribunal exclusively.
All the tenets of the church of Alexandria, whether of faith or
discipline, were rejected; and it was not known how far the patriarch
intended to subject the civil jurisdiction of the judges to the
ecclesiastical power. Two steps that he took, the one immediately after
the other, seemed to give great reason of fear upon this head.
In order to understand the first of these cases, it will be necessary
to know, that it is a fundamental constitution of the monarchy of
Ethiopia, that all lands belong to the king; and that there is no such
thing as church-lands in this country. Those that the king has given
for the maintenance of churches or monasteries are resumed every day,
at the instance of, and for the convenience of individuals, and new
ones granted in their stead sometimes of a greater value, sometimes of
a less. Nor have the priests or monks any property in these lands. A
lay-officer, appointed by the king, divides to each monk or priest, his
quota of the revenue, applying any overplus to other uses, which is, we
may suppose, often putting it into his own pocket.
There was a nobleman of great distinction for his family and rank at
court, for his age, and the merit of his service; he had occupied some
of the lands belonging to a monk who happened to be a Catholic. This
man, had he been an Alexandrian, could have had no recourse to the
Abuna his patriarch, and the cause must have been tried before the
civil judge. But Mendes was of another opinion. He ordered the nobleman
to make his defence before the ecclesiastical tribunal; and, upon his
refusing this as a novelty to which he was not bound, he condemned him
immediately to restore the lands to the monk. This, too, was refused on
the part of the present possessor, who being one day attending the king
at church, the patriarch, without preamble, pronounced against him a
formal sentence of excommunication, by which he gave him over, soul and
body, to the devil.
Such procedure was, till then, unknown in Abyssinia. The nobleman,
though otherwise brave, was so much affected with the terms of his
sentence as to faint, imagining himself already in the clutches of
Satan, and it was with difficulty he was recovered, the king making
intercession with the patriarch to take off this censure, or rather
this curse.
Sudden as it was, however, in the inflicting, and easy in the removal,
it made very lasting and serious impressions on the minds of men of all
ranks, greatly to the disadvantage of the patriarch and the professors
of his new religion, in the exercise of which they did not discover
that degree of charity, meekness, mercy, and long-suffering, that they
had been taught were the very essentials of it.
The next instance was this: There had been an Itchegué, that is, the
superior of the monks of Debra Libanos, an Order instituted by Abba
Tecla Haimanout, the last Abyssinian Abuna, not more celebrated by the
church than the state, as being the restorer of the line of Solomon,
for many years banished to Shoa; and this superior, besides the dignity
of his office, was remarkable for an innocent, pious, and holy life.
It happened that a Catholic monk officiated in a church where this
Itchegué had been buried under the altar; the patriarch declared the
church defiled by the burial of that heretic and schismatic, and
suspended the celebration of divine service till the body was raised
and thrown out of the church in a most indecent manner. Universal
discontent seized the minds of all men; and, from that time, it seemed
the friends of the old religion began again to recover strength, and
the Catholics to be looked upon, if not with hatred, yet with terror.
And every trifle now contributed towards the one or the other.
The Jesuits, following practices or customs of their own, had thought
fit to exhibit a kind of religious plays or farces. The devil in these
pieces is always the buffoon; he plays harlequin and slight-of-hand
tricks, fires squibs and gun-powder, very little consistent with the
decency of the other persons who compose the drama. This continued
to be practised in several Catholic countries in Europe, while that
learned company existed[60]. It happened to be necessary to introduce
figures of this kind blacked all over, and in masks, with cloven feet,
&c. The first exhibition of these figures so surprised and terrified
the Abyssinian audience, that they fled immediately upon their
appearance, crying out, Alas! alas! these Franks have brought devils
into our country with them!
This great extension of civil jurisdiction, and the large strides it
took to annihilate the civil power, the encroachments it made upon the
prerogative of the king, till now supreme in all causes ecclesiastical
and civil, the more than regal, the more, if possible, than papal
pride of the patriarch, began to be felt universally, and it was seen
to be intended to lessen every order of government, from the king to
the lowest officer in the province. From this time, therefore, we date
the decline of the Catholic interest in Abyssinia. The first blow was
given it by the king himself, not with a view to destroy it, for he
was a sincere Catholic upon principle, but to controul and keep it
within some bounds, as he found there was no order could otherwise be
maintained.
He desired the patriarch to permit the use of the ancient liturgies of
Ethiopia, altered by himself in every thing where they did not agree
with that of the church of Rome. With this the patriarch was obliged to
comply, because there was in it an appearance of reason that men should
pray to God in a language that they understood, and which was their
own, rather than a foreign tongue of which they did not understand
one word. This was thought so obvious in Ethiopia as not to admit
any doubt. But the order and practice of the church of Rome was just
the contrary; and this wound was a mortal one; for no sooner was the
permission given to use their own liturgies, than all the Abyssinians
embraced them to a man, and went on in their old prayers and services
without any of the patriarch’s alterations.
To these events, not important in themselves, but only from the effect
they had upon the minds of mankind, succeeded tragedies of a more
serious nature. I have already observed, in speaking of the Galla,
that they were divided into three principal divisions, those on the
east of Abyssinia were called Bertuma Galla, those on the south called
Toluma, and those on the west Boren Galla; each of these were divided
into seven, and these again subdivided into a number of tribes. Each
of these seven nations choose a king once in seven years called Lubo;
and it is usually the first act of the new king’s reign to over-run the
neighbouring provinces of Abyssinia, laying every thing waste with fire
and sword for this year, even if they had no provocation, but had been
at peace for several years before.
The Abyssinians remained long in ignorance of this cause of these
invasions, and, while that was the case, they could take no measures to
be prepared against, and resist them. But after, when the customs of
the Galla were better known, their periodical invasions were watched
and provided against, so that though they were still continued, they
were generally repelled with the slaughter and defeat of the invaders.
It happened that the present year, 1627, was the season of electing
the king, and of the invasion. Though the time of the expedition
was known, no intelligence had been given of the manner in which it
was to be executed. In past times, the nations, or tribes of Galla,
assaulted each the opposite province in whose frontiers they were
settled; but this year it was agreed among them to choose one province,
Gojam, which, by uniting their whole force, they were to devote to
destruction, or, if possible, keep possession of it.
Buco was governor of Gojam; the king had sent Sela Christos to his
assistance, and was intending to follow with another army himself. In
the mean time, the passes through which the Galla used to enter were
all lined with men, and every preparation made to receive them.
These barbarians advanced to the Nile in multitudes never seen before;
and, finding the province perfectly on its guard, they feigned a panic,
or disagreement among themselves, retired in seeming confusion, and
dispersed, some, as it was said, to their own homes, and some to an
expedition against Narea. This in reality had often happened; but now
it was only a stratagem; for they all assembled in their own country
Bizamo, of which the Abyssinians had no intelligence. Buco, thinking he
was free of them for that year, disbanded his troops, or detached them
to other services; Sela Christos did the same; neither did Socinios
advance with his army.
In that interval of weakness, news were sent to Buco that the Galla had
passed the Nile. Upon which he advanced with 1000 foot and 200 horse,
believing that it was some small part of that army which he thought
had some time before been dispersed. After hearing mass with great
devotion, and receiving the sacrament, in passing through a thick wood
he was assaulted by the Galla. Being a man, brave in his own person,
and exceedingly well-trained to arms, he fought so successfully, and
so encouraged his men by his example, that he cut that body of Galla
entirely to pieces; and, as he thought the whole matter then at an
end, he ordered his drums to beat, and his trumpets to sound, in token
of victory.
The rest of the Galla, who were now dispersed through the province,
but at no great distance, burning and destroying, as their custom is,
and who left this body behind them only to secure their retreat across
the river, returned all to their colours, upon hearing the drums and
trumpets of Kasmati Buco, whom they did not know to be so near; and, as
soon as he came in sight, despising his small number, they surrounded
them on every side. Buco immediately saw that he was a lost man; but,
considering the multitude of the enemy, and the unprepared state of the
province, he thought his own life and those of his followers could not
be better employed than by obstinately fighting to disable the enemy,
so as to put it out of their power to pursue the ruin of the country
further; throwing himself furiously into the thickest of the Galla, he,
at first onset, killed four of the most forward of their leaders, and
made himself a lane through the troops opposing him; and he was now got
without their circle, when some of his officers seeing him, cried to
him to make the best of his way, as affairs were desperate, and not to
add by his death to the misfortunes of that day.
Upon this he paused, as recollecting himself for a moment; but,
disdaining to survive the loss of his army, he threw himself again
among the Galla, where his men were still fighting, carrying victory
wherever he went. His horse was at last wounded, and, being otherwise
young and untrained, became ungovernable. It was necessary to quit him,
when, drawing his sword, and leaping upon the ground, he continued the
fight with the same degree of courage, till the Galla, who did not dare
to approach him near, killed him by a number of javelins thrown at a
distance.
The news of the defeat and death of Buco reached Sela Christos, then in
march to join him; nor did the misfortune that had already happened,
nor the bad prospect of his own situation, alter his resolution of
attacking the enemy: But he first wrote to the king his brother,
telling him his situation, and the probable consequences of doing his
duty as he had determined, laying all the blame upon the malice of
his enemies, who, to gratify their own private malice, had left him
without assistance, and occasioned misfortunes so detrimental to the
common-weal.
Sela Christos passed this night upon a rising ground, and in the
morning early descended into the plain, with a view of attacking the
Galla, when, to his great surprise, that barbarous people, content with
the slaughter of Kasmati Buco and his army, and not willing to risk a
large quantity of plunder with which their whole army was loaded, had
repassed the Nile, and returned home.
Tecla Georgis was son-in-law to Socinios, and then governor of Tigré,
but at variance with his father-in-law upon some quarrel with his wife.
Determined on this account to rebel, he associated with some noblemen
of the first rank and power in Tigré, particularly Guebra Mariam and
John Akayo, declaring to them, that he would no longer suffer the Roman
religion, but defend the ancient church of Alexandria to the utmost
of his power. And, to convince all the Abyssinians of his sincerity,
he tore off the figures of crucifixes, and all church-ornaments and
images of saints that were in relief, and burned them publicly, to make
his reconciliation with the king impossible. He then called before
him Abba Jacob his Catholic chaplain, and, having stripped him of his
pontificals, killed him with his own hand. There was no method he could
devise of bringing his quarrel sooner to an issue than this which he
had adopted. But he did not seem to have taken equal pains to provide
for his defence, as he had done to give provocation.
Socinios, upon the first intelligence of this murder and treason,
ordered Keba Christos to march against him with the troops that he had
at hand. This general, equally a good soldier, subject, and Catholic,
being convinced of the necessity of punishing speedily so monstrous
a crime, passed by forced marches through Siré to Axum, thence to
Fremona; and, having appointed Gaspar Paez to meet him there, he
confessed himself, and received the sacrament from that Jesuit’s hands.
From Fremona he continued with the same speed, making three ordinary
days marches in one, being desirous of preventing the possibility of
Tecla Georgis’s collecting troops, and taking refuge on a mountain
called _Masba_, which he heard to be his design.
It was the 12th of December 1628 that news were brought him of the
situation of the enemy; upon which he ordered his baggage to be left
behind, and every soldier to carry two loaves, and to march without
resting till he came up with Tecla Georgis.
In the morning of the day following, two horsemen, on the scout before
him, discovered five of the rebel soldiers upon the look-out likewise.
These, upon seeing Keba Christos’s horsemen, returned immediately to
their master, and told him that they had seen armed men, and conceived
them to be the soldiers of Keba Christos. To this intelligence Tecla
Georgis answered, That Keba Christos was in the king’s palace at Dancaz
the 15th of November, and that it was impossible he then could be so
near with an army, if he had even wings to fly; but that the men they
had seen were probably reinforcements that he expected.
Keba Christos, on the contrary, hearing that the enemy was at hand,
drew up his army in three divisions. The first consisted of his own
household, the second of a body of horse of the king’s household,
called _the Koccob Horse_, or _Star Cavalry_, from a silver star which
each of them wears on the front of his helmet; and the third, of the
people of Tigré who had joined him. In this order he came in sight
of his enemy posted upon a small height, divided only from him by a
narrow plain. Tecla Georgis, convinced now that it was Keba Christos,
formed his army into two divisions; the one composed of a body called
_Tcheraguas_, the other of a body called _Sultan ba Christos_; with
these was a large corps of Galla which had lately joined them.
Keba Christos, now turning to his troops, briefly said, “My children,
I will not waste my time nor yours in discourse, or in telling you
what you are to do. You have all arms in your hands; you are good
Christians; and I can positively assure you there is not before you one
of your enemies that is not also an enemy to Christ.” Then, placing
himself before the Koccob horse, he pulled off his helmet and gave it
to his servant, saying, “By my naked face you shall know me to-day,
that I am not going in the midst of you as general or commander, but
foot for foot along with you like a common soldier.”
Upon having uncovered his head, he was quickly known by Tecla Georgis,
from whose troops a number of muskets was fired at him. But this had
so little effect upon this gallant officer, that, changing his place,
(which then was at the head of the second division) he placed himself
still nearer the enemy in the front of his own household troops, which
were the first; and the Galla charging them in that instant, he slew
their leader with his own hand. Upon the death of their commander,
these barbarians immediately fled, as is their custom, while Keba
Christos endeavoured to make his way to where Tecla Georgis was
employed keeping his troops from following so bad an example. But so
soon as that rebel saw his enemy approach him, he and his whole army
joined the Galla in their flight; tho’ he narrowly escaped, by the
swiftness of his horse, a light javelin, thrown by Keba Christos, which
struck him behind, but so feebly, by reason of the distance, that it
did not pierce his armour.
The king’s troops pursued vigorously, and soon brought to their general
the mule, the sword, and helmet of Tecla Georgis, with the heads of
300 slain in the battle, most of them Gallas, and with them 12 heads
of the most turbulent rebellious monks of Tigré. With these they also
brought Adera, sister to Tecla Georgis, wounded in the throat, who
had instigated him very strongly to commit the violences against the
professors of the Catholic religion. Tafa, too, his master of the
household, was taken prisoner; and it being made known to Keba Christos
that this man had assisted at the murder of Abba Jacob, he ordered him
directly to be put to death.
Tecla Georgis, aided by the strength of his horse and knowledge of
the country, escaped and concealed himself from his pursuers for four
days; but, on the Saturday that followed the victory, he was found in a
cavern with his great confidents, Woldo Mariam, and a schismatic monk
whose name was Sebo Amlac. Tecla Georgis was carried alive to Keba
Christos, who sent him to the king, his two companions being slain as
soon as found, and their heads accompanied their living master, which,
on their arrival at Dancaz, the king ordered to be hung upon a tree.
Tecla Georgis being convicted of sacrilege as well as murder, having
burnt the crucifixes and images of the saints, was condemned to be
burnt alive, and a lime-kiln was immediately prepared in which he was
to suffer. Upon hearing this, he desired a Catholic confessor, as
wishing to be reconciled to the church of Rome, and for this purpose
he sent a request to the patriarch, who was at three leagues distance,
and who dispatched Antonio Fernandes with full powers to absolve from
all manner of sins, and at the same time gave him orders to intercede
strongly with the king to pardon the criminal. Tecla Georgis confessed
publicly at the door of the church, and abjured the errors of the
church of Alexandria.
After this, the father Fernandes applied to the king, pleading strongly
for his pardon. To which the king answered, “Many reasons there are why
I should desire to pardon Tecla Georgis. To say no more, he has been
married to two of my daughters, and he has by them two sons, both good
soldiers and horsemen, who actually ride before me, and accompany me
in battle. I have therefore pardoned him all the affronts and injuries
he has done to me. But, were I to take upon myself to pardon the
affronts and insults he has offered the Divine Majesty, I should turn
the punishment of his sins upon myself, my family, and kingdom; and,
therefore, I refuse your petition, and order you to return forthwith to
Gorgora.”
After the departure of the father, in consideration that Tecla Georgis
had again embraced the Catholic religion, the king altered his sentence
of being burnt, into that of being hanged privately in the house where
he was then in prison; and, for that purpose, the executioner had
brought with him the cord with which Tecla had ordered the feet of Abba
Jacob to be tied. No sooner did he perceive that there were no hopes of
pardon, by their beginning to tie his hands, than he again, with a loud
voice, renounced his confession, declaring that he died an Alexandrian,
and that there was but one nature in Christ. The executioner
endeavoured to stop his further blasphemies, by drawing him up on the
beam in the room; but he resisted so strongly, that there was time to
inform Socinios of his abjuration: upon which the king ordered that
he should be hanged publicly upon a pine-tree; and he was accordingly
taken down, half-strangled, from the beam in the house, and hung upon
the tree before the palace.
Adera, his sister, was next examined; and it being clearly proved
that she had been a very active agent in the murder of Abba Jacob,
she likewise was condemned to be hanged upon the same tree with her
brother, fifteen days afterwards.
All that interval, the queen and ladies at court employed their utmost
interest with the king to pardon Adera, for they looked upon it as a
disgraceful thing, both to their sex and quality, that a woman of her
family should be thus publicly executed. All the ladies of the court
having joined, therefore, in a public petition to the king while on
his throne, he is said to have answered them by the following short
parable:--
“There was once an old woman, who being told of the death of an infant,
said, with great indifference, Children are but tender; it is no wonder
that they die, for any thing will kill a child. Being told of a youth
dying, she observed, Young people are forward and rash; they are always
in the way of some disaster; no wonder they die; it is impossible it
should be otherwise. But being told an old woman was dead, she began to
tear her hair, and lament, crying, Now the world is at an end if old
women begin to die, fearing that her turn might be the next. In this
manner all of you have seen Tecla Georgis die, and also several of his
companions, and you have not said a word. But now it is come to the
hanging of one woman, you are all alarmed, and the world is at an end.
Do not then deceive yourselves, but be assured that the same cord which
tied the feet of Abba Jacob, still remains sufficient to hang that sow
Adera, and all those that shall be so wicked as to behave like her, to
the disgrace of your sex, and their own rank and quality.”
The effects of these ostentatious acts of reformation soon produced
consequences which troubled their joy. The Agows of Lasta, called
Tcheratz Agow, who live at the head of the Tacazzé, rebelled. The
country they occupy is not extensive, but exceedingly populous, and was
supposed at that time to be able to bring into the field above 50,000
fighting men, besides leaving behind a sufficient number to defend
the passes and strong-holds of their country, which are by much the
most difficult and inaccessible of any in Abyssinia. They are divided
into five clans, Waag, Tettera, Dehaanah, Gouliou, and Louta, each
having an independent chief. They are exceedingly warlike; and, though
the country be so rude and rocky, they have a considerable number of
good horses; and are in general reckoned among the bravest and most
barbarous soldiers in Abyssinia. Their province abounds with all sorts
of provisions, and they rarely can be forced to pay any thing to
government in the name of tax, or tribute.
Tecla Georgis was now dead, but the cause of the rebellion still
subsisted. While governor of Begemder, he had connived at many abuses
of his officers who occupied the posts nearest to Lasta. These being
young men, from wantonness only, without provocation, had made many
different inroads, driving away cattle, and committing many other
excesses. The Agows carried their complaints to the governor, who, far
from hearing or redressing their wrongs, justified the conduct of his
officers, by making inroads himself immediately after; but coming to an
action in person with that people, he was shamefully beat, and a great
part of his army left dead upon the field.
This misfortune very much affected Socinios. Nor did the Agows
themselves doubt, but that a speedy chastisement was to follow this
victory over Tecla Georgis.
There was a youth descended of the royal family, who, to preserve the
freedom of his person, lived among the Galla, in expectation of better
times. His name was Melca Christos. To him the Agows applied, that,
with this prince of the house of Solomon at their head, they might wipe
off the odium of being reputed rebels, and appear as fighting under a
lawful sovereign for reformation of abuses. The renunciation of the
Alexandrian faith, forcibly obtruded upon them by Socinios, served
as cause of complaint. The Roman Catholic writers in the history of
this mission, say this was but a pretext, in which I conceive they are
right. I have lived among the Agows of Lasta, and in intimacy with
many of them, who are not, to this day, so anxious about Christianity
as to ascend one of their hills for the difference between that and
Paganism; and I am satisfied, for these 300 years last past there has
been scarcely a common layman in Lasta that has known the distinction
between the Alexandrian and the Roman church.
In the beginning of February 1629 the king marched from Dancaz
towards Gojam, where he collected an army of 30,000 men, which, with
the baggage, servants, and attendants, at that time very great and
numerous, amounted to above 80,000 men.
Socinios detached a number of small parties to enter Lasta at different
places. On the other hand, Melca Christos assembled his troops on the
most inaccessible rocks; whence, when he spied occasion, he came
suddenly down and surprised the enemy below. Among all the rude, high,
and tremendous mountains of which this country consists, there is one
especially, called by the name of _Lasta_. It is in the territory of
Waag, strongly surrounded with inaccessible precipices, having a large
plain on the top, abounding with every thing necessary, and watered by
a fine stream that never fails.
The manner in which the Agows remained secure in this strong post was
misconstrued into fear by the king’s army, which, in two divisions,
advanced to the attack of the mountain. That on the right had with some
difficulty scrambled up without opposition; but, being now arrived to
the steep part of the rock, such a number of large stones was rolled
down upon them from above, that this division of the army was entirely
destroyed. The number of stones on the brink of the precipices was
inexhaustible; and, once put in motion, pursued the scattered troops
with unavoidable speed, even down to the plains below. Among the slain
was Guebra Christos, the king’s son-in-law, dashed to pieces by the
fragment of a rock. The left division was upon the point of suffering
the same misfortune, had not Keba Christos come to their relief and
drawn them off, just before the enemy had begun to discharge this
irresistible artillery against them.
The king, thus shamefully beaten, retired to Dancaz, leaving the
entrances from Lasta strongly defended, lest these mountaineers should,
by way of retaliation, fall upon the province of Begemder. But the
late ill-fortune had dispirited the troops, and caused an indifference
about duty, a want of obedience, and a relaxation in discipline in the
whole army. Each of the detachments, therefore, one after the other,
left their post from different excuses, and returned home. The bad
consequence of this was now experienced. The Agows entered Begemder
spreading desolation everywhere. Melca Christos, no longer sculking
among the rocks of Lasta, planted his standard upon the plain, within
five days march of the capital where the king was residing.
The jealousies that had arisen between Socinios and his brother-in-law
Sela Christos, had been so much aggravated since the oath administered
by the patriarch, that the king had again deprived him of Gojam,
suffering him to live in obscurity in Damot, and among the Agows,
occupied, as the Jesuits say, in the conversion of that Pagan people,
by destroying their idols, which they represent to be a species of
cane or bamboo[61], and in forbidding the ceremonies of adoration and
devotion, which at stated times they paid to the river.
No remedy could be proposed, but the presence of Sela Christos, who,
upon the first warning, joined the king, and coming suddenly upon the
army of Lasta occupied in laying waste the low country of Begemder,
gave them such an overthrow that sufficiently compensated the first
loss of the king, and forced them again to take refuge among their
strong-holds in Lasta.
A misfortune of another kind followed this victory: Laeca Mariam, a
near relation to the king, was appointed governor of Begemder; but
no sooner did he see himself vested with that government, than he
meditated shaking off his allegiance to Socinios.
The king, after his last battle with the Agows, had named his son
Facilidas commander in chief of his forces; and, to secure him a
powerful and able assistant, he had first restored Sela Christos to his
government of Gojam, then sent him with an army to join Facilidas, and
command under him.
The success was answerable to the prudence of the measure; for,
immediately upon their arrival, they obliged Laeca Mariam to seek for
refuge in the mountains of Amhara, and, without giving him time to
recollect himself there, forced their way to the mountain to which he
had retired, and from which he and his followers had no way to escape,
but by venturing down a steep precipice; in attempting this, Laeca
Mariam fell, and was dashed to pieces, as were many others of his
followers; the rest were slain by the army that pursued them.
At this time, Facilidas began to attract the eyes of the nation in
general. Besides personal bravery, he had shewn great military talents
in the former campaign of Lasta. Though young, he was in capacity and
resolution equal to his father, but less warm, more reserved in his
temper and discourse. He was thought to be an enemy to the Catholic
religion, because he did not promote it, and neither exceeded nor fell
short of what his father commanded him. Yet, he lived with the Jesuits
on such an even footing, that they confess they did not know whether he
was their friend or enemy: he kept one of their number, called Father
Angelis, constantly in his household, where he was much favoured, and
constantly in his presence. He was thought to be an enemy to Sela
Christos, though he never had shewn it.
Facilidas received a flattering message from Urban VIII. but did not
answer it; nor does it appear his father ever desired him; for, through
the whole course of the life of Socinios, as his enemies are forced to
confess, he paid to his father’s will, the most passive obedience in
every thing. The tyranny, however, of church-government began to appear
unmasked; and it is probable that the king, though resolved to die a
Roman Catholic from principles of conscience, was indifferent about
forging for his son the chains he had himself worn with pain.
However this may be, the last step of placing Facilidas at the head
of the army was construed as another stroke of humiliation to the
Catholics, especially as it was followed with the removal of Keba
Christos (the support of that religion) from court, where he had been
appointed Billetana Gueta. It is true he was removed by what, in other
times, would have been called preferment; but things had now changed
their qualities, and places were not estimated, as formerly, by the
consequence they gave in the empire, but by the opportunities they
afforded of constant access to the king, and occasion of joining in
councils with him, and defeating those of their enemies.
Keba Christos being sent governor to Tigré, was to enter Lasta from
that quarter on the N. E. He is said to have received his appointment
with a great degree of concern, and to have told his friends, that he
foresaw he never was to return from that expedition, which he did not
regret, because he was convinced, by living much longer, it would be
made his duty to assist at the fall of the Catholic religion.
After having performed his devotions at Fremona, this general advanced
through Gouliou, a territory mostly inhabited by Galla, and destitute
of any sort of provisions; after which he took possession of the
mountains of Lasta, with a view to cover the march of the young prince
Facilidas, whom he every day expected. But that prince not appearing in
time, and provisions becoming scarce, no measure remained but making
his retreat to Tigré; and, although he formed the best disposition for
that purpose, the people of Lasta observing his intention in time, on
his first movement attacked his rear-guard while he was descending the
mountain, and put it to flight; being thereby masters of the higher
ground, they had the command of the cowardly soldiers below them, who
could not insure their destruction more certainly than by the indecent
manner in which they were flying.
Keba Christos, deserted by all except a few servants, continued
courageously fighting; and, although it was very possible for him to
have escaped, he disdained to survive the loss of his army. Receiving
at that time a wound from a javelin, which passed through his belly,
and judging the stroke to be mortal, he gave up all further resistance,
fell upon his knees to prayer, and was again wounded by a stone, which
struck him to the ground. Two of the mountaineers immediately came
up to him, one of whom did not know him, and contented himself with
stripping the body; but the other remembering his face, cut his head
off, and carried it to the rebel Melca Christos.
The misfortune was followed by another in Gojam, great to the nation
in general, and greater still to the Catholic cause in particular. At
the time that Sela Christos was in Begemder with prince Facilidas, the
Galla from Bizamo, supposing the province of Damot without defence,
passed the Nile, laying the whole province waste before them. Fecur
Egzie, lieutenant-general under Sela Christos, although he had with him
only a small number of troops, did not hesitate to march against those
savages, to endeavour, if possible, to stop their ravages. The Galla,
surprised at this, thought it was Sela Christos, and fled before him.
He had now pursued them almost alone, and lighted in a low meadow to
give grass to his horse, when he was surrounded and slain by a number
of the enemy that lay hid among the bushes, and discovered how ill he
was attended.
He was reputed a man of the best understanding, and the most liberal
sentiments of any in Ethiopia; a great orator, excelling both in the
gracefulness of manner and copiousness and purity of his language. He
was among the first that embraced the Catholic religion, even before
the king or Sela Christos, and was the principal promoter of the
translations of the Portuguese books into Ethiopic, assisted by the
Jesuit Antonio de Angelis. We have seen, in the year 1613, the great
efforts he made in the embassy to India by the coast of Melinda. He was
an excellent horseman, but more violent and rash in battle than could
have been expelled from a man of such mild manners.
There happened at this time another novelty. The king brought the
patriarch from Gorgora to Dancaz this year, at Easter, to hear that
feast celebrated, with the Ethiopic service amended, of which we have
already spoken abundantly. This countenance, so unnecessarily given
to an innovation that produced every day such very bad effects to the
Catholic interest, joined to many other circumstances, seemed clearly
to indicate a change in that prince’s mind.
The patriarch having made but a short stay at Dancaz, it was currently
reported a disagreement had happened, and that the king had sent
him prisoner to Gorgora; and this false report affected greatly the
weight the Catholics were supposed before to have had at court. But
the transaction that followed was of a nature to promise much more
consequences.
Socinios had a daughter called _Ozoro Wengelawit_, which means the
Evangelical, a name she certainly deserved not from her manners. This
lady was first married to Bela Christos, a man of rank at court, from
whom she had been divorced. She was next married to another, and then
(her two former husbands being still alive) to Tecla Georgis, who had
before married her sister, another of the king’s daughters. During this
marriage she had openly lived in adultery with Za Christos, who had
been married to her sister, a third daughter of the king. Za Christos
had been happy enough in preserving this lady’s esteem longer than
any other of her husbands, and nothing would content her now but a
marriage with her lover solemnly and publicly. For which purpose she
applied to the patriarch to dispense with the affinity between her and
Za Christos, arising from his having been married before to her sister.
It is not to be supposed that the patriarch would have resisted,
if nothing had stood in the way except the affinity: but weighty
impediments presented themselves besides; for either the first marriage
was valid, or it was not. If it was valid, then Wengelawit could not
marry Za Christos or any one else, because her husband was alive; nor
could she marry her second, nor Tecla Georgis, her third. If the first
marriage was not valid, then the second was, which husband was still
alive; and, in this case, a licence to marry was giving her liberty of
having three husbands at one time. The patriarch, for these reasons,
refused his authority to this manifold adultery and incest; nor could
he, notwithstanding the intercession of the whole court, ever be
brought to comply. His firmness (however commendable) greatly increased
the hatred to his person, and aversion to the church of Rome.
One day when the king was sitting in his apartment, a monk entered the
room, crying with a loud voice, “Hear the ambassador of God and of the
Virgin Mary!” The king, upon first sight of the man, expecting some
improper liberty might be taken, ordered his attendants to turn him out
at the door, and, being removed from his presence, to bring word what
he had to say, which was to this effect: “It is three days since I rose
from the dead. One day when I was standing in paradise, God called me,
and sent me with this message to you:--O emperor! says God, it is now
many years that I hoped you would amend of the great sin, the having
forsaken the faith of your ancestors. All this time the Virgin Mary was
kneeling before her blessed Son, beseeching him to pardon you; and,
upon the whole, it was agreed, that, unless you repent in a fortnight’s
time, you should be punished in such a manner that you will not forget
it presently.”
Socinios desired them to ask the man, “How it was possible that,
having so lately left the grave, his body should have so little of
the emaciated appearance of one long buried, and be now in such good
case, fat and fair?” To this he answered, “That, in paradise, he
thanked God there was abundance of every thing; and people were very
well used there, for he had lived upon good bread, and plenty of good
wine, biskets, and sweetmeats.” To which Socinios answered, “Tell him,
after the pains he had taken, it would be wrong in me to keep him long
from so good a place as this his paradise. Let him go and acquaint the
person who sent him, I shall live and die in the Roman Catholic faith;
and, in order that he may deliver the message quickly in the other
world, speed him instantly out of this, by hanging him upon the tree
before the palace-gate.”
The love of the wine, sweetmeats, and other celestial food, seemed to
have forsaken the ambassador. Upon hearing this message he recanted,
and was pardoned at the joint petition of those of the court that were
present, who concurred with the monk in thinking, that the message of
the emperor was an indecent one, and ought not to be delivered; that
having been in paradise once, was as much as fell to the lot of any
one man, and that he should therefore remain upon earth. The intended
catastrophe, then, of this singular ambassador was remitted; but the
truth of his mission was believed by the populace, and raised great
scruples in every weak mind.
The many misfortunes that had lately befallen the troops of the
king were accounted as so much increase of power to the rebel Melca
Christos, who, encouraged by the correspondence he held with the chiefs
of the Alexandrian religion, began now to take upon him the state and
office of a king. His first essay was to send, as governor to the
province of Tigré, a son of that great rebel Za Selassé, whose manifold
treasons, we have already seen, occasioned the death of two kings, Za
Denghel and Jacob.
Asca Georgis was then governor of Tigré for Socinios, a man of merit
and valour, but poor, and though related to the king himself, had very
few soldiers to be depended on, excepting his own servants, and two
bodies of troops which the king had sent him to maintain his authority,
and to keep his province in order.
The new governor, sent by the rebel Melca Christos, had with him a
considerable army; and, knowing the weakness of Asca Georgis, he
paraded through the province in the utmost security.
One Saturday which, in defiance of the king’s edict, he was to
solemnize as a festival equal to Sunday, he had resolved on a party
of pleasure in a valley, where, much at his ease, he was preparing an
entertainment for his troops and friends, and such of the province as
came to offer their obedience. Intelligence of this party came to
three Shum’s, commanders of small districts, two of them sons-in-law
of the king, the third a very loyal subject. These three sent to Asca
Georgis, to propose that, at a stated time, they should, each with his
own men, fall separately upon the son of Za Selassé, and interrupt his
entertainment.
This was executed with great order and punctuality. In the height of
the festival, the rebels were surrounded by an unexpected enemy. To
think of fighting was too late, nor was there time for flight. The
greatest part of the army was cut to pieces with little resistance.
The new governor saved himself among the rest by the goodness of his
horse, leaving Billetana Gueta, or chief master of the household of the
rebel Melca Christos, dead upon the spot, with about 4000 of his men.
Among the plunder were taken 32 kettle-drums, which alone were evidence
sufficient of the greatness of the slaughter.
Although the happy turn Socinios’s affairs had taken had given him
leisure to pass this winter at home, and in greater quiet than he had
done in former ones, yet the calm which it had produced was of very
short duration. The people of Lasta, perceiving some of the prince’s
army busy in destroying their harvest when almost ripe, came down
suddenly upon them from the mountain, and put them to flight with
very great slaughter. The blame of this was laid upon Sela Christos,
who might have prevented the calamity; and this accusation, with many
others, were brought against him to the king by Lesana Christos.
This man had been condemned to die for an offence, some time before, by
Ras Sela Christos; but having fled to the king, who heard his cause,
the sentence was reversed. Some time after this he fell into the hands
of the Ras, who put him to death upon his former sentence, without
regarding the late pardon of the king. This violent act became the
foundation upon which his enemies built many accusations, mostly void
of truth.
The king upon this took from him the government of Gojam, and gave
it to a young nobleman whose name was Serca Christos, supposed to be
a friend and dependent upon the prince Facilidas. Serca Christos was
no sooner arrived in his government than he resolved to rebel, and
privately solicited the young prince Facilidas to take up arms and
make a common cause against the king his father, in favour of the
Alexandrian church. At the time that the young man departed to his
government, Socinios had earnestly recommended to him, and he had most
solemnly promised, to protect the Catholic religion in his province,
and seemingly for this purpose he had taken with him a Jesuit named
Francisco de Carvalho.
Another affair which the king particularly charged him with was, the
care of a caravan which once a-year came from Narea. This, besides many
other valuable articles for the merchant, brought 1000 wakeas of gold
as tribute to the king, equal to about 10,000 dollars, or crowns of
our money: its whole way was through barbarous and lawless nations of
Galla till they arrived at the Nile; then through Gafats and Gongas,
immediately after having passed it.
Serca Christos, in his march, was come to a settlement of those
last-mentioned savages, where Gafats, Agows, and Damots, all in peace,
pastured immense flocks of cattle together. There are no where, I
believe, in the world, cattle so beautiful as those of the Gafats, nor
in such numbers. Large plains, for many days journey, are filled so
full of these that they appear as one market.
Serca Christos halted here to give grass to his horses; and, while this
was doing, it entered into his young head, that making prize of the
cattle was of much greater consequence than protecting the caravan of
Narea. Assembling then his cavalry, he fell upon the poor Gafats and
Damots, who feared no harm; and, having soon put them all to flight, he
drove off their cattle in such numbers, that, at Dancaz, it was said,
above 100,000 had reached that market.
The king, much shocked at this violent robbery, ordered Serca Christos
to give up the cattle, and surrender himself as prisoner. This message
of the king he answered in terms of duty and obedience; but, in the
mean time, went to the prince, and proposed to him to declare himself
king and champion of the church of Alexandria. Facilidas received him
with sharp reproofs, and he returned home much discontented. However,
as he had now declared himself, he resolved to put the best face upon
the matter; and, in order to make it generally believed that the prince
and he understood each other, he sent him publicly word, “I have
done what your highness ordered me; come and take possession of your
kingdom.” Upon which the prince ordered his messenger to be put in
irons, and sent to Dancaz to the king his father.
After this, Serca Christos ordered proclamation to be made that prince
Facilidas was king, at the palace of the governor of Gojam, which Sela
Christos had built near the convent of Collela. As one article of it
was the abolishing the Roman faith, the fathers ran precipitately into
the convent, and shut the doors upon themselves, fearing they should be
insulted by the army of schismatics: but a number of the Portuguese,
who lived in the neighbourhood, being brought into the church with
them, and there having been loop-holes made in the walls, and abundance
of fire-arms left there in deposit by Sela Christos, the rebel governor
did not choose to attempt any thing against them at that time. On the
contrary, he sent them word that he was in his heart a Roman Catholic,
and only, for the present, obliged to dissemble; but he would protect
them to the utmost, desiring them to send him the fire-arms left there
by Sela Christos, which they absolutely refused to do.
Serca Christos, apprehending that his army (if not acting under some
chief of the royal family) would forsake him on the first appearance of
the prince, had recourse to a child of the blood-royal, then living in
obscurity among his female relations, and this infant he made king, in
hopes, if he succeeded, to govern during his minority. There were many
who expected the prince would reconcile him to the king, especially
as he had yet preserved a shadow of respect for the Jesuits, and this
he imagined was one cause why the schismatics had not joined him in
the numbers necessary. In order to shew them that he designed no
reconciliation with the king, and to make such agreement impossible, he
adopted the same sacrilegious example that had so ill succeeded with
Tecla Georgis.
Za Selasse, a priest of Selalo, had been heard to say, when Serca
Christos was appointed to the government of Gojam, “There is an end
of the Catholic faith in this province.” Being now called before the
governor, he was forbid to say mass according to the forms of the
church of Rome. This the priest submitted to; but, being ordered to
deny the two natures in Christ, he declared this was a point of faith
which he would never give up, but always confess Christ was perfect God
and perfect man. Upon this Serca Christos ordered him to be slain; and
he was accordingly thrust through with many lances, repeating these
words, God and man! God and man! till his last breath.
Serca Christos had now drawn the sword, and thrown away the scabbard.
Upon receiving the news, the king ordered the prince, who waited
but his command, to march against him. The murder of Za Selassé had
procured an accession of fanatics and monks, but very few soldiers; so
that as soon as he heard with what diligence the prince was advancing,
he left his whole baggage, and fled into those high and craggy
mountains that form the banks of the Nile in Damot.
The prince pressed closely upon him, notwithstanding the difficulty of
the ground; so that no safety remained for him but to pass the Nile
into the country of the Galla, where he thought himself in safety. In
this, however, he was mistaken. He had to do with a general of the most
active kind, in the person of Facilidas, who crossed the Nile after
him, and, the third day, forced him to a battle on such ground as the
prince had chosen, who was likewise much his superior in number of
troops. But there was no longer any remedy; Serca Christos made the
best that he could of this necessity, and fought with great obstinacy,
till his men being for the most part slain, he was forced, with the few
that remained, to take refuge on a high hill, whence the prince obliged
him to deliver himself up to his mercy without condition.
Facilidas immediately dispatched news of his victory to court, and
fifteen days after, he followed himself, bringing Serca Christos,
with six of his principal officers and counsellors, loaded with heavy
chains. Being interrogated by the judges, What he had to answer for
his treasons? the prisoner denied that he had any occasion to answer,
because he had already received pardon from the prince. This excuse
was not admitted, the prince having disowned it absolutely. Upon which
he was sentenced to death; and, though he appealed to the king, his
sentence was confirmed.
It was too late to execute the sentence that night, but next morning
the seven prisoners were put to death. One of the principal servants
of Serca Christos being asked to confess and turn Catholic, abandoned
himself to great rage, uttering many curses and blasphemies against the
king, who, therefore, ordered him to be fastened upon a hook of iron,
where he continued his curses till at last he was slain by lances.
Serca Christos, cousin to Socinios, was treated with more respect. He,
with seeming candour, declared, that he would die a Catholic; and the
king, very desirous of this, gave orders to Diego de Mattos, a priest,
to attend him constantly in prison. After which, one night he sent five
of his confidential servants, who killed him privately, to prevent his
recantation.
Socinios had again taken Gojam from Sela Christos; which last disgrace
so affected him, that he desired to retire and live as a private man in
that province.
The king, having now no other enemy, all his attention was employed in
preparing for a campaign against Melca Christos of Lasta. But, as he
found his army full of disaffection, it was proposed to him, before he
took the field, to content them so far as to indulge the Alexandrians
in some rites of the old church; and a proclamation was accordingly
made by the king, “That those who chose to observe the Wednesday
as a fast, instead of Saturday, might do it;” and some other such
indulgences as these were granted, which were understood to affect the
faith.
As soon as this came to the ears of the patriarch, he wrote a very
sharp letter to the king, reproving him for the proclamation that
he had made; adding, that it was an encroachment upon the office of
the priesthood, that he, a layman, should take upon him to direct in
matters merely ecclesiastical. He warned the king, moreover, that God
would call him to the very strictest account for this presumption,
and reminded him of the words of Azarias the chief priest to king
Uzziah, and of the punishment of leprosy that followed the king’s
encroachment on the ecclesiastical function; and insisted upon Socinios
contradicting his proclamation by another.
Socinios so far complied, that the alteration made by the last
proclamation was confined to three articles. First, that no liturgy,
unless amended by the patriarch, was to be used in divine service.
Secondly, that all feasts, excepting Easter and those that depended
upon it, should be kept according to the ancient computation of time.
And, thirdly, that, whoever chose, might fast on Wednesday, rather than
on the Saturday.
At the same time, the king expressed himself as greatly offended at
the freedom of the application of the story of Azarias and Uzziah to
him. He told the patriarch plainly, that it was not by his sermons,
nor those of the fathers, nor by the miracles they wrought, nor by the
desire of the people, but by his edicts alone, that the Roman religion
was introduced into Ethiopia; and, therefore, that the patriarch had
not the least reason to complain of any thing being altered by the
authority that first established it. But, from this time, it plainly
appears, that Socinios began to entertain ideas, at least of the church
discipline and government, very opposite to those he had when he first
embraced the Romish religion.
The king now set out in his campaign for Lasta with a large army, which
he commanded himself, and under him his son, the prince Facilidas. Upon
entering the mountain, he divided his army into three divisions. The
first commanded by the prince, and under him Za Mariam Adebo his master
of the household, was ordered to attack, scale, and lodge themselves
on the highest part of the mountain. The second he gave to Guebra
Christos, governor of Begemder; and in this he placed the regiment, or
body of troops, called Inaches, veteran soldiers of Sela Christos, and
a small, but brave body of troops containing the sons of Portuguese:
These he directed to occupy the valleys and low ground. In the center
the king commanded in person.
The rebel chief and his mountaineers remained in a state of security;
for they neither thought to be so speedily attacked, nor that Socinios
could have raised so large an army. They abandoned, therefore, the
lower ground, and all took posts upon the heights. The prince advanced
to the first entrance, and ordered Damo, his Billetana Gueta, to force
it with four companies of good soldiers, who ascended the mountain with
great perseverance; and, notwithstanding the obstinate defence of the
rebels, made themselves master of that post, having killed two of the
bravest officers Melca Christos had, the one named Billene, the other
Tecla Mariam, sirnamed _defender of the faith_, because he was the
first that brought Galla to the assistance of Melca Christos.
There were likewise slain, at the same time, four priests and five
monks, after a desperate resistance; one of whom, calling the king’s
troops Moors, forbade them to approach for fear of defiling him, and
then, with a book in his hand, threw himself over the rock, and was
dashed to pieces in the plain below. Here the prince met with an enemy
he did not expect: The cold was so excessive, that above fifty persons
were frozen to death.
The top of the mountain, which was the second entry into Lasta, was
occupied by a still larger body of rebels, and, therefore, necessary
to be immediately stormed, else those below were in imminent danger
of being dashed to pieces by the large stones rolled down upon them.
The prince divided his army into two parties, exhorting them, without
loss of time, to attack that post; but the rebels, seeing the good
countenance with which they ascended, forsook their station and fled;
so that this second mountain was gained with much less loss and
difficulty than the first.
Behind this, and higher than all the rest, appeared the third, which
struck the assailants at first with terror and despair. This was
carried with still less loss on the part of the prince, because he was
assisted by the Inaches and Portuguese, who cut off the communication
below, and hindered one mountain from succouring the other. Here they
found great store of arms, offensive and defensive; coats of mail,
mules, and kettle drums; and they penetrated to the head-quarters
of Melca Christos, which was a small mountain, but very strong in
situation, where a Portuguese captain seized the seat which served as a
throne to the rebel; and, had not they lost time by falling to plunder,
they would have taken Melca Christos himself, who with difficulty
escaped, accompanied by ten horse.
To this last mountain Socinios repaired with the prince, and they were
joined by the governors of Amhara and Tigré, who had forced their way
in from the opposite side.
Hitherto all had gone well with the king; but when he had detached
Guebra Christos, governor of Begemder, with the Inaches and Portuguese,
who were at some distance, to destroy the crop, the mountaineers, again
assembled on a high hill above them, saw their opportunity, and fell
suddenly upon the spoilers, and cut all the soldiers of Begemder to
pieces. A considerable part of the Inaches fell also; but the rest,
joining themselves with the Portuguese in one body, made good their
retreat to the head-quarters.
The destruction of the corn everywhere around them, and the
impossibility of bringing provisions there, as they were situated in
the midst of their enemies, obliged the king to think of returning
before the rebels should collect themselves, and cut off his retreat.
And it was with great difficulty, and still greater loss, he
accomplished this, and retired to Dancaz, abandoning Lasta as soon as
he had subdued it, but leaving Begemder almost a prey to the rebels
whom he had conquered in Lasta.
Socinios being now determined upon another campaign against Lasta,
and for the relief of Begemder, ordered his troops to hold themselves
in readiness to march as soon as the weather should permit. But an
universal discontent had seized the whole army. They saw no end to this
war, nor any repose from its victories obtained with great bloodshed,
without spoil, riches, or reward; no territory acquired to the king,
nor nation subdued; but the time, when they were not actually in the
field, filled up with executions and the constant effusion of civil
blood, that seemed to be more horrid than war itself. They, therefore,
positively refused to march against Lasta; and the prince was deputed
by them to inform the king, that they did not say the Roman faith was
a bad one, as they did not understand it, nor desire to be instructed;
that this was an affair which entirely regarded themselves, and no one
would pretend to say there was any merit in professing a religion
they did not understand or believe: that they were ready, however, to
march and lay down their lives for the king and common-weal, provided
he restored them their ancient religion, without which they would have
no concern in the quarrel, nor even wish to be conquerors. Whether
the king was really in the secret or not, I shall not say; but it is
expressly mentioned in the annals of his reign, that Socinios did
promise by his son to the army, that he would restore the Alexandrian
faith if he should return victorious over Lasta; and the sudden manner
in which he executed this must convince every other person that it was
so.
The army now marched from Dancaz, upon intelligence arriving that the
rebels had left their strong-holds in Lasta, and were in their way to
the capital to give the king battle there. It was the 26th of July
1631 the king discovered, by his scouts, that the rebel Melca Christos
was at hand, having with him an army of about 25,000 men. Upon this
intelligence he ordered his troops to halt, and hear mass from Diego de
Mattos; and, having chosen his ground, he halted again at mid-day, and
confessed, according to the rite of the church of Rome, and then formed
his troops in order of battle.
It was not long till the enemy came in sight, but without shewing that
alacrity and desire of engaging they used to do when in their native
mountains. The king, at the head of the cavalry, fell so suddenly and
so violently upon them, that he broke through the van-guard commanded
by Melca Christos, and put them to flight before his foot could come
up. The rest of the army followed the example of the leader, and the
enemy were everywhere trodden down and destroyed by the victorious
horse, till night put an end to the pursuit.
Melca Christos, in the beginning of the engagement, saved himself by
the swiftness of his horse; but 8000 of the mountaineers were slain
upon the spot, among whom was Bicané, general to Melca Christos, an
excellent officer both for council and the field, and several other
considerable persons, as well inhabitants of Lasta as others, who had
taken that side from dislike to the king and his measures.
Next morning the king went out with his son to see the field of battle,
where the prince Facilidas is said to have spoke to this effect in name
of the army: “These men, whom you see slaughtered on the ground, were
neither Pagans nor Mahometans at whose death we should rejoice--they
were Christians, lately your subjects and your countrymen, some of them
your relations. This is not victory which is gained over ourselves. In
killing these you drive the sword into your own entrails. How many men
have you slaughtered? How many more have you to kill? We are become a
proverb even among the Pagans and Moors for carrying on this war, and
for apostatizing, as they say, from the faith of our ancestors.”--The
king heard this speech without reply, and returned manifestly
disconsolate to Dancaz; though many times before he had feasted and
triumphed for the gaining of a lesser victory.
After his arrival at Dancaz, he had a conference with the patriarch
Alphonso Mendes, who, in a long speech, upbraided him with having
deserted the Catholic faith at the time when the victory obtained by
their prayers gave him an opportunity of establishing it. The king
answered, with seeming indifference, that he had done every thing
for the Catholic faith in his power; that he had shed the blood of
thousands, and as much more was to be shed; and still he was uncertain
if it would produce any effect; but that he should think of it, and
send him his resolutions to-morrow.
The next day Socinios made a declaration by Za Mariam to the patriarch,
to this purport: “When we embraced the faith of Rome, we laboured for
it with great diligence, but the people shewed no affection for it.
Julius rebelled out of hatred against Sela Christos, under pretence of
being defender of the ancient faith, and was slain, together with many
of his followers. Gabriel did the same. Tecla Georgis, likewise, made a
league to die for the Alexandrian faith, which he did, and many people
with him. The same did Serca Christos the preceding year; and those
peasants of Lasta fight for the same cause at this day. The faith of
Rome is not a bad one; but the men of this country do not understand
it. Let those that like it remain in that faith, in the same way as the
Portuguese did in the time of Atzenaf Segued; let them eat and drink
together, and let them marry the daughters of Abyssinians. As for those
that are not inclined to the Roman faith, let them follow their ancient
one as received from the church of Alexandria.”
Upon this declaration, delivered by Za Mariam, the patriarch inquired
if it came from the king. Being answered that it did; after a little
pause, he returned this answer by Emanuel Almeyda, “That the patriarch
understood that both religions should be permitted in the kingdom, and
that the Alexandrians were to have every indulgence that could be
wished by them, without violating the purity of the Catholic faith;
that, therefore, he had no difficulty of allowing the people of Lasta
to live in the faith of their ancestors without alteration, as they had
never embraced any other; but as for those that had sworn to persist
in the Catholic faith, and had received the communion in that church,
by no means, without a grievous sin, could it be granted to them to
renounce that faith in which they had deliberately sworn to live and
die.”
The king, upon this answer, which he understood well, and expected,
only replied, “What is to be done? I have no longer the power of
government in my own kingdom;”--and immediately ordered a herald to
make the following proclamation:--
“Hear us! hear us! hear us! First of all we gave you the Roman Catholic
faith, as thinking it a good one; but many people have died fighting
against it, as Julius, Gabriel, Tecla Georgis, Serca Christos, and,
lastly, these rude peasants of Lasta. Now, therefore, we restore to
you the faith of your ancestors; let your own priests say their mass
in their own churches; let the people have their own altars for the
sacrament, and their own liturgy, and be happy. As for myself, I am now
old and worn out with war and infirmities, and no longer capable of
governing; I name my son Facilidas to reign in my place.”
Thus, in one day, fell the whole fabric of the Roman Catholic faith,
and hierarchy of the church of Rome, in Abyssinia; first regularly
established, as I must always think, by Peter Paez, in moderation,
charity, perseverance, long-suffering, and peace; extended and
maintained afterwards by blood and violence beyond what could be
expected from heathens, and thrown down by an exertion of the civil
power in its own defence, against the encroachments of priesthood
and ecclesiastical tyranny, which plainly had no other view than,
by annihilating the constitution under its native prince, to reduce
Abyssinia to a Portuguese government, as had been the case with so many
independent states in India already.
This proclamation was made on the 14th of June 1632. After this
Socinios took no care of public affairs. He had been for a long time
afflicted with various complaints, especially since the last campaign
in Lasta; and affairs were now managed by prince Facilidas in his
father’s place, though he did not take upon him the title of King.
Emana Christos, brother of Sela Christos, a steady Alexandrian, and
Guebra Christos, were then made governors of Lasta and Begemder; but no
steps were taken in this interval against the Jesuits.
On the 7th of September the king died, and was buried with great
pomp, by his son Facilidas, in the church of Ganeta Jesus, which he
himself had built, professing himself a Roman Catholic to the last.
The Portuguese historians deny both his resignation of the crown, and
his perseverance in the Roman Catholic faith to his death, but this
apparently for their own purposes.
He was a prince remarkable for his strength of body; of great courage
and elevation of mind; had early learned the exercise of arms,
patience, perseverance, and every military virtue that could be
acquired; and had passed the first of his life as a private person, in
the midst of hardships and dangers.
He is celebrated to this day in Abyssinia for a talent, which seems to
be the gift of nature, that of choosing upon the first view the proper
ground for the camp or battle, and embracing, in his own mind in a
moment, all the advantages and disadvantages that could result from any
particular part of it. This talent is particularly recorded in several
short proverbs, or military adages, such as the following: “Blind him
first, or you shall never beat him.” This most material qualification
seemed to have been in part transmitted to Ras Michael, the great
general in my time, descended from Socinios by his mother; and, by this
superiority alone over the other commanders opposed to him, he is said
to have been victorious in forty-three pitched battles.
Socinios embraced the Catholic religion from conviction, and studied it
with great application, as far as his narrow means of instruction would
allow him; and there can be no doubt that, under the moderate conduct
of Peter Paez, who converted him, he would have died a martyr for that
religion; and there seems as little reason to doubt, conscientious as
he was, if he had been a young man he would have quitted it for the
good of his country, and from his inability to suffer the tyranny of
the patriarch Alphonso Mendes, and his continual encroachment upon
civil government. Being, in the last years of his life, left without
one soldier to draw his sword for the Catholic cause, he kept his
religion, and abandoned his crown; and having been, it should seem, for
some time convinced that the government of the church of Rome, in such
hands as he left it, was incompatible with monarchy, he took no pains
to change Facilidas’s known sentiments, or to render him favourable to
the Roman faith, or to name another of his sons to succeed him whom he
found to be more so.
The Jesuits, considering only the catastrophe, and unmindful of the
strenuous efforts made to establish their religion during his whole
reign, have traduced his character as that of an apostate, for giving
way to the universal demand of his people to have their ancient form
of worship restored when his army had deserted him, and he himself was
dying of old age. But every impartial man will admit, that the step he
took, of abdicating his sovereignty over a people who had abjured the
religion he had introduced among them, was, in his circumstances, the
noblest action of his life, and just the reverse of apostacy.
This resignation of the crown, and his tenacious persevering in the
Catholic faith, together with the moderation of his son, the prince
Facilidas, in appointing a regency to govern, rather than to mount
the throne himself during his father’s life, are three facts which we
know to be true from the Abyssinian annals, and which the Jesuits have
endeavoured to suppress, that they might the more easily blacken the
character both of the father and the son.
They have pretended that it was the queen, and other ladies at court,
who by their influence seduced the king from the Catholic religion.
But Socinios was then past seventy, and the queen near sixty, and he
had no other wives or mistresses. To judge, moreover, by his behaviour
in the affair of Adera, sister to Tecla Georgis, the voice of the
women at court seems to have had no extraordinary weight with him. In a
word, he never varied in his religion after he embraced that of Rome,
but stedfastly adhered to it, when the pride and bad conduct of the
Jesuits, its professors, had scarcely left another friend to it in the
whole kingdom; and, therefore, the charge of apostacy is certainly an
unmerited falsehood.
As it is plain the Portuguese, from the beginning, believed their
religion could only be established by force, and were persuaded such
means were lawful, the blame of so much bloodshed for so many years,
and the total miscarriage of the whole scheme at last, lay at the
door of their sovereign, the king of Spain and Portugal; who, having
succeeded to his wish in his conquest of India, seems not to have had
the same anxiety the patriarch had for the conversion of Abyssinia,
nor even to have thought further of sending a body of troops with
his priests to the succour of Socinios, whom he left to the prayers
of Urban VIII. the merit of Ignatius Loyola, and the labours of his
furious and fanatic disciples.
TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
BOOK IV.
ANNALS OF ABYSSINIA,
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL.
CONTINUATION OF THE ANNALS, FROM THE DEATH OF SOCINIOS
TILL MY ARRIVAL IN ABYSSINIA.
[Illustration]
FACILIDAS, OR SULTAN SEGUED.
From 1632 to 1665.
_The Patriarch and Missionaries are banished--Seek the
Protection of a Rebel--Delivered up to the King, and sent to
Masuah--Prince Claudius rebels--Sent to Wechné--Death and
Character of the King._
As soon as the prince Facilidas had paid the last honours to his
father, he set about composing those disorders which had so long
distracted the kingdom by reason of the difference of religion.
Accordingly he wrote to the patriarch, that, the Alexandrian faith
being now restored, his leaving the kingdom had become indispensible:
that he had lately understood, that an Abuna, sent for by his
predecessor and by himself, was now actually on the way, and only
deferred his arrival from a resolution not to enter the kingdom
till the Romish patriarch and his priests should have left it; and,
therefore, he commanded the patriarch and fathers, assembled from their
several convents in Gojam and Dembea, to retire immediately to Fremona,
there to wait his further pleasure.
The patriarch endeavoured to parry this, with offering new concessions
and indulgencies; but the king informed him that he was too late; and
that he wished him to be advised, and fly, while it was time, from
greater harm that would otherwise fall upon him.
It was not long before the patriarch had revenge of Facilidas for this
intimation of the expectation of a successor in the person of the
Abuna. For on that very Easter there did arrive one, whose name was
Sela Christos, calling himself Abuna, who performed all the functions
of his office, dedicated churches, administered the sacrament, and
ordained priests. After continuing in office some months, he was
detected by a former companion of his, and found to be a man of very
bad character, from Nara, the frontier of Abyssinia, and that by
profession he had been a dealer in horses.
Facilidas then ordered his uncle, Sela Christos, to be brought before
him, received him kindly, and offered him again his riches and
employments. That brave man, Christian in every thing but in his hatred
and jealousy against his sovereign and nephew, refused absolutely to
barter his faith to obtain the greatest good, or avoid the greatest
punishment, it was in the power of the king to inflict. After repeated
trials, all to no purpose, the king, overcome by the instigation of
his enemies, banished him to Anabra in Shawada, a low, unwholesome
district amidst the mountains of Samen. But hearing that he still kept
correspondence with the Jesuits, and that their common resolution was
to solicit Portuguese troops from India, and remembering his former
oath, he sent orders to his place of exile to put him to death, and he
was in consequence hanged upon a cedar-tree.
Tellez, the Portuguese historian, in his collection of martyrs that
died for the faith in Abyssinia, has deservedly inserted the name
of Sela Christos; but professes that he is ignorant of the time of
his death, and under what species of torment he suffered. The only
information that I can give is what I have just now written. It was in
the beginning of the year 1634 he was carried to Shawada in chains, and
confined upon the mountain Anabra; but no mention is made of any other
hardship being put upon him than his being in irons, nor is more usual
in that kind of banishment. It was at the end of that year, however,
that he was executed in the manner above mentioned, being suspected of
having corresponded with the patriarch and Jesuits, and afterwards of
inciting his nephew Claudius to rebel, as, it appears, he had meditated
long before, and actually did very soon after.
The 9th of March 1633, the king ordered the patriarch to leave Dancaz,
and, with the rest of the fathers, to proceed immediately to Fremona,
under the conduct of four people of the first consideration, Tecla
Georgis, brother of Keba Christos, Tecla Saluce, one of the principal
persons in Tigré, and two Azages, men of great dignity at court. These
were joined by a party of soldiers belonging to Claudius, brother of
the king, supposed to have been in the conspiracy with Sela Christos
his uncle, to supplant his brother Facilidas by the help of the Jesuits
and Portuguese troops from India. But as soon as the patriarch had
fallen into disgrace, and Sela Christos lost his life, that prince
returned to the church of Alexandria, as did all the other sons of
Socinios; after which, Claudius seized to his own use all the lands and
effects that he found in Gojam, and was now by the king made governor
of Begemder. Under this escort the patriarch and his company arrived
at Fremona in the end of April 1633, after having been often robbed
and ill-treated by the way, the guards that were given to defend them
conniving with the banditti that came to rob them.
However strictly the fathers observed the precepts of scripture on
other occasions, in this they did not follow the line of conduct
prescribed by our Saviour--“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor
hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off
the dust of your feet.” They were not sheep that went patiently and
dumb to the slaughter; and, if their hearts, as they say, were full of
love and charity to Abyssinia, it was strangely accompanied with the
resolution they had taken to send Jerome Lobo, the most famous, because
the most bigotted Jesuit of the whole band, first to the viceroy of
India, and then to Spain, to solicit an army and fleet which were to
lay all this kingdom in blood.
The king was perfectly advised of all that passed. As he saw that the
patriarch endeavoured to gain time, and knew the reason of it; and, as
the fathers among them had a considerable quantity of fire-arms, he
sent an officer to the patriarch at Fremona, commanding him to deliver
up the whole of these, with gun-powder and other ammunition, and to
prepare, at the same time, to set out for Masuah. This at first the
patriarch refused to do. Nor did Facilidas punish this disobedience by
any harsher method than convincing him mildly of the imprudence and
inutility of such refusal, and the bad consequences to themselves.
Upon which the patriarch at last surrendered the articles required
to the officer sent by the king, but he resolved very differently as
to the other injunction of carrying all his brethren to Masuah. On
the contrary, he determined by every means to scatter them about the
kingdom of Abyssinia, and leave them behind if he was forced to embark
at Masuah, which he, however, resolved to avoid and resist to the
utmost of his power.
In order to do this, it was resolved that he should solicit the
Baharnagash (John Akay, then in rebellion) to take them under his
protection, and for that purpose to send a number of armed men, on a
night appointed, to meet them near Fremona, and carry them in safety
from any pursuit of the governor of Tigré. This project, extraordinary
as it was, succeeded. Akay promised them his protection. The patriarch
and priests, deceiving the guard the king had set upon them, escaped
in the night, and joined the soldiers of John Akay, commanded by Tecla
Emanuel, who was ready to receive them: They took refuge at Addicota,
the soldiers of the guard, though alarmed, not daring to pursue them in
the night, as not knowing the number and power of their protectors,
and fearing they might fall into some ambush.
It may not be amiss here to take notice, that this John Akay was the
very man with whom Tecla Georgis had associated for the murder of
Abba Jacob. He was a shrewd man, and had great power by living in
the neighbourhood of Sennaar, to which country he could retreat when
occasion required. He received the patriarch with great kindness.
Addicota is an inaccessible rock, perpendicular on all sides, excepting
where there is a narrow path by which was the entrance. Here the
patriarch thought he could continue in Abyssinia, in defiance of
Facilidas, till he should procure succours from India.
It was not, however, long before he found how little dependence there
was upon this new protector; for, in the midst of all his schemes, he
received orders to remove from Addicota, under pretence that they were
not there enough in safety; and Akay transferred them vexatiously from
place to place, into hot and unwholesome situations, always under the
same pretence, till he had destroyed their healths, and exhausted their
strength and patience.
There is but one way of disposing such people to grant a favour, and
it was surprising the patriarch did not find this out sooner. Jerome
Lobo was sent with a small present in gold, desiring they might have
leave to continue in their old habitation, Addicota. Lobo found John
Akay very much taken up in a pursuit that some ignorant monks had put
into his head. They had made him believe that there was a treasure hid
under a certain mountain which they had shewn him, but that the devil
who guarded it had constantly hindered his predecessors from acquiring
it. At present they had found out, that this devil had gone a journey
far off, was become blind and lame, and was, besides, in very great
affliction for the death of a son, the only hopes of his devilship’s
family, having now only a daughter remaining, very ugly, lame,
squinting, and sickly, and that all these reasons would hinder him from
being very anxious about his treasure. But, even supposing he did come,
they had an old monk that would exorcise him, a man as eminent for
wisdom as for sanctity.
In short, they produced a monk, one of their brethren, above a hundred
years old, whom they mounted upon a horse, then tied him to the animal,
wrapping him round with black wool, which, it seems, was the conjuring
habit. He was followed by a black cow and some monks, who carried beer,
hydromel, and roasted wheat, which was necessary, it seemed, to refresh
the devil after his long journey and great affliction, and put him in
good humour, if he should appear.
The old monk sung without ceasing, the workmen wrought vigorously, and
much earth and stones were removed; at last they discovered some rat,
mice, or mole-holes, at the sight of which a cry of joy was heard from
all the parties present.
The old monk sings again; the cow is brought in great hurry, and
sacrificed, and pieces of it thrown to the rats and mice: again they
fall to work with double keenness, the mole-holes vanish, and a hard
rock appears. This being the last obstacle, they fall keenly upon the
rock, and the old monk chants till he is hoarse with singing; the heat
of the sun is excessive; no gold appears; John Akay loses his patience,
and asks when it may be seen? The monks lay the whole blame upon him,
because, they say, he had not enough of faith. They give over work;
with one consent fall to eating the cow, and then disperse.
Father Jerome, takes the opportunity of this disappointment to abuse
the monks. He presents the Baharnagash with two ounces of gold, and
some other trifles, instead of the treasure which he was to get in the
mountain: he obtains the request he came to solicit, and the patriarch
and fathers return to Addicota.
Facilidas, informed of the asylum afforded to the Jesuits who had fled
from Fremona, applied to John Akay, promising him forgivenness of what
was past if he would deliver the priests under his protection. This
John Akay declined to do from motives of delicacy. It was breaking his
word to deliver his guests into the hands of the king; but, by a very
strange refinement, he agreed to sell them to the Turks. Accordingly
they were delivered for a sum to the basha of Masuah, who received them
with much greater kindness than they had experienced in the Christian
country from which they fled.
Two Jesuits were purposely left behind, with the consent of John
Akay, unknown to Facilidas, in fervent hopes that some occasion would
soon offer of suffering martyrdom for the true faith; and in this
expectation they were not long disappointed, all those who were left in
Abyssinia having lost their lives by violent deaths, most of them on a
gibbet, by order of Facilidas, the last of whom was Bernard Nogeyra.
Facilidas, weary of the obstinacy of these missionaries, uneasy also
at the suspicions they created, that a number of Portuguese troops
would be poured in upon his country by the viceroy of India, concluded
a treaty with the bashas of Masuah and Suakem, for preventing any
Portuguese passing into Abyssinia, by shutting these ports against
them. Not above eight years before, that is, in the year 1624, Socinios
had sent a zebra, and several other curious articles, as presents
to the basha of Suakem, with a request to him not to obstruct, as
the Turks had used to do, the entrance of any Portuguese into his
dominions. But those times were now so changed, that both nations,
Turks and Abyssinians, had resolved, with one consent, to exclude them
all, for their mutual safety, peace, and advantage.
This treaty with the Turks, made by Facilidas, probably gave rise
to that calumny of the Jesuits, that, for fear of a return of the
Portuguese, that prince had embraced the Mahometan religion, and sent
for preceptors from Mocha to instruct him in their tenets. This, I say,
if not founded upon the treaty I mention, was destitute of the least
shadow of truth; but, like other calumnies then propagated in great
number, arose solely from the rage, malice, and heated imaginations of
desperate fanatics.
Amidst the general regret this revolution in the church of Ethiopia
occasioned at Rome, there were some who thought the pride, obstinacy,
and violence of the Jesuits, the hardness and cruelty of their hearts
in instigating Socinios to that perpetual effusion of blood, and
their independence, their encroachments upon, and resistance of the
civil power, were faults resulting from the institutions of that
particular society, and that these occasioned the miscarriage; that a
well-grounded aversion to the teachers had created a repugnance to the
doctrines preached, and was the reason of the expulsion of the fathers,
and the relapse of Abyssinia to the Alexandrian faith. From this
persuasion, six capuchins, all of them Frenchmen of the reformed Order
of St Francis, were sent from Rome after the death of Nogeyra, by the
congregation _De Propagandâ Fide_, and these had protections from the
grand signior.
Two attempted the entering Abyssinia by way of the Indian Ocean, that
is, from Magadoxa, and were slain by the Galla, after advancing a very
short way into the country. Two of them penetrated into Abyssinia, and
were stoned to death. The remaining two, hearing the fate of their
companions at Masuah, and not being so violently bent upon a crown of
martyrdom as were the Portuguese missionaries, prudently returned home,
carrying with them the account of this bad success.
Three other capuchins were sent after this. It is impossible to judge
from their conduct what idea they had formed; for they themselves
gave the first information of their intended coming to Facilidas, who
thereupon recommended it to the basha to receive them according to
their merits; and thereupon, on their arrival at Suakem, their heads
were cut off by his order; the skins of their heads and faces stripped
off and sent to the king of Abyssinia, that, by their colour, he might
know them to be franks, and by their tonsure to be priests. Nor was
it possible afterwards to introduce any Catholic missionaries, either
during this or the following reign.
Facilidas having thus provided against being further disturbed by
missionaries, and having reduced all his subjects to the obedience of
the Alexandrian church, sent again messengers to bring an Abuna from
Cairo, while he took the field against Melca Christos his rival, who
continued in arms at the head of the peasants of Lasta, though there
was now no longer any pretence that the Alexandrian faith was in
danger. Both armies met in Libo, a country of the Galla, where a panic
seized the king’s troops, his horse flying at the first onset. The
royal army being entirely dispersed, Melca Christos pursued his good
fortune, and entered the king’s palace, took possession of the throne,
and was crowned; he appointed to all the great places in government,
and distributed a largess, or bounty, to his soldiers.
The Portuguese historians say, that this happened at Dancaz, not at
Libo. But they should have remembered what they before have said, that
an epidemic fever raged in all Dembea, so that the king was not at
Dancaz that year. He passed the winter of the preceding one at Dobit,
near Begemder.
The memoirs of these missionaries, even when they were in the country,
are to be read with great caution, being full of misrepresentations of
the manners and characters of men, magnifying some actions, slighting
others, and attributing to their favourites services that were really
performed by their adversaries; and, from the coming of Alphonso
Mendes, till they were banished to Masuah, great part of their account
is untrue, and the rest very suspicious. After their retiring to India,
which is the time we are now speaking of, the whole that they have
published is one continued tissue of falsehood and calumny, either
hear-say stories communicated to them, as they say, by the remnants
of zealots still alive in Abyssinia, or fabrications of their own,
invented for particular purposes. In continuing this history, I shall
take notice of some of these, though for facts I rely entirely upon the
annals of the country, treating, however, the Abyssinian account of the
Jesuits’ doctrines and behaviour with the same degree of caution.
This forwardness of his rival Melca Christos did not discourage
Facilidas. Without losing a moment, he sent expresses to Kasmati Dimmo,
governor of Samen, to Ras Sela Christos, of Damot, and to his brother
Claudius, governor of Begemder, ordering them to march and attack Melca
Christos, then acting as sovereign in the king’s palace at Libo.
These three generals were not slack in obeying the commands of
Facilidas. They surrounded Melca Christos before he expected them, and
forced him to a battle, in which he was defeated and lost his whole
army. He himself, fighting manfully at the head of his troops, was
slain hand to hand by Cosmas, a soldier of Kasmati Claudius, the king’s
brother.
Jerome Lobo mentions Facilidas’s bad success against the Gallas and
Agows as an instance of divine vengeance which pursued him. But if the
approbation or disapprobation of heaven is to be appealed to in this
reign as a proof of the justness of the measures taken, we must be
obliged to say the cause of the Jesuits was not the cause of heaven.
If we except the temporary advantage gained over Facilidas, and the
accident that happened to his army at Lasta, perpetual victory had
attended the wars in which this prince was engaged; for so far was he
from being unfortunate this campaign against the Agows, that, on the
9th of February 1636, he marched from Libo into Gojam, and totally
defeated the two great tribes Azena and Zeegam. After which he sent his
army with Kasmati Melca Bahar, who coming up with the Galla, a great
body of whom had made an incursion into Gojam, he totally overthrew
them, and passing the Nile into their country, laid it waste, and
returned with a great number of cattle, and multitudes of women and
children to be sold as slaves.
The king then returned to Begemder, and took up his head-quarters
at Gonsala; but, soon hearing that the Abuna Marcus was arrived, he
quitted that place, and came to meet him in Gondar.
The next year, which was the fifth of his reign, and the first of the
coming of Abuna Marcus, he again fought with the Agows, and beat the
Denguis, Hancasha, and the Zeegam, and passed that winter in Gafat;
nor was he ever unfortunate with the Agows or Galla. But a misfortune
happened this year (the 6th of his reign) which very much affected the
whole kingdom. The people of Lasta seemed to grow more inveterate
after the defeat they had received under Melca Christos. In the stead
of that prince slain in battle, they appointed his son, a young man of
good hopes.
Facilidas, trusting to his former reputation acquired in these
mountains in his father’s time, on the 3d of March 1638 advanced with
a large army into Lasta, with a design to bring these peasants to a
battle. But the rebels, growing wise by their losses, no longer chose
to trust themselves on the plain, but, retiring to the strongest
posts, fortified them so judiciously, that, without risking any loss
themselves, they cut off all supplies or provisions coming to the
king’s army.
It happened at that time the cold was so excessive that almost the
whole army perished amidst the mountains; great part from famine, but
a greater still from cold, a very remarkable circumstance in these
latitudes. Lasta is barely 12° from the Line, and it was now the
equinox in March, so that the sun was but 12° from being in the zenith
of Lasta, and there was in the day twelve hours of sun. Yet here is
an example of an army, not of foreigners, but natives, perishing with
cold in their own country, when the sun is no farther than 12° from
being vertical, or from being directly over their heads; a strong proof
this, as I have often remarked, that there is no way of judging by the
degrees of heat in the thermometer, what effect that degree of heat or
cold is to have upon the human body.
The eighth year of the reign of Facilidas, Claudius, governor of
Begemder, his brother, revolted and joined the rebels of Lasta. It
seems, that this prince had been long encouraged by the Jesuits, and
his uncle Sela Christos, in expectation of succeeding his father
Socinios, and supplanting Facilidas, his brother, in the kingdom. But,
after the banishment of the Jesuits, and the death of Sela Christos,
Facilidas thinking, these bad counsellors being removed, he would
continue firm in his duty, and willing to disbelieve the whole that had
been reported of his designs, made him governor of Begemder.
It happened, however, that this very year two Abunas arrived from
Egypt, one by way of Sennaar, the other by Dancali. Upon inquiry it was
found, that Abba Michael, the latter of these Abunas, had been sent for
by Kasmati Claudius, in expectation that he was to be on the throne by
the time of his Abuna’s arrival. This implied clearly that the king’s
death was agreed on. Claudius, without attempting a vindication, or
awaiting the discussion of this step, fled to Lasta, and joined Laeca,
son of Melca Christos, a youth then at the head of the rebels.
Facilidas banished Abba Michael to Serké, a Mahometan town in the way
to Sennaar, and admitted Abba Johannes, whom he himself had sent for
from Cairo, into the office of Abuna.
Soon after this, Claudius was surprised and taken prisoner, and brought
to the king, and, though stained in a high degree with ingratitude,
treason, and intended fratricide, he could not be brought to order his
execution, but, like a wise and merciful prince, reflecting on the
ancient usages of the empire, and how much royal blood might be daily
saved by sequestering the descendents of the imperial family upon the
mountain, he chose that of Wechné in Belessen, which served ever after
for this purpose.
This is the third mountain within the reach of written history, first
chosen, and then reprobated, as a state-prison for all the males of the
royal family, excepting the one seated upon the throne.
This interruption of the imprisonment of the princes for a time, and
the resuming it again for another period, have led the Portuguese
writers, very little acquainted with the history or constitution of
this country, into various disputes and difficulties, which I shall
fully explain and reconcile in their proper place. It is sufficient
for the present to observe, that Claudius was sent into exile to the
mountain of Wechné, and that he was the first prince banished thither,
where he lived for many years.
The king, finding that nothing material pressed at home, marched into
Gojam to Enzagedem, whence he sent Ras Bela Christos against the
Shangalla, N. W. of the country of the Agows. These people being put
upon their guard by their neighbours, all disaffected to the king,
contrived to place themselves in ambush so judiciously, that Bela
Christos, marching in security into their country, was surrounded by
the Shangalla, whom he thought yet at a distance. Great part of his
troops was slain by the arrows of the enemy, who, from their caves and
holes in the mountain, poured their missile weapons, stones, and arrows
on the troops, at so small a distance that every one took place, though
above the reach of swords, and lances, or such common weapons; others
were overpowered by large bodies of men sallying from the thickets, and
fighting them firmly foot to foot. Many officers were that day slain,
among the rest Alzaguè and Petros, two persons of great distinction
in the palace. But the king, however afflicted for the loss of his
men, well knew that this defeat would have no other consequences; so
returned to his capital, with resolution to make another vigorous
effort against Lasta.
The manner in which this expedition was prevented cannot but give us
a high idea of Facilidas: Laeca, at the head of an army of veteran
troops, whose affection he never had occasion to doubt, thought it
safer to trust to the generosity of a king, who had slain his father in
battle, than to the acquiring a crown that was not his, by persevering
any longer in rebellion. Accordingly he surrendered himself, without
condition, to Facilidas, who immediately committed him to prison, which
seeming severity, however, meant nothing further, than to shew him
the lenity which followed was entirely his own, and not suggested to
him by the officiousness of courtiers; for no sooner was he arrived
at Gondar, than he sent for Laeca from prison, received him not only
kindly, but with great marks of distinction; and, instead of banishing
him to Wechné, as he did his own brother Claudius, and which, as being
of the blood-royal, should have been his destination likewise, the king
entered into a kind of treaty with Laeca, by which he gave him large
possessions in Begemder near Lasta, and married him to his daughter
Theoclea, by whom, however, he had no children, but lived long in
constant friendship and confidence with Facilidas.
Except the events which I have already recorded, there is nothing
farther in this long reign worthy of being insisted upon; the early
inroads of the Galla, in plundering parties, and the seditions and
revolts of the Agows from the oppression and extortion of their
governors, were such as we find in every reign; and in all these
Facilidas was victorious, whilst the Hancasha and Zeegam were greatly
weakened in these campaigns.
Facilidas was taken ill at Gondar, in the end of October, of a disease
which, from its first appearance, he thought would prove mortal. He,
therefore, sent to his eldest son Hannes, whom he had constantly kept
with him, and who was now of age to govern, and recommended to him
his kingdom, and the persevering in the ancient religion. He died the
30th of September 1665, in great peace and composure of mind, and they
buried him at Azazo.
If we are obliged to give his father the preference, from the greater
variety of trials which he underwent, we must in justice allow, that,
after his father, Facilidas was the greatest king that ever sat
upon the Abyssinian throne. He had every good quality necessary to
constitute a great prince, without any alloy or mixture, that, upon so
much provocation as he had, might have misled him to be a bad one. He
was calm, dispassionate, and courteous in his behaviour. In the very
difficult part he had to act between his father and the nation, the
necessities of the times had taught him a degree of reserve, which, if
it was not natural, was not therefore the less useful to him. He was
in his own person the bravest soldier of his time, and always exposed
himself in proportion as the occasion was important.
To this were added all the qualities of a good general, in which
character he seems to have equalled his father Socinios, who else was
universally allowed to be the first of his time. Fierce and violent in
battle, he was backward in shedding blood after it. Though an enemy
to the Catholic religion, yet, from duty to his father, he lived
with the patriarch and Jesuits upon so familiar a footing, that they
confess themselves it was not from any part of his behaviour to them
they ever could judge him an enemy. He was most remarkable for an
implicit submission to his father’s commands; and, upon this principle,
fought in favour of the Catholic religion against his own friends and
persuasion, because such were the orders of his sovereign. He was of a
very mild and pleasant temper, as appeared by his behaviour to Melca
Christos, to his brother Claudius, to his uncle Sela Christos, and to
the patriarch and Jesuits.
It is true, that, of these last, Sela Christos, and many of the
Jesuits, were put to death in his reign; but this was not till they had
experienced repeated acts of mercy and forgivenness; still, persisting
in constant rebellion against government, they were justly cut off
as traitors and rebels by the civil power, in the very act of their
conspiracy against the life of the king and constitution of the country.
There is published by Tellez a letter of Alphonso Mendes, written, as
is falsely said, from Masuah, where it is dated, but truly from Goa.
If, as the patriarch pretends, he wrote it from Masuah, it is another
proof of this prince’s clemency, that he ever suffered the author of
such an indecent libel to return to India in peace. It is well known,
that, on the first requisition of Facilidas, the Turks would have
delivered the patriarch into his hands; and, every one that reads it
must allow, such language from a low-born priest to a king, deserved
every exemplary punishment offended royalty could inflict: It would not
have been mild, had such liberty been taken by a stranger in his native
country, Portugal.
The patriarch accuses Facilidas with the crime committed by Absalom,
which is, I suppose, debauching his father’s wives and concubines.
But, unluckily for the truth of this story, we have the Jesuit’s own
testimony, that Socinios had put away his wives and concubines before
he embraced the Catholic religion, so at his father’s death this was
impossible, unless he could commit incest with his own mother, who
was at that time a woman near sixty. But we shall suppose that they
existed, were never married, and, at the time of their being put away,
they were 18 years of age at an average. The king put them away in the
year 1621; and, therefore, in the year 1634, they would be 30 years of
age; and any body that has seen the effects that number of years has
upon Abyssinian beauty, must confess they could be no great temptation
to a prince.
The next calumny mentioned in this libel is, the murder of his brother
Claudius, nay, of all his brothers. Now we have seen, in the history of
his reign, that Claudius had fairly forfeited his life by a meditated
fratricide, and by an overt act of rebellion in which he was taken
prisoner. Yet so mild and placable was Facilidas, that he refused to
put him to death, but sent him prisoner to the mountain of Wechné, and
mercifully revived the ancient usage of banishing the princes of the
blood-royal to the mountain, instead of executing them, which had been
the practice to his time, and had occasioned the death of above sixty
of these unfortunate princes within the last hundred years.
To mount Wechné he also sent his own son David, and with him all his
brothers; and, so far from being murdered, we shall find them mostly
alive attending an extraordinary festival made for their sakes by
Facilidas’s grandson; an accident so rare, that it seems Providence had
permitted it in favour and vindication of truth and innocence, and to
stamp the lie upon the patriarch’s scandalous aspersions.
The third falsehood is, that Facilidas turned Mahometan, and got
doctors from Mocha to instruct him in the Koran. We have already seen
what gave rise to this, if it indeed had any foundation at all; but
it is a well-known fact, that, though he governed the church, during
a whole reign, mildly and judiciously, without any mark of bigotry,
never were two princes better affected to the Alexandrian church than
Facilidas and his son; and never were two that had better reason,
having both seen the disorders that other religions had occasioned.
We see throughout all this piece of the patriarchs, a self-sufficient
mind, gratifying itself by disgorging its passion and malice. If
Alphonso Mendes had no regard, as it seems indeed he had not; if he
had no reverence to higher powers, such as scripture had taught him
to have; if he was too enlightened, or too infatuated, to take our
Saviour’s precepts for his rule, and, shaking the dust of Abyssinia
from his feet, remit them to a Judge who will, at his own time,
separate good from evil, still he should have had, at least, a
brotherly love and charity for those unfortunate people who were to
fall into Facilidas’s hands; and we cannot reasonably suppose but that
the constant butcheries committed by the Turks afterwards upon the
Catholic priests, wild enough to enter at Masuah and Suakem, were the
fruits of the calumnious, intemperate libel of the patriarch.
After the death of the last missionary, Bernard Nogeyra, no
intelligence arrived of what was doing in Abyssinia, excepting from the
Dutch settlements of Batavia, where Abyssinian factors, or merchants,
had arrived; and where the industrious Mr Ludolf, very much engaged
in the history of this country, and who spared no pains, maintained
a correspondence, and thence he was informed that Facilidas had died
after a long and prosperous reign, and had left his kingdom in peace to
his son.
This intelligence alarmed the zeal of two great champions of the
Jesuits; the one M. le Grande, late secretary to the French embassy to
Portugal; and the other M. Piques, a member of the Sorbonne, a very
confused, dull disputant upon the difference of religion.
These two worthies, without any proof or intelligence but their own
warm and weak imaginations, fell violently upon poor Ludolf, accusing
him of falsehood, partiality, and prevarication; and, right or wrong,
they would have Facilidas plunged up to the neck in troubles, wading
through labyrinths of misfortunes, conspiracies, and defeats, certainly
dead, or about to die some terrible death by the vengeance of heaven;
and this ridiculous report is unjustly spread abroad by all the zealots
of those times. _Fata obstant_;--truth will out. The annals of the
country, written without a regard to either party, state, that, in the
long reign of Facilidas, notwithstanding the calamitous state in which
his father left him the empire, very few misfortunes only are reported
to have happened either to himself or lieutenants.
[Illustration]
HANNES I. OR ŒLAFE SEGUED.
From 1665 to 1680.
_Bigotry of the King--Disgusts his Son Yasous, who flies from Gondar._
If this prince succeeded to his kingdom in peace, he had the address
still to keep it so. He was not in his nature averse to war, though,
besides two feeble attempts he made upon Lasta, and one against the
Shangalla, all without material consequences, no military expedition
was undertaken in his time; and no rebellion or competitor (so frequent
in other reigns) at all disturbed his.
Hannes seems to have had the seeds of bigotry in his temper; from the
beginning of his reign he commanded the Mahometans to eat no other
flesh but what had been killed by Christians; and gathered together
the Catholic books, which the Jesuits had translated into the Ethiopic
language, and burned them in a heap. Much of his attention was given
to church matters, and, in regulating these, he seems to have employed
most of his time. He deposed the Abuna Christadulus, appointed by his
father, and in his place put the Abuna Sanuda.
This last measure seems to have displeased his eldest son Yasous, who
fled from the palace one night, and passed the Nile; and, though he was
followed by Kasmati Aserata Christos, he was not overtaken, but staid
some time in his sister’s house, and then returned to Gondar at the
request of his father.
A convocation of the clergy, the second in this reign, was now held,
and great heats and divisions followed among two orders of monks,
those of Eustathius and those of Debra Libanos. The king seems to have
assisted at all these debates, and to have contented himself with
holding the balance in his hands without declaring for either party.
But these altercations and disputes could not satisfy the active spirit
of the prince his son, who again fled from his father and from Gondar,
but was overtaken at the river Bashilo, and brought back to the palace,
where he found his father ill.
Hannes died the 19th of July, and was buried at Tedda, after having
reigned 15 years. He seems, from the scanty memorials of his long
reign, to have been a weak prince; but, perhaps, if the circumstances
of the times were fully known, he may have been a wise one.
[Illustration]
YASOUS I.
From 1680 to 1704.
_Brilliant Expedition of the King to Wechné--Various Campaigns
against the Agows and Galla--Comet appears--Expedition against
Zeegam and the Eastern Shangalla--Poncet’s Journey--Murat’s
Embassy--Du Roule’s Embassy--Du Roule assassinated at
Sennaar--The King is assassinated._
Yasous succeeded his father Hannes with the approbation of the whole
kingdom. He had, as we have seen, twice in Hannes’s life-time absconded
from the palace; and this was interpreted as implying an impatience to
reign. But I rather think the cause was a difference of manners, his
father being extremely bigotted, sordid, and covetous; for he never, in
those elopements, pretended to make a party contrary to his father’s
interest, nor shewed the least inclination to give either the army or
the people a favourable impression of himself, to the disadvantage of
the king. There was, besides, a difference in religious principles.
Yasous had a great predilection for the monks of Debra Libanos, or
the high church; while Hannes, his father, had done every thing in his
power to instil into his son a prepossession in favour of those of Abba
Eustathius.
To these opinions, therefore, so widely different, as well in
religion as the things of the world, I attribute the young prince’s
disinclination to live with his father. This seems confirmed by the
first step he took upon his mounting the throne, which was to make an
alteration in the church government from what his father had left it at
his death.
It was on the 7th of July 1680 he was proclaimed king; the next day
he deposed the Acab Saat Constantius, and gave his place to Asera
Christos. He then called a council of the clergy on the 27th of
September, when he deposed Itchegué Tzaga Christos, and in his room
named Cyriacus.
It was now the time that, according to custom, he was to make his
profession in regard to the difference I have formerly mentioned that
subsisted between the two parties about the incarnation of Christ.
But this he refused to do in the present state of the church, as
there was then no certain Abuna in Abyssinia. For Hannes, before he
died, had written to the patriarch of Alexandria to depose both Abuna
Christodulus and Marcus, who, in case of death, was to have succeeded
him, and this under pretence that he had varied in his faith between
the two contending parties.
Hannes, therefore, desired the patriarch to appoint Abuna Sanuda,
a man known to be devoted to the monks of St Eustathius and their
tenets; whereas the other two priests were supposed to be inclined to
the monks of Debra Libanos. Yasous told his clergy that he would not
suffer Sanuda to be elected; and the assembly, with little opposition,
conformed to the sentiments of the king, who sent immediately thereupon
to Cairo, demanding peremptorily that Marcus might be appointed Abuna,
and declaring his resolution to admit no other. He then ordered the
church of Tecla Haimanout to be consecrated with great solemnity; he
repaired and adorned it with much magnificence, and endowed it with
lands, which increased its revenue very considerably.
These two circumstances (especially the last) shewed distinctly to the
whole kingdom his affection for the high church, as explicitly as any
proclamation could have done. And in this he continued steady during
his whole life, notwithstanding the many provocations he met with from
that restless body of men.
Having thus settled the affairs of the church, he proceeded to those
of the state, and appointed Anastasius (then governor of Amhara) to be
Ras, or lieutenant-general, in his whole kingdom, allowing him also to
keep his province of Amhara. In this he shewed a wisdom and penetration
that gained him the good opinion of every one; for Anastasius was a
man advanced in years, of great capacity and experience, and of a most
unblemished character among his neighbours, who, in all their own
affairs, had recourse to, and were determined by, his counsels.
The king then took a journey of a very extraordinary nature, and such
as Abyssinia had never before seen. Attended only by his nobility, of
whom a great number had flocked to him, he sat down at the foot of the
mountain of Wechné, and ordered all the princes of the royal family who
were banished, and confined there, to be brought to him.
During the last reign, the mountain of Wechné, and those forlorn
princes that lived upon it, had been, as it were, totally forgotten.
Hannes having sons of an age fit to govern, and his eldest son Yasous
living below with his father, no room seemed to remain for attempting
a revolution, by the young candidates escaping from the mountain. This
oblivion to which they were consigned, melancholy as it was, proved
the best state these unhappy prisoners could have wished; for to be
much known for either good or bad qualities, did always at some period
become fatal to the individuals. Punishment always followed inquiries
after a particular prince; and all messages, questions, or visits, at
the instance of the king, were constantly fore-runners of the loss of
life, or amputation of limbs, to these unhappy exiles. To be forgotten,
then, was to be safe; but this safety carried very heavy distress along
with it. Their revenues were embezzled by their officers or keepers,
and ill paid by the king; and the sordid temper of Hannes had often
reduced them all to the danger of perishing with hunger and cold.
Yasous, as he was well acquainted with all these circumstances, so he
was, in his nature and disposition, as perfectly willing to repair
the injuries that were past, and prevent the like in future. Nothing
tended so much to conciliate the minds of the people to their sovereign
as this behaviour of Yasous.
In the midst of his relations there now appeared (as risen from the
dead) Claudius, son of Socinios, the first exile who was sent to the
mountain of Wechné by his brother Facilidas, grandfather of Yasous.
This was the prince who, as we have already stated, was fixed upon
by the Jesuits to succeed his father, and govern that country when
converted to the Romish religion by their intrigues, and conquered by
the arms of the Portuguese: This was the prince who, to make their
enemies appear more odious, these Jesuits have asserted was slain
by his brother Facilidas, one instance by which we may judge of the
justice of the other charges laid against that humane, wise, and
virtuous prince, whose only crime was an inviolable attachment to the
religion and constitution of his country, and the just abhorrence
he most reasonably had, as an independent prince, to submit the
prerogatives of his crown, and the rights of his people to the blind
controul of a foreign prelate.
There came from the mountain also the sons of Facilidas, with their
families; and likewise his own brothers, Ayto Theophilus, and Ayto
Claudius, sons of his father Hatzè Hannes. The sight of so many noble
relations, some advanced in years, some in the flower of their youth,
and some yet children; all, however, in tatters, and almost naked,
made such an impression on the young king that he burst into tears.
Nor was his behaviour to the respective degrees of them less proper or
engaging. To the old he paid that reverence and respect due to parents;
to those about his own age, a kind and liberal familiarity; while he
bestowed upon the young ones caresses and commendations, sweetened with
the hopes that they might see better times.
His first care was to provide them all plentifully with apparel and
every necessary. His brothers he dressed like himself, and his uncles
still more richly. He then divided a large sum of money among them all.
In the month of December, which is the pleasantest season of the whole
year, the sun being moderately hot, the sky constantly clear and
without a cloud, all the court was encamped under the mountain, and the
inferior sort strewed along the grass. All were treated at the expence
of the king, passing the day and night in continual festivals. It is
but right, said the king, that I should pay for a pleasure so great
that none of my predecessors ever dared to taste it; and of all that
noble assembly none seemed to enjoy it more sincerely than the king.
All pardons solicited for criminals at this time were granted. In this
manner having spent a whole month, before his departure the king called
for the deftar, (_i. e._ the treasury book) in which the account of
the sum allowed for the maintenance of these prisoners is stated; and
having inquired strictly into the expenditure, and cancelled all grants
that had been made of any part of that sum to others, and provided
in future for the full, as well as yearly payment of it, he, for his
last act, gave to the governor of the mountain a large accession of
territory, to make him ample amends for the loss of the dues he was
understood to be intitled to from that revenue. After this, he embraced
them all, assuring them of his constant protection; and, mounting his
horse, he took the keeper along with him, leaving all the royal family
at their liberty at the foot of the mountain.
This last mark of confidence, more than all the rest, touched the minds
of that noble troop, who hurried every man with his utmost speed to
restore themselves voluntarily to their melancholy prison, imputing
every moment of delay as a step towards treason and ingratitude to
their munificent, compassionate, and magnanimous benefactor. All their
way was moistened with tears flowing from sensible and thankful hearts;
and all the mountain resounded with prayers for the long life and
prosperity o£ the king, and that the crown might never leave the lineal
descendents of his family. It was very remarkable, that, during this
long reign, though he was constantly involved in war, no competitor
from the mountain ever appeared in breach of those vows they had so
voluntarily undertaken.
There was another great advantage the king reaped by this generous
conduct. All the most powerful and considerable people in the kingdom
had an opportunity, at one view, to see each individual of the royal
family that was capable of wearing the crown, and all with one voice
agreed, upon the comparison made, that, if they had been then assembled
to elect a king, the choice would not have fallen upon any but the
present.
Though the country of the Agows of Damot is generally plain and laid
out in pasture, each tribe has some mountain to which, upon the
alarm of an enemy, they retire with their flocks. The Galla, being
their neighbours on the other side of the Nile to the south, and the
Shangalla in the low country immediately to the west, these natural
fortresses are frequently of the greatest use during the incursions of
both.
They alone, of all the nations of Abyssinia, have found it their
interest so far to cultivate their neighbours the Shangalla, that there
are places set apart in which both nations can trade with each other in
safety; where the Agows sell copper, iron, beads, skins, or hides, and
receive an immense profit in gold; for, below these to the south and
west, is the gold country nearest Abyssinia, none of that metal being
anywhere found in Abyssinia itself.
Yasous, from this country of the Agows, descended into that of the
Shangalla; where, conforming to the ancient custom of Abyssinia, he
hunted the elephant and rhinoceros, the ordinary first expedition in
the kings his predecessors reigns, but the second in his; the first
having been (as before stated) spent in charity and mercy, much more
nobly, at the foot of the mountain of Wechné.
Yasous is reported to have been the most graceful and dexterous
horseman of his time. He distinguished himself in this hunting as much
for his address and courage against the beasts, as he had, for a short
while before, done by his affability, generosity, and benevolence,
amidst his own family. All was praise, all was enthusiasm, wherever the
young king presented himself; the ill-boding monks and hermits had not
yet dared to foretel evil, but every common mouth predicted this was to
be an active, vigorous, and glorious reign, without being thought by
this to have laid any pretension to the gift of prophecy.
It was now the second year of his reign when the king took the field
with a small, but very well chosen army. The Edjow and Woolo, two of
the most powerful tribes of southern Galla, taking advantage of the
absence of Ras Anastasius, had entered Amhara by a pass, on the side
of which is situated Melec Shimfa, one of the principal towns of the
province.
The king, leaving old Anastasius to the government of Gondar, took
upon himself the relief of Amhara; and, being joined by all the
troops in his way, he arrived at Melec Shimfa before the Galla had
any intelligence of him. The Galla always chose for their residence
a very level country, because they are now become all horsemen. The
country of Amhara, on the contrary, is full of high mountains, and
only accessible by certain narrow passes. The king, therefore, instead
of marching directly to the enemy, passed above them, and left them
still advancing, burning the villages and churches in the country
below. He then took possession of the pass (through which he knew they
must retreat) with a strong body of troops; and filled the entrance
of the defile, which was very rugged ground, with fusileers, and his
best foot armed with lances: after this, he separated his horse into
two divisions, and, reserving one half to himself, gave the other to
Kasmati Demetrius. He then placed the troops conducted by himself in
a wood, about half a mile from the entrance of the pass, and ordered
Demetrius to fall upon the Galla briskly on the plain, but to retreat
as if terrified by their numbers, and to make the best of his way then
to the pass in the mountains.
Demetrius, finding the enemy’s parties scattered wide wasting the
country, fell upon them, and slew many, till he had arrived near the
middle of their body, when the Galla, used to such expeditions, poured
in from all sides, and presently united. Demetrius, surrounded on every
side, was slain, fighting to the last in the most desperate manner, and
his party, much diminished in number, fled in a manner that could not
be mistaken for stratagem. They were closely pursued, and followed into
the pass by the Galla, who thought they had thus entirely cut them off
from Amhara. But they were soon received by a close fire from the foot
among the bushes, and by the lances that mingled with them from every
side of the mountain.
The king, upon the first noise of the musquetry, advanced quickly with
his horse, and met the Galla, in the height of their confusion, flying
back again into the plain. Here they fell an easy sacrifice to the
fresh troops led by Yasous, and to the peasants, exasperated by the
havoc they before had made in the country. Of the enemy, about 6000
men fell this day on the field; a few were brought to Gondar, and, in
contempt, sold for slaves. Few on the king’s side were slain, excepting
those that fell with Demetrius, the account of whose death the king
heard without any signs of regret:--“I told the man (says the king)
that he should shew himself and retire; if I wanted a victory I would
have led the army in person; I march against the Galla, not as a king,
but as an executioner, because my aim is to extirpate them.”
Although Yasous was stedfast in his own opinion as to his religion, or,
as it may be more properly called, the disputes and quibbles with the
monks concerning it, yet he suffered each sect to enjoy its own, and,
probably, in his heart he perfectly despised both.
The monks, however, were far from possessing any such spirit of
toleration. They considered the deposing of Acab Saat, Constantius,
and the Itchegué Tzaga Christos, as a declaration of dislike the king
entertained towards their party. They bore with great impatience and
indignation, that Abuna Sanuda, who was once their zealous partizan
in the time of Hannes, should now suddenly change his sentiments, and
declare implicitly for those of the king, and thereby increase both the
number and the consequence of their adversaries. They declared that
they would suffer every thing rather than live under a king who shewed
himself so openly a favourer of Debra Libanos, though it was now but
their turn, having in the last reign had a king more partial, and more
attached to St Eustathius, than ever Yasous was to any set of monks
whatever.
The ringleaders in all these seditious declarations were Abba Tebedin,
superior of the monastery of Gondga, and Kasmati Wali of Damot, by
origin a Galla. These two turbulent men, having first drawn over to
their party the Agows and province of Damot, passed over the Nile
to Goodero and Basso, whom they joined, and then proclaimed king
one Isaac, grandson of Socinios a prince, who was never sent to the
mountain, but whose predecessors, being at liberty when Facilidas
first banished his brothers and children to Wechné, had fled to the
Galla, and there remained in obscurity, waiting the juncture which now
happened to declare his royal descent, and offer himself for king.
The Galla, who sought but a pretence for invading Abyssinia, readily
embraced this opportunity, and swarmed to him on all sides. His army,
in a very short time, was exceedingly numerous, and the Agows and all
Damot were ready to join him when he should repass the Nile. This
revolt was indeed likely to have proved general, but for the activity
and diligence of the king, who, on the first intelligence, put himself
so suddenly in motion that he was on the banks of the Nile before
the Galla on the one side were ready for their junction with the
confederates on the other.
The king’s presence imposed upon the Agows and the rebels of Damot,
so that they let him pass quietly over the Nile into the country of
the Galla, hoping that, as their designs were not discovered, he might
again return through their country in peace if victorious over the
Galla; but, if he was beaten, they then were ready to intercept him.
But the Galla, who expected that they would have had to fight with an
army already fatigued and half-ruined by an action with the Agows on
the other side of the river, no sooner saw it pass the Nile unmolested
in full force, than they began to think how far it was from their
interest to make their country a seat of war, when so little profit was
to be expected. On the approach, therefore, of the king’s army, many
of them deserted to it, and made their peace with him. The few that
remained faithful to Isaac were dispersed after very little resistance;
and he himself being taken prisoner, and brought before the king, was
given up to the soldiers, who put him to death in his presence. On the
king’s side, no person of consideration was slain but Kasmati Maziré,
and very few on the part of the enemy.
This year 1685, the 5th of Yasous’s reign, there was no military
expedition. He had pardoned Abba Tebedin, and Kasmati Wali, and the
monks again desired an assembly of the clergy, which was granted. But
the king seeing, at its first meeting, that it was to produce nothing
but wrangling and invectives; with great calmness and resolution told
the assembly, “That their disputes were of a nature so confused and
unedifying, that he questioned much their being really founded in
scripture; and the rather so, because the patriarch of Alexandria
seemed neither to know, nor concern himself about them, nor was the
Abuna, at his first coming, ever instructed on any one of these
points. If they were, however, founded in scripture, one of them was
confessedly in the wrong; and, if so, he doubted it might be the case
with both; that he had, therefore, come to a resolution to name several
of the best-qualified persons of both parties, who, in the presence of
the Itchegué and Abuna, might inspect the books, and from them settle
some premises that might be hereafter accepted and admitted as _data_
by both.”
This being assented to, the very next year he ordered two of the
priests of Debra Libanos then at Gondar, together with Abba Tebedin,
Cosmas of Aruana, the Abuna Sanuda, and the Itchegué, forthwith to
repair to Debra Mariam, an island in the lake Tzana, where, sequestered
from the world, they might discuss their several opinions, and settle
some points admissible by both sides. After which, without giving any
opportunity for reply, he dissolved the assembly, and took the field
with his army.
The king, though perfectly informed of the part that the whole province
of Damot had taken in the rebellion of Isaac, as also great part of
the Agows, but most of all that tribe called Zeegam, yet had so well
dissembled, that most of them believed he was ignorant of their fault,
and all of them, that he had no thoughts of punishing them, for he had
returned through Damot, after the defeat of Isaac, without shewing
any mark of anger, or suffering his troops to commit the smallest
hostility. He now passed in the same peaceable manner through the
country of Zeegam, intending to attack the Shangalla of Geesa and
Wumbarea.
These two tribes are little known. Like the other Shangalla they are
Pagans, but worship the Nile and a certain tree, and have a language
peculiar to themselves. They are woolly-headed, and of the deepest
black; very tall and strong, straighter and better-made about the
legs and joints than the other blacks; their foreheads narrow, their
cheekbones high, their noses flat, with wide mouths, and very small
eyes. With all this they have an air of chearfulness and gaiety which
renders them more agreeable than other blacks. Their women are very
amorous, and sell at a much greater price than other blacks of the sex.
This country is bounded on the south by Metchakel; on the west by the
Nile; the east by Serako, part of Guesgué and Kuara; and, on the north,
by Belay, Guba, and the Hamidge[62] of Sennaar. They make very frequent
inroads, and surprise the Agows, whose children they sell at Guba to
the Mahometans, who traffic there for gold and slaves, and get iron and
coarse cotton-cloths in return. Their country is full of woods, and
their manner of life the same as has been already described in speaking
of the other tribes.
The Geesa live close upon the Nile, to which river they give their
own name. It is also called Geesa by the Agows, in the small district
of Geesh, where it rises from its source. They never have yet made
peace with Abyssinia, are governed by the heads of families, and live
separately for the sake of hunting, and, for this reason, are easily
conquered. The men are naked, having a cotton rag only about their
middle. The nights are very cold, and they lie round great fires; but
the fly is not so dangerous here as to the eastward, so that goats, in
a small number, live here. Their arms are bows, lances, and arrows;
large wooden clubs, with knobs, nearly as big as a man’s head, at the
end of them; their shields are oval. They worship the Nile, but no
other river, as I have said before; it is called Geesa, which, in their
language, signifies the first Maker, or Creator. They imagine its water
is a cure for most diseases.
East of the Geesa is Wumbarea, which reaches to Belay. The king fell
first on the Geesa, part of whom he took, and the rest he dispersed. He
then turned to the right through Wumbarea, and met with some resistance
in the narrow passes in the mountains, in one of which Kasmati Kosté,
(one of his principal officers) a man of low birth, but raised by his
merit to his present rank, was slain by an arrow.
The king then repassed the Agows of Zeegam, in the same peaceable
manner in which he came, and then marched on without giving any cause
of suspicion, taking up his quarters at Ibaba. It was here he had
appointed an assembly of the clergy to meet, before whom the several
delegates, chosen to consider the controverted points, and find some
ground for a reconciliation, were to make their report. The Abuna,
Itchegué, and all those who, for this purpose, were shut up in Debra
Mariam, appeared before the king. But, however amicably things had been
carried on while they were shut up in the island, the usual warmth and
violence prevailed before the assembly. Ayto Christos, Abba Welled
Christos of Debra Libanos, on one side, and Tebedin and Cosmas on the
other, fell roundly, and without preface, upon a dispute about the
incarnation, so that the affair from argument was likely to turn to
sedition.
The turbulent Tebedin, leaving the matter of religion wholly apart,
inveighed vehemently against the retirement to Debra Mariam, which he
loudly complained of as banishment. Ras Anastasius and Abuna Sanuda
reproved him sharply for the freedom with which he taxed this measure
of the king, and in this they were followed by many of the wiser sort
on both sides. Immediately after the assembly, the king ordered Tebedin
to be put in irons, and sent to a mountainous prison. He then returned
to Gondar.
This year, the 9th of Yasous reign, there appeared a comet, remarkable
for its size and fiery brightness of its body, and for the prodigious
length and distinctness of its tail. It was first taken notice of
at Gondar, two days before the feast of St Michael, on which day the
army takes the field. A sight so uncommon alarmed all sorts of people;
and the prophets, who had kept themselves within very moderate bounds
during this whole reign, now thought that it was incumbent upon them
to distinguish themselves, and be silent no longer. Accordingly they
foretold, from this phenomenon, and published everywhere as a truth
infallibly and immutably pre-ordained, that the present campaign was
to exhibit a scene of carnage and bloodshed, more terrible and more
extensive than any thing that ever had appeared in the annals of
Ethiopia. That these torrents of blood, which were everywhere to follow
the footsteps of the king, were to be stopped by his death, which was
to happen before he ever returned again to Gondar; and, as the object
of the king’s expedition was still a secret, these alarming presages
gained a great deal of credit.
But it was not so with Yasous, who, notwithstanding he was importuned,
by learned men of all sorts, to put off his departure for some days,
absolutely refused, answering always such requests by irony and
derision: “Pho! Pho! says he, you are not in the right; we must give
the comet fair play; use him well, or he will never appear again, and
then idle people and old women will have nothing to amuse themselves
with.”
He accordingly left Gondar at the time he had appointed; and he was
already arrived at Amdaber, a few day’s distance from the capital,
when an express brought him word of his mother’s death, on which he
immediately marched back to Gondar, and buried her in the island of
Mitraha with all possible magnificence, and with every mark of sincere
grief.
Though the prophets had not just succeeded in what they foretold, they
kept nevertheless a good countenance. It is true that no blood was
shed, nor did the king die before he returned to Gondar; but his mother
died when he was away, and that was much the same thing, for they
contended that it was not a great mistake, from the bare authority of
a comet, to err only in the sex of the person that was to die; a queen
for a king was very near calculation. As for the bloody story, and the
king’s death, they said they had mistaken the year in computing, but
that it still was to happen (when it pleased God) _some other time_.
Every body agreed that these explanations were the best possible,
excepting the king, who perceived a degree of malice in the foretelling
his death and certain loss of his army just at the instant he was
taking the field. But he disguised his resentment under strong irony,
with which he attacked these diviners incessantly. He had inquired
accurately the day of his mother’s death: “How is it, says he to his
chaplain, (or kees hatzé) that this comet should come to _foretel_
my mother’s death, when she was dead four days before it appeared?”
Another day, to the same person he said, “I fear you do my mother
too much honour at the expence of religion. Is it decent to suppose
that such a star, the most remarkable appearance at the birth of
Christ, should now be employed on no greater errand than to foretel
the death of the daughter of Guebra Mascal?” These, and many more
such railleries, accounted by these visionaries, as little short of
impiety, so mortified Kostè (the kees hatzé,) a great believer in, and
protector of the dreamers, that he resigned all his employments, and
retired among the hermits into the desert of Werk-leva towards Sennaar,
to study the aspects of the stars more accurately, and more at leisure.
Though we neither pay this comet the superstitious reverence the idle
fanatics of Abyssinia shewed it, nor yet treat it with that contempt
which this great king’s good sense prompted him to do, we shall make
some use of it, acknowledging our gratitude to the historian who has
recorded it. We shall hereby endeavour to establish our chronology
in opposition to that of the catholic writers, relating to the date
of some transactions with which they were not cotemporaries, and
only relate from hearsay, as happening before the arrival of the
missionaries in this country.
Yasous the Great, of whom we are now writing, came to the throne upon
the death of his father Hannes in 1680; the 9th year of this reign then
was 1689.
Hedar is the 3d month of the Abyssinians, and answers to part of our
November; and the 12th of that month, Hedar, is the feast of St Michael
the archangel, or 8th day of our month November, N. S.
Gondar is in lat. 12° 34´ 30´´ N. and in long. 37° 33´ 0´´ E. from the
meridian of Greenwich. By the fiery appearance of the nucleus, or body
of the comet, it certainly then was very near the sun, and either was
going down upon it to its perihelion, or had already passed it, and
was receding to its aphelion; but by its increasing tail, already at
a great length, we may conjecture it was only then going down to its
conjunction, and was then near approaching to the sun.
From this we should conclude that this comet must have been seen,
however rapidly it did move, some time before the 6th of November,
or two days before the feast of St Michael. But this depends on the
circumstances of the climate; for though the tropical rains cease the
first of September, the cloudy weather continues all the month of
October; at the end of these fall the latter rains in gentle showers,
which allay the fevers in Dembea, and make the country wholesome for
the march of the army, and these rains fall mostly in the night. From
this it is probable that the comet, having at first little light and no
tail, as yet at a distance from the sun, was not very apparent to the
naked eye, till by its increased motion and heat it had acquired both
tail and brightness, as it approached its perihelion.
Now we find by our European accounts[63], that, in the year 1689, there
did appear a comet, the orbit of which was calculated by M. Pingrè. And
this comet arrived at its perihelion on the 1st day of December 1689,
so was going down much inflamed, and with a violent motion to the sun,
the 6th of November, when it was observed at Gondar, being but 25 days
then from its perihelion.
As these circumstances are more than sufficient to constitute the
identity of the comet, a phænomenon too rare to risk being confounded
with another, we may hardly conclude the 9th year of Yasous the First
to be the year 1689 of Christ, such as our chronology, drawn from the
Abyssinian annals, states it to be; or, at least, if there is any
error, it must be so small as to be of no sort of consequence to any
sort of readers, or influence upon the narrative of any transactions.
The 10th year began with a sudden and violent alarm, which spread
itself in an instant all over the kingdom without any certain
authority. The Galla with an innumerable army were said to have entered
Gojam, at several places, and laid waste the whole province, and this
was the more extraordinary, as the Nile was now in the height of its
inundation. On his march, the king learned that this story arose merely
from a panic; and this formidable army turned out no more than a small
band of robbers of that nation, who had passed the river in their usual
way, part on horseback, while the foot were dragged over, hanging at
the horses tails, or riding on goats skins blown up with wind. This
small party had surprised some weak villages, killed the inhabitants,
and immediately returned across the river. But the alarm continued,
and there were people at Gondar who were ready to swear they saw the
villages and churches on fire, and a large army of Galla in their march
to Ibaba, at the same time that there was not one Galla on the Gojam
side of the river.
The king, however, either considering this small body of Galla coming
at this unseasonable time, and the panic that was so artificially
spread, as a feint to throw him off his guard when a real invasion
might be intended, or with a view to cover his own designs, summoned
all the men of the province of Gojam to meet him in arms at Ibaba the
7th day of January, being the proper season for preparing an expedition
into the country of the Galla. He himself in the mean time retired to
Dek, an island in the lake Tzana, there to stay till his army should be
collected.
While the king was in the island, a number of the malcontents among the
monks, who had, in the several assemblies, been banished for sedition
with Tebedin, came to him there, desiring to be heard before an
assembly; and they brought with them Arca Denghel, of Debra Samayat, to
support their petition. The king answered, that he was ready to call an
assembly, provided the Abuna desired, or would promise to be present;
but that the Abuna was then at Debra Mariam, where they might go and
know his mind.
The Abuna, who foresaw little good could be expected from such
meetings, and knew how disagreeable they were to the king, absolutely
refused to attend. On this they returned again to the king, desiring
that, of his own mere prerogative, he would call their assembly without
consulting further the Abuna. To this the king answered boldly, That
he knew it was his right to call his subjects together, without any
other reason for so doing but his will; yet, when the avowed cause of
the meeting was to canvass matters of faith, he had made it a rule to
himself, that the Abuna should always be present, or at least consent
to the meeting. And with this answer he ordered them all to depart
immediately.
Many of the principal people about the king advised him to put these
turbulent people in irons, for daring to come into his presence without
leave. But Yasous was contented to remand each to the place of his
banishment from whence he came. He then removed from Dek to Ibaba, on
the 10th of January, the journey being no more than two easy days;
but, whether it was that the Galla did not intend another invasion, or
whether they were overawed by the king’s preparations and presence, and
did not think themselves safe even in their own country, none of them
this year passed the Nile, or gave any uneasiness either to Gojam or
Damot.
Though the whole nation believed that the king’s attention was entirely
engaged in the various expeditions against the Galla and Shangalla,
which he executed with so much diligence and success, yet there was
still a principal object superior to all these, which remained a secret
in his own breast, after the parties concerned had absolutely forgot
it. All his campaigns against the Shangalla were only designed to lull
asleep those he considered as his principal enemies, that he might make
the blow he aimed at them more certain and effectual.
Six years had now passed since the Agows, and particularly the most
powerful tribe of them, the Zeegam, had, with those of Damot and the
Galla, conspired to put the crown upon the head of the rebel prince
Isaac, who had lost his life in the engagement which followed on the
other side of the Nile. It will be remembered also, that the country
of the Agows is in general open, full of rich plains, abundantly
watered by variety of fine streams; in other parts, gentle risings
and descents, but without mountains, saving that, almost in every
tribe, Nature had placed one rugged mountain to which these people
retired upon the approach of their neighbouring enemies the Galla and
Shangalla. This description does, in a more extensive manner, belong to
the country of the Zeegam, the most powerful, rich, and trading tribe
of the whole nation.
Not one single mountain, but a considerable ridge, divides the country
nearly in the middle, the bottom of which, and nearly one-third up,
is covered with brush-wood, full of stiff bamboos and canes, bearing
prickly fruit, with aloes, acacia very thorny, and of several dwarf
shrubby kinds, interspersed with the kantuffa[64], a beautiful thorn,
which alone is considered, where it grows thick and in abundance, as
a sufficient impediment for the march of a royal army. Through these
are paths known only to the inhabitants themselves, which lead you to
the middle of the mountain, where are large caves, probably begun by
Nature, and afterwards enlarged by the industry of man. The mouths of
these are covered with bushes, canes, and wild oats, that grow so as to
conceal both man and horse, while the tops of these mountains are flat
and well-watered, and there they sow their grain out of the reach of
the enemy. Upon the first alarm they drive the cattle to the top, lodge
their wives and children in the caves, and, when the enemy approaches
near, they hide the cattle in the caves likewise, some of which
cavities are so large as to hold 500 oxen, and all the people to which
they belong. The men then go down to the lowest part of the mountain,
from whose thickets they sally, upon every opportunity that presents
itself, to attack the enemy whom they find marauding in the plains.
The king had often assembled his army at Ibaba, only four days march
from Zeegam. He had done more; he had passed below the country,
and returned by the other side of it, in his attack upon Geesa and
Wumbarea; but he had never committed any act of hostility, nor shewn
himself discontented with them. To deceive them still farther, he
ordered now his army to meet him at Esté in Begemder; and sent to
Kasmati Claudius, governor of Tigré, to join him with all his forces as
soon as he should hear he was arrived at Lama, a large plain before we
descend the steep mountain of Lamalmon, which stands not far from the
banks of the river Tacazzé. He privately gave orders also to Kasmati
Claudius, Kasmati Dimmo Christos of Tigré, and to Adera and Quaquera
Za Menfus Kedus, to inform themselves where the water lay below, and
whether there was enough for his army in Betcoom, for so they call the
territory of the eastern branch of Shangalla adjoining to Siré and
Tigré. By this manœuvre the enemy was deceived, as the most intelligent
thought he was to attack Lasta, and the others, that knew the secret of
the water, were sure his march was against the Shangalla.
The king began his march from Ibaba, and crossed the Nile at the second
cataract below Dara, where there is a bridge; and, entering Begemder,
he joined his army at Esté, which was going in a route directly from
Agow and Damot towards Lasta. But no sooner was he arrived at Esté,
than, that very night, he suddenly turned back the way he came, and,
marching through Maitsha, he crossed the Nile, for the second time, at
Goutto, above the first cataract.
The morning of the 3d of May, the sixth day of forced marches, without
having encamped the whole way, he entered Zeegam at the head of his
army. He found the country in perfect security, both people and
cattle below on the plains and in the villages; and having put all
to the sword who first offered themselves, and the principal of the
conspirators being taken prisoners, he sold their wives and children
at a public auction for slaves to the highest bidder. He then took the
principal men among them along with him for security for paying six
years tribute which they were in arrears, fined them 6000 oxen, which
he ordered to be delivered upon the spot; and then collecting his army,
he sent to the chiefs of Damot to meet him before he entered their
territory, and to bring security with them for the fine he intended to
lay upon them, otherwise he would destroy their country with fire and
sword; and he advanced the same day to Assoa, south of the sources of
the Nile, divided only from Damot by the ridge of mountains of Amid
Amid.
The people of Damot, inhabiting an open level country without defence,
had no choice but to throw themselves on the king’s mercy, who fined
them 500 ounces of gold and 100 oxen, and took the principal people
with him in irons as hostages.
He then returned, leaving the sources of the Nile on his right, through
Dengui, Fagitta, and Aroosi; crossed the river Kelti, having the Agow
and Atchesser on his left, and returned to Gondar by Dingleber. He
then gave 2000 cattle to the churches of Tecla Haimanout and Yasous,
being neared the king’s palace, to the Itchegué Hannes, the judges and
principal servants of his household, to all a share, without reserving
one to himself. And the rains being now very constant, (for it was the
25th of June) he resolved to continue the rest of the winter in Gondar
to regulate the affairs of the church.
This year the king resumed his expedition against the Shangalla,
towards which he had taken several preparatory steps, while he was
projecting the surprise of the Zeegam. These are the Troglodytes on
the eastern part of Abyssinia, towards the Red Sea, south of Walkayt,
Siré, Tigré, and Baharnagash, till they are there cut off by the
mountains of the Habab. These, the most powerful of all their tribes,
are comprehended under the general name of _Dobenah_; the tribe Baasa,
which we have already spoken of as occupying the banks of the Tacazzé,
are the only partners they have in the peninsula formed by that river
and the Mareb. Their country and manner of life have been already
abundantly described. It is all called Kolla, in opposition to Daga,
which is the general name of the mountainous parts of Abyssinia.
The king, being informed by Kasmati Claudius that there was water in
great plenty at Betcoom, marched from Gondar the 29th of October to
Deba, thence to Kossoguè, after to Tamama. He then turned to the left
to a village called Sidrè, nearer to the Shangalla. From this station
he forbade the lighting fires in the camp, and took the road leading to
the Mareb; then turning to the left, the 1st of December he surprised a
village called Kunya. The king was the first who began the attack, and
was in great danger, as Mazmur, captain of his guard, was killed by a
lance at his side. But the soldiers rushing in upon sight of the king’s
situation, who had already slain two with his own hand, the village was
carried, and the inhabitants put to the sword, refusing all to fly, and
fighting obstinately to the last gasp.
From Kunya the king proceeded rapidly to Tzaada Amba[65], the largest
and most powerful settlement of these savages. They have no water
but what they get from the river Mareb, which, as I have elsewhere
observed, rises above Dobarwa, and, after making the circle of that
town, loses itself soon after in the sand for a space, then appears
again, and, after a short course, hides itself a second time to the N.
E. near the Taka, whose wells it supplies with fresh water. But in the
rainy months it runs with a full-stream, in a wide and deep bed, and
unites itself to the Tacazzé, with it making the northmost point of the
ancient island of Meroë.
The king met the same success at Tzaada Amba that he had before
experienced at Kunya, at which last village he passed the feast of the
epiphany and benediction of the waters; a ceremony annually observed
both by the Greek and Abyssinian church, the intent of which has been
strangely mistaken by foreigners.
From Kunya, his head-quarters, Yasous attacked the several nations
of which this is, as it were, the capital, Zacoba, Fadè, Qualquou,
and Sahalé, and he returned again to Tzaada Amba, resolving to
complete their destruction. The remains of these miserable people,
finding resistance vain, had hid themselves in inaccessible caves in
the mountains, and the thickest parts of the woods, where they lay
perfectly concealed in the day-time, and only stole out when thirst
obliged them at night. The king, who knew this, and that they had no
other water but what they brought from the Mareb, formed a strong line
of troops along the banks of that river, till the greatest part of the
Shangalla of Tzaada Amba died with thirst, or were taken or slain by
the army.
His next enterprize was to attempt Betcoom, a large habitation of
Shangalla east of the Mareb, whose number, strength, and reputation for
courage, had hitherto prevented the Abyssinians from molesting them,
never having touched, unless the farthest skirts of their country. The
names of their tribes inhabiting Betcoom are, Baigada, Dadé, Ketfè,
Kicklada, Moleraga, Megaerbé, Gana, Selé, Hamta, Shalada, Elmsi, and
Lentè. The small river of Lidda falling from a high precipice, when
swelled with the winter rains, hollows out deep and large reservoirs
below, which it leaves full of water when the rains cease, so that
these people are here as well supplied with water as those that dwell
on the large rivers the Mareb and Tacazzé. This was a circumstance
unknown, till this sagacious and provident king ordered the place to
be reconnoitred by Kasmati Claudius, then marched and encamped on the
river Lidda, which, after a short but violent course, falls into the
Mareb.
The Shangalla of Betcoom did nothing worthy of their reputation or
numbers. They had already procured intelligence of the fate of great
part of their nation, and had dispersed themselves in unknown and
desolate places. The king, however, made a considerable number of
slaves of the younger sort, and killed as many of the rest as fell into
his hands.
Leaving Betcoom, the army proceeded still eastward; passed through the
mountains of the Habab, into the low level country which runs parallel
to the Red Sea, at the base of these mountains, where he spent several
days hunting the elephant, some of which he slew with his own hand, and
turned then to the left to Amba Tchou[66] and Taka.
The Taka are a nation of Shepherds living near the extremity of the
rains. They are not Arabs, but live in villages, and were part formerly
of the Bagla, or Habab; they speak the language of Tigré, and are now
reputed part of the kingdom of Sennaar.
While the king was at Taka, he received the disagreeable news, that,
after he had left the Shangalla on the Mareb, Mustapha Gibberti, a
Mahometan soldier in the service of Kasmati Fasa Christos of Dedgin,
had, with a small number of men, ventured down, thinking that he should
surprise the Shangalla of Tzaada Amba, before they recovered from
their late misfortune. This Mustapha had slain two or three Shangalla
with fire-arms; and at first they stood aloof as fearing the king. But
finding soon that it was no part of his army, and only a small body
of adventurers, the Shangalla ‘now collected in numbers, surrounded
Mustapha and his party, whom they cut off to a man; and, pursuing their
advantage, they entered and took Dedgin, wounded Kasmati Fasa Christos,
and put the inhabitants of the town to the sword’.
News of this misfortune were carried speedily to Kasmati Claudius,
governor of Tigré: Cassem, a Mahometan, led the Gibbertis, the people
of that religion in the province; and, as he was an advanced party,
came speedily to blows with the Shangalla, and was closely engaged,
with great appearance of success, when Claudius came up with an army
that would soon have put an end to the contest. But no sooner was
his army engaged with the Shangalla, than a panic seized him, and he
sounded a retreat; which, in an instant, became a most shameful flight.
Cassem and his gibbertis fell, fighting to the last man in the middle
of their enemies. The Shangalla followed their advantage, and great
part of the Abyssinian army perished in the flight; Claudius, tho’ he
escaped, left his standard, kettle-drums, and his whole province in
possession of the enemy.
The king, upon hearing this, returned hastily into Siré; and his
presence established order and tranquillity in that province, already
half abandoned for fear of the Shangalla. From Siré the king proceeded
to Axum, where he celebrated his victories over the Shangalla, by
several days of feasting and thanksgiving.
In the midst of this rejoicing, news were brought that Murat, a servant
of the king, whom he had dispatched to India with merchandise, to
bring such commissions as he stood in need of, was arrived at Masuah,
where Musa the Naybe, or Turkish governor of the island, had detained
him, and seized his goods, under some vexatious pretences. There is
not indeed a more merciless, thievish set of miscreants, than in that
government of Masuah. But the king knew too well the few resources that
island had, to be long in applying a remedy, without moving from Axum;
after being fully informed of the affair, in all its circumstances,
by Murat, he sent to Abba Saluce, Guebra Christos, and Zarabrook of
Hamazen, the governors of the districts, that as it were surround
Masuah, prohibiting all, upon pain of death, to suffer any provisions
to be carried by any person whatever into the island of Masuah.
A severe famine instantly followed, which was to terminate in certain
death, before any relief could come to them, unless from Abyssinia.
The Naybe Musa, therefore, found into what a terrible scrape he had
got; but hunger did not leave him a moment to deliberate. No third
way remained, but either he must see the king, or die; and without
hesitation he chose the former. He, therefore, set out for Axum,
bringing with him Murat and all the merchandises he had seized, as also
several very considerable presents for Yasous himself, who accepted
them, received his submission, and ordered the communication with
Abyssinia to be open as before. This done, he dismissed the Naybe, who
returned to Masuah in peace.
The next affair that came before the king was that of Kasmati Claudius,
(governor of Tigré) who was accused and found guilty of having fled
while the battle with the Shangalla was yet undecided, leaving his
standard and kettle-drums in the power of the enemy. Besides his
present misbehaviour, strong prejudice existed against him, drawn from
his former character; for it was averred, from very credible authority,
that on one occasion, upon a very slender appearance of sedition,
he ordered his troops to fire upon several priests of Axum, some of
whom were killed on the spot. Besides which, in the reign of Hatzè
Hannes, he was found guilty of capital crimes committed at Emfras,
condemned to die, and was already hanging upon the tree, when a very
seasonable reprieve arrived from the king, and he was thereupon cut
down whilst yet alive. Yasous contented himself with depriving him of
his employment, and afterwards sending him to perpetual banishment.
The next brought to their trial were Za Woldo, and Adera and his sons.
These last were very near relations to the king, for they were sons of
Ozoro Keduset Christos, daughter of Facilidas. They were accused of
having deserted their country and left it waste to be over-run by wild
beasts, and a rendezvous for the Shangalla, who thence extended their
incursions as far as Waldubba. Of this there was ample proof against
them, and they were therefore sentenced to die, but the king commuted
their punishment into that of being imprisoned for life in a cave in
the island of Dek.
As for the province of Siré itself, he declared all the inhabitants and
nobility, degraded from their rank, and all lands, whether feus from
the king, or held by any other tenure, were confiscated, resumed by,
and re-united to the crown. He then reduced the whole province from a
royal government to a private one, and annexed it to the province of
Tigré, whose governor was to place over it a shum, or petty officer,
without any ensigns of power. And, last of all, he gave the government
of Tigré to the Ras Feres, or master of the horse, in room of Kasmati
Claudius degraded and banished.
The many striking examples which the king had lately given, one close
upon the other, of his own personal bravery, his impartial justice, his
secrecy in his expeditions, and the certain vengeance that followed
where it was deserved, his punishment of the Zeegam, his expedition
against the Shangalla, his affair with the Naybe Musa, and his
behaviour to the cowardly Claudius and dastardly nobility of Siré,
fully convinced his subjects of all degrees, that neither family, nor
being related to the crown, nor the strength of their country, nor
length of time since they offended, nor indeed any thing but a return
to and continuance in their duty, could give them security under such
a prince. Thus ended the campaign of the Dobenah, spoke of to this
day in Abyssinia as the greatest warlike atchievement of any of their
kings. Twenty-six thousand men are said to have perished by thirst
when the king took possession of the water at Tzaada Amba. And yet,
notwithstanding the small-pox which, in some places, exterminated
whole tribes, the Dobenah have not lost an inch of territory, but seem
rather to be gaining upon Siré.
Yasous arrived at Dancaz on the 8th of March 1692, having dismissed his
army as he passed Gondar. From Dancaz he went to Lasta, and after a
short stay there, came to Arringo in Begemder. At this place the king
received accounts that far exceeded his expectations, and gratified his
warmest wishes. He had long endeavoured to gain a party among the Galla
to divide them; and, though no marks of success had yet followed, he
still had continued to use his endeavours.
On his arrival at Arringo, he was met by a chief of the southern
Galla, called Kal-kend, who brought him advice that, while he was
busy with the Shangalla, an irruption had been made into Amhara by
the Galla tribes of Liban and Toluma; that they, the king’s friends,
had come up with them at Halka, fought with them, and beat them, and
freed Amhara entirely from all apprehension. The king, exceedingly
rejoiced to see his most inveterate enemies become the defenders of his
country, ordered the governor of Amhara to pay the Kal-kend 500 webs
of cotton-cloth, 500 loads of corn, and escort both the men and the
present till they were safely delivered in their own country.
The 30th of June the king arrived at Gondar from Arringo, and
immediately summoned an assembly of the clergy to meet and receive
a letter from the patriarch of Alexandria, brought by Abba Masmur
of Agde, and Abba Dioscuros of Maguena, who were formerly sent to
Egypt to ask the patriarch why he displaced Abuna Christodulus, and
appointed Abba Sanuda in his room, and desiring that Abba Marcus should
be made Abuna, and Sanuda deposed. The clergy met very punctually, and
the patriarch’s letter was produced in the assembly, the seal examined,
and declared to be the patriarch’s, and unbroken. The letter being
opened by the king’s order, it contained the patriarch’s mandate to
depose Abba Sanuda, and to put Marcus Abuna in his place, which was
immediately done by command of the king.
While Yasous was thus busied in directing the affairs of his kingdom
with great wisdom and success, both in church and state, a matter was
in agitation, unknown to him, at a distance from his dominions, which
had a tendency to throw them again into confusion.
Towards the end of the last century, there was settled at Cairo a
number of Italian missionaries of the reformed Order of St Francis,
who, though they lived in the same convent, and were maintained at the
expence of the fathers of the Holy Land, yet did they still pretend
to be independent of the guardian of Jerusalem, the superior of these
latter.
The expence of their maintenance, joined with their pretensions to
independence, gave great offence to those religious of the Holy Land,
who thereupon carried their complaints to Rome, offering to be at the
whole charge of the mission of Egypt, and to furnish from their own
society subjects capable of attending to, and extending the Christian
faith. This offer met with the desired success at Rome. The mission of
Egypt, to the exclusion of every other Order, was given to the fathers
of Jerusalem, or the Holy Land, whom we shall henceforth call Capuchin
friars. These capuchins lost no time, but immediately dismissed the
reformed Franciscans, whom we shall hereafter distinguish by the name
of Franciscans, suffering only two of that Order to remain at Cairo.
The Franciscans, thus banished, returned all to Rome, and there, for
several years together, openly defended their own cause, insisting upon
the justice of their being replaced in the exercise of their ancient
functions. This, however, they found absolutely impossible. They were a
poor Order, and the interest of the capuchins had stopped every avenue
of the sacred college against them. Finding, therefore, that fair and
direct means could not accomplish their ends, they had recourse to
others not so commendable, and by these they succeeded, and obtained
their purpose. They pretended that, when the Jesuits were chased out of
Abyssinia, a great number of Catholics, avoiding the persecution, had
fled into the neighbouring countries of Sennaar and Nubia; that they
still remained, most meritoriously preserving their faith amidst the
very great hardships inflicted upon them by the infidels; but that,
under these hardships, they must soon turn Mahometans, unless spiritual
assistance was speedily sent them.
This representation, as totally void of truth as ever fable was, was
confirmed by the two Franciscans, who still remained at Cairo by
permission of the capuchins, or fathers of the Holy Land; and, when
afterwards published at Rome, it excited the zeal of every bigot
in Italy. All interested themselves in behalf of these imaginary
Christians of Nubia; and pope Innocent XII. was so convinced of the
truth of the story, as to establish a considerable fund to support the
expence of this, now called the Ethiopic mission, the sole conduct of
which remains still with the reformed Franciscans.
To take care of these fugitive Christians of Nubia, though it was the
principal, yet it was not the only charge committed to the fathers of
his mission. They were to penetrate into Abyssinia, and keep the seeds
of the Romish faith alive there until a proper time should present
itself for converting the whole kingdom.
In order to this, a large convent was bought for them at Achmim, the
ancient Panopolis in Upper Egypt, that here they might be able to
afford a refreshment to such of their brethren as should return weary
and exhausted by their preaching among the Nubian confessors; and, for
further assistance, they had permission to settle two of their Order at
Cairo, independent of the fathers of the Holy Land, notwithstanding the
former exclusion.
Such is the state of this mission at the present time. No Nubian
Christians ever existed at the time of their establishment, nor is
there one in being at this day. But if their proselytes have not
increased, their convents have. Achmim, Furshout, Badjoura, and Negadè
are all religious houses belonging to this mission, although I never
yet was able to learn, that either Heretic, or Pagan, or Mahometan,
was so converted as to die in the Christian faith at any one of these
places; nor have they been much troubled with relieving their brethren,
worn out with the toils of Abyssinian journies, none of them, as far
as I know, having ever made one step towards that country; nor is this
indeed to be regretted by the republic of letters, because, besides
a poor stock of scholastic divinity, not one of them that I saw had
either learning or abilities to be of the smallest use either in
religion or discovery.
It was now the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. almost
an Augustan age, and generally allowed so, both in France and among
foreigners. Men of merit, of all countries and professions, felt
the effects of the liberality of this great encourager of learning;
public works were undertaken, and executed superior to the boasted
ones of Greece or Rome, and a great number and variety of noble events
constituted a magnificent history of his reign, in a series of medals.
Religion alone had yet afforded no hint for these. His conduct in this
matter, instead of that of a hero, shewed him to be a blind, bloody,
merciless tyrant, madly throwing down in a moment, with one hand, what
he had, with the assistance of great ministers, been an age in building
with the other. The Jesuits, zealous for the honour of the king, their
great protector, thought this a time to step in and wipe away the
stain. With this view they set upon forwarding a scheme, which might
have furnished a medal superior to all the rest, had its inscription
been, “The Kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring gifts.”
Father Fleuriau, a friend of father de la Chaise, the king’s confessor,
was employed to direct the consul of Cairo, that he should, in
co-operation with the Jesuits privately, send a fit person into
Abyssinia, who might inspire the king of that country with a desire
of sending an embassy into France, and, upon the management of this
political affair, they founded their hopes of getting themselves
replaced in the mission they formerly enjoyed, and of again superseding
their rivals the Franciscans, in directing all the measures to be taken
for that country’s conversion. But this required the utmost delicacy,
for it was well known, that the court of Rome was very much indisposed
towards them, imputing to their haughtiness, implacability, and
imprudence, the loss of Abyssinia. Their conduct in China, where they
tolerated idolatrous rites to be blended with Christian worship, began
also now to be known, and to give the greatest scandal to the whole
church. It was, therefore, necessary to make the king declare first in
their favour before they began to attempt to conciliate the pope.
Louis took upon him the protection of this mission with all the
readiness the Jesuits desired; and the Jesuit Verseau was sent
immediately to Rome, with strong letters to cardinal Jansen, protector
of France, who introduced him to the pope.
Verseau knew well the consequence of the protection with which he was
honoured. At his first audience he declared, in a very firm voice and
manner, to the pope, that the king had resolved to take upon himself
the conduct of the Ethiopic mission, and that he had cast his eyes upon
them (the Jesuits) as the fittest persons to be entrusted with the
care of it, for _reasons best known to himself_. The pope dissembled;
he extolled, in the most magnificent terms, the king’s great zeal for
the advancement of religion, approved of the choice he had made of the
Jesuits, and praised their resolution as highly acceptable to him,
immediately consenting that Verseau, and five other Jesuits, should
without delay pass into Abyssinia.
But it very soon appeared, that, however this might be the language
of the pope, nothing could be more remote from his intentions; for,
without the knowledge of the Jesuits, or any way consulting them, he
appointed the superior of the Franciscans to be his legate a latere to
the king of Abyssinia, and provided him with presents to that prince,
and the chief noblemen of his court.
Some time afterwards, when, to prevent strife or concurrence, the
Jesuits applied to the pope to receive his directions which of the two
should first attempt to enter Abyssinia, the Franciscans, or their own
Order, the pope answered shortly, That it should be those who were most
expert. Whether this apparent indisposition of his Holiness intimidated
Verseau is not known; but, instead of going to Cairo, he went to
Constantinople, thence to Syria, to a convent of his Order of which
he was superior, and there he staid. So that the Ethiopic mission at
Cairo remained in the hands of two persons of different Orders, the one
Paschal, an Italian Franciscan friar, the other a Jesuit and Frenchman,
whose name was Brevedent.
Brevedent was a person of the most distinguished piety and probity,
zealous in promoting his religion, but neither imprudent nor rash in
his demonstrations of it; affable in his carriage, chearful in his
disposition, of the most profound humility and exemplary patience.
Besides this, he was reputed a man of good taste and knowledge in
profane learning, and, what crowned all, an excellent mathematician.
He seems indeed to me to have been a copy of the famous Peter Paez, who
first gave an appearance of stability to the Portuguese conversion of
Abyssinia; like him he was a Jesuit, but of a better nation, and born
in a better age.
I must here likewise take notice of what I have already hinted, that
in Abyssinia the character of ambassador is not known. They have no
treaties of peace or commerce with any nation in the world: But, for
purposes already mentioned, factors are employed; and, Abyssinia
being everywhere surrounded by Mahometans, these of course have the
preference; and, as they carry letters from their masters, the custom
of the East obliges them to accompany these with presents to the
sovereigns of the respective kingdoms through which they pass, and
this circumstance dignifies them with the title of ambassador in the
several courts at which they have business. Such was Musa, a factor of
the king, whom we have seen detained, and afterwards delivered by the
Naybe of Masuah, not many years before, in this king’s reign; and such
also was Hagi Ali, then upon his master’s business at Cairo, when M. de
Maillet was consul there, and had received his instructions from father
Fleuriau at Paris, to bring about this embassy from Abyssinia.
Besides his other business, Hagi Ali had orders to bring with him a
physician, if possible, from Cairo; for Yasous and his eldest son were
both of a scorbutic habit, which threatened to turn into a leprosy.
Hagi Ali, in former voyages, had been acquainted with a capuchin friar
Paschal; and, having received medicines from him before, he now applied
to Paschal to return with him into Abyssinia, and undertake the cure
of the king. Paschal very readily complied with this, upon condition
that he should be allowed to take for his companion a monk of his own
Order, friar Anthony; to which Hagi Ali readily consented, happy in
being enabled to carry two physicians to his master instead of one.
The French consul was soon informed of this treaty with the friar
Paschal; and, having very easy means to bring Hagi Ali to his house,
he informed him, that neither Paschal nor Anthony were physicians, but
that he himself had a man of his own nation, whose merit he extolled
beyond any thing that had hitherto been said of Hippocrates or Galen.
Hagi Ali very willingly accepted of the condition, and it was agreed
that, as Verseau had not appeared, Brevedent above mentioned should
attend the physician as his servant.
This physician was Charles Poncet, a Frenchman, settled in Cairo, who
was (as Mr Maillet says) bred a chymist and apothecary, and, if so,
was necessarily better skilled in the effects and nature of medicine
than those are who call themselves physicians, and practise in the
east. Nothing against his private character was intimated by the
consul at this time; and, with all deference to better judgment, I
must still think, that if Poncet did deserve the epithets of drunkard,
liar, babbler, and thief, which Maillet abundantly bestows upon him
towards the end of this adventure, the consul could not have chosen a
more improper person as the representative of his master, nor a more
probable one to make the design he had in hand miscarry; nor could he,
in this case, ever vindicate the preventing Paschal’s journey, who must
have been much fitter for all the employments intended than such a man
as Poncet was, if one half is true of that which the consul said of him
afterwards.
Maillet, having so far succeeded, prevailed upon one Ibrahim Hanna,
a Syrian, to write five letters, according to his own ideas, in the
Arabic language, one of which was to the king, the four others to
the principal officers at the court of Abyssinia: doubting, however,
whether Ibrahim’s expressions were equal to the sublimity of his
sentiments, he directed him to submit the letters to the consideration
of one Francis, a monk, capuchin, or friar of the Holy Land. Ibrahim
knew not this capuchin; but he was intimate with another Francis of the
reformed Franciscan Order, and to him by mistake he carried the letters.
These Franciscans were the very men from whom Mr de Maillet would have
wished to conceal the sending Poncet with the Jesuit Brevedent; but
the secret being now revealed, Ibrahim Hanna was discharged the French
service for this mistake; and Hagi Ali departing immediately after with
Poncet and Brevedent, no time remained for the Franciscans to take the
steps they afterwards did to bring about the tragedy in the person of
Poncet, which they completely effected in that of Mr Noir du Roule.
Mr Poncet, furnished with a chest of medicines at the expence of the
factory, accompanied by father Brevedent, who, in quality of his
servant, now took the name of Joseph, joined Hagi Ali, and the caravan
destined in the first place, to Sennaar the capital of Nubia.
Poncet set out from Cairo on the 10th of June of the year 1698, and,
fifteen days after, they came to Monfalout, a considerable town upon
the banks of the Nile, the rendezvous of the caravan being at Ibnah,
half a league above Monfalout. Here they tarried for above three
months, waiting the coming of the merchants from the neighbouring towns.
In the afternoon of the 24th of September, they advanced above a league
and a half distance, and took up their lodging at Elcantara, or the
bridge, on the eastern bank of the Nile. A large calish, or cut, from
the Nile stretches here to the east, and, at that season, was full of
water, the inundation being at its height.
Poncet believes he was on the eastern banks of the Nile; but this is a
mistake. Siout and Monfalout, the cities he speaks of, are both on the
western banks of that river; nor had the caravan any thing to do with
the eastern banks, when their course was for many days to the west, and
to the southward of west. Nor was the bridge he passed a bridge over
the Nile. There are no bridges upon that river from the Mediterranean
till we arrive at the second cataract near the lake Tzana in Abyssinia.
The amphitheatre and ruins he speaks of are the remains of the ancient
city Isiu; and what he took for the Nile was a calish from the river to
supply that city with water.
The 2d of October the caravan set out in earnest, and passed, as he
says, into a frightful desert of sand, having first gone through a
narrow passage, which he does not mention, amidst those barren, bare,
and stony mountains which border the valley of Egypt on the west.
The 6th of October they came to El-Vah, a large village, or town,
thick-planted with palm-trees, the Oasis Parva of the ancients, the
last inhabited place to the west that is under the jurisdiction of
Egypt. By softening the original name, Poncet calls this Helaoue,
which, as he says, signifies _sweetness_. But surely this was never
given it from the productions he mentions to abound there, _viz._ senna
and coloquintida. The Arabs call El-Vah a shrub or tree, not unlike
our hawthorn either in form or flower. It was of this wood, they say,
Moses’s rod was made when he sweetened the waters of Marah. With a
rod of this wood, too, Khalid Ibn el Waalid, the great destroyer of
Christians, sweetened these waters at El-Vah, once very bitter, and
gave it the name from this miracle. A number of very fine springs burst
from the earth at El-Vah, which renders this small spot verdant and
beautiful, though surrounded with dreary deserts on every quarter; it
is situated like an island in the midst of the ocean.
The caravan rested four days at El-Vah to procure water and provisions
for the continuation of the journey thro’ the desert. Poncet’s
description of the unpleasantness of this, is perfectly exact, and
without exaggeration. In two days they came to Cheb, where there
is water, but strongly impregnated with alum, as the name itself
signifies; and, three days after, they reached Selima, where they found
the water good, rising from an excellent spring, which gives its name
to a large desert extending westward forty-five days journey to Dar
Fowr, Dar Selè, and Bagirma, three small principalities of Negroes
that live within the reach of the tropical rains.
At Selima they provided water for five days; and, on the 26th of
October, having turned their course a little to the eastward, came to
Moscho, or Machou, a large village on the western banks of the Nile,
which Poncet still mistakes for the eastern, and which is the only
inhabited place since the leaving El-Vah, and the frontiers of the
kingdom of Dongola, dependent upon that of Sennaar. The Nile here takes
the farthest turn to the westward, and is rightly delineated in the
French maps.
Poncet very rightly says, this is the beginning of the country of the
Barabra, or Berberians, (I suppose it is a mistake of the printer
when called in the narrative Barauras). The true signification of the
term is _the land of the Shepherds_, a name more common and better
known in the first dynasties of Egypt than in more modern histories.
The Erbab (or governor) of this province received him hospitably, and
kindly invited him to Argos, his place of residence, on the eastern or
opposite side of the Nile, and entertained him there, upon hearing from
Poncet that he was sent for by the king of Abyssinia.
After refreshing themselves eight days at Moscho, they left it on the
4th of November 1698, and arrived at Dongola on the 13th of the same
month. The country which he passed along the Nile is very pleasant, and
is described by him very properly. It does not owe its fertility to the
overflowing of the Nile, the banks of that river being considerably too
high. It is watered, however, by the industry of the inhabitants, who,
by different machines, raise water from the stream.
We are not to attribute to Poncet, but to those who published, the
story here put into father Brevedent’s mouth about the fugitive
Christians in Nubia, which fable gave rise to the first institution of
the Ethiopic mission. “It drew tears, says he, from the eyes of father
Brevedent, my dear companion, when he reflected that it was not long
since this was a Christian country; and that it had not lost the faith
but only for want of some person who had zeal enough to consecrate
himself to the instruction of this abandoned nation.” He adds, that
upon their way they found a great number of hermitages and churches
half ruined; a fiction derived from the same source.
Dongola was taken, and apostatized early, and the stones of hermitages
and churches had long before this been carried off, and applied to the
building of mosques. Father Brevedent, therefore, if he wept for any
society of Christians at Dongola, must have wept for those that had
perished there 500 years before.
Poncet was much caressed at Dongola for the cures he made there. The
Mek, or king, of that city wished him much to stay and settle there;
but desisted out of respect, when he heard he was going to the emperor
of Ethiopia. Dongola, Poncet has placed rightly on the eastern bank of
the Nile, about lat. 20° 22´.
The caravan departed from Dongola on the 6th of January 1699; four days
after which they entered into the kingdom of Sennaar, where they met
Erbab Ibrahim, brother of the prime minister, and were received civilly
by him. He defrayed their expences also as far as Korti, where they
arrived the 13th of January.
Our travellers from Korti were obliged to enter the great desert of
Bahiouda, and cross it in a S. E. direction till they came to Derreira,
where they rested two days, which, Poncet says, was done to avoid the
Arabs upon the Nile. These Arabs are called Chaigie; they inhabit the
banks of that river to the N. E. of Korti, and never pay the king his
revenue without being compelled and very ill-treated.
The country about Derreira is called Belled Ullah, from the cause of
its plenty rather than the plenty itself. This small district is upon
the very edge of the tropical rains, which it enjoys in part; and, by
that, is more fruitful than those countries which are watered only by
the industry of man. The Arabs of these deserts figuratively call rain
Rahamet Ullah, ‘the mercy of God’, and Belled Ullah, ‘the country which
enjoys that mercy.’
Some days after the caravan came to Gerri. Poncet says, the use of this
station was to examine caravans coming from the northward, whether they
had the small-pox or not. This usage is now discontinued by the decay
of trade. It must always have served little purpose, as the infection
oftener comes in merchandise than by passengers. At Gerri great respect
was shewn to Poncet, as going to Ethiopia.
I cannot conceive why Poncet says, that, to avoid the great windings
of the Nile, he should have been obliged to travel to the north-east.
This would have plainly carried him back to the desert of Bahiouda, and
the Arabs: his course must have been S. W. to avoid the windings of the
Nile, because he came to Herbagi, which he describes very properly as a
delicious situation. The next day they came to Sennaar.
The reader, I hope, will easily perceive that my intention is not
to criticise Mr Poncet’s journey. That has been done already so
illiberally and unjustly that it has nearly brought it into disrepute
and oblivion. My intention is to illustrate it; to examine the facts,
the places, and distances it contains; to correct the mistakes where it
has any, and restore it to the place it ought to hold in geography and
discovery. It was the first intelligible itinerary made through these
deserts; and I conceive it will be long before we have another; at any
rate, to restore and establish the old one will, in all sensible minds,
be the next thing to having made a second experiment.
He surely is in some degree of mistake about the situation of Sennaar
when he says it is upon an eminence. It is on a plain close on the
western banks of the Nile. A small error, too, has been made about its
latitude. By an observation said to have been made by father Brevedent,
the 21st of March 1699, he found the latitude of Sennaar to be 13° 4´
north. The French maps, the most correct we have in all that regards
the east, place this capital of Nubia in lat. 15° and a few minutes.
But the public may rest assured, that the correct latitude of Sennaar,
by a mean of very small differences of near fifty observations, made
with a three-feet brass quadrant, in the course of several months I
staid in that town, is lat 13° 34´ 36´´ north.
What I have to say further concerning Sennaar will come more naturally
in my own travels; and I shall only so far consider the rest of
Poncet’s route, as to explain and clear it from mistakes, Sennaar being
the only point in which our two tracts unite.
I shall beg the reader to remark, that, from the time of Poncet’s
setting out of Egypt till his arrival at Sennaar, so far was he from
being ill-looked upon, or any bad construction being put upon his
errand, that he was, on the contrary, respected everywhere, as going to
the king of Abyssinia. It never was then imagined he was to dry up the
Nile, nor that he was a conjurer to change its course, nor that he was
to teach the Abyssinians to cast cannon and make war, nor that he was
loaded with immense sums of money. These were all _piæ fraudes_, lies
invented by the priests and friars to incite these ignorant barbarians
to a crime which, though it passed unrevenged, will justly make these
brethren in iniquity the detestation of men of every religion in all
ages.
Poncet left Sennaar the 12th of May 1699, and crossed the Nile at
Basboch, about four miles above the town, where he stopped for three
days. This he calls a fair village; but it is a very miserable one,
consisting of scarce 100 huts, built of mud and reeds.
He departed the 15th in the evening, and travelled all the night as
far as Bacras, and arrived the day after at Abec; then at Baha, a long
day’s journey of about ten hours. He is mistaken, however, when he says
Baha is situated upon the banks of the Nile, for it is upon a small
river that runs into it. But, at the season he passed it, most of those
rivers were dried up.
On the 19th he came to Dodar, a place as inconsiderable as Baha; then
to Abra, a large village; then to Debarke and Enbulbul. On the 25th
they came to Giesim. Giesim is a large village situated upon the banks
of the Nile, in the middle of a forest of trees of a prodigious height
and size, all of which are loaded with fruit or flowers, and crowded
with paroquets, and variety of other birds, of a thousand different
colours. They made a long stay at this place, not less than nineteen
days.
In this interval, father Brevedent is said to have made an observation
of the latitude of the place, which, if admitted, would throw all the
geography of this journey into confusion. Poncet says, that Giesim
is half-way between Sennaar and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and that
a small brook, a little beyond Serké, is the boundary between those
states. Now, from Sennaar to Giesim are nine stages, and one of them we
may call a double one, but between Giesim and Serkè, only four; Giesim
then cannot be half way between Sennaar and Serkè.--Again, the latitude
of Sennaar is 13° 4´ north, according to Brevedent, or rather 13°
34´. Now, if the latitude of Giesim be 10°, then the distance between
Sennaar and it must be about 250 miles which they had travelled in
eight days, or more than thirty miles a-day, which, in that country, is
absolutely impossible.
But what must make this evident is, that we know certainly that Gondar,
the metropolis to which they were then going, is in lat. 12° 34´ north.
Giesim then would be south of Gondar, and the caravan must have passed
it when the observation was made. But they were not yet arrived at the
confines of Sennaar, much less to the capital of Abyssinia, to which
they were indeed advancing, but were still far to the northward of it.
There is a mistake then in this observation which is very pardonable,
Brevedent being then ill of a mortal dysentery, which terminated in
death soon after. We shall, therefore, correct this error, making the
latitude of Giesim 14° 12´ north, about 110 English miles from Sennaar,
and 203 from Gondar.
The 11th of June they set out from Giesim for Deleb, then to Chow, and
next to Abotkna. They rested all night, the 14th, in the delightful
valley of Sonnone, and, two days after, they came to Serkè, a large
town of trade, where there are many cotton weavers. Here ends the
kingdom of Sennaar, the brook without this town being the boundary of
the two states.
Arrived now in Abyssinia, they halted at Tambisso, a village which
belongs to the Abuna; next at Abiad, a village upon the mountain. On
the 23d they stopped in a valley full of canes and ebony-trees, where
a lion carried away one of their camels. On the 24th they passed the
Gandova, a large, violent, and dangerous river. The country being
prodigiously woody, one of their beasts of carriage, straggling from
the caravan, was bit on the hip by a bear, as Mr Poncet apprehends.
But we are now in the country corresponding to that inhabited by
the Shangalla, that is one of the hottest in the world, where the
thermometer rises to 100° in the shade. Bears are not found in climates
like this; and most assuredly there are none even in the higher and
colder mountains above. Poncet does not say he saw the bear, but judged
only by the bite, which might have been that of a lion, leopard, or
many other animals, but more probably that of the hyæna.
The 27th they arrived at Girana, a village on the top of a mountain.
Here they left their camels, and began to ascend from the Kolla into
the more temperate climate in the mountains of Abyssinia. From Girana
they came to Barangoa, and the next day to Tchelga, where anciently was
the customhouse of Sennaar while peace and commerce subsisted between
the two kingdoms. The 3d of July they arrived at Barcos, or Bartcho,
about half a day’s journey from Gondar; and on the 9th of August father
Brevedent died. Poncet was himself detained by indisposition at this
village of Barcos till the 21st of July, on which day he set out for
Gondar and arrived in the evening, where he succeeded to his wishes,
performing a complete cure upon his royal patient in a very short time;
and so fulfilled this part of his mission as perfectly as the ablest
physician could have done.
As for the other part with which he was charged, I doubt very much if
it was in his power to perform it in another manner than he did. It
required a mind full of ignorance and presumption, such as was that of
Mr de Maillet and all the missionaries at the head of whom he was,
to believe that it was possible for a private man, such as Poncet,
without language, without funds, without presents, or without power
or possibility of giving them any sort of protection in the way, to
prevail upon 26 or 28 persons, on the word of an adventurer only, to
attempt the traversing countries where they ran a very great risk of
falling into slavery--to do what? why, to go to France, a nation of
Franks whose very name they abhorred, that they might be instructed in
a religion they equally abhorred, to meet with certain death if ever
they returned to their own country; and, unless they did return, they
were of no sort of utility whatever.
M. de Maillet should have informed himself well in the beginning, if it
was possible that the nobility in Abyssinia could be so contemptible as
to suffer twelve of their children to go to countries unknown, upon the
word of a stranger, at least of such a doubtful character as Poncet. I
say doubtful, because, if he was such a man as M. de Maillet represents
him, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, a man without religion, a perpetual
talker, and a superficial practitioner of what he called his own trade,
surely the Abyssinians must have been very fond of emigration, to have
left their homes under the care of such a patron as this. When did M.
de Maillet ever hear of an Abyssinian who was willing to leave his own
country and travel to Cairo, unless the very few priests who go for
duty’s sake, for penances or vows, to Jerusalem? When did he ever hear
of an Abyssinian layman, noble, or plebeian, attending even the Abuna
though the first dignitary of the church? We shall see presently a poor
slave, a Christian Abyssinian boy, immediately under the protection of
M. de Maillet, and going directly from him into the presence of his
king, taken forcibly from the chancellor of the nation[67], and made a
Mahometan before their eyes.
The Abyssinian embassy then demanded from France, and recommended to M.
de Maillet, was a presumptuous, vain, impracticable chimera, which must
have ended in disappointment, and which never could have closed more
innocently than it did.
I shall pass over all that happened during Poncet’s stay at Gondar, as
he did not understand the language, and must therefore have been very
liable to mistake. But as for what he says of armies of 300,000 men;
of the king’s dress at his audience; of his mourning in purple; of
the quantity of jewels he had, and wore; of his having but one wife;
and of large stone-crosses being erected on the corners of the palace
at Gondar; these, and several other things, seem to me to have been
superadded afterwards. Nor do I think what is said of the churches and
Christians remaining in the kingdom of Dongola, nor the monstrous lie
about the golden rod suspended in the air in the convent of Bisan[68],
is at all the narrative of Poncet, but of some fanatic, lying friar,
into whose possession Poncet’s manuscript might have fallen. The
journey itself, such as I have restored it, is certainly genuine; and,
as I believe it describes the best and safest way into Abyssinia, I
have rectified some of the few errors it had, and now recommend it to
all future travellers, and to the public.
This is to be understood of his travels to Abyssinia, his journey in
returning being much more inaccurate and incomplete, the reason of
which we have in his own words: “I have not, says he, exactly noted
down the places through which we passed, the great weakness I then lay
under not permitting me to write as I could have wished.” I shall,
therefore, say little upon his return, as the deficiency will be
carefully supplied by the history of my own journey from Masuah, the
road by which he left the country being very nearly the same as that by
which I entered.
It was on the 2d of May of the year 1700 that Poncet left Gondar and
took his journey to the town of Emfras. Here there is a mistake in the
very beginning. Emfras[69], at which place I staid for several weeks,
is in lat. 12° 12´ 38´´, and long. 37° 38´ 30´´, consequently about 22
miles from Gondar, almost under the same meridian, or south from it;
so that, as he was going to the east, and northward of east, this must
have been so many miles out of his way; for, going towards Masuah, his
first station must have been upon the river Angrab.
The same may be said of his next to Coga. It was a royal residence
indeed, but very much out of his way. He has forgot likewise, when
he says, that, in the way from Gondar to Emfras, you must go over a
very high mountain. The way from Gondar to Emfras is the beaten way to
Begemder, Foggora, and Dara, and so on to the second cataract of the
Nile. It is on that plain the armies were encamped before the battle
of Serbraxos[70], whence the road passes by Correva, which is indeed
upon a rising ground, sloping gently to the lake Tzana, but is not
either mountain or hill.
Seven or eight days are a space of time just enough for the passing
through Woggora, where he justly remarks the heats are not so excessive
as in the places he came from. He takes no notice of the passage of
Lamalmon, which ought to have been very sensible to a man in a decayed
state of health, the less so as he was only descending it. Every thing
which relates to the passage of the Tacazzé is just and proper, only
he calls the river itself the Tekesel, instead of the true name, the
_Tacazzé_. It was the Siris of the ancients; and it is doing justice
to both countries, when he compares the province of Siré with the most
delicious parts of his own country of France. This province is that
also where he might very probably receive the young elephant, which he
says awaited him there as a present to the king of France, and which
died a few days after.
He passed afterwards to Adowa. It is the capital of Tigré, is still the
seat of its governor, and was that of Ras Michael in my time. All that
he says of the intermediate country and its productions, shew plainly
that his work is genuine, and his remarks to be those of an eye-witness.
From this province of Tigré he enters the country of the Baharnagash,
and arrives at Dobarwa, which he erroneously calls Duvarna, and
says it is the capital of the province of Tigré, whereas it is that
of the Baharnagash. Isaac Baharnagash, when in rebellion against his
sovereign, surrendered this town to the Turks in the year 1558, as may
be seen at large in my history of the transactions of those times.
As the authenticity of this journey, and the reality of Poncet’s
having been in Abyssinia, has been questioned by a set of vain,
ignorant, fanatic people, and that from malice only, not from spirit
of investigation, of which they were incapable, I have examined every
part of it, and compared it with what I myself saw, and shall now give
one other instance to prove it genuine, from an observation Poncet has
made, and which has escaped all the missionaries, though it was entire
and visible in my time.
Among the ruins of Axum[71] there is a very high obelisk, flat on both
sides, and fronting the south. It has upon it no hieroglyphic, but
several decorations, or ornaments, the fancy of the architect. Upon a
large block of granite, into which the bottom of it is fixed, and which
stands before it like a table, is the figure of a Greek patera, and on
one side of the obelisk, fronting the south, is the representation of
a wooden door, lock, and a latch to it, which first seems designed to
draw back and then lift up, exactly in the manner those kind of locks
are fashioned in Egypt at this very day. Poncet observed very justly,
there are no such locks made use of in Abyssinia, and wonders how they
should have represented a thing they had never seen, and, having done
so, remained still incapable to make or use it. Poncet was no man of
reading out of his own profession; he nowhere pretends it; he recorded
this fact because he saw it, as a traveller should do, and left others
to give the reason which he could not. Poncet calls this place Heleni,
from a small village of that name in the neighbourhood. Had he been a
scholar he would have known that the ruins he was observing were those
of the city of Axum, the ancient metropolis of this part of Ethiopia.
Ptolemy Evergetes, the third Grecian king of Egypt, conquered this
city and the neighbouring kingdom; resided some time there; and, being
absolutely ignorant of hieroglyphics, then long disused, he left the
obelisk he had erected for ascertaining his latitudes ornamented with
figures of his own choosing, and the inventions of his subjects the
Egyptians, and particularly the door for a convenience of private life,
to be imitated by his new-acquired subjects the Ethiopians, to whom it
had hitherto been unknown.
From Dobarwa he arrived at Arcouva, which, he says, geographers
miscall Arequies. M. Poncet might have spared this criticism upon
geographers till he himself had been better informed, for both are
equally miscalled, whether Arcouva or Arequies. The true and only name
of the place, known either to Mahometans or Christians, is Arkeeko, as
the island to which he passed, crossing an arm of the sea, is called
Masuah, not Messoua, as he everywhere spells it.
From Masuah, Poncet crossed the Red Sea to Jidda, passing the island
Dahalac and Kotumbal, a high rock, the name of which is not known to
many navigators.
Had old Murat, Musa, and Hagi Ali, happened at that time to have been
upon some mercantile errand to Cairo, there is no doubt but they would
have been preferred and become ambassadors to France. They would have
gone there, perplexed the minister and the consul with a thousand
lies and contrivances, which the French never would have been able to
unravel; they would have promised every thing; obtained from the king
some considerable sum of money, on which they would have undertaken
to send the embassy in any form that was prescribed, and, after their
return home, never been heard of more. But those worthies were,
probably, all employed at this time; therefore the only thing Poncet
could do was to bring Murat, since he was to procure at all events an
ambassador.
He had been a cook to a French merchant at Aleppo; was a maker of
brandy at Masuah; and probably his uncle old Murat’s servant at the
time. But he was not the worse ambassador for this. Old Murat, Hagi
Ali, and Musa, had perhaps been also cooks and servants in their
time. Prudence, sobriety, and good conduct, skill in languages, and
acquaintance, with countries recommended them afterwards to higher
trusts. Old Murat probably meant that his nephew should begin his
apprenticeship with that embassy to France; and M. Poncet, to increase
his consequence, and fulfil the commission the consul gave him, allowed
him to invent all the rest.
Poncet, from Jidda, went to Tor, and thence to Mount Sinai, where,
after some stay, being overtaken by Murat, they both made their entry
into Cairo.
M. de Maillet, the consul, was an old Norman gentleman, exceedingly
fond of nobility, consequently very haughty and overbearing to those
he reckoned his inferiors, among which he accounted those of his own
nation established at Cairo, though a very amiable and valuable set
of men. He was exceedingly testy, choleric, obstinate, and covetous,
though sagacious enough in every thing concerning his own interest. He
lived for the most part in his closet, seldom went out of his house,
and, as far as I could learn, never out of the city. There, however, he
wrote a description of all Egypt, which since has had a considerable
degree of reputation[72].
Maillet had received advice of the miserable state of this embassy from
Jidda, that the Sherriffe of Mecca had taken from Poncet, by force,
two female Abyssinian slaves, and that the elephant was dead; which
particulars being written to France, he was advised in a letter from
father Fleuriau by no means to promote any embassy to the court of
Versailles; that a proper place for it was Rome; but that in France
they looked upon it in the same light as they did upon an embassy from
Algiers or Tunis, which did no honour to those who sent it, and as
little to those that received it; this, however, was a new light.
M. de Maillet, by this letter, becoming master of the ambassador’s
destiny, began first to quarrel with him upon etiquette, or who should
pay the first visit; and, after a variety of ill-usage, insisted upon
seeing his dispatches. This Murat refused to permit, upon which the
consul sent privately to the basha, desiring him to take the dispatches
or letters from Murat, sending him at the same time a considerable
present.
The basha on this did not fail to extort a letter from Murat by threats
of death. He then opened it. It was in Arabic, in very general and
indifferent terms, probably the performance of some Moor at Masuah,
written at Murat’s instance. And well was it for all concerned that it
was so; for had the letter been a genuine Abyssinian letter, like those
of the empress Helena and king David III. proposing the destruction
of Mecca, Medina, and the Turkish ships on the Red Sea, the whole
French nation at Cairo would have been massacred, and the consul and
ambassador probably impaled.
The Jesuits, ignorant of this manœvure of M. de Maillet, but alarmed
and scandalized at this breach of the law of nations, for such the
basha’s having opened a letter, addressed to the king of France, was
justly considered, complained to M. Feriol the French ambassador at
Constantinople, who thereupon sent a capigi from the port, to inquire
of the basha what he meant by thus violating the law of nations, and
affronting a friendly power of such consequence as France.
These capigis are very unwelcome guests to people in office to whom
they are sent. They are always paid by those they are sent to. Besides
this, the report they carry back very often costs that person his
life. The basha, accused by the capigi at the instance of the French
ambassador at Constantinople, answered like an innocent man, That he
had done it by desire of the French consul, from a wish to serve him
and the nation, otherwise he should never have meddled in the matter.
The consequence was, M. de Maillet was obliged to pay the basha the
expence of the capigi; and, having some time afterwards brought it in
account with the merchants, the French nation at Cairo, by deliberation
of the 6th of July of the year 1702, refused to pay 1515 livres, the
demand of the basha, and 518 livres for those of his officers.
The consul, however, had gained a complete victory over Murat, and
thereupon determined to send Monhenaut, chancellor of France at Cairo,
with letters, which, though written and invented by himself, he
pretended to be translations from the Ethiopian original.
But father Verseau, the Jesuit, now returned to Cairo, who had entered
into a great distrust of the consul since the discovery of his intrigue
with the basha about Murat’s letter, resolved to be of the party.
Poncet, who was likewise on bad terms with the consul, neither inclined
to lose the merits of his travels into Abyssinia, nor trust the recital
of it to Monhenaut, or to the manner in which it might be represented
in the consul’s letters. These three, Monhenaut, Poncet, and Verseau,
set out therefore for Paris with very different views and designs. They
embarked at Bulac, the shipping-place of Cairo upon the Nile, taking
with them the ears of the dead elephant.
The remaining part of the present brought for the king of France by
this illustrious embassy, was an Abyssinian boy, a slave bought by
Murat, and who had been hid from the search of the Sherriffe, when he
forcibly took from him the two Abyssinian girls, part of the intended
present also. This boy no sooner embarked on board the vessel at Bulac
than a great tumult arose. The janizaries took the boy out of the
vessel by force, and delivered him to Mustapha Cazdagli, their kaya;
nor could all the interest of M. de Maillet and the French nation, or
all the manœuvres of the Jesuits, ever recover him.
As for Monhenaut, Poncet, and Verseau, his protectors, they were
obliged to hide themselves from the violence of the mob, nor dared
they again to appear till the vessel sailed. And happy was it for them
that this fell out at Cairo, for, had they offered to embark him at
Alexandria, in all probability it would have cost all of them their
lives.
I must beg leave here to suggest to the reader, how dangerous, as
well as how absurd, was the plan of this embassy. It was to consist
of twenty-eight Abyssinians, twelve of whom were to be sons of noble
families, all to be embarked to France. What a pleasant day would the
embarkation have been to M. de Maillet! What an honourable appearance
for his king, in the eyes of other Christian princes, to have seen
twenty-eight Christians under his immediate protection, twelve of
whom we might say were princes, (as all the nobility in Abyssinia are
directly of the family of the king), from motives of vanity only, by
the pride of the Jesuits, and the ignorance of the consul, hurried in
one day into apostacy and slavery! Whatever Maillet thought of Poncet’s
conduct, his bringing Murat, and him only, cook as he was, was the very
luckiest accident of his life.
I know French flatterers will say this would not have happened, or,
if it had, a vengeance would have followed, worthy the occasion and
the resentment of so great a king, and would have prevented all such
violations of the law of nations for the future. To this I answer, The
mischief would have been irreparable, and the revenge taken, however
complete, would not have restored them their religion, and, without
their religion, they themselves would not have returned into their own
country, but would have remained necessary sacrifices, which the pride
and rashness of the Jesuits had made to the faith of Mahomet.
Besides, where is the threatened revenge for the assassination of M.
du Roule, then actual ambassador from the king of France, of which I
am now to speak? Was not the law of nations violated in the strongest
manner possible by his murder, and without the smallest provocation?
What vengeance was taken for this?--Just the same as would have been
for the other injury; for the Jesuits and consul would have concealed
the one, as tenderness for the Franciscan Friars had made them cover
the other, left their abominable wickedness should be exposed. If the
court of France did not, their consul in Cairo should have known what
the consequence would be of decoying twenty-eight Abyssinians from
their own country, to be perverted from their own religion, and remain
slaves and Mahometans at Cairo, a nuisance to all European nations
established there.
Upon the arrival of the triumvirate at Paris, Monhenaut immediately
repaired to the minister; Verseau was introduced to the king, and
Poncet, soon after, had the same honour. He was then led as a kind
of show, through all Paris, cloathed in the Abyssinian dress, and
decorated with his gold chain. But while he was vainly amusing himself
with this silly pageantry, the consul’s letters, and the comments made
upon them by Monhenaut, went directly to destroy the credit of his ever
having been in Abyssinia, and of the reality of Murat’s embassy.
The Franciscan friars, authors of the murder of M. du Roule, enemies to
the mission, as being the work of the Jesuits; M. Piques, member of the
Sorbonne, a body never much distinguished for promoting discoveries,
or encouraging liberal and free inquiry; Abbé Renaudot, M. le Grande,
and some ancient linguists, who, with great difficulty, by the industry
of M. Ludolf, had attained to a very superficial knowledge of the
Abyssinian tongue, all fell furiously upon Poncet’s narrative of his
journey. One found fault with the account he gave of the religion of
the country, because it was not so conformable to the rites of the
church of Rome, as they had from their own imagination and prejudice,
and for their own ends conceived it to be. Others attacked the truth
of the travels, from improbabilities found, or supposed to be found,
in the description of the countries through which he had passed; while
others discovered the forgery of his letters, by faults found in the
orthography of that language, not one book of which, at that day, they
had ever seen.
All these empty criticisms have been kept alive by the merit of the
book, by this alone they have any further chance of reaching posterity;
while, by all candid readers, this itinerary, short and incomplete as
it is, will not fail to be received as a valuable acquisition to the
geography of these unknown countries of which it treats.
I think it but a piece of duty to the memory of a fellow-traveller, to
the lovers of truth and the public in general, to state the principal
objections upon which this outcry against Poncet was raised; that, by
the answers they admit of, the world may judge whether they are or are
not founded in candour, and that before they are utterly swallowed up
in oblivion.
The first is, that of the learned Renaudot, who says he does not
conceive how an Ethiopian could be called by the name of Murat. To
this I answer, Poncet, de Maillet, and the Turkish Basha, say Murat
was an Armenian, a hundred times over; but M. Renaudot, upon his own
authority, makes him an Ethiopian, and then lays the blame upon others,
who are not so ignorant as himself.
Secondly, Poncet asserts Gondar was the capital of Ethiopia; whereas
the Jesuits have made no mention of it, and this is supposed a strong
proof of Poncet’s forgery. I answer, The Jesuits were banished in
the end of Socinios’s reign, and the beginning of that of his son
Facilidas, that is about the year 1632; they were finally extirpated in
the end of this last prince’s reign, that is before the year 1666, by
his ordering the last Jesuit Bernard Nogueyra, to be publicly hanged.
Now Gondar was not built till the end of the reign of Hannes I. who was
grandson to Socinios, that is about the year 1680. Unless, then, these
holy Jesuits, who, if we believe the missionaries, had all of them a
sight into futurity before their martyrdom, had, from these their _last
visions_, described Gondar as capital of Abyssinia, it does not occur
to me how they should be historians of a fact that had not existence
till 50 years after they were dead.
Thirdly, Poncet speaks of towns and villages in Ethiopia; whereas
it is known there are no towns, villages, or cities, but Axum.--I
believe that if the Abyssinians, who built the large and magnificent
city of Axum, never had other cities, towns, and villages, they were
in this the most singular people upon earth; or, if places where
6000 inhabitants live together in contiguous houses, separated with
broad streets where there are churches and markets, be not towns and
villages, I do not know the meaning of the term; but if these are
towns, Poncet hath said truth; and many more such towns, which he never
did see nor describe, are in Abyssinia at this day.
Fourthly, The Abyssinians live, and always have lived, in tents, not in
houses.--It would have been a very extraordinary idea in people living
in tents to have built such a city as Axum, whose ruins are as large
as those of Alexandria; and it would be still more extraordinary, that
people, in such a climate as Abyssinia, in the whole of which there
is scorching weather for six months, deluges of rain, storms of wind,
thunder, lightning, and hurricanes, such as are unknown in Europe,
for the other six, should choose to live in tents, after knowing how
to build such cities as Axum. I wonder a man’s understanding does not
revolt against such absurdities in the moment he is stating them.
The Abyssinians, while at war, use tents and encampments, to secure the
liberty of movements and changing of ground, and defend themselves,
when stationary, from the inclemency of the weather. But no tent has,
I believe, yet been invented that could stand in the fields in that
country from June to September; and they have not yet formed an idea of
Abyssinia who can suppose this.
I conceive it is _ignorance_ of the language which has led these
_learned_ men into this mistake. The Abyssinians call a house, standing
by itself, allotted to any particular purpose, Bet. So Bet Negus is a
palace, or the house of a king; Bet Christian is a church, or a house
for Christian worship; whilst Bet Mocha is a prison, or house under
ground. But houses in towns or villages are called Taintes, from the
Abyssinian word Tain, to sleep, lie down, rest, or repose. I suppose
the similitude of this word to tents has drawn these _learned_ critics
to believe, that, instead of towns, these were only collections of
tents. But still I think, no one acquainted with the Abyssinian
language, or without being so, would be so void of understanding as to
believe, a people that had built Axum of stone, should endure, for ages
after, a tropical winter in bare tents.
The fifth thing that fixes falsehood upon Poncet is, that he describes
delicious valleys beyond European ideas; beautiful plains, covered
with odoriferous trees and shrubs, to be everywhere in his way on the
entrance of Abyssinia; whereas, when Salidan’s brother conquered
this country, the Arabian books say they found it destitute of all
this fruitfulness. But, with all submission to the Arabian books, to
Abbé Renaudot and his immense reading, I will maintain, that neither
Salidan, nor his brother, nor any of his tribe, ever conquered the
country Poncet describes, nor were in it, or ever saw it at a distance.
The province where Poncet found these beautiful scenes lies between
lat. 12 and 13°. The soil is rich, black mould, which six months
tropical rain are needed to water sufficiently, where the sun is
vertical to it twice a-year, and stationary, with respect to it, for
several days, at the distance of 10°, and at a lesser distance still
for several months; where the sun, though so near, is never seen, but
a thick screen of watery clouds is constantly interposed, and yet the
heat is such, that Fahrenheit’s thermometer rises to 100° in the shade.
Can any one be so ignorant in natural history, as to doubt that, under
these circumstances, a luxuriant, florid, odoriferous vegetation must
be the consequence? Is not this the case in every continent or island
within these limits all round the globe?
But Poncet contradicts the Arabian books, and all travellers, modern
and ancient; for they unanimously agree that this country is a dreary
miserable desert, producing nothing but Dora, which is millet, and such
like things of little or no value. I wish sincerely that M. Renaudot,
when he was attacking a man’s reputation, had been so good as to name
the author whose authority he relied on. I shall take upon me to deny
there ever was an Arabian book which treated of this country. And with
regard to the ancient and modern travellers, his quotations from
them are, if possible, still more visionary and ridiculous. The only
ancient travellers, who, as I believe, ever visited that country, were
Cambyses’s ambassadors; who, probably, passed this part of Poncet’s
track when they went to the Macrobii, and the most modern authors (if
they can be called modern) that came nearest to it, were the men sent
by Nero[73] to discover the country, whose journey is very doubtful;
and they, when they approached the parts described by Poncet, say “the
country began to be green and beautiful.” Now I wish M. Renaudot had
named any traveller more modern than these messengers of Nero, or more
ancient than those ambassadors of Cambyses, who have travelled through
and described the country of the Shangalla.
I, that have lived months in that province, and am the only traveller
that ever did so, must corroborate every word Poncet has said upon this
occasion. To dwell on landscapes and picturesque views, is a matter
more proper for a poet than a historian. Those countries which are
described by Poncet, merit a pen much more able to do them justice,
than either his or mine.
It will be remembered when I say this, it is of the country of the
Shangalla, between lat. 12° and 13° north, that this is the people who
inhabit a hot woody stripe called Kolla, about 40 or 50 miles broad,
that is from north to south, bounded by the mountainous country of
Abyssinia, till they join the Nile at Fazuclo, on the West.
I have also said, that, for the sake of commerce, these Shangalla have
been extirpated in two places, which are like two gaps, or chasms,
in which are built towns and villages, and through which caravans
pass between Sennaar and Abyssinia. All the rest of this country is
impervious and inaccessible, unless by an armed force. Many armies have
perished here. It is a tract totally unknown, unless from the small
detail that I have entered into concerning it in my travels.
And here I must set the critic right also, as to what he says of the
produce of these parts. There is no grain called Dara, at least that I
know of. If he meant millet, he should have called it Dora. It is not a
mark of barrenness in the ground where this grows: part of the finest
land in Egypt is sown with it. The banks of the Nile which produce
Dora would also produce wheat; but the inhabitants of the desert like
this better; it goes farther, and does not subject them to the violent
labour of the plough, to which all inhabitants of extreme hot countries
are averse.
The same I say of what he remarks with regard to cotton. The finest
valleys in Syria, watered by the cool refreshing springs that fall from
Mount Libanus, are planted with this shrub; and, in the same grounds
alternately, the tree which produces its sister in manufactures, silk,
whose value is greatly inhanced by the addition. Cotton clothes all
Ethiopia; cotton is the basis of its commerce with India, and of the
commerce between England, France, and the Levant; and, were it not for
some such ignorant, superficial reasoners as Abbé Renaudot, cotton,
after wool, should be the favourite manufacture of Britain. It will in
time take place of that ungrateful culture, flax; will employ more
hands, and be a more ample field for distinguishing the ingenuity of
our manufacturers.
We see, then, how the least consideration possible destroys these
ill-founded objections, upon which these very ignorant enemies of
Poncet attempted to destroy his credit, and rob him of the merit of
his journey. At last they ventured to throw off the mask entirely, by
producing a letter supposed to be written from Nubia by an Italian
friar, who asserts roundly, that he hears Poncet was never at the
capital of Ethiopia, nor ever had audience of Yasous; but stole the
clothes and money of father Brevedent, then married, and soon after
forsook his wife and Ethiopia together.
Maillet could have easily contradicted this, had he acted honestly; for
Hagi Ali had brought him the king of Abyssinia’s letter, who thanked
him for his having sent Poncet, and signified to him his recovery.
But without appealing to M. Maillet upon the subject, I conceive
nobody will doubt, that Hagi Ali had a commission to bring a physician
from Cairo to cure his master, and that Poncet was proposed as that
physician, with consent of the consul. Now, after having carried Poncet
the length of Bartcho, where it is agreed he was when Brevedent died,
(for he was supposed there to have robbed that father of his money)
what could be Hagi Ali’s reason for not permitting him to proceed half
a day’s journey farther to the capital, and presenting him to the king,
who had been at the pains and expence of sending for him from Egypt?
What excuse could Hagi Ali make for not producing him, when he must
have delivered the consul’s letters, telling him that Poncet was come
with the caravan for the purpose of curing him?
Besides this, M. de Maillet saw Hagi Ali afterwards at Cairo, where
he reproached him with his cruel behaviour, both to Poncet and to
friar Justin, another monk that had come along with him from Ethiopia.
Maillet then must have been fully instructed of Poncet’s whole life
and conversation in Ethiopia, and needed not the Italian’s supposed
communication to know whether or not he had been in Ethiopia. Besides,
Maillet makes use of him as the forerunner of the other embassy he was
then preparing to Gondar, and to that same king Yasous, which would
have been a very strange step had he doubted of his having been there
before.
Supposing all this not enough, still we know he returned by Jidda,
and the consul corresponded with him there. Now, how did he get from
Bartcho to the Red Sea without passing the capital, and without
the king’s orders or knowledge? Who franked him at those number of
dangerous barriers at Woggora, Lamalmon, the Tacazzé, Kella, and Adowa,
where, though I had the authority of the king, I could not sometimes
pass without calling force to my assistance? Who freed him from the
avarice of the Baharnagash, and the much more formidable rapacity of
that murderer the Naybe, who, we have seen in the history of this
reign, attempted to plunder the king’s own factor Musa, though his
master was within three days journey at the head of an army that in a
few hours could have effaced every vestige of where Masuah had stood?
All this, then, is a ridiculous fabrication of lies; the work, as I
have before said, of those who were concerned in the affair of the
unhappy Du Roule.
Poncet, having lost all credit, retired from Paris in disgrace, without
any further gratification than that which he at first received. He
carried to Cairo with him, however, a gold watch and a mirror, which he
was to deliver to the consul as a present to his companion Murat, whose
subsistence was immediately stopped, and liberty given him to return to
Ethiopia.
Nor did Maillet’s folly stop here. After giving poor Murat all the
ill-usage a man could possibly suffer, he entrusted him with a
Jesuit[74] whom he was to introduce into Ethiopia, where he would
certainly have lost his life had not the bad-treatment he received by
the way made him return before he arrived at Masuah.
This first miscarriage seemed only to have confirmed the Jesuits more
in their resolution of producing an embassy. But it now took another
form. Politicians and statesmen became the actors in it, without a
thought having been bestowed to diminish the enemies of the scheme, or
render their endeavours useless, by a superior knowledge of the manners
and customs of the country through which this embassy was to pass.
No adventurer, or vagrant physician, (like Poncet) was to be employed
in this second embassy. A minister versed in languages, negociations,
and treaties, accompanied with proper drugomans and officers, was to
be sent to Abyssinia to cement a perpetual friendship and commerce
between two nations that had not a national article to exchange with
each other, nor way to communicate by sea or land. The minister, who
must have known this, very wisely, at giving his fiat, pitched upon the
consul M. de Maillet to be the ambassador, as a man who was acquainted
with the causes of Poncet’s failure, and, by following an opposite
course, could bring this embassy to a happy conclusion for both nations.
Maillet considered himself as a general whose business was to direct
and not to execute. A tedious and troublesome journey through dangerous
deserts was out of the sphere of his closet, beyond the limits of which
he did not choose to go. Beyond the limits of this, all was desert to
him. He excused himself from the embassy, but gave in a memorial to
serve as a rule for the conduct of his successor in the nomination in
a country he had never seen; but this, being afterwards adopted as a
well-considered regulation, proved one of the principal causes of the
miscarriage and tragedy that followed.
M. Noir du Roule, vice-consul at Damiata, was pitched upon as the
ambassador to go to Abyssinia. He was a young man of some merit, had
a considerable degree of ambition, and a moderate skill in the common
languages spoken in the east, but was absolutely ignorant of that of
the country to which he was going, and, what was worse, of the customs
and prejudices of the nations through which he was to pass. Like most
of his countrymen, he had a violent predilection for the dress,
carriage, and manners of France, and a hearty contempt for those of
all other nations; this he had not address enough to disguise, and
this endangered his life. The whole French nation at Cairo were very
ill-disposed towards him, in consequence of some personal slight, or
imprudences, he had been guilty of; as also towards any repetition of
projects which brought them, their commerce, and even their lives into
danger, as the last had done.
The merchants, therefore, were averse to this embassy; but the Jesuits
and Maillet were the avowed supporters of it, and they had with them
the authority of the king. But each aimed to be principal, and had very
little confidence or communication with his associate.
As for the capuchins and Franciscans, they were mortally offended with
M. de Maillet for having, by the introduction of the Jesuits, and the
power of the king of France, forcibly wrested the Ethiopic mission from
them which the pope had granted, and which the sacred congregation of
cardinals had confirmed. These, by their continual communication with
the Cophts, the Christians of Egypt, had so far brought them to adopt
their designs as, one and all, to regard the miscarriage of du Roule
and his embassy, as what they were bound to procure from honour and
mutual interest.
Things being in these circumstances, M. du Roule arrived at Cairo, and
took upon him the charge of this embassy, and from that moment the
intrigues began.
The consul had persuaded du Roule, that the proper presents he should
take with him to Sennaar were prints of the king and queen of France,
with crowns upon their heads; mirrors, magnifying and multiplying
objects, and deforming them; when brocade, sattin, and trinkets of gold
or silver, iron or steel, would have been infinitely more acceptable.
Elias, an Armenian, a confidential servant of the French nation, was
first sent by way of the Red Sea into Abyssinia, by Masuah, to proceed
to Gondar, and prepare Yasous for the reception of that ambassador,
to whom he, Elias, was to be the interpreter. So far it was well
concerted; but, in preparing for the end, the middle was neglected. A
number of friars were already at Sennaar, and had poisoned the minds
of that people, naturally barbarous, brutal, and jealous. Money, in
presents, had gained the great; while lies, calculated to terrify and
enrage the lower class of people, had been told so openly and avowedly,
and gained such root, that the ambassador, when he arrived at Sennaar,
found it, in the first place, necessary to make a _procez verbal_, or
what we call a precognition, in which the names of the authors, and
substance of these reports, were mentioned, and of this he gave advice
to M. de Maillet, but the names and these papers perished with him.
It was on the 9th of July 1704 that M. du Roule set out from Cairo,
attended by a number of people who, with tears in their eyes, foresaw
the pit into which he was falling. He embarked on the Nile; and, in
his passage to Siout, he found at every halting-place some new and
dangerous lie propagated, which could have no other end but his
destruction.
Belac, a Moor, and factor for the king of Sennaar, was chief of the
caravan which he then joined. Du Roule had employed, while at Cairo,
all the usual means to gain this man to his interest, and had every
reason to suppose he had succeeded. But, on his meeting him at Siout,
he had the mortification to find that he was so far changed that it
cost him 250 dollars to prevent his declaring himself an abettor of
his enemies. And this, perhaps, would not have sufficed, had it not
been for the arrival of Fornetti, drugoman to the French nation at
Cairo, at Siout, and with him a capigi and chiaoux from Ismael Bey, the
port of janizaries, and from the basha of Cairo, expressly commanding
the governor of Siout, and Belac chief of the caravan, to look to the
safety of du Roule, and protect him at the hazard of their lives, and
as they should answer to them.
All the parties concerned were then called together; and the fedtah,
or prayer of peace, used in long and dangerous journies, was solemnly
recited and assented to by them all; in consequence of which, every
individual became bound to stand by his companion even to death, and
not separate himself from him, nor see him wronged, though it was for
his own gain or safety. This test brought all the secret to light;
for Ali Chelebi, governor of Siout, informed the ambassador, that the
Christian merchants and Franciscan friars were in a conspiracy, and
had sworn to defeat and disappoint his embassy even by the loss of his
life, and that, by presents, they had gained him to be a partner in
that conspiracy.
Belac, moreover, told him, that the patriarch of the Cophts had assured
the principal people of which that caravan consisted, that the Franks
then travelling with him were not merchants, but sorcerers, who were
going to Ethiopia, to obstruct, or cut off the course of the Nile, that
it might no longer flow into Egypt, and that the general resolution was
to drive the Franks from the caravan at some place in the desert which
suited their designs, which were to reduce them to perish by hunger or
thirst, or else to be otherwise slain, and no more heard of.
The caravan left Siout the 12th of September. In twelve days they
passed the lesser desert, and came to Khargué, where they were detained
six days by a young man, governor of that place, who obliged M. du
Roule to pay him 120 dollars, before he would suffer him to pass
further; and at the same time forced him to sign a certificate, that he
had been permitted to pass without paying any thing. This was the first
sample of the usage he was to expect in the further prosecution of his
journey.
On the 3d of October they entered the great desert of Selima, and on
the 18th of same month they arrived at Machou, or Moscho, on the Nile,
where their caravan staid a considerable time, till the merchants had
transacted their business. It was at this place the ambassador learned,
that several Franciscan friars had passed the caravan while it remained
at Siout, and advanced to Sennaar, where they had staid some time, but
had lately left that capital upon news of the caravan’s approaching,
and had retired, nobody knew whether.
A report was soon after spread abroad at Cairo, but no one could
ever learn whence it came, that the ambassador, arriving at Dongola,
had been assassinated there. This, indeed, proved false, but was, in
the mean time, a mournful presage of the melancholy catastrophe that
happened soon afterwards.
M. du Roule arrived at Sennaar towards the end of May, and wrote at
that time; but a packet of letters was after brought to the consul at
Cairo, bearing date the 18th of June. The ambassador there mentions,
that he had been well received by the king of Sennaar, who was a young
man, fond of strangers; that particular attention had been shewn
him by Sid Achmet-el-coom; or, as he should have called him, Achmet
Sid-el-coom, i.e. Achmet master of the household. This officer, sent
by the king to visit the baggage of the ambassador, could not help
testifying his surprise to find it so inconsiderable, both in bulk and
value.
He said the king had received letters from Cairo, informing him that he
had twenty chests of silver along with him. Achmet likewise told him,
that he himself had received information, by a letter under the hand
and seal of the most respectable people of Cairo, warning him not to
let M. du Roule pass; for the intention of his journey into Abyssinia
was to prevail on Yasous to attack Masuah and Suakem, and take them
from the Turks. Achmet would not suffer the bales intended for the king
of Abyssinia to be opened or visited, but left them in the hands of the
ambassador.
M. du Roule, however, in writing this account to the consul, intimated
to him that he thought himself in danger, and declares that he did
not believe there was on earth so barbarous, brutal, and treacherous a
people, as were the Nubians.
It happened that the king’s troops had gained some advantage over the
rebellious Arabs, on which account there was a festival at court,
and M. du Roule thought himself obliged to exert himself in every
thing which could add to the magnificence of the occasion. With this
intention he shaved his beard, and drest himself like a European, and
in this manner he received the visit of the minister Achmet. M. Macé,
in a letter to the consul of the above date, complains of this novelty.
He says it shocked every body; and that the[75]mirrors which multiplied
and deformed the objects, made the lower sorts of the people look upon
the ambassador and his company as sorcerers.
Upon great festivals, in most Mahometan kingdoms, the king’s wives have
a privilege to go out of their apartments, and visit any thing new that
is to be seen. These of the king of Sennaar are very ignorant, brutish,
fantastic, and easily offended. Had M. du Roule known the manners of
the country, he would have treated these black majesties with strong
spirits, sweetmeats, or scented waters; and he might then have shewed
them with impunity any thing that he pleased.
But being terrified with the glasses, and disgusted by his inattention,
they joined in the common cry, that the ambassador was a magician,
and contributed all in their power to ruin him with the king; which,
after all, they did not accomplish, without the utmost repugnance and
difficulty. The farthest length at first they could get this prince to
go was, to demand 3000 dollars of the ambassador. This was expressly
refused, and private disgust followed.
M. du Roule being now alarmed for his own safety, insisted upon liberty
to set out forthwith for Abyssinia. Leave was accordingly granted him,
and after his baggage was loaded, and every thing prepared, he was
countermanded by the king, and ordered to return to his own house. A
few days after this he again procured leave to depart; which a short
time after was again countermanded. At last, on the 10th of November,
a messenger from the king brought him final leave to depart, which,
having every thing ready for that purpose, he immediately did.
The ambassador walked on foot, with two country Christians on one hand,
and Gentil his French servant on the other. He refused to mount on
horseback, but gave his horse to a Nubian servant to lead. M. Lipi,
and M. Macé, the two drugomans, were both on horseback. The whole
company being now arrived in the middle of the large square before the
king’s house, the common place of execution for criminals, four blacks
attacked the ambassador, and murdered him with four strokes of sabres.
Gentil fell next by the same hands, at his master’s side. After him M.
Lipi and the two Christians; the two latter protesting that they did
not belong to the ambassador’s family.
M. du Roule died with the greatest magnanimity, fortitude, and
resignation. Knowing his person was sacred by the law of nations, he
disdained to defend it by any other means, remitting his revenge to the
guardians of that law, and he exhorted all his attendants to do the
same. But M. Macé the Drugoman, young and brave, and a good horseman,
was not of the sheep kind, to go quietly to the slaughter. With his
pistols he shot two of the assassins that attacked him, one after the
other, dead upon the spot; and was continuing to defend himself with
his sword, when a horseman, coming behind him, thrust him through the
back with a lance, and threw him dead upon the ground.
Thus ended the second attempt of converting Abyssinia by an embassy.
A scheme, if we believe M. de Maillet, which had cost government a
considerable expence, for in a memorial, of the 1st of October 1706,
concerning the death of M. du Roule, he makes the money and effects
which he had along with him, when murdered, to amount to 200 purses, or
L.25,000 Sterling. This, however, is not probable; because, in another
place he speaks of M. du Roule’s having demanded of him a small supply
of money while at Sennaar, which friar Joseph, a capuchin, refused
to carry for him. Such a supply would not have been necessary if the
ambassador had with him such a sum as that already mentioned; therefore
I imagine it was exaggerated, with a view to make the Turkish basha of
Suakem quarrel with the king of Sennaar about the recovering it.
The friars, who were in numbers at Sennaar, left it immediately before
the coming of M. du Roule. This they might have done without any bad
intention towards him; they returned, however, immediately after his
murder. This, I think, very clearly constitutes them the authors of
it. For had they not been privy and promoters of the assassination,
they would have fled with fear and abhorrence from a place where six of
their brethren had been lately so treacherously slain, and were not yet
buried, but their carcases abandoned to the fowls of the air, and the
beasts of the field, and where they themselves, therefore, could have
no assurance of safety.
They however pretended, first to lay the blame upon the king of
Abyssinia, then upon the king of Sennaar, and then they divided it
between them both. But Elias, arrived at Gondar, vindicated that
prince, as we shall presently see, and the list of names taken at
Sennaar; and a long series of correspondence, which afterwards came
out, and a chain of evidence which was made public, incontestibly prove
that the king of Sennaar was but an agent, and indeed an unwilling one,
who two several times repented of his bloody design, and made M. du
Roule return to his own house, to evade the execution of it.
The blood then of this gallant and unfortunate gentleman undoubtedly
lies upon the heads of the reformed Franciscan friars, and their
brethren, the friars of the Holy Land. The interest of these two
bodies, and a bigotted prince, such as Louis XIV then was, was more
than sufficient to stop all inquiry, and hinder any vengeance to
be taken on those holy assassins. But he who, unperceived, follows
deliberate murther through all its concealments and darkness of its
ways, in a few years required satisfaction for the blood of du Roule,
at a time and place unforeseen, and unexpected.
We shall now return to Gondar to king Yasous, who being recovered of
his disease, and having dismissed his physician, was preparing to set
out on a campaign against the Galla.
Yasous, for his first wife, had married Ozoro Malacotawit, a lady of
great family and connections in the province of Gojam. By her he had
a son, Tecla Haimanout, who was grown to manhood, and had hitherto
lived in the most dutiful affection and submission to his father,
who, on his part, seemed to place unlimited confidence in his son. He
now gave a proof of this, not very common in the annals of Abyssinia,
by leaving Tecla Haimanout behind him, at an age when he was fit to
reign, appointing him Betwudet, with absolute power to govern in his
absence. Yasous had a mistress whom he tenderly loved, a woman of great
quality likewise, whose name was Ozoro Kedustè. She was sister to his
Fit-Auraris, Agné, a very distinguished and capable officer, and by her
he had three children, David, Hannes, and Jonathan.
It happened, while he was watching the motions of the Galla, news were
brought that Ozoro Kedustè had been taken ill of a fever; and though,
upon this intelligence, he disposed his affairs so as to return with
all possible expedition, yet when he came to Bercanté, the lady’s
house, he found that she was not only dead, but had been for some
time buried. All his presence of mind now left him; he fell into the
most violent transport of wild despair, and, ordering her tomb to be
opened, he went down into it, taking his three sons along with him,
and became so frantic at the sight of the corpse, that it was with the
utmost difficulty he could be forced again to leave the sepulchre.
He returned first to Gondar, then he retired to an island in the lake
Tzana, there to mourn his lost mistress.
But before this, Elias, ignorant of what had passed at Sennaar,
presented M. de Maillet’s letter to him, beseeching his leave for
M. du Roule to enter Abyssinia, and come into his presence. This he
easily procured: Yasous was fond of strangers; and not only granted the
request, but sent a man of his own to Sennaar with letters to the king
to protect and defray the expences of the ambassador to Gondar. This
man, who had affairs of his own, loitered away a great deal of time in
the journey, so that Elias, upon first hearing of the arrival of the
ambassador, set out himself to meet him at Sennaar. The king, in the
mean time, having finished his mourning, dispatched Badjerund Oustas
to his son the Betwudet, at Gondar, ordering him forthwith to send him
a body of his household troops to rendezvous on the banks of the lake,
opposite to the island Tchekla Wunze, where he then had his residence.
It has been said, contrary to all truth, by those who have wrote
travels into this country, that sons born in marriage had the same
preference in succession as they have in other countries. But this, as
I have said, is entirely without foundation: For, in the first place,
there is no such thing as a regular marriage in Abyssinia; all consists
in mere consent of parties. But, allowing this to be regular, not only
natural children, that is, those born in concubinage where no marriage
was in contemplation; and adulterous bastards, that is, the sons of
unmarried women by married men; and all manner of sons whatever,
succeed equally as well to the crown as to private inheritance; and
there cannot be a more clear example of this than in the present
king, who, although he had a son, Tecla Haimanout, born of the queen
Malacotawit in wedlock, was yet succeeded by three bastard brothers,
all sons of Yasous, born in adultery, that is, in the life of the
queen. David and Hannes were sons of the king by his favourite Ozoro
Kedustè; Bacuffa, by another lady of quality.
Although the queen, Malacotawit, had passed over with seeming
indifference the preference the king had given his mistress, Ozoro
Kedustè, during her lifetime, yet, from a very unaccountable kind of
jealousy, she could not forgive those violent tokens of affection
the king had shewn after her death, by going down with his sons and
remaining with the body in the grave. Full of resentment for this, she
had persuaded her son, Tecla Haimanout, that Yasous had determined to
deprive him of his succession, to send him and her, his mother, both
to Wechné, and place his bastard brother, David, son of Ozoro Kedustè,
upon the throne.
The queen had been very diligent in attaching to her the principal
people about the court. By her own friends, and the assistance of the
discontented and banished monks, she had raised a great army in Gojam
under her brothers, Dermin and Paulus. Tecla Haimanout had shewn great
signs of wisdom and talents for governing, and very much attached to
himself some of his father’s oldest and ablest servants.
It was, therefore, agreed, in return to Yasous’s message by Oustas,
to answer, That, after so long a reign, and so much bloodshed, the
king would do well to retire to some convent for the rest of his
life, and atone for the many great sins he had committed; and that he
should leave the kingdom in the hands of his son Tecla Haimanout, as
the ancient king Caleb had resigned his crown into the hands of St
Pantaleon in favour of his son Guebra Mascal. As it was not very safe
to deliver such a message to a king such as Yasous, it was therefore
sent to him, by a common foot-soldier, who could not be an object of
resentment.
The king received it at Tchekla Wunze, the island in the lake Tzana,
where he was then residing. He answered with great sharpness, by the
same messenger, “That he had been long informed who these were that had
seduced his son, Tecla Haimanout, at once from his duty to him as his
father, and his allegiance as his sovereign; that though he did not
hold them to be equal in sanctity to St Pantaleon, yet, such as they
were, he proposed immediately to meet them at Gondar, and settle there
his son’s coronation.”
This ironical message was perfectly understood. Those of the court
that were with Tecla Haimanout, and the inhabitants of the capital,
met together, and bound themselves by a solemn oath to live and die
with their king Tecla Haimanout. The severity of Yasous was well known;
his provocation now was a just one; and the measure of vengeance that
awaited them, every one concerned knew to be such that there was no
alternative but death or victory.
Neither party were slack in preparations. Kasmati Honorius, governor of
Damot, a veteran officer and old servant of Yasous, collected a large
body of troops and marched them down the west side of the lake. Yasous
having there joined them, and putting himself at the head of his army,
began his march, rounding the lake on its south side towards Dingleber.
Neither did Tecla Haimanout delay a moment after hearing his father was
in motion, but marched with his army from Gondar, attended with all the
ensigns of royalty. He encamped at Bartcho, in that very field where
Za Denghel was defeated and slain by his rebellious subjects. Thinking
this a post ominous to kings, he resolved to wait for his father there,
and give him battle.
The king, in his march through the low country of Dembea, was attacked
by a putrid fever, very common in those parts, which so increased upon
him that he was obliged to be carried back to Tchekla Wunze. This
accident discouraged his whole party. His army, with Honorius, took the
road to Gojam, but did not disperse, awaiting the recovery of the king.
But the queen, Malacotawit, no sooner heard that Yasous her husband
was sick at Tchekla Wunze, than she sent to her son Tecla Haimanout
to leave his unwholesome station, and march back immediately to
Gondar; and, as soon as he was returned, she dispatched her two
brothers, Dermin and Paulus, with a body of soldiers and two Mahometan
musqueteers, who, entering the island Tchekla Wunze by surprise,
shot and disabled the king while sitting on a couch; immediately
after which, Dermin thrust him through with a sword. They attempted
afterwards to burn the body, in order to avoid the ill-will the
sight of it must occasion: In this, however, they were prevented by
the priests of the island and the neighbouring nobility, who took
possession of the body, washed it, and performed all the rites of
sepulture, then carried it in a kind of triumph, with every mark of
magnificence due to the burial of a king, interring it in the small
island of Mitraha, where lay the body of all his ancestors, and where I
have seen the body of this king still entire.
Nor did the prince his son, Tecla Haimanout, now king, discourage the
people in the respect they voluntarily paid to his father. On the
contrary, that parricide himself shewed every outward mark of duty, to
the which inwardly his heart had been long a stranger.
Poncet, who saw this king, gives this character of him: He says he
was a man very fond of war, but averse to the shedding of blood.
However this may appear a contradiction, or said for the sake of the
antithesis, it really was the true character of this prince, who, fond
of war, and in the perpetual career of victory, did, by pushing his
conquests as far as they could go, inevitably occasion the spilling of
much blood. Yet, when his army was not in the field, though he detected
a multitude of conspiracies among priests and other people at home,
whose lives in consequence were forfeited to the law, he very rarely,
either from his own motives, or the persuasion of others, could be
induced to inflict capital punishments though often strongly provoked
to it.
Upon his death the people unanimously gave to him the name of Tallac,
which signifies _the Great_, a name he has ever since enjoyed
unimpeached in the Abyssinian annals, or history of his country, from
the which this his reign is taken.
[Illustration]
TECLA HAIMANOUT I.
From 1704 to 1706.
_Writes in Favour of Du Roule--Defeats the Rebels--Is assassinated
while hunting._
Elias the Armenian, of whom we have already spoken, and who was
charged with letters of protection from Yasous to meet M. du Roule at
Sennaar, had reached within three days journey of that capital when
he heard that king Yasous was assassinated. Terrified at the news, he
returned in the utmost haste to Gondar, and presented the letters,
which had been written by Yasous, to be renewed by his son, king Tecla
Haimanout. Tecla Haimanout read his father’s letters, and approved of
their contents, ordering them to be copied in his own name; and Elias
without delay set out with them. I have inserted a translation of these
letters, which were originally written in Arabic, and seem to me to
be of the few that are authentic among those many which have been
published as coming from Abyssinia.
“The king Tecla Haimanout, son of the king of the church of Ethiopia,
king of a thousand churches.
[Illustration: JESUS son of MARY
Race of Solomon Son of David, Israel, Edom, Isaac.[76]]
“On the part of the powerful august king, arbiter of nations, shadow
of God upon earth, the guide of kings who profess the religion of the
Messiah, the most powerful of Christian kings, he that maintains order
between Mahometans and Christians, protector of the boundaries of
Alexandria, observer of the commandments of the gospel, descended of
the line of the prophets David and Solomon,--may the blessing of Israel
be upon our prophet and upon them.--To the king Baady, son of the king
Ounsa, may his reign be full of happiness, being a prince endowed with
these rare qualities that deserve the highest praises as governing his
kingdom with distinguished wisdom, and by an order full of equity.--The
king of France, who is a Christian, wrote a letter seven or eight
years ago, by which he signified to me, that he wished to open a trade
for the advantage of his subjects and of mine, which request we have
granted. We come at present to understand, that he has sent us presents
by a man whose name is du Roule, who has likewise several others along
with him, and that these people have been arrested at your town of
Sennaar. We require of you, therefore, to set them immediately at
liberty, and to suffer them to come to us with all the marks of honour,
and that you should pay regard to the ancient friendship which has
always subsisted between our predecessors, since the time of the _king
of Sedgid_ and the _king of Kim_, to the present day. We also demand
of you to suffer all the subjects of the king of France to pass, and
all those that come with letters of his consul who is at Cairo, as all
such Frenchmen come for trade only, being of the same religion with
us. We likewise recommend to you, that you permit to pass freely, all
French Christians, Cophts, and Syrians who follow our rites, observing
our religion, and who intend coming into our country; and that you do
not suffer any of those who are contrary to our religion to pass, such
as the monk Joseph, and his companions, whom you may keep at Sennaar,
it being in no shape our intention to suffer them to come into our
dominions, where they would occasion troubles, as being enemies to our
faith. God grant you your desires.”--Wrote the 10th of Zulkadé, Anno
1118, _i. e._ the 21st of January 1706.
☞The direction is--“To king Baady, son of king Ounsa, may God
favour him with his grace.”
The first thing I remark upon this letter is, the mention of the
ancient peace and friendship which subsisted between the predecessors
of these two princes now corresponding. It was a friendship, he says,
that had endured from the time of the king of _Sedgid_, and the king of
_Kim_, to the present day.
The kingdom of Sennaar, as we shall see, was but a modern one, and
recently established by conquest over the Arabs. Therefore the kingdoms
of _Sedgid_ and of _Kim_ were before that conquest, places whence this
black nation came that had established their sovereignty at Sennaar by
conquest: from which, therefore, I again infer, there never was any
war, conquest, or tribute between Abyssinia and that state.
The Arabs, who fed their flocks near the frontiers of the two
countries, were often plundered by the kings of Abyssinia making
descents into Atbara; but this was never reckoned a violation of peace
between the two sovereigns. On the contrary, as the motive of the
Arabs, for coming south into the frontiers of Abyssinia, was to keep
themselves independent, and out of the reach of Sennaar, when the king
of Abyssinia fell upon them there, he was understood to do that monarch
service, by driving them down farther within his reach. The Baharnagash
has been always at war with them; they are tributary to him for eating
his grass and drinking his water, and nothing that he ever does to
them gives any trouble or inquietude to Sennaar. It is interpreted as
maintaining his ancient dominion over the Shepherds, those of Sennaar
being a new power, and accounted as usurpers.
M. de Maillet, nor M. le Grande his historian, have not thought fit
to explain who the monk Joseph was mentioned in this letter. Now it
is certain, that, when Murat and Poncet were returned from Abyssinia,
there was a missionary of the minor friars, who arrived in Ethiopia,
had an audience of the king, and wrote a letter in his name to the
pope, wherein he has foisted many improbabilities and falsehoods;
and concludes with declaring on the part of Yasous, that he submits
to the see of Rome in the same manner the kings his predecessors had
submitted. He makes Yasous speak Latin, too; and it is perfectly
plain from the[77]whole letter, that, though he writes it himself, he
cannot conceal that the king Yasous wanted him very much away, and
was very uneasy at his stay at Gondar. Who this was we know not, but
suppose it was one of those assassins of M. du Roule, carrying on a
private intrigue without participation of the consul, some of whom were
afterwards detected in Walkayt in the reign of David IV.
As for Elias, the forerunner of the French embassy, now become the only
remains of it, he continued in Abyssinia (to judge by his letter) in
great poverty, till the year 1718, immediately after which he went over
to Arabia Felix, and first wrote from Mocha to M. de Maillet consul
at Cairo, as it will appear in the reign of David IV. where I have
inserted his letter; that written to M. du Roule in the name of Yafous,
that of Tecla Haimanout to the Basha and Divan of Cairo, I have now
here inserted, because I have advanced facts founded upon them.
TRANSLATION _of an_ ARABIC LETTER _from the_ KING _of_ ABYSSINIA _to_
M. DU ROULE.
“The king Tecla Haimanout, king of the established church, son of the
king of a thousand churches.
“This letter cometh forth from the venerable, august king, who is the
shadow of God, guide of Christian princes that are in the world, the
most powerful of the Nazarean kings, observer of the commandments
of the gospel, protector of the confines of Alexandria, he that
maintaineth order between Mahometans and Christians, descended from the
family of the prophets David and Solomon, upon whom being the blessings
of Israel, may God make his happiness eternal, and his power perpetual,
and protect his arms--So be it.--To his excellence the most virtuous
and most prudent man du Roule, a Frenchman sent to us, may God preserve
him, and make him arrive at a degree of eminence--So be it.--Elias,
your interpreter whom you sent before you, being arrived here, has been
well received. We have understood that you are sent to us on the part
of the king of France our brother, and are surprised that you have been
detained at Sennaar. We send to you at present a letter for king Baady,
in order that he may set you at liberty, and not do you any injury,
nor to those that are with you, but may behave in a manner that is
proper both for you and to us, according to the religion of Elias that
you sent, who is a Syrian; and all those that may come after you from
the king of France our brother, or his consul at Cairo, shall be well
received, whether they be ambassadors or private merchants, because
we love those that are of our religion. We receive with pleasure those
who do not oppose our laws, and we send away those that do oppose them.
For this reason we did not receive immediately Joseph[78] with all his
companions, not choosing that such sort of people should appear in our
presence, nor intending that they should pass Sennaar, in order to
avoid troubles which may occasion the death of many; but with respect
to you, have nothing to fear, you may come in all safety, and you shall
be received with honour.”--Written the 10th of the month Zulkadé, Anno
1118, _i. e._ the 21st of January of the year 1706.
☞ The address is--“Let the present be delivered to M. du Roule
at the town of Sennaar.”
I shall only observe upon this letter, that all the priests, who had
flocked to Sennaar before M. du Roule arrived there, disappeared upon
his near approach to that city, after having prepared the mischief
which directly followed. And, no sooner was the murder, which they
before concerted, committed, than they all flocked back again as if
invited to a festival. M. de Maillet speaks of several of them in his
letters, where he complains of the murder of du Roule, and says that
they were then on their way to enter Abyssinia. Of these probably was
this Joseph, whom Tecla Haimanout strictly prohibits to come farther
than Sennaar, having seen what his father had written concerning him in
the first letters Elias was charged with.
Others are mentioned in Elias’s letter to the consul as having been in
Abyssinia. He calls them those of the league of Michael and Samuel,
of whom we shall speak afterwards. But, even though the French consul
had ordered his nation to drive all the subjects of Sennaar from their
houses and service, none of these missionaries were afraid to return
and abide at Sennaar, because they knew the murder of the ambassador
was the work of their own hands, and, without their instigation, would
never have been committed.
The unlucky messenger, Elias, was again about to enter Sennaar, when
he received information that du Roule was assassinated. If he had
fled hastily from this inauspicious place upon the murder of Yasous,
his haste was now ten-fold, as he considered himself engaged in the
same circumstances that had involved M. du Roule’s attendants in his
misfortunes.
The king, upon hearing the account given by Elias of the melancholy
fate of the ambassador at Sennaar, was so exasperated, that he gave
immediate orders for recalling such of his troops as he had permitted
to go to any considerable distance; and, in a council held for that
purpose, he declared, that he considered the death of M. du Roule as
an affront that immediately affected his crown and dignity. He was,
therefore, determined not to pass it over, but to make the king of
Sennaar sensible that he, as well as all the other kings upon earth,
knew the necessity of observing the law of nations, and the bad
consequence of perpetual retaliations that must follow the violation of
it. In the mean time, thinking that the basha of Cairo was the cause of
this, he wrote the following letter to him.
TRANSLATION _of an_ ARABIC LETTER _from the_ KING _of_ ABYSSINIA _to
the_ BASHA _and_ DIVAN _of_ CAIRO.
“To the Pacha, and Lords of the Militia of Cairo.
“On the part of the king of Abyssinia, the king Tecla Haimanout, son of
the king of the church of Abyssinia.
“On the part of the august king, the powerful arbiter of nations,
shadow of God upon earth, the guide of kings who profess the religion
of the Messiah, the most powerful of all Christian kings, he who
maintains order between Mahometans and Christians, protector of the
confines of Alexandria, observer of the commandments of the gospel,
heir from father to son of a most powerful kingdom, descended of the
family of David and Solomon,--may the blessing of Israel be upon our
prophet, and upon them may his happiness be durable, and his greatness
lasting, and may his powerful, army be always feared.--To the most
powerful lord, elevated by his dignity, venerable by his merits,
distinguished by his strength and riches among all Mahometans, the
refuge of all those that reverence him, who by his prudence governs
and directs the armies of the noble empire, and commands his confines;
victorious viceroy of Egypt, the four corners of which shall be always
respected and defended:--so be it.--And to all the distinguished
princes, judges, men of learning, and other officers whose business
it is to maintain order and good government and to all commanders
in general, may God preserve them all in their dignities, in the
nobleness of their health. You are to know that our ancestors never
bore any envy to other kings, nor did they ever occasion them any
trouble, or shew them any mark of hatred. On the contrary, they have,
upon all occasions, given them proofs of their friendships, assisting
them generously, relieving them in their necessities, as well in what
concerns the caravan and pilgrims of Mecca in Arabia Felix, as in the
Indies, in _Persia_, and other distant and out-of-the-way places, also
by protecting distinguished persons in every urgent necessity.
“Nevertheless, the king of France our brother, who professes our
religion and our law, having been induced thereto, by some advances of
friendship on our part such as are proper, sent an ambassador to us;
I understand that you caused arrest him at Sennaar, and also another
by name Murat, the Syrian, whom you did put in prison also, though he
was sent to that ambassador on our part, and by thus doing, you have
violated the law of nations, as ambassadors of kings ought to be at
liberty to go wherever they will; and it is a general obligation to
treat them with honour, and not to molest or detain them, nor should
they be subject to pay customs, or any sort of presents. We could very
soon repay you in kind, if we were inclined to revenge the insult
you have offered to the man Murat sent on our part; the Nile would
be sufficient to punish you, since God hath put into our power his
fountain, his outlet, and his increase, and that we can dispose of the
same to do you harm; for the present we demand of, and exhort you to
desist from any future vexations towards our envoys, and not disturb
us by detaining those who shall be sent towards you, but you shall let
them pass and continue their route without delay, coming and going
wherever they will freely for their own advantage, whether they are our
subjects or Frenchmen, and whatever you shall do to or for them, we
shall regard as done to or for ourselves.”
☞ The address is--“To the basha, princes, and lords governing
the town of great Cairo, may God favour them with his goodness.”
There are several things very remarkable in this letter. The king of
Abyssinia values himself, and his predecessors, upon never having
molested or troubled any of his neighbours who were kings, nor borne
any envy towards them. We are not then to believe what we see often in
history, that there was frequent war between Sennaar and Abyssinia,
or that Sennaar was tributary to Abyssinia. That stripe of country,
inhabited by the Shangalla, would, in this case, have been first
conquered. But it is more probable, that the great difference of
climate which immediately takes place between the two kingdoms, the
great want of water on the frontiers, barriers placed there by the hand
of Nature, have been the means of keeping these kingdoms from having
any mutual concerns; and so, indeed, we may guess by the utter silence
of the books, which never mention any war at Sennaar till the beginning
of the reign of Socinios.
I apprehend, that protecting distinguished persons upon great
occasions, alludes to the children of the king of Sennaar, who
frequently fly after the death of their father to Abyssinia[79] for
protection, it being the custom of that state to murder all the
brothers of the prince that succeeds, instead of sending them to a
mountain, as they do in Abyssinia.
The next thing remarkable is his protection of the pilgrims who go to
Mecca, and the merchants that go to India. Several caravans of both
set out yearly from his kingdom, all Mahometans, some of whom go to
Mecca for religion, the others to India, by Mocha, to trade. But it is
not possible to understand how he is to protect the trade in Persia,
with which country he certainly has had no sort of concern these 800
years, nor has it been in that time possible for him either to molest
or protect a Persian. What, therefore, I would suppose, is, that the
king has made use of the common phrase which universally obtains here
both in writing and conversation, calling Ber el Ajam the West, and Ber
el Arab the East coast of the Red Sea.--Ber el Ajam, in the language of
the country, is the coast where there is water or rain, in opposition
to the Tehama, or opposite shore of Arabia, where there is no water.
The Greeks and Latins translated this word into their own language, but
did not understand it; only from the sound they called it Azamia, from
Ajam. Now Ajam, or Ber el Ajam, is the name of Persia also; and the
French interpreter says, the king of Abyssinia protects the caravans of
Persia; when he should say, the caravans, going through Ber el Ajam,
the Azamia of the ancients, to embark at the two ports Suakem and
Masuah, both in the country of that name.
The next thing to remark here is, that the king acknowledges Murat to
be his ambassador; and it is the arresting him, which we have seen
was done at the instance of M. de Maillet collusively, that the king
says was a violation of the law of nations; and it was this insult,
done to Murat his ambassador, that he all along complains of, not that
offered to du Roule, which he leaves to the king of France; for he
says expressly, if he was to starve, or destroy them all, by stopping
the Nile from coming into Egypt, it would be on account of the insult
offered to Murat, the envoy, or man, sent on his part to France. It is
plain, therefore, that M. de Maillet persecuted the poor Syrian very
wrongfully, and that in no one instance, from first to last, was he
ever in the right concerning that embassy.
This step, which justice dictated, was not without its reward; for
Tecla Haimanout, who had assembled his army on this account sooner than
he otherwise intended, found immediately after, that a rival and rebel
prince, Amda Sion, was set up against him by the friends of his father
Yasous, and that he had been privately collecting troops, intending to
take him by surprise, when he was, however, at the head of his army
ready to give him battle.
The first thing the king did was to dispatch a large body of troops to
reinforce Dermin, governor of Gojam, and to him he sent positive orders
to force Amda Sion to fight wherever he should find him, while he, with
the royal army, came forward with all expedition to keep the people in
awe, and prevent them from joining his rival.
Amda Sion, on the other hand, lost no time. From Ibaba, through
Maitsha, he marched straight to Gondar. Being arrived at the king’s
house at Dingleber, he sat down on the throne with the ensigns of
royalty about him, and there appointed several officers that were most
needed, in the army, the provinces, and about his person. During his
stay here, news were brought that Dermin had followed him step by step
in the very track he had marched, and laid the whole country waste that
had shewn him any countenance or favour. Amda Sion’s heart seemed to
fail him upon this; for he left Dingleber, crossed the ford at Delakus,
and endeavoured to pass Dermin, by keeping on the west side of the
Nile, and on the low road by which he returned to Ibaba.
Dermin, well-informed as to his motions, and perfectly instructed in
the situation of the country, instead of passing him, turned short
upon his front, crossing the Nile at Fagitta, and forced him to an
engagement in the plain country of Maitsha. The battle, though it was
obstinately fought by the rebels, ended in a complete victory in favour
of the king. Those among the rebels who most distinguished themselves
were the banished monks, the greatest part of whom were slain fighting
desperately. Among these, were Abba Welleta Christos, Tobias and his
brother Abba Nicolaus, who had been ringleaders in the late religious
disputes in the time of Yasous, and were now chiefs of the rebellion
against his son.
The greatest part of the loss fell upon the common men of Gojam, of
the clans Elmana and Densa. No man of note among them was lost; only
Amda Sion, who fell at their head in the beginning of the engagement,
fighting with all the bravery that could be expected from a man in his
circumstances. The rebel army was entirely dispersed. On the king’s
side no man of consideration was slain, but Anastè, son of Ozoro Sabel
Wenghel.
After having reinforced Dermin, the first thing the king did was
to send three of his brothers, David, Hannes, and Jonathan, to be
imprisoned on the mountain of Wechné. He then marched with his army
from Gondar; and, being ignorant of what had happened, he dispatched
his master of the horse, by way of Dingleber, to join Kasmati Dermin,
in case he had not still been strong enough to fight the rebels. With
his main army he took the road to Tedda, intending to proceed to Gojam;
but, by the way, was informed that Dermin had defeated and slain his
rival Amda Sion: and he had scarce crossed the Nile at Dara, when
another messenger arrived with news that Dermin had also come up with
Kasmati Honorius and his army on the banks of the Nile, at Goutto, had
entirely defeated and slain him, together with his principal officers,
and dispersed the whole army. Upon this the king marched towards Ibaba,
and was there joined by Dermin, when great rejoicing and feasting
ensued for several days.
On this occasion the king crowned his mother Malacotawit, conferring
upon her the dignity and title of Iteghè; the consequence of which
station I have often described. Having now no longer enemies to
fear, he was persuaded, by some of his favourites, first to dismiss
Dermin and his army, then all the troops that had joined him, and go
with a few of his attendants, or court, to hunt the buffalo in the
neighbouring country, Idi; which council the young prince too rashly
adopted, suspecting no treason.
While the hunting-match lasted, a conspiracy was formed by Gueber Mo,
his two brothers, Palambaras, Hannes, and several others, old officers
belonging to the late king Yasous, who saw that he intended, one by
one, to weed them out of the way as soon as safely he could, and that
the whole power and favour was at last to fall into the hands of the
Iteghé, and her brothers Dermin and Paulus. Accordingly one morning,
the conspirators having surrounded him while riding, one of them thrust
him through the body with a sword, and threw him from his mule upon the
earth. They then laid his body upon a horse, and, with all possible
expedition, carried him to the house of Azena Michael, where he arrived
yet alive, but died immediately upon being taken from the horse.
Badjerund Oustas, and some others of his father’s old officers, who had
attached themselves to him after his father’s death, took the body of
the king and buried it in Quebran.
As soon as this assassination was known, the master of the horse, with
the few troops that he could gather together, came to the palace, and
took a young son of Tecla Haimanout, aged only four years, whom he
proclaimed king, and the Iteghé, Malacotawit, regent of the kingdom.
But Badjerund Oustas, and those who had not been concerned in the
murder of either king, went straight to the mountain of Wechné, and
brought thence Tisilis, that is Theophilus, son to Hannes, and brother
to the late king Yasous, whom they crowned at Emfras, and called him,
by his inauguration name, Atserar Segued.
[Illustration]
TIFILIS.
From 1706 to 1709.
_Dissembles with his Brother’s Assassins--Execution of the
Regicides--Rebellion and Death of Tigi._
Theophilus, a few days after his coronation, having called the whole
court and clergy together, declared to them, that his faith upon the
disputable point concerning our Saviour’s incarnation was different
from that of his brother Yasous, or that of his nephew Tecla Haimanout,
but in every respect conformable to that of the monks of Gojam,
followers of Abba Eustathius, and that of the Iteghè, Malacotawit,
Dermin, and Paulus. A violent clamour was instantly raised against the
king by the priests of Debra Libanos, as having forsaken the religious
principles of his predecessors. But the king was inflexible; and this
ingratiated him more with the inhabitants of Gojam. Not many days
after, the king arrested the master of the horse, Johannes Palambaras,
the Betwudet Tigi, and several others, all supposed to be concerned in
the murder of the late king, and confined them in several places and
prisons.
This last action of the king entirely relieved the minds of all the
friends of Tecla Haimanout from any further fear of being called to
account for the murder of Yasous; and, in consequence of this, the
queen Malocotawit, with her brothers Dermin and Paulus, and all the
murderers of the late king Yasous, came to Gondar that same winter to
do homage to Theophilus, whom they now thought their greatest protector.
But the wise and sagacious king had kept his secret in his own bosom.
All his behaviour hitherto had been only dissimulation, to induce his
brother’s murderers to come within his power. And no sooner did he see
that he had succeeded in this, than the very first day, while they were
yet at audience, he ordered an officer, in his own presence, to arrest
first the queen, and then her two brothers Dermin and Paulus. He gave
the same directions concerning the rest of the conspirators, who were
all scattered about Gondar, eating, drinking, and fearing nothing, but
rejoicing at the happy days they had promised themselves, and were now
to see: he ordered the whole of them, amounting to 37 persons, many of
these of the first rank, to be all executed that same forenoon.
He began with the queen, who was taken immediately from his presence
and hanged by the common hangman on the tree before the palace gate;
the first of her rank, it is believed, that ever died so vile a death,
either in Abyssinia or any other country, the history of which has come
down to our hands. Dermin and Paulus were first carried to the tree
to see their sister’s execution; after which, one after the other,
they were thrust through with swords, the weapon with which they had
wounded the late king Yasous. But the two Mahometans were shot with
muskets, it having been in that manner they had ended the late king’s
life, after Dermin had wounded him with a sword. As they had committed
high treason, none of the bodies of these traitors were allowed to be
buried; they were hewn in small pieces with knives, and strewed about
the streets, to be eat by the hyænas and dogs; a most barbarous and
offensive custom, to which they strictly adhere to this very day.
After having thus taken ample vengeance for the murder of his brother
Yasous, Theophilus did not stop here. Tecla Haimanout was, it is true,
a parricide, but he was likewise a king, and his nephew; nor did it
seem just to Theophilus that it should be left in the will of private
subjects, after having acknowledged Tecla Haimanout as their sovereign,
to choose a time afterwards, in which they were to cut him off for
a crime which, however great, had not hindered them from swearing
allegiance to him at his accession, and entering into his service at
the time when it was recently committed. He, therefore, ordered all the
regicides in custody to be put to death; and sent circular letters to
the several governors, that they should observe the same rule as to all
those directly concerned in the murder of his nephew Tecla Haimanout,
who should be found in places under their command.
Tigi, formerly Betwudet, had been imprisoned in Hamazen, a small
district near the Red Sea, under the government of Abba Saluce.
This man, by birth a Galla, had escaped from Hamazen, and collected
a considerable army of the different tribes of his nation, Liban,
Kalkend, and Basso; and, having found one that pretended to be of the
royal blood, he proclaimed him king, and put his army in motion.
Upon the first news of this revolt, the king, though attended with few
troops, immediately left Gondar, ordering all those whose duty it was
to join him at Ibaba. Having there collected a little army, he marched
immediately for the country of the Basso, destroying every thing with
fire and sword. Tigi, in the mean time, by forced marches came to
Ibaba, where he committed all sorts of cruelties without distinction
of age or sex. The cries of the sufferers reached the king, who turned
immediately back to the relief of Ibaba; and, not discouraged by his
enemy’s great superiority of number, offered battle to them as soon as
he arrived. Nor did Tigi and his Galla refuse it; but, on the 28th day
of March 1709, a very obstinate engagement ensued; where, though the
king was inferior in forces, yet being himself warlike and active, he
was so well seconded by his troops that Basso and Liban were almost
entirely cut off.
In the field of battle there was a church, built by the late king
Yasous after a victory gained there over the Pagans, whence it had the
name it then bore, Debra Mawea, or the _Mountain of Victory_. A large
body of these Galla, seeing that all went against them in the field,
fled to the church for a sanctuary, trusting to be protected from the
fury of the soldiers by the holiness of the place, and they so far
judged well; for the king’s troops, though they surrounded the church
on every side, did not offer to break into it, or molest the enemy that
had sheltered themselves within. Theophilus, informed of this scruple
of his soldiers, immediately rode up to them, crying out, “That the
church was defiled by the entrance of so many Pagans, and no longer
fit for Christian worship, that they should therefore immediately put
fire to it, and he would build a nobler one in its place.” The soldiers
obeyed without further hesitation; and, with cotton wads wrapt about
the balls of their guns, they set fire to the thatch, with which every
church in Abyssinia is covered. The whole was instantly consumed, and
every creature within it perished. Many principal officers and men of
the best families on the king’s side, Billetana Gueta, Sana Denghel,
and Billetana Gueta Kirubel, Ayto Stephenous, son of Ozoro Salla of
Nara, all men of great consideration, were slain that day. What came of
the rebel prince was never known. Tigi, with his two sons, fled from
the field; but they were met by a peasant, who took them prisoners
first; and, after discovering who they were, put them all three to
death, and brought their heads to the king.
After so severe a rebuke, the Galla, on both sides of the Nile, seemed
disposed to be quiet, and the king thereupon returned to Gondar amidst
the acclamations of his soldiers and subjects; but scarce had he
arrived in the capital when he was taken ill of a fever, and died on
the 2d of September, and was buried at Tedda, after a reign of three
years and three months.
[Illustration]
OUSTAS.
From 1709 to 1714.
_Usurps the Crown--Addicted to hunting--Account of the
Shangalla--Active and bloody Reign--Entertains Catholic Priests
privately--Falls sick and dies; but how, uncertain._
It has been already observed in the course of this history, that the
Abyssinians, from a very ancient tradition, attribute the foundation
of their monarchy to Menilek son of Solomon, by the queen of Saba, or
Azab, rendered in the Vulgate, the Queen of the south. The annals of
this country mention but two interruptions to have happened, in the
lineal succession of the heirs-male of Solomon. The first about the
year 960, in the reign of Del Naad, by Judith queen of the Falasha,
of which revolution we have already spoken sufficiently. The second
interruption happened at the period to which we have now arrived in
this history, and owed its origin, not to any misfortune that befel the
royal family as in the massacre of Judith, but seemed to be brought
about by the peculiar circumstances of the times, from a well-founded
attention to self-preservation.
Yasous the Great, after a long and glorious reign, had been murdered by
his son Tecla Haimanout. Two years after, this parricide fell in the
same manner. The assassination of two princes, so nearly related, and
in so short a time, had involved, from different motives, the greatest
part of the noble families of the kingdom, either in the crime itself,
or in the suspicion of aiding and abetting it.
Upon the death of Tecla Haimanout, Tifilis, or Theophilus, brother of
Yasous, had been brought from the mountain, and placed on the throne
as successor to his nephew; this prince was scarcely crowned when he
made some very severe examples of the murderers of his brother, and he
seemed privately taking informations that would have reached the whole
of them, had not death put an end to his inquiries and to his justice.
The family of king Yasous was very numerous on the mountain. It was
the favourite store whence both the soldiery and the citizens chose
to bring their princes. There were, at the very instant, many of his
sons princes of great hopes and of proper ages. Nothing then was more
probable than that the prince, now to succeed, would be of that family,
and, as such, interested in pursuing the same measures of vengeance
on the murderers of his father and of his brother as the late king
Theophilus had done; and how far, or to whom this might extend, was
neither certain nor safe to trust to.
The time was now past when the nobles vied with each other who should
be the first to steal away privately, or go with open force, to take
the new king from the mountain, and bring him to Gondar, his capital:
A backwardness was visible in the behaviour of each of them, because in
each one’s breast the fear was the same.
In so uncommon a conjuncture and disposition of men’s minds, a subject
had the ambition and boldness to offer himself for king, and he was
accordingly elected. This was Oustas[80], son of Delba Yasous, by a
daughter of the late king of that name; and Abyssinia now saw, for the
second time, a stranger seated on the throne of Solomon. Oustas was a
man of undisputed merit, and had filled the greatest offices in the
state. He had been Badjerund, or master of the household, to the late
king Yasous. Tecla Haimanout, who succeeded, had made him governor of
Samen; and though, in the next reign, he had fallen into disgrace with
Theophilus, this served but to aggrandize him more, as he was very soon
after restored to favour, and by this very prince raised to the dignity
of Ras, the first place under the king, and invested at once with the
government of two provinces, Samen and Tigré. He was, at the death of
Theophilus, the greatest subject in Abyssinia; one step higher set him
on the throne, and the circumstances of the time invited him to take
it. He had every quality of body and mind requisite for a king; but the
constitution of his country had made it unlawful for him to reign. He
took, upon his inauguration, the name of Tzai Segued.
Oustas, though a new king, followed the customs of the ancient monarchs
of Abyssinia; for that very reason was unwilling to add novelty to
novelty, and it has been a constant practice with these to make a
public hunting-match the first expedition of their reign. On these
occasions the king, attended by all the great officers of state,
whose merit and capacity are already acknowledged, reviews his young
nobility, who all appear to the best advantage as to arms, horses, and
equipage, with the greatest number of servants and attendants. The
scene of this hunting is always in the Kolla, crowded with an immense
number of the largest and fiercest wild beasts, elephants, rhinoceros,
lions, leopards, panthers, and buffaloes fiercer than them all, wild
boars, wild asses, and many varieties of the deer kind.
As soon as the game is roused, and forced out of the wood by the
footmen and dogs, they all singly, or several together, according to
the size of the beast, or as strength and ability in managing their
horses admit, attack the animal upon the plain with long pikes or
spears, or two javelins in their hands. The king, unless very young,
sits on horseback on a rising ground, surrounded by the graver sort,
who point out to him the names of those of the nobility that are happy
enough to distinguish themselves in his sight. The merit of others is
known by report.
Each young man brings before the king’s tent, as a trophy, a part of
the beast he has slain; the head and skin of a lion or leopard; the
scalp or horns of a deer; the private parts of an elephant; the tail
of a buffalo, or the horn of a rhinoceros. The great trouble, force,
and time necessary to take out the teeth of the elephant, seldom make
them ready to be presented with the rest of the spoils; fire, too, is
necessary for loosing them from the jaw. The head of a boar is brought
stuck upon a lance; but is not touched, as being unclean.
The elephant’s teeth are the king’s perquisites. Of these round ivory
rings are turned for bracelets, and a quantity of them always brought
by him to be distributed among the most deserving in the field, and
kept ever after as certificates of gallant behaviour. Nor is this
mark attended with honour alone. Any man who shall from the king,
queen-regent, or governor of a province, receive so many of these rings
as shall cover his arm down to his wrist, appears before the twelve
judges on a certain day, and there, laying down his arm with these
rings upon it, the king’s cook breaks every one in its turn with a kind
of kitchen-cleaver, whereupon the judges give him a certificate, which
proves that he is entitled to a territory, whose revenue must exceed
20 ounces of gold, and this is never either refused or delayed. All
the different species of game, however, are not equally rated. He that
slays a Galla, or Shangalla, man to man, is entitled to two rings; he
that slays an elephant to two; a rhinoceros, two; a giraffa, on account
of its speed, and to encourage horsemanship, two; a buffalo, two; a
lion, two; a leopard, one; two boars, whose tusks are grown, one; and
one for every four of the deer kind.
Great disputes constantly arise about the killing of these beasts; to
determine which, and prevent feuds and quarrels, a council sits every
evening, in which is an officer called _Dimshasha_, or _Red Cap_, from
a piece of red silk he wears upon his forehead, leaving the top of his
head bare, for no person is allowed to cover his head entirely except
the king, the twelve judges, and dignified priests. This officer
regulates the precedence of one nobleman over another, and is possessed
of the history of all pedigrees, the noblest of which are always
accounted those nearest to the king reigning.
Every man pleads his own cause before the council, and receives
immediate sentence. It is a settled rule, that those who strike the
animal first, if the lance remain upright, or in the same direction
in which it enters the beast, are understood to be the slayers of
the beast, whatever number combat with him afterwards. There is one
exception, however, that if the beast, after receiving the first wound,
tho’ the lance is in him, should lay hold of a horse or man, so that
it is evident he would prevail against them; a buffalo, for example,
that should toss a man with his horns, or an elephant that should take
a horse with his trunk, the man who shall then slay the beast, and
prevent or revenge the death of the man or horse attacked, shall be
accounted the slayer of the beast, and entitled to the premium.
This was the ancient employment of these councils. In my time they kept
up this custom in point of form; the council sat late upon most serious
affairs of the nation; and the death, banishment, and degradation of
the first men in the kingdom were agitated and determined here under
the pretence of sitting to judge the prizes of pastimes. This hunting
is seldom prolonged beyond a fortnight.
The king, from ocular inspection, is presumed to be able to choose
among the young nobility those that are ready for taking the necessary
charges in the army; and it is from his judgment in this that the
priests foretel whether his reign is to be a successful one, or to end
in misfortune and disappointment.
Oustas, having taken a view of his nobility, and attached such to
him as were most necessary for his support, set out for this hunting
with great preparations. The high country of Abyssinia is destitute
of wood; the whole lower part of the mountains is sown with different
sorts of grain; the upper part perfectly covered with grass and all
sorts of verdure. There are no plains, or very small ones. Such a
country, therefore, is unfit for hunting, as it is incapable of either
sheltering or nourishing any number of wild beasts.
The lower country, however, called Kolla, is full of wood, consequently
thinly inhabited. The mountains, not joined in chains or ridges, run
in one upon the other, but, standing each upon its particular base,
are accessible all round, and interspersed with plains. Great rivers
falling from the high country with prodigious violence, during the
tropical rains, have in the plains washed away the soil down to the
solid rock, and formed large basons of great capacity, where, though
the water becomes stagnant in pools when the currents fail above,
yet, from their great depth and quantity, they resist being consumed
by evaporation, being also thick covered with large shady trees whose
leaves never fall. These large trees, which, in their growth, and
vegetation of their branches, exceed any thing that our imagination
can figure, are as necessary for food, as the pools of water are for
cisterns to contain drink for those monstrous beasts, such as the
elephant and rhinoceros, who there make their constant residence,
and who would die with hunger and with thirst unless they were thus
copiously supplied both with food and water.
This country, flat as the deserts on which it borders, has fat black
earth for its soil. It is generally about 40 miles broad, though in
many places broader and narrower. It reaches from the mountains of the
Habab, or Bagla, which run in a ridge, as I have already said, from
the south of Abyssinia[81] north down into Egypt, parallel to the Red
Sea, dividing the rainy seasons, and it stretches like a belt from east
to west to the banks of the Nile, encircling all the mountainous, or
high land part of Abyssinia; which latter country is, at all times,
temperate, and often cold, while the other is unwholesome, hazy, close,
and intolerably hot.
Many nations of perfect blacks inhabit this low country, all Pagans,
and mortal enemies to the Abyssinian government. Hunting these
miserable wretches is the next expedition undertaken by a new king. The
season of this is just before the rains, while the poor savage is yet
lodged under the trees preparing his food for the approaching winter,
before he retires into his caves in the mountain, where he passes that
inclement season in constant confinement, but as constant security; for
these nations are all Troglodytes, and by the Abyssinians are called
Shangalla.
However Oustas succeeded in attaching to him those of the nobility that
partook of his sports, his good fortune in the capital was not equal
to it. A dangerous conspiracy was already forming at Gondar by those
very people who had persuaded him to mount the throne, and whom he had
left at home, from a persuasion that they only were to be trusted with
the support of his interest and the government in his absence.
Upon the first intelligence, the king, with a chosen body of troops,
entered Gondar in the night, and surprised the conspirators while
actually sitting in council. Ras Hezekias, his prime minister, and
Heraclides, master of his household, and five others of the principal
confederates, lost their ears and noses, and were thrown into prison in
such circumstances that they could not live. Benaia Basilé, one of the
principal traitors, and the most obnoxious to the king, escaped for a
time, having had already intelligence of Oustas’s coming.
The king having quieted every thing at Gondar, being at peace with all
his neighbours, and having no other way to amuse his troops and keep
them employed, set out to join the remainder of his young nobility whom
he had left in the Kolla to attack the Shangalla.
The Shangalla were formerly a very numerous people, divided into
distinct tribes, or, as it is called, different nations, living each
separately in distinct territories, each under the government of
the chief of its own name, and each family of that name under the
jurisdiction of its own chief, or head.
These Shangalla, during the fair half of the year, live under the shade
of trees, the lowest branches of which they cut near the stem on the
upper part, and then bend, or break them down, planting the ends of the
branches in the earth. These branches they cover with the skins of wild
beasts. After this they cut away all the small or superfluous branches
in the inside, and so form a spacious pavilion, which at a distance
appears like a tent, the tree serving for the pole in the middle of it,
and the large top overshadowing it so as to make a very picturesque
appearance.
Every tree then is a house, under which live a multitude of black
inhabitants until the tropical rains begin. It is then they hunt the
elephant, which they kill by many various devices, as they do the
rhinoceros and the other large creatures. Those who reside where water
abounds, with the same industry kill the hippopotami, or river-horses,
which are exceedingly numerous in the pools of the stagnant rivers.
Where this flat belt, or country, is broadest, the trees thickest, and
the water in the largest pools, there the most powerful nations live,
who have often defeated the royal army of Abyssinia, and constantly
laid waste, and sometimes nearly conquered, the provinces of Tigré and
Siré, the most warlike and most populous part in Abyssinia.
The most considerable settlement of this nation is at Amba Tzaada,
between the Mareb and Tacazzé, but nearer by one-third to the Mareb,
and almost N. W. from Dobarwa. These people, who have a variety of
venison, kill it in the fair months, and hang it up, cut into thongs as
thick as a man’s thumb, like so many ropes, on the trees around them.
The sun dries and hardens it to a consistence almost like leather, or
the hardest fish sent from Newfoundland. This is their provision for
the winter months: They first beat it with a wooden mallet, then boil
it, after which they roast it upon the embers; and it is hard enough
after it has undergone all those operations.
The Dobenah, the most powerful of all the Shangalla, who have a
species of supremacy or command over all the rest of the nations, live
altogether upon the elephant or rhinoceros. In other countries, where
there is less water, fewer trees, and more grass, the Shangalla feed
chiefly upon more promiscuous kinds of food, as buffaloes, deer, boars,
lions, and serpents. These are the nations nearer the Tacazzé, Ras el
Feel, and the plains of Siré in Abyssinia, the chief of which nations
is called Baasa. And still farther west of the Tacazzé, and the valley
of Waldubba, is a tribe of these, who live chiefly upon the crocodile,
hippopotamus, and other fish; and, in the summer, upon locusts, which
they boil first, and afterwards keep dry in baskets, most curiously
made with split branches of trees, so closely woven together as to
contain water almost as well as a wooden vessel.
This nation borders nearly upon the Abyssinian hunting-ground; but,
not venturing to extend themselves in the chace of wild beasts, they
are confined to the neighbourhood of the Tacazzé, and rivers falling
into it, where they fish in safety: the banks of that river are
deep, interrupted by steep precipices inaccessible to cavalry, and,
from the thickness of the woods, full of thorny trees of innumerable
species, almost as impervious to foot. These streams, possessed only by
themselves, afford the Baasa the most excellent kinds of fish in the
most prodigious plenty.
In that part of the Shangalla country more to the eastward, about N.
N. E. of Amba Tzaada, in the northern extremities of the woody part,
where the river Mareb, leaving Dobarwa, flows through thick bushes till
it loses itself in the sands, there is a nation of these blacks, who
being near the country of the Baharnagash, an officer whose province
produces a number of horse, dare not, for that reason, venture to make
an extensive use of the variety of wild beasts which throng in the
woods to the southward, for fear of being intercepted by their enemy,
constantly upon the watch for them, part of his tribute being paid in
black slaves. These, therefore, confine themselves to the southern part
of their territory, near the Barabra.
The extraordinary course of this river under the sand, allures to it
multitudes of ostriches, which, too, are the food of the Shangalla,
as is a beautiful lizard, never, that I know, yet described. These
are the food of the eastern Shangalla; and I must here observe, that
this country and people were much better known to the ancients than
to us. The Egyptians traded with them, and caravans of these people
were constantly in Alexandria in the reigns of the first Ptolemies.
Most of the productions of these parts, and the people themselves, are
mentioned in the remarkable procession made by Ptolemy Philadelphus on
his accession to the throne of Egypt, as already observed, though a
confusion often arises therein by this country being called by the name
of India.
Ptolemy, the geographer, classes these people exactly enough,
and distinguishes them very accurately by their particular food,
or dietetique regimen, though he errs, indeed, a little in the
particular situation he gives to the different nations. His Rhizophagi,
Elephantophagi, Acridophagi, Struthiophagi, and Agriophagi, are all the
clans I have just described, existing under the same habits to this day.
This soil, called by the Abyssinians _Mazaga_, when wet by the tropical
rains, and dissolving into mire, forces these savages to seek for
winter-quarters. Their tents under the trees being no longer tenable,
they retire with their respective foods, all dried in the sun, into
caves dug into the heart of the mountains, which are not in this
country basaltes, marble, or alabaster, as is all that ridge which
runs down into Egypt along the side of the Red Sea, but are of a
soft, gritty, sandy stone, easily excavated and formed into different
apartments. Into these, made generally in the steepest part of the
mountain, do these savages retire to shun the rains, living upon the
flesh they have already prepared in the fair weather.
I cannot give over the account of the Shangalla without delivering
them again out of their caves, because this return includes the
history of an operation never heard of perhaps in Europe, and by which
considerable light is thrown upon ancient history. No sooner does the
sun pass the zenith, going southward, than the rains instantly cease;
and the thick canopy of clouds, which had obscured the sky during their
continuance, being removed, the sun appears in a beautiful sky of pale
blue, dappled with small thin clouds, which soon after disappear, and
leave the heavens of a most beautiful azure. A very few days of the
intense heat then dries the ground so perfectly, that it gapes in
chasms; the grass, struck at the roots by the rays, supports itself no
more, but droops and becomes parched. To clear this away, the Shangalla
set fire to it, which runs with incredible violence the whole breadth
of Africa, passing under the trees, and following the dry grass among
the branches with such velocity as not to hurt the trees, but to
occasion every leaf to fall.
A proper distance is preserved between each habitation, and round the
principal watering-places; and here the Shangalla again fix their tents
in the manner before described. Nothing can be more beautiful than
these shady habitations; but they have this fatal effect, that they
are discernible from the high grounds, and guide their enemies to the
places inhabited.
The country now cleared, the hunting begins, and, with the hunting,
the danger of the Shangalla. All the governors bordering upon the
country, from the Baharnagash to the Nile on the west, are obliged to
pay a certain number of slaves. Ras el Feel (my government) was alone
excepted, for a reason which, had I staid much longer in the country,
would probably have been found more advantageous to Abyssinia than
all the slaves they procure by the barbarous and prodigal effusion of
the blood of these unhappy savages; for, when a settlement of these
is surprised, the men are all slaughtered; the women, also, are many
of them slain, many throw themselves down precipices, run mad, hang
themselves, or starve, obstinately refusing food.
The boys and girls under 17 and 18 years of age, (the younger the
better) are taken and educated by the king, and are servants in
all the great houses of Abyssinia. They are instructed early in the
Christian religion, and the tallest, handsomest, and best inclined,
are the only servants that attend the royal person in his palace.
The number of the men was 300 that had horses in my time. They were
once 280, and, before my time, less than 200. These are all cloathed
in coats of mail, and mounted on black horses; always commanded by
foreigners devoted entirely to the king’s will. By strict attention
to their morals, removing all bad examples from among them, giving
premiums to those that read most and best, (for they had all time
enough upon their hands, especially in winter) and, above all, by
the great delight and pleasure the king used to take in conversing
with them while alone, countenancing and rewarding them in the line
he knew I followed, this body became, as to firmness and coolness in
action, equal perhaps to any of the same number in the world; and the
greatest difficulty was keeping them together, for all the great men
used to wish one of them for the charge of his door, which is a very
great trust among the Abyssinians. The king’s easiness was constantly
prevailed upon to promise such, and great inconvenience always followed
this, till Ras Michael discharged this practice by proclamation, and
set the example, by returning four that he himself had kept for the
purpose before mentioned.
While what I have said is still in memory, I must apply a part of
it to explain a passage in Hanno’s Periplus. We saw, says that bold
navigator, when rowing close along the coast of Africa, rivers of fire,
which ran down from the highest mountains, and poured themselves into
the sea; this alarmed him so much, that he ordered his gallies to keep
a considerable offing.
After the fire has consumed all the dry grass on the plain, and, from
it, done the same up to the top of the highest mountain, the large
ravines, or gullies, made by the torrents falling from the higher
ground, being shaded by their depth, and their being in possession of
the last water that runs, are the latest to take fire, though full of
every sort of herbage. The large bamboos, hollow canes, and such like
plants, growing as thick as they can stand, retain their greenness, and
are not dried enough for burning till the fire has cleared the grass
from all the rest of the country. At last, when no other fuel remains,
the herdsmen on the top of the mountains set fire to these, and the
fire runs down in the very path in which, some months before, the water
ran, filling the whole gully with flame, which does not end till it
is checked by the ocean below where the torrent of water entered, and
where the fuel of course ceases. This I have often seen myself, and
been often nearly inclosed in it, and can bear witness, that, at a
distance, and by a stranger ignorant of the cause, it would very hardly
be distinguished from a river of fire.
The Shangalla go all naked; they have several wives, and these very
prolific. They bring forth children with the utmost ease, and never
rest or confine themselves after delivery, but washing themselves and
the child with cold water, they wrap it up in a soft cloth made of the
bark of trees, and hang it upon a branch, that the large ants, with
which they are infested, and the serpents, may not devour it. After a
few days, when it has gathered strength, the mother carries it in the
same cloth upon her back, and gives it suck with the breast, which she
throws over her shoulder, this part being of such a length as, in some,
to reach almost to their knees.
The Shangalla have but one language, and of a very guttural
pronunciation. They worship various trees, serpents, the moon, planets,
and stars in certain positions, which I never could so perfectly
understand as to give any account of them. A star passing near the
horns of the moon denotes the coming of an enemy. They have priests,
or rather diviners; but it should seem that these were looked upon as
servants of the evil-being, rather than of the good. They prophecy bad
events, and think they can afflict their enemies with sickness, even at
a distance. They generally wear copper bracelets upon their wrists and
arms.
I have said the Shangalla have each several wives. This, however,
is not owing to any inordinate propensity of the men to this
gratification, but to a much nobler cause, which should make European
writers, who object this to them, ashamed at the injustice they do
the savage, who all his life, quite the reverse of what is supposed,
shews an example of continence and chastity, which the purest and most
refined European, with all the advantages of education, cannot pretend
to imitate.
It is not the men that seek to avail themselves of the liberty they
have by their usages of marrying as often and as many wives as they
please. Hemmed in on every side by active and powerful enemies, who
consider them as a species of wild beasts, and hunt them precisely as
they do the elephant and rhinoceros, placed in a small territory,
where they never are removed above 20 miles from these powerful
invaders furnished with horses and fire-arms, to both of which they
are strangers, they live for part of the fair season in continual
apprehension. The other part of the season, when the Abyssinian armies
are all collected and abroad with the king, these unhappy savages are
constantly employed in a most laborious hunting of large animals, such
as the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa; and afterwards, in the no
less laborious preparation of the flesh of these quadrupeds, which is
to serve them for food during the six months rains, when each family
retires to its separate cave in the mountain, and has no intercourse
with any of its neighbours, but leaves the country below immersed in a
continual deluge of rain. In none of these circumstances, one should
imagine, the savage, full of apprehension and care, could have much
desire to multiply a race of such wretched beings as he feels himself
to be. It is the wife, not the man, that is the cause of this polygamy;
and this is surely a strong presumption against what is commonly said
of the violence of their inclinations.
Although the Shangalla live in separate tribes, or nations, yet
these nations are again subdivided into families, who are governed
by their own head, or chief, and of a number of these the nation is
composed, who concur in all that regards the measures of defence and
offence against their common enemy the Abyssinian and Arab. Whenever
an expedition is undertaken by a nation of Shangalla, either against
their enemies, the Arabs on the north, or those who are equally their
enemies, the Abyssinians on the south, suppose the nation or tribe to
be the Baasa, each family attacks and defends by itself, and theirs is
the spoil or plunder who take it.
The mothers, sensible of the disadvantage of a small family, therefore
seek to multiply and increase it by the only means in their power;
and it is by their importunity that the husband suffers himself to be
overcome. A second wife is courted for him by the first, in nearly the
same manner as among the Galla.
I will not fear to aver, as far as concerns these Shangalla, or
negroes, of Abyssinia, (and, I believe, most others of the same
complexion, though of different nations), that the various accounts
we have of them are very unfairly stated. To describe them justly, we
should see them in their native purity of manners, among their native
woods, living on the produce of their own daily labours, without other
liquor than that of their own pools and springs, the drinking of which
is followed by no intoxication or other pleasure than that of assuaging
thirst. After having been torn from their own country and connections,
reduced to the condition of brutes, to labour for a being they never
before knew; after lying, stealing, and all the long list of European
crimes, have been made, as it were, necessary to them, and the delusion
occasioned by drinking spirits is found, however short, to be the only
remedy that relieves them from reflecting on their present wretched
situation, to which, for that reason, they most naturally attach
themselves; then, after we have made them monsters, we describe them as
such, forgetful that they are now not as their Maker created them, but
such as, by teaching them our vices, we have transformed them into, for
ends which, I fear, one day will not be found a sufficient excuse for
the enormities they have occasioned.
I would not, by any means, have my readers so far mistake what I have
now said as to think it contains either censure upon, or disapprobation
of, the slave-trade. I would be understood to mean just the contrary;
that the abuses and neglect of manners, so frequent in our plantations,
is what the legislature should direct their coercion against, not
against the trade in general, which last measure, executed so suddenly,
cannot but contain a degree of injustice towards individuals. It is
a shame for any government to say, that enormous cruelties towards
any set of men are so evident, and have arrived to such excess,
without once having been under consideration of the legislature to
correct them. It is a greater shame still for that government to say,
that these crimes and abuses are now grown to such a height that
wholesome severity cannot eradicate them; and it cannot be any thing
but an indication of effeminacy and weakness at once to fall to the
destruction of an object of that importance, without having first tried
a reformation of those abuses which alone, in the minds of sober men,
can make the trade exceptionable.
The incontinence of these people has been a favourite topic with which
blacks have been branded; but, throughout the whole of this history,
I have set down only what I have observed, without consulting or
troubling myself with the systems or authorities of others, only so
far, as having these relations in my recollection, I have compared them
with the fact, and found them erroneous. As late as two centuries ago,
Christian priests were the only historians of heathen manners.
In the number of these Shangalla, or negroes, of which every department
of Gondar was full, I never saw any proof of unbridled desires in
either sex, but very much the contrary; and I must remark, that every
reason in physics strongly militates against the presumption.
The Shangalla of both sexes, while single, go entirely naked: the
married men, indeed, have a very slender covering about their waist,
and married women the same. Young men and young women, till long past
the age of puberty, are totally uncovered, and in constant conversation
and habits with each other, in woods and solitudes, free from
constraint, and without any punishment annexed to the transgression.
Yet criminal commerce is much less frequent among them than in the same
number chosen among Christian nations, where the powerful prejudices of
education give great advantage to one sex in subduing their passions,
and where the consequences of gratification, which always involve some
kind of punishment, keep within bounds the desires of the other.
No one can doubt, but that the constant habit of seeing people of all
ages naked at all times, in the ordinary transactions and necessities
of life, must greatly check unchaste propensities. But there are still
further reasons why, in the nature of things an extraordinary vehemence
of passion should not fall to be a distinguishing characteristic
among the Shangalla. Fahrenheit’s thermometer rises there beyond
100°. A violent relaxation from profuse perspiration must greatly
debilitate the savage. In Arabia and Turkey, where the whole business
of man’s life is the devoting himself to domestic pleasure, men remain
constantly in a sedentary life, eat heartily, avoiding every manner
of exercise, or expence of animal spirits by sweats. Their countries,
too, are colder than that of the Shangalla, who, living sparingly
under a burning sun, and obliged to procure food by laborious hunting,
of consequence deprive themselves of that quantity of animal spirits
necessary to lead them to any extreme of voluptuousness. And that this
is the case is seen in the constitution of the Shangalla women, even
though they are without fatigue.
A woman, upon bearing a child or two, at 10 or 11 years old, sees her
breast fall immediately down to near her knees[82]. Her common manner
of suckling her children is by carrying them upon her back, as our
beggars do, and giving the infant the breast over her shoulders. They
rarely are mothers after 22, or begin child-bearing before they are
10; so that the time of child-bearing is but 12 years. In Europe, very
many examples there are of women bearing children at 14, the civil law
fixes puberty at 12, but by an inuendo[83] seems to allow it may be
something earlier. Women sometimes in Europe bear children at 50. The
scale of years of child-bearing between the savage and the European is,
therefore, as 12 is to 38. There can be little doubt but their desires
are equal to their strength and constitution; but a Shangalla at 22 is
more wrinkled and deformed, apparently by old age, than is a European
woman of 60.
To come still nearer; it is a fact known to naturalists, and which
the application of the thermometer sufficiently indicates, that there
is a great and sensible difference in the degree of animal heat in
both sexes of different nations at the same ages or time of life. The
voluptuous Turk estranges himself from the fairest and finest of his
Circassian and Georgian women in his seraglio, and, during the warm
months in summer, addicts himself only to negro slaves brought from
the very latitudes we are now speaking of; the sensible difference of
the coolness of their skins leading him to give them the preference at
that season. On the other hand, one brown Abyssinian girl, a companion
for the winter months, is sold at ten times the price of the fairest
Georgian or Circassian beauty, for opposite reasons.
The very great regard I shall constantly pay my fair readers has made
me, as they may perceive, enter as tenderly as possible into these
discussions, which, as a philosopher and a historian, I could not,
however, wholly omit: the most useful study of mankind is man; and not
the least interesting view of him is when, stripped of his vain-glory
and the pageantry of palaces, he wanders naked and uncorrupted among
his native woods and rivers.
I must mention, greatly to the credit of two of the first geniuses
of this age, M. de Buffon and Lord Kaimes, that they were both so
convinced by the arguments above mentioned, stated in greater detail
and with more freedom, that they immediately ordered their bookseller
to strike out from the subsequent editions of their work all that had
been advanced against the negroes on this head, which they had before
drawn from the herd of prejudiced and ignorant compilers, strangers to
the manners and language of the people they were dishonouring by their
descriptions, after having before abused them by their tyranny.
The Shangalla have no bread: No grain or pulse will grow in the
country. Some of the Arabs, settled at Ras el Feel, have attempted to
make bread of the feed of the Guinea grass; but it is very tasteless
and bad, of the colour of cow-dung, and quickly producing worms.
They are all archers from their infancy. Their bows are all made of
wild fennel, thicker than the common proportion, and about seven feet
long, and very elastic. The children use the same bow in their infancy
that they do when grown up; and are, by reason of its length, for the
first years, obliged to hold it parallel, instead of perpendicular
to the horizon. Their arrows are full a yard and a half long, with
large heads of very bad iron rudely shaped. They are, indeed, the only
savages I ever knew that take no pains in the make or ornament of this
weapon. A branch of a palm, stript from the tree and made straight,
becomes an arrow; and none of them have wings to them. They have this
remarkable custom, which is a religious one, that they fix upon their
bows a ring, or thong, of the skin of every beast slain by it, while
it is yet raw, from the lizard and serpent up to the elephant. This
gradually stiffens the bow, till, being all covered over, it can be no
longer bent even by its master. That bow is then hung upon a tree,
and a new one is made in its place, till the same circumstance again
happens; and one of these bows, that which its master liked best, is
buried with him in the hopes of its rising again materially with his
body, when he shall be endowed with a greater degree of strength,
without fear of death, or being subjected to pain, with a capacity
to enjoy in excess every human pleasure. There is nothing, however,
spiritual in this resurrection, nor what concerns the soul, but it
is wholly corporeal and material; although some writers have plumed
themselves upon their fancied discovery of what they call the savages
belief of the immortality of the soul.
Before I take leave of this subject, I must again explain, from
what I have already said, a difficult passage in classical history.
Herodotus[84] says, that, in the country we have been just now
describing, there was a nation called Macrobii, which was certainly not
the real name of the Shangalla, but one the Greeks had given them, from
a supposed circumstance of their being remarkable long livers, as that
name imports. These were the western Shangalla, situated below Guba and
Nuba, the gold country, on both sides of the Nile north of Fazuclo.
The Guba and the Nuba, and various black nations that inhabits the
foot of that large chain of mountains called Dyre and Tegla[85], are
those in whose countries the finest gold is found, which is washed from
the mountains in the time of violent rains, and lodged in holes, and
roots of trees and grass, by the torrents, and there picked up by the
natives; it is called Tibbar, or, corruptly, gold-dust. The greatest
part finds its way to Sennaar by the different merchants, Pagan and
Mahometan, from Fazuclo and Sudan. The Agows and Gibbertis also bring
a small quantity of it to Gondar, mostly debased by alloy; but there
is no gold in Abyssinia, nor even in Nubia, west of Tchelga, among the
Shangalla themselves.
Cambyses marched from Egypt expressly with a view of conquering the
gold country, and sent messengers before him to the king, or chief of
it, requiring his immediate submission. I omit romantic and fabulous
circumstances; but the answer of the king of Macrobii to Cambyses was,
Take this bow, and till you can bring me a man that can bend it, you
are not to talk to us of submission. The bow was accordingly carried
back with the defiance, but none of the Persian army could bend it. Yet
it was their own weapon with which they practised from their infancy;
and we are not to think, had it been possible to bend this bow, but
that some of their numerous archers would have done it, for there is no
such disproportion in the strength of men. But it was a bow which had
lost its elastic force from the circumstance above mentioned, and had
been long given up as impossible to be bent by the Macrobii themselves,
and was now taken down from the tree where it had probably some time
hung, and grown so much the less flexible, and intended to be buried,
as these bows are, in the grave with their master, who is to use it,
after his resurrection, in another world, where he is to be endowed
with strength infinitely more than human: it is probable this bow
would have broke, rather than have bent.
If the situation of these Macrobii in Ptolemy did not put it past
dispute that they were Shangalla, we should hesitate much at the
characteristic of the nation; that they were long livers; none of these
nations are so; I scarcely remember an example fairly vouched of a
man past sixty. But there is one circumstance that I think might have
fairly led Herodotus into this mistake; some of the Shangalla kill
their sick, weak, and aged people; there are others that honour old
age, and protect it. The Macrobii, I suppose, were of this last kind,
who certainly, therefore, had many old men, more than the others.
I shall now just mention one other observation tending to illustrate a
passage of ancient history.
Hanno, in his Periplus, remarks, that, while sailing along the coast of
Africa, close by the shore, and probably near the low country called
Kolla, inhabited by the kind of people we have been just describing,
he found an universal silence to prevail the whole day, without any
appearance of man or beast: on the contrary, at night, he saw a
number of fires, and heard the sound of music and dancing. This has
been laughed at as a fairy tale by people who affect to treat Hanno’s
fragment as spurious; for my own part, I will not enter into the
controversy.
A very great genius, (in some matters, perhaps, the greatest that ever
wrote, and in every thing that he writes highly respectable) M. de
Montesqieu, is perfectly satisfied that this Periplus[86] of Hanno is
genuine; and it is a great pleasure again to endeavour to obviate any
doubt concerning the authenticity of the work in this second passage,
as I have before done in another.
In countries, such as those that we have been now describing, and
such as Hanno was then sailing by, when he made the remark, there is
no twilight. The stars, in their full brightness, are in possession
of the whole heavens, when in an instant the sun appears without a
harbinger, and they all disappear together. We shall say, at sun-rising
the thermometer is from 48° to 60°; at 3 o’clock in the afternoon it
is from 100° to 115°; an universal relaxation, a kind of irresistible
languor and aversion to all action takes possession both man and beast;
the appetite fails, and sleep and quiet are the only things the mind is
capable of desiring, or the body of enduring: cattle, birds, and beasts
all flock to the shade, and to the neighbourhood of running streams, or
deep stagnant pools, and there, avoiding the effects of the scorching
sun, pant in quiet and inaction. From the same motive, the wild beast
stirs not from his cave; and for this, too, he has an additional
reason, because the cattle he depends upon for his prey do not stroll
abroad to feed; they are asleep and in safety, for with them are their
dogs and their shepherds.
But no sooner does the sun set, than a cold night instantly succeeds
a burning day; the appetite immediately returns; the cattle spread
themselves abroad to feed, and pass quickly out of the shepherds sight
into the reach of a multitude of beasts seeking for their prey. Fires,
the only remedy, are everywhere lighted by the shepherds to keep these
at a respectful distance; and dancing, singing, and music at once
exhilarate the mind, and contribute, by alarming the beasts of prey,
to keep their flocks in safety, and prevent the bad effects of severe
cold[87]. This was the cause of the observation Hanno made in sailing
along the coast, and it was true when he made it: just the same may be
observed still, and will be, so long as the climate and inhabitants are
the same.
I have been more particular in the history of this extraordinary
nation, because I had, by mere accident, an opportunity of informing
myself fully and with certainty concerning it; and, as it is very
improbable that such an opportunity will occur again to any European, I
hope it will not be ungratefully received.
I shall only add an answer to a very obvious question which may occur.
Why is it that, in this country, nothing that would make bread will
grow? Is it from the ignorance of the inhabitants in not choosing
the proper seasons, or is it the imperfection of the soil? To this I
answer, Certainly the latter. For the inhabitants of Ras el Feel were
used to plow and sow, and did constantly eat bread; but the grain was
produced ten or fifteen miles off upon the sides of the mountains
of Abyssinia, where every certain number of soldiers had small farms
allowed them for that purpose by government; but still they could never
bring up a crop in the Mazaga; and the progress of the miscarriage
was this: Before the month of May all that black earth was rent into
great chasms, trode into dust, and ventilated with hot winds, so as
to be a perfect _caput mortuum_, incapable of any vegetation. Upon
the first sprinkling of rain the chasms are filled up, and the whole
country resembles dry garden-mould newly dug up. As the sun advances
the rains increase; there is no time to be lost now; this is the
season for sowing; let us suppose wheat. In one night’s time, while
the wheat is swelling in the ground, up grows an immense quantity of
indigenous natural grass, that, having sowed itself last year, has lain
ever since in a natural matrix, ready to start at the most convenient
season. Before the wheat, or any grain soever can appear, this grass
has shot up so high and so thick as absolutely to choke it. Suppose
it was possible to hoe or weed it, the grass will again overtop the
grain before it is an inch from the ground. Say it could be again hoed
or cleared, by this time the rains are so continual, the black earth
becomes a perfect mire. The rain increases, and the grain rots without
producing any crop.
The same happens to millet, or Indian corn; the rain rots the plant
which is thrown down by the wind. It is equally destroyed if sown
at the end of the rains; the grass grows up, wherever the ground is
cleared, in a greater proportion, if possible, than in the beginning of
the year; and the rain ceasing abruptly, and the sun beginning to be
intensely hot the very day it passes the zenith, the earth is reduced
to an impalpable powder, whilst the grain and plant die without ever
shewing a tendency to germinate.
We left the king, Oustas, after detecting a conspiracy, ready to fall
upon some settlement of Shangalla. This he executed with great success,
and surrounded a large part of the nation called Baasa, encamped under
the trees suspecting no danger. He put the grown people to the sword,
and took a prodigious number of children of both sexes captive. He
was intending also to push his conquest farther among these savages,
when he was called to Gondar by the death of his prime minister and
confident, Ras Fasa Christos.
Besides his attention to hunting and government, the king had a very
great taste for architecture, which, in Abyssinia, is a very popular
one, though scarcely any thing is built but churches. In the season
that did not permit him to be in the field, he bestowed a great deal of
leisure and money this way; and he was, at this time, busy erecting a
magnificent church to the Nativity, about a mile below Gondar, on the
small river Kahha.
But the season of hunting returning before he had finished it, he left
it to repair to Bet Malo, a place in the Kolla, where he had built a
hunting-seat, not far distant from the Shangalla, called Baasa. Here
he had a most successful hunting-match of the buffalo, rhinoceros,
and elephant, in which he often put himself in great danger, and
distinguished himself in dexterity and horsemanship greatly above any
of his court. He returned upon news, that persons, whom he had secretly
employed, had apprehended Betwudet Basilé, and his son Claudius, who
had escaped when the last conspirators were seized. Both these he
sentenced immediately to lose their eyes.
These hunting-matches, so punctually observed, and so eagerly followed
by a man already past the flower of his youth, had, in their first
appearance, nothing but sound policy. The king’s title was avowedly a
faulty one; and the many conspiracies that had been formed had shewn
him the nobility were not all of them disposed to bear his yoke;
nothing then was more political than to keep a considerable number of
them employed in field-exercises, to be informed of their inclinations,
and to attach them to his person by favours. At the head of this
little, but very active army, he was ready in a moment to fall upon
the disaffected, before they could collect strength sufficient for
resistance. Time, however, shewed this was not entirely the reason of
these continual intervals of absence for so long a time in the Kolla.
Notwithstanding the misfortune that had befallen the French ambassador,
M. du Roule, at Sennaar, in the reign of Yasous I. and Tecla Haimanout
his son, under Baady el Ahmer, there had still remained below, in
Atbara, some of those missionaries who had courage and address enough
to attempt the journey into Abyssinia, and they succeeded in it. Oustas
had probably been privy to their arrival in Yasous’s time, and had,
equally with him, a favourable opinion of the Romish religion.
These missionaries, though Yasous was now dead, were perfectly well
received by Oustas; he had given them in charge to Ain Egzie, an old
and loyal servant of Yasous, and governor of Walkayt. He had placed
also with them an Abyssinian priest, who had been in Jerusalem, and
was well-affected to the Romish faith, to be their interpreter, stay
with them always, and manage their interests, while he himself,
stealing frequently from the hunting-matches, heard mass, and received
the communion, returning back to his camp, as he flattered himself,
unperceived. These meetings with the priests were not, however, so well
concealed but that they came to the knowledge of many people about
court, both seculars and clergy. But the king’s character, for severity
and vigilance, made everybody confine their thoughts, whatever they
were, within their own breasts.
The employment of this year was a short journey to Ibaba, a large
market-town, where there is a royal residence, below Maitsha, on the
west, or Gojam side of the Nile, from which it is about three days
distance. From this he returned again, and went to Tcherkin, a small
village in Kolla, beyond Ras el Feel, in the way to Sennaar, the
principal abode of the elephant. But, in the first day’s hunting,
Yared, master of his household, and a considerable favourite, being
torn to pieces by one of these quadrupeds, he gave over the sport, and
returned very sorrowful to bury him at Gondar, leaving three of his
servants to execute a design he had formed against the Baasa in that
neighbourhood.
From the constant interruptions Oustas had met with in all these
hunting-matches, and his success, notwithstanding, whenever he had
himself attended, the divining monks had prophesied his reign was to
be short, and attended with much bloodshed; nor were they for once
distant from the truth; for, in the month of January 1714, while he
was over-looking the workmen building the church of Abba Antonius at
Gondar, he was taken suddenly ill, and, suspecting some unwholesomeness
or _witchcraft_ in his palace, he ordered his tent to be pitched
without the town till the apartments should be smoaked with gunpowder.
But this was done so carelessly by his servants, that his house was
burnt to the ground, which was looked upon as a very bad omen, and made
a great impression upon the minds of the people.
The 27th of January it was generally understood that the king was
dangerously ill, and that his complaint was every day increasing. Upon
this the principal officers went, according to the usual custom, to
condole with and comfort him. This was at least what they pretended.
Their true errand, however, was pretty well known to be an endeavour to
ascertain whether the sickness was of the kind likely to continue, till
measures could be adopted with a degree of certainty to take the reins
of government out of his hand.
The king easily divined the reason of their coming. Having had a good
night, he used the strength that he had thereby acquired to rouse
himself for a moment, to put on the appearance of health, and shew
himself, as usual, engaged in his ordinary dispatch of business. The
seeming good countenance of the king made their condolence premature.
Some excuse, however, for so formal a visit, was necessary; but
every apology was not safe. They adopted this, which they thought
unexceptionable, that hearing he was sick, which they happily found he
was not, they came to propose to him a thing equally proper whether he
was sick or well; that he would, in time, settle the succession upon
his son Fasil, then in the mountain of Wechné, as a means of quieting
the minds of his friends, preventing bloodshed, and securing the crown
to his family.
Oustas did the utmost to command himself upon this occasion, and to
give them an answer such as suited a man in health who hoped to live
many years. But it was now too late to play such a part; and, in spite
of his utmost dissimulation, evident signs of decay appeared upon him,
which his visitors conjectured would soon be past dissembling, and they
agreed to stay with the king till the evening.
But the soldiers on guard, who heard the proposal of sending for
Oustas’s son, and who really believed that these men spoke from their
heart, and were in earnest, were violently discontented and angry at
this proposal. They began to be weary of novelty, and longed for a
king of the ancient royal family. As soon, therefore, as it was dark
they entered Gondar, and called together the several regiments, or
bodies of soldiers, which composed the king’s household. Having came
to a resolution how they were to act, they returned to their quarters
where they were upon guard, and meeting the great officers coming out
of Oustas’s tent, where they, too, had probably agreed upon the same
measure, though it was not known, the soldiers drew their swords,
and slew them all, being seven in number. Among these were Betwudet
Tamerté, and the Acab Saat; the one the principal lay-officer, the
other the chief ecclesiastic in the king’s house.
This massacre seemed to be the signal for a general insurrection,
in the course of which, part of the town was set on fire. But the
soldiers, at their first meeting in the palace[88], had shut up the
coronation-chamber, and the other royal apartments, and possessed
themselves of the kettle-drum by which all proclamations were made at
the gate, driving away, and rudely treating the multitude on every
side. At last they brought out the drum, though it was yet night, and
made this proclamation:--“David, son of our late king Yasous, is our
king.” The tumult and disorder, nevertheless, still continued; during
all which, it was very remarkable no one ever thought of offering an
injury to Oustas.
While these things were passing at Gondar, a violent alarm had seized
all the princes upon the mountain of Wechné. They had been treated
with severity during Oustas’s whole reign. Their revenues had been
with-held, or at least not regularly paid, and they had been reduced
nearly to perish for want of the necessaries of life. When, therefore,
the accounts of Oustas’s illness arrived, and that the principal
people had proposed to name Fasil his son, then their fellow-prisoner,
to succeed him, their fears no longer reminded them of the hardships
of his father’s reign, as they expected utter extirpation as the only
measure by which he could provide for his own security. Full of these
fears, they agreed, with one consent, to let down from the mountain
fifty princes of the greatest hopes, all in the prime of life, and
therefore most capable of defending their own right, and securing
the lives of those that remained upon the mountain, from the cruel
treatment they must obviously expect if they fell into the hand of an
usurper or stranger.
The brother of Betwudet Tamerté, who, with the six others, had been
murdered before Oustas’s tent, was, at this time, guardian of the
mountain of Wechné. His brother’s death, however, and the unsettled
state of government, had so much weakened both his authority and
attention, that he either did not choose, or was not able, to prevent
the escape of these princes, all flying for their lives, and for the
sake of preserving the ancient constitution of their country. And that
this, and no other was their object, appeared the instant the danger
was removed; for, as soon as the news that David was proclaimed at
Gondar arrived at the mountain, all the princes returned of their own
accord, excepting Bacuffa, younger brother to the king, who fled to the
Galla, and lay concealed among them for a time.
On David’s arrival at Gondar, all the old misfortunes seemed to be
forgotten. The joy of having the ancient royal line restored, got the
better of those fears which first occasioned the interruption. The
prisons were thrown open, and David was crowned the 30th of January
1714, amidst the acclamations of all ranks of people, and every
demonstration of festivity and joy.
David was son of Yasous the Great, and consequently brother to the
parricide Tecla Haimanout, but by another mother. At his coronation he
was just twenty-one years of age, and took for his inauguration name
Adebar Segued.
In all this time, however, Oustas was alive. Oustas was, indeed, sick,
but still he was king; and yet it is surprising that David had been now
nine days at Gondar, and no injury had been offered to Oustas, nor any
escape attempted for him by his friends.
It was the 6th of February, the day before Lent, when, the king
sent the Abuna Marcus, Itchegué Za Michael, with some of the great
officers of state, to interrogate Oustas judicially, for form’s sake,
as to his title to the crown. The questions proposed are very short
and simple--“Who are you? What brought you here?” To these plain
interrogatories, Oustas, then struggling with death, answered, however,
as plainly, and without equivocation, “Tell my king David, that true it
is I have made myself king, as much as one can be that is not of the
royal family; for I am but a private man, son of a subject, Kasmati
Delba Yasous: all I beg of the king is to give me a little time, and
let me die with sickness, as I shortly shall, without putting me to
torment or pain.”
On the 10th day of February, that is four days after the interrogation,
Oustas died, but whether of a violent or natural death is not known.
The historian of his reign, a cotemporary writer, says, some reported
that he died of an amputation of his leg by order of the king; others,
that he was strangled; but that most people were of opinion that he
died of sickness; and this I think the most probable, for had the king
been earnestly set upon his death, he would not have allowed so much
time to pass, after his coronation, before his rival was interrogated;
nor was there any reason to allow him four days after his confession.
David’s moderation after the death, moreover, seems to render this
still more credible; for he ordered his body to be buried in the church
of the Nativity, which he had himself built, with all the honours and
public ceremonies due to his rank as a nobleman and subject, who had
been guilty of no crime, instead of ordering his body to be hewn in
pieces, and scattered along the ground without burial, to be eat by
the dogs; the invariable punishment, unless in this one instance, of
high-treason in this country.
Posterity, regarding his merit more than his title, have, however, kept
his name still among the list of kings; and tradition, doing him more
justice still than history, has ranked him among the best that ever
reigned in Abyssinia.
[Illustration]
DAVID IV.
From 1714 to 1719.
_Convocation of the Clergy--Catholic Priests executed--A
second Convocation--Clergy insult the King--His severe
Punishment--King dies of Poison._
The moderation of the king, both before and after the death of Oustas,
and perhaps some other favourable appearances now unknown to us, set
the monks, the constant pryers into futurity, upon prophecying that the
reign of this prince was to be equal in length to that of his father
Yasous the Great, and that it was to be peaceable, full of justice and
moderation, without execution, or effusion of civil blood.
David, immediately upon his accession, appointed Fit-Auraris Agnè,
Ozoro Keduste’s brother[89], his Betwudet, and Abra Hezekias his
matter of the household; and was proceeding to fill up the inferior
posts of government, when he was interrupted by the clamours of a
multitude of monks demanding a convocation of the clergy.
These assemblies, however often solicited, are never called in
the reign of vigorous princes, but by the special order of the
sovereign, who grants or refuses them purely from his own free-will.
They are, however, particularly expected at the accession of a new
prince, upon any apprehension of heresy, or any novelty or abuse in
church-government.
The arrival of a new-Abuna from Egypt is also a very principal reason
for the convocation. These assemblies are very numerous. Many of the
most discreet members of the church absent themselves purposely. On
the other hand, the monks, who, by vows, have bound themselves to the
most painful austerities and sufferings; those that devote themselves
to pass their lives in the deep and unwholesome valleys of the country;
hermits that starve on the points of cold rocks; others that live in
deserts surrounded with, and perpetually exposed to wild beasts; in
a word, the whole tribe of fanatics, false prophets, diviners, and
dreamers, people who affect to see and foreknow what is in future
to happen, by living in perfect ignorance of what is passing at the
present; people in constant habits of dirt and nastiness, naked, or
covered with hair; in short, a collection of monsters, scarcely to
be described or conceived, compose an ecclesiastical assembly in
Abyssinia, and are the leaders of an ignorant and furious populace,
who adore them as saints, and are always ready to support them in some
violation of the laws of the country, or of humanity, to which, by
their customs and manner of life, their very first appearance shews
they have been long strangers.
David, however averse to these assemblies, could not decently refuse
them, now a new prince was set on the throne, a new Abuna was come
from Egypt, and a complaint was ready to be brought that the church
was in danger. The assembly met in the usual place before the palace.
The Itchegué, or head of the monks of Debra Libanos, was ready with a
complaint, which he preferred to the king. He stated it was notorious,
but offered to prove it if denied, that three Romish priests, with an
Abyssinian for their interpreter, were then established in Walkayt,
and, for several years, had been there maintained, protected, and
consulted by the late king Oustas, who had often assisted at the
celebration of mass as solemnized by the church of Rome.
David was a rigid adherent to the church of Alexandria, and educated
by his mother in the tenets of the monks of Saint Eustathius, that is,
the most declared enemies of every thing approaching to the tenets of
the church of Rome. He was consequently, not by inclination, neither
was he by duty, obliged to undertake the defence of measures adopted by
Oustas, of which he was besides ignorant, having been confined in the
mountain of Wechné. He ordered, therefore, the missionaries, and their
interpreter, whose name was Abba Gregorius, to be apprehended.
These unfortunate people were accordingly produced before the most
prejudiced and partial of all tribunals. Abba Masmarè and Adug Tesfo
were adduced to interrogate and to interpret to them, as they
understood the Arabic, having been at Cairo and Jerusalem. The trial
neither was, nor was intended to be long. The first question put was
a very direct one; Do you, or do you not, receive the council of
Chalcedon as a rule of faith? and, Do you believe that Leo the pope
lawfully and regularly presided at it, and conducted it? To this the
prisoners plainly answered, That they looked upon the council of
Chalcedon as the fourth general council, and received it as such,
and as a rule of faith: that they did believe pope Leo lawfully and
regularly presided at it, as being head of the Catholic church,
successor to St Peter, and Christ’s vicar upon earth. Upon this a
general shout was heard from the whole assembly; and the fatal cry,
“Stone them.”--“Whoever throws not three stones, he is accursed, and an
enemy to Mary,” immediately followed.
One priest only, distinguished for piety and learning among his
countrymen, and one of the chief men in the assembly, with great
vehemence declared, they were tried partially and unfairly, and
condemned unjustly. But his voice was not heard amidst the clamours
of such a multitude; and the monks were accordingly by the judges
condemned to die. Ropes were instantly thrown about their necks, and
they were dragged to a place behind the church of Abbo, in the way to
Tedda, where they were, according to their sentence, stoned to death,
suffering with a patience and resignation equal to the first martyrs.
The justice, however, which we owe to the memory of the deceased M. du
Roule, must always leave a fear in every Christian mind, that, spotted
as these missionaries were with the horrid crime of the premeditated,
unprovoked murder of that ambassador, the indifference they testified
at the approach, and in the immediate suffering of death, had its
origin rather in hardness of heart than in the quietness of their
consciences. Many fanatics have been known to die, glorying in having
perpetrated the most horrid crimes to which the sentence of eternal
damnation is certainly annexed in the book before them.
I have often, both on purpose and by accident, passed by this place,
where three large, and one small pile of stones, cover the bodies of
these unfortunate sufferers; and, with many heavy reflections, upon
my own danger, I have often wondered how these three priests, of
whatever nation they were, passed unnoticed among the number of their
fraternity, whose memory is honoured with long panegyrics by the Romish
writers of those times, as destined one day to appear in the kalendar.
Though those that compose the long list of Tellez died with piety
and resignation, they were surely guilty in the way they almost all
were engaged, contrary to the laws and constitution of the country,
in actions and designs that can be fairly qualified by no other name
than that of treason, while no such political meddling out of their
profession ever was reproached to these three, even by their enemies.
Tellez says not a word of them; Le Grande, a zealous Catholic writer
of these times, but little; though he publishes an Arabic letter to
consul Maillet, which mentions their names, their sufferings, and other
circumstances attending them. I shall, therefore, take the liberty of
offering my conjecture, as I think this silence, or the suppression of
a fact, gives me a title to do; but shall first produce the letter of
Elias Enoch, upon which I found my judgment.
TRANSLATION _of an_ ARABIC LETTER _wrote to_ M. DE MAILLET.
“After having assured M. de Maillet, the consul, of my respects, and
of the continuation of my prayers for his health, as being a gentleman
venerable for his merits, distinguished by his knowledge and great
penetration, of a noble birth, always beneficent, and addicted to
pious actions, (may God preserve his life to that degree of honour due
to so respectable a person), I now write you from the town of Mocha.
I left Abyssinia in the year 1718, and came to this town of Mocha in
extreme poverty, or rather absolutely destitute. God has assisted me:
I give praise to him for his bounty, and always remain much obliged to
you. What follows is all that I can inform you as touching the news of
Abyssinia. King Yasous is long since dead: his son, Tecla Haimanout,
having seized upon the kingdom by force, caused his father to be
assassinated. This king Yasous, having given me leave to go to Sennaar,
furnished me with a letter addressed to the king there, in which he
desired him to put no obstacles in the way of du Roule the French
ambassador’s journey, but to suffer him to enter Ethiopia. He also gave
me another letter addressed to the basha and officers of Grand Cairo;
and another letter to the ambassador himself, by which he signified
to him that he might enter into Ethiopia without fear. Accordingly I
had departed with these letters for Sennaar; but king Tecla Haimanout,
son of king Yasous, having taken possession of the kingdom while I was
yet in Abyssinia, I returned and delivered to him the letters which
had been given me by his father. It was now three months since Tecla
Haimanout had been upon the throne; he approved of the letters, and
caused them to be transcribed in his own name; and ordered me to go and
join du Roule the ambassador, and accompany him back again to Gondar.
King Yasous had already sent an officer to meet the ambassador at
Sennaar; and he had been gone six months without my knowledge; but that
officer, having trifled away his time in trading, did not enter Sennaar
till that king had caused the ambassador to be murdered, together with
those that were with him. As for me, not knowing what had happened,
I was advancing with the orders of Tecla Haimanout, when, being now
within three days journey of Sennaar, I heard of the ambassador’s
death, and that of his companions; and being terrified at this, I
returned into Abyssinia to let Tecla Haimanout know what the king of
Sennaar had done. Immediately upon hearing of this, Tecla Haimanout
formed a resolution to declare war against the king of Sennaar, but was
soon after slain in a mutiny of the soldiers. He reigned two years.
Tifilis, brother of Yasous, succeeded him, and reigned three years and
three months. Oustas, nephew of king Yasous, succeeded Tifilis, and
usurped the kingdom, of which he was actually prime minister, being
son of a sister of Yasous. Oustas was dethroned, and died soon after.
David, son of Yasous, succeeded him, and reigned five years and five
months. The _friars_, who arrived in Ethiopia in the reign of Oustas,
were stoned to death, upon the succession of David to the throne, by
those that were of the party of David. A son of _Michael_, whom he
had by a slave, aged only six years, was stoned with him. It was the
_fourth_ son he had. I made Yasous believe that the religion of the
French was the same with that of Ethiopia,” &c. &c.
From this letter, we see a boy of six years old, son of one of these
priests or friars, was stoned to death with them; and his heap of
stones appears with those of the others. It was, indeed, a common
test of the people suspected to be priests, who stole into Abyssinia,
to offer them women, their vows being known, and that they could not
marry. I apprehend, to avoid detection, one at least of them had
broken his vow of celibacy and chastity, and that this child was the
consequence, but not the only one, as Enoch says, in his letter, he had
three others; and this probably was the reason why the Catholics of
those times had consigned their merit to oblivion, rather than record
it with their failings.
For although we know that there were friars who had been in Ethiopia
since the time of Oustas, we should not have been informed who they
were, had it not been for a small sheet, published at Rome in the year
1774, by a capuchin priest called Theodosius Volpi, sent to me by my
learned and worthy friend the honourable Daines Barrington. From this
we find, that these three were, Liberato de Wies, apostolical prefect
in Austria; Michael Pius of Zerbe, in the province of Padua; and Samuel
de Beumo, of the Milanese. The account of their death is the same as
already given, though the publisher suppresses the stoning of the
child, and the existence of the three other, fruits of the seraphic
mission, through the endeavours of father Michael Pius of Zerbe, of the
province of Milan. The child, too, stoned to death with his father,
was six years old, and was, as Elias says, fourth son of Michael;
and it was in 1714 this catastrophe happened, so that this will bring
these fathers entrance into Nubia about the time of the murder of M. du
Roule: so consistent with every crime is fanaticism and false religion.
The barbarous monks, gratified in the first instance, would not be
contented without extending their vengeance to Abba Gregorius, the
Abyssinian priest, the interpreter. But David, who found upon trial
that, in going to attend the priests in Walkayt, he had only obeyed the
express command of Oustas, then his sovereign, absolutely refused to
suffer him to be either tried or punished, but dismissed him, without
further censure or question, to his native country.
While David was thus employed at Gondar, news were brought to him
that his brother Bacuffa had left the Galla, and was then in a small
town in Begemder, called Wetan. It was this prince who, together with
fifty others of the royal family, were let down from the mountain of
Wechné, upon Oustas’s son being proposed, and he alone refused to
return upon his brother’s accession to the throne. David sent Azaleffi,
Guebra Mehedin, and Badjerund Welled de l’Oul, to Wetan, where they
apprehended Bacuffa by surprise, and lodged him in the mountain of
Wechné, after having cut off a very small part of the tip of his nose,
which was scarcely discernible when he came to the throne.
Kasmati Georgis, had been banished to the mountain in the reign of the
late king, where he had contracted an intimate friendship with David.
He had also married a sister of Ozoro Mamet, by whom Yasous had several
children, particularly one Welleta Georgis, a prince then of years
to govern, and confined to the mountain. David, on his coming to the
throne, did not forget his old friendship on the mountain; and, passing
by Emfras, he sent to Wechné to bring down Kasmati Georgis to Arringo,
one of the king’s palaces in Begemder, where he intended to pass the
summer. On his return he gave him the government of Gojam; and his
favourite Agné, his uncle, dying at this time, very much regretted,
Georgis was also created Betwudet in his place.
This year Abuna Marcus died; and his successor, Abuna Christodulus,
arriving the third day of November, this made the calling of another
assembly of the clergy absolutely necessary, although, from the humour
the last was in, the whole time of their meeting, the king was very
little inclined to it.
The monks in Abyssinia, as I have often said, are divided into two
bodies, those of Debra Libanos and those of Abba Eustathius. Some have
imagined that the difference between these two bodies arises from a
dispute about two natures in Christ. But this is from misinformation;
for, were a dispute to arise about the two natures in Christ, each
party would declare the other a heretic; but at present a few equivocal
words, used to define the mode and moment of our Saviour’s incarnation,
though neither opinion is thought heretical[90], have the effect to
make these two sects enemies all their lives.
The Abuna is the head of the Abyssinian church; yet, as he is known to
be a slave of the Mahometans, upon his first arrival, and permission
obtained from the king, the assembly meets in a large outer court,
or square, before the palace, where he is interrogated, and where he
declares which of the two opinions he adopts. If he has been properly
advised, he declares for the ruling and strongest party; though
sometimes he is determined, by the address of those about him, to side
with the weakest; and very often, if he has had no instruction on his
arrival, he does not know what this reference means; for no trace of
such dispute exists among his brethren in Cairo, from whence he came.
He is, moreover, a stranger to the language, and the words containing
either opinion, which, for shortness sake, are made to mean a great
deal more than they at first seem to import; and, whether freely or
literally translated, are equally unintelligible to a foreigner. After
the Abuna has declared his choice, this is announced by beat of drum to
the people, and is called _Nagar Haimanout_, or, the Proclamation of
the Faith. The only ordinary effect this declaration has, is to make
the person who is at the head of one party an adversary to him who is
the head of the other, all his life after.
The king at his accession makes his declaration also. The clergy
maintain, that he should do this in an assembly called for that
purpose, though the king denies that there is any necessity for
the clergy to be present; but he considers it as his privilege to
choose his own time and place, and announces it to the people, by
proclamation, at what time, and in what manner, he thinks most
convenient.
Although David had given his permission to assemble the clergy to hear
the Abuna’s declaration, he did not think himself bound to assist at
it, and, therefore, he sent to the monks of Debra Libanos, and those of
Abba Eustathius, to go to the Abuna with Betwudet Georgis, who should
interrogate the Abuna, and report the answer to the king, who thereupon
would order it to be proclaimed to the people. The monks of Debra
Libanos refused this, as they did not consider Georgis as indifferent,
being known to be a staunch Eustathian. They declared, therefore, they
would neither hear nor regard what the Abuna said, unless it was in
the king’s presence; and this was just what David was resolved not to
humour them in.
Betwudet Georgis, the great officers of state, and most of the people
of consideration about Gondar, waited upon the Abuna as the king had
commanded; and the Betwudet having desired him to make his profession,
he would only give this evasive answer, That his faith was in all
respects the same as that of Abba Marcos and Abba Sanuda, the ancient
and orthodox Abunas.
This answer left every party at liberty to imagine that the Abuna was
their own. But this evasion did not content the king, who therefore
ordered the Betwudet, without taking further notice of the Abuna, to
make proclamation in terms of the profession of the monks of Abba
Eustathius. This occasioned great heats among the monks of Debra
Libanos. They ran all with one accord to the Itchegué’s house, for he
is their general, or chief of their convent, and here they came to
the most violent resolutions, declaring that they would die either
together, or man by man, in support of their privileges and the
freedom of their assemblies. From the Itchegué’s house they ran to
the Abuna’s, without soliciting or receiving any permission from the
king; and, upon interrogation, they succeeded with the Abuna to the
height of their wishes; for he answered in the precise words of their
profession--“One God, of the Father alone, united to a body perfectly
human, consubstantial with ours, and by that union becoming the
Messiah;” in direct opposition to what was proclaimed by the king’s
order at the gate of the palace the day before--Perfect God and perfect
man, by the union one Christ, whose body is composed of a precious
substance, called _Bahery_, not consubstantial with ours, or derived
from his mother.
Had they stopt here it had been well; but the victory was too great,
too unexpected, and complete, to admit of their sitting quietly down
without a triumph. They returned, therefore, from the Abuna’s, frantic
with joy, shouting, and singing, and more peculiarly one kind of song,
or hallelujah, used always upon victories obtained over infidels. As
they passed the door of the king’s palace, some of the officers of
the household, Azage Zakery, Azage Tecla Haimanout, and Badjerund
Welleta David, moderate men, lovers of peace, and inclined to no party,
endeavoured to persuade them to content themselves with what they
had done, to disperse, and each go to his home, before some mischief
overtook them. But they were too high-minded. They redoubled their
songs; and, in this manner, again assembled in the Itchegué’s house to
deliberate on what further they were to attempt; when one of the monks,
a prophet, or dreamer, declared, “That God had opened his eyes, and
that he then saw a cherub with a flaming sword guarding the Itchegué’s
gate:” with such a centinel they concluded that they were perfectly
safe from any attempts of man.
In the mean time, however, the king was violently affected at the
seditious behaviour of the monks; nor did he hesitate a moment in
what manner he was to punish it. As they had employed the song which
was sung only for victories obtained over infidels, by which they
meant to allude particularly to the king, he detached a body of Pagan
Galla to punish them; having surrounded the Itchegué’s house, where
the monks were assembled, they forced open the gate, (and the cherub
with the flaming sword not interfering) they fell, sword in hand, upon
the unarmed priests, and in an instant laid above a hundred of the
principal of them dead upon the floor. They then sallied out with their
bloody weapons into the street, and hewed to pieces those that attended
the procession, and who were still diverting themselves with their
song. Gondar now appeared like a town taken by storm; every street was
covered with the dead, and dying; and this massacre continued till next
day at noon, when, by proclamation, the king ordered it to cease.
David, now satisfied as to the priests, thought he owed to the Abuna
a mortification for his double-dealing. He sent, therefore, the
soldiers to take him out of his house, and bring him to the gate of
the palace, where the poor wretch, half dead with fear, expected every
moment to fall by the bloody hands of the Djawi. Having enjoyed his
panic some time, the king ordered him to be placed close beside the
kettle-drum, and a profession of faith was made in the royal presence,
and announced by beat of drum to the people, agreeing in every respect
to that published the first day by Betwudet Georgis, and directly
contradicting what he had said with his own mouth to the monks of Debra
Libanos, which was the occasion of the riot.
This bloody, indiscriminate massacre had comprehended too many men
of worth and distinction not to occasion great discontent among the
principal people both within and without the palace. Conspiracies
against the king were now everywhere openly talked of, the fruits of
which soon appeared. David fell sick, and those about him endeavoured
to persuade him that it was the remains of an injury which he had
lately received from a fall off his horse. But, upon the meeting of a
council on the 9th of March 1719, it was discovered and proved, that
Kasmati Laté and Ras Georgis had employed Kutcho, keeper of the palace,
to give a strong poison to the king, which he had taken that morning
from the hands of a Mahometan. Ras Georgis was then brought before the
council, and scarcely denied the fact; upon which his only son was
ordered to be hewn to pieces before his face, and immediately after the
father’s eyes were pulled out. Kutcho, keeper of the palace, and the
Mahometan who gave the poison, were hewn to pieces with swords before
the gate of the palace, and their mangled bodies thrown to the dogs.
The king died that evening in great agony.
The king’s favourite, Betwudet Georgis, found himself now in a most
dangerous situation. David his protector was dead, and he was left now
alone to answer for those bloody measures of which he was universally
believed to be the adviser. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, if
possible, to secure a successor of David’s own family, who might stop
the prosecutions against him for steps the king had adopted as his own,
and as such had carried into execution.
We have already observed, that, when banished to the mountain of Wechné
by Oustas, he had contracted there, first a friendship with David,
and, at the same time, with another prince, Ayto Welled Georgis, who
was son to Yasous by Ozoro Mamet, whose sister Georgis had married,
and consequently was uncle to Ayto Welleta Georgis, as having married
his aunt, sister to Ozoro Mamet. When this prince now arrived at
manhood, he knew himself perfectly secure; and, therefore, a number
of the men in power being then assembled at his house, he lost no
time, but surrounded it with a body of soldiers. He proposed to them
Welled Georgis as immediate successor to David. The people present,
seeing themselves in the soldiers hands, and convinced from the
recent examples, that Georgis was not very tender in the use of them,
in appearance chearfully, and without hesitation, approved of the
Betwudet’s choice; and Lika Jonathan, one of the chief civil judges,
performed the office of crier, proclaiming with an audible voice,
“Ayto Welled Georgis, brother to our late king David, son of our great
king Yasous, he is now our king. Mourn for the king that is dead, but
rejoice with the king that is alive.” This is the ordinary stile of
the proclamation. Mutual congratulations and promises passed among the
members of the meeting, but with very different resolutions.
All the company, escorted by a body of archers, and another of
fuzileers, with Betwudet Georgis at their head, repaired to the great
place before the palace to make the same proclamation by beat of drum
that they had done in the Betwudet’s house. They found the drum ready,
and the whole body of the king’s household troops under arms, and
drawn up before it. Upon the sight of their companions, the soldiers
left the Betwudet, and fell into a proper place reserved vacant for
them by their brethren. Without loss of time the drum was beat, and a
proclamation made, “Bacuffa, son of Yasous, is our king! Mourn for the
dead, and rejoice with the living.” Loud acclamations from the people
were echoed back again by the soldiers, and Bacuffa’s name was received
with universal acclamations. Some of the principal people then went
to the council-chamber, and sent proper officers, with a good body of
troops, to escort the king from Wechné.
Upon their arrival they found the sentiments of the princes upon the
election were widely different from those testified by the people.
They all to a man declared their dissent from that election. They
upbraided Bacuffa for his brutal manners; for his violent, unsociable,
unrelenting temper, from the which, they said, they had the cruelest
consequences to apprehend; and, indeed, it was not without great reason
that they made these remonstrances; for Bacuffa, when he escaped from
the mountain, fled for refuge among the Galla, and received there
a very strong tincture of the savage manners of that nation, which
neither those of Gondar nor the army could have an opportunity to judge
of. Resolute, active, and politic, he was very well formed to hold
the reins of government in unsettled times; but his temper of itself
exceedingly suspicious, and the little regard he had for the life of
man, made his whole reign (as it was feared) one continued tragedy. So
that, notwithstanding the goodness of his understanding, and many acts
of wisdom and justice, he is considered as a bloody, merciless tyrant,
and his memory regarded with the greatest detestation.
On the first news of the insurrection of the princes on Wechné, Kasmati
Amha Yasous, governor of Begemder, marched with his whole force and
encamped under the mountain. He then received Bacuffa, as king, having
rescued him from the hands of his relations; and, in order to obviate,
as much as possible, any future trouble, he obliged the different
branches of the royal family to a reconciliation with each other,
making Bacuffa, on the one side, swear that he was not to remember nor
revenge any injury or affront received upon the mountain; and them on
the mountain swear also, that they would forget all old disagreements,
consider Bacuffa as their king, and not create him any trouble in his
reign by escapes, or other rebellious practices.
As it was then night, Bacuffa staid in the house of Azage Assarat,
and the next morning came to Serbraxos, whence he sent to the monks
of Tedda to meet him there. From Tedda he proceeded to Gondar, where
he was met by the Abuna and Itchegué amidst the acclamations of a
prodigious number of people.
[Illustration]
BACUFFA.
From 1719 to 1729.
_Bloody Reign--Exterminates the Conspirators--Counterfeits
Death--Becomes very popular._
Honest men, who loved their country, saw the dangerous situation it was
then in. Every day had produced instances of a growing indifference to
that form of government which, from the earliest times, they had looked
upon as sacred; and upon every slight and unreasonable disgust a person
of consequence thought he had met with, a party was immediately formed,
and nothing less was agreed on than directly imbruing their hands in
the blood of their sovereign.
A prince was necessary who had qualities of mind proper to enable him
to put a stop to these enormities before they involved the state in
one scene of anarchy and ruin. Bacuffa was thought to answer these
expectations; and, in the end, he was found to exceed them. Silent,
secret, and unfathomable in his designs, surrounded by soldiers
who were his own slaves, and by new men of his own creation, he
removed those tyrants who opposed their sovereigns upon the smallest
provocation. Conspiracy followed conspiracy, and rebellion; but all
were defeated, as soon as they had birth, by the superior activity and
address of the king.
I have said he was called Bacuffa by the Galla; but, in compliance
with the custom of Abyssinia, already mentioned, he had assumed still
two other names, which were, Atzham Georgis, his name of baptism, and
Adebar Segued, which means “reverenced by the towns or inhabited places
of the country,” given him at his inauguration. As for that of Bacuffa,
which meant the _inexorable_, it was the less dishonourable from having
been given him by impartial strangers from their own observation while
he was yet in private life; his whole conduct afterwards shewed how
justly.
The king has near his person an officer who is meant to be his
historiographer. He is also keeper of his seal, and is obliged to make
a journal of the king’s actions, good or bad, without comment of his
own upon them. This, when the king dies, or at least soon after, is
delivered to the council, who read it over, and erase every thing false
in it; whilst they supply any material fact that may have been omitted,
whether purposely or not. This would have been a very dangerous book
to have been kept in Bacuffa’s time; and, accordingly, no person chose
ever to run that risk; and the king’s particular behaviour afterwards
had still the further effect, that nobody would supply this deficiency
after his death, a general belief prevailing in Abyssinia that he is
alive to this day, and will appear again in all his terrors. It is
owing to this circumstance that we have nothing complete of this king’s
reign; only a few anecdotes are preserved, some of them very odd ones.
I shall only, for the present, choose such of those as lead me to the
subject I have in hand.
Bacuffa was exceedingly fond of divinations, dreams, and prophecies,
so are all the Abyssinians; but he imbibed an additional propensity
to these, among the Pagans to whom he had fled. One day, when walking
alone, he perceived a priest exceedingly attentive in observing the
forms that little pieces of straw, cut to certain lengths, made upon a
pool of water into which ran a small stream. From the combination of
these in letters, or figures, as they chanced to fall, an answer is
procured to the doubt proposed, which, if you believe these idlers, is
perfectly infallible.
Bacuffa in disguise, dressed like a poor man, is said to have asked the
priest after what he was inquiring. The priest answered, He was trying
whether the king would have a son, and who should govern the kingdom
after him. The king abode the investigation patiently; and the answer
was, That he should have a son; but that a Welleta Georgis should
govern the kingdom after him for thirty years, though that Welleta
Georgis should be neither his son nor any descendant of his. Full of
thought at this untoward prediction, he harboured it in his breast
without communicating it to any one, and resolved to blast the hopes
of every Welleta Georgis that should be so unfortunate as to stand
within the possibility of reigning after him. Many innocent people of
different parts disappeared from this unknown crime; and eleven princes
on the mountain of Wechné, some say more, lost their lives for a name
that is very common in Abyssinia, without one overt act of treason,
or even a suspicion of what they were accused. A panic now struck all
ranks of people, without terminating in any scheme of resistance;
which sufficiently shewed that the king had succeeded in dissolving
all confederacies among his subjects, and destroying radically that
rebellious spirit which had operated so fatally in the last reigns.
It is a custom among the kings of Abyssinia, especially in intervals
of peace, to disappear for a time, without any warning. Sometimes,
indeed, one or two confidential servants, pretending to be busied in
other affairs, attend at a distance, and keep their eye upon him,
while, disguised in different manners, he goes like a stranger to those
parts he intends to visit. In one of these private journeys, passing
into Kuara, a province on the N. E. of Abyssinia, near the confines of
Sennaar, Bacuffa happened, or counterfeited, to be seized by a fever,
a common disease of that unwholesome country. He was then in a poor
village belonging to servants of a man of distinction, whose house was
on the top of the hill immediately above, in temperate and wholesome
air. The hospitable landlord, upon the first hearing of the distress
of a stranger, immediately removed him up to his house, where every
attention that could be suggested by a charitable mind was bestowed
upon his diseased guest, who presently recovered his former state of
health, but not till the kind assistance and unwearied diligence of the
beautiful daughter of the house had made the deepest impression upon
him, and laid him under the greatest obligations.
The family consisted of five young men in the flower of their youth,
and one daughter, whose name was Berhan Magass, _the Glory of
Grace_, exceedingly beautiful, gentle, mild, and affable; of great
understanding and prudence beyond her age; the darling, not only of her
own family, but of all the neighbourhood.
Bacuffa recovering his health, returned speedily to the palace, which
he entered privately at night, and appeared early next morning sitting
in judgment, and hearing causes, which, with these princes, is the
first public occupation of the day.
A messenger, with guards and attendants, was immediately sent to
Kuara, and Berhan Magass hurried from her father’s house, she knew not
why, but her surprise was carried to the utmost, by being presented
and married to the king, no reply, condition, or stipulation being
suffered. She gained, however, and preserved his confidence as long
as he lived: not that Bacuffa valued himself upon constancy to one
wife, more than the rest of his predecessors had done. He had, indeed,
many mistresses, but with these he observed a very singular rule; he
never took to his bed any one woman whatever, the fair Berhan Magass
excepted, without her having been first so far intoxicated with wine or
spirits as not to remember any thing that passed in conversation.
While Bacuffa was on his concealed journey to Kuara, a very dangerous
conspiracy was forming at Gondar, under the immediate conduct of Ozoro
Welleta Raphael, the king’s sister, a very ambitious woman, and of
an unquiet, enterprising temper. Disgusted by her brother’s refusal
of a gift of some crown lands which were then vacant, and without
any owners, she thought no vengeance adequate to the affront, but
dethroning Bacuffa. With this view she engaged several men of power in
her interest, and particularly the black servants of the palace who
attend immediately upon the king’s person, and were to seize upon, or
destroy him, the moment he returned. This plot, in all its particulars,
was conveyed to the king.
There was an old, abandoned house of king Yasous, at Bartcho, about a
day’s journey south of Gondar; it stands on a very extensive plain.
The king intending, as he said, to repair, or rather clean and prepare
this house for his immediate reception, ordered all the black slaves
from Gondar thither for that purpose, together with some of their
ringleaders. Kasmati Waragna, in the mean time, was ordered to bring a
thousand horsemen of his Galla Djawi. He arrived at Bartcho nearly at
the same time with the black servants, who being unarmed, as suspecting
nothing, and on foot, after a sharp reproof from the king, were all
surrounded and cut to pieces by the hands of Waragna, and orders were
immediately sent to Gondar to extirpate the remainder there; and this
execution laid a foundation for a feud that endures to this day between
the Galla troops and the black horse, who were then abolished, as the
Galla have been since, though both were part of the king’s household
formerly, before David’s or Bacuffa’s time. As for Welleta Raphael,
she was seized that same night, and was conveyed to Walkayt, to be
confined there, with private instructions, however, to put her to death
speedily, which were executed accordingly.
The queen had a son within the year, whom the council named Yasous,
after his grandfather, whose memory will ever be dear in Abyssinia; and
this again revived the old apprehensions that Welleta Georgis was to
govern the country (as the prophet said) for thirty years. Tormented
with this idea, rather than the havoc it had occasioned, he devised
with himself a scheme which he thought would certainly detect this
future usurper of his crown and dethroner of his child. But first he
directed that the queen should be crowned, a ceremony that carries
great consequences along with it when solemnized properly, as at that
time she is made regent, or Iteghè, in all minorities that may happen
afterwards.
After he had created his wife Iteghè, Bacuffa pretended to be sick:
several days passed without hopes of recovery; but at last the news
of the king’s death were published in Gondar. The joy was so great,
and so universal, that nobody attempted to conceal it. Every one found
himself eased of a load of fear which had become insupportable. Several
princes escaped from the mountain of Wechné to put themselves in the
way of being chosen; some were sent to by those great men who thought
themselves capable of effecting the nomination, and a speedy day was
appointed for the burial of the king’s corpse, when Bacuffa appeared,
in the ordinary seat of justice, early in the morning of that day,
with the Iteghè, and the infant Yasous, his son, sitting in a chair
below him.
There was no occasion to accuse the guilty. The whole court, and all
strangers attending there upon business, fled, and spread an universal
terror through the whole streets of Gondar. All ranks of people were
driven to despair, for all had rejoiced; and much less crimes had been
before punished with death. What this sedition would have ended in, it
is hard to know, had it not been for the immediate resolution of the
king, who ordered a general pardon and amnesty to be proclaimed at the
door of the palace.
There are two kettle-drums of a large size placed one on each side of
the outer gate of the king’s house. They are called the _lion_ and
the _lamb_. The lion is beat at the proclamations which regard war,
attainders for conspiracies and rebellions, promotions to supreme
commands, and suchlike high matters. The lamb[91] is heard only on
beneficent, pacific occasions, of gifts from the crown, of general
amnesties, of private pardons, and reversals of penal ordinances. The
whole town was in expectation of some sanguinary decree, when, to
their utter surprise, they heard the voice of the lamb, a certain sign
of peace and forgivenness; and speedily followed by a proclamation,
forbidding people of all degrees to leave their houses, that the king’s
word was pledged for every one’s security; and that all the principal
men should immediately attend him within the palace, in a public place
which is called the Ashoa, and that upon pain of rebellion.
The king appeared cloathed all in white, being the habit of peace; his
head was bare, dressed, anointed, and perfumed, and his face uncovered.
He thus advanced to the rail of the gallery, about 10 feet above the
heads of the audience, and, in a very graceful, composed, but resolute
manner, began a short oration to the people. “He put them in mind of
their wantonness in having made Oustas, a man not of the royal line
of Solomon, king of Abyssinia; of their having incited his brother,
Tecla Haimanout, to assassinate their father Yasous; that they had
afterwards murdered Tecla Haimanout himself, one brother, and lately
his other brother David, his own immediate predecessor: That he had
taken due vengeance upon all the ringleaders of those crimes, as
was the duty of his place, and, if much blood had been shed, it was
because many enormities had been committed; but that knowing now that
order was established, and conspiracies extinguished among them, he
had counterfeited death, to signify an end was put to Bacuffa and his
bloody measures; that he now was risen again, and appeared to them by
the name of Atzham Georgis, son of Yasous the Great; and ordered every
man home to his house to rejoice at the accession of a new king, under
whom they should have justice, and live without fear, as long as they
respected the king that God had anointed over them.”
This speech was followed by the loudest acclamations, “Long live
Bacuffa! Long live Atzham Georgis!” It was well known that this king
never failed in his word, or any way prevaricated in his promises.
Every one, therefore, went home in as perfect peace as if war had never
been among them; and Bacuffa’s delicacy in this respect was seen a few
days after; for Hannes his brother having been brought clandestinely
from Wechné by Kasmati Georgis, a nobleman of great consequence,
they were both taken by the governor of Wechné and sent in chains to
the king. The ordinary process would have been to put them instantly
to death, as being apprehended in the very highest act of treason;
nor would this have alarmed any person whatever, or been thought an
infraction of the king’s late promise. Bacuffa, however, was of another
mind. He sent the criminal judges, who ordinarily sit upon capital
crimes, to meet the two prisoners in their way to Gondar, and carried
them back to the foot of the mountain of Wechné to have their crimes
proved, and to be tried there out of his presence and influence, where
they were both condemned, Hannes to have an arm cut off, Georgis to be
sent to prison to the governor of Walkayt, with private orders to put
him to death; both which sentences were executed, though Hannes so far
recovered that he was king of Abyssinia in my time, notwithstanding
this mutilation; but it was a direct violation of the laws of the land.
It is said that a discovery, which happened in the king’s feigned
illness, promoted this sudden revolution of manners. In one of his
secret tours through Begemder, (after Tigré, the most powerful province
in Abyssinia, and by much the most plentiful) being disguised like a
poor man, dirty and fatigued with the length of the way and heat of
the weather, he came to the house of a private person, not very rich,
indeed, but of noble manners and carriage, and who, by the justice and
mildness of his behaviour and customs, had acquired a great degree of
influence among his neighbours. The father was old and feeble, but the
son in the vigour of his age, who was then standing in a large pool of
water, at his father’s door, washing his own cotton cloak, or wrapper,
which is their upper garment; an occupation below no young man in
Abyssinia.
Bacuffa, as overcome with heat, threw himself down under the shade of
a tree, and, in a faint voice and foreign dialect, intreated the young
man to wash his cloak likewise, after having finished his own. The
young man consented most willingly; and, throwing by his own garment,
fell to washing the stranger’s with great diligence and attention.
In the mean time, Bacuffa began questioning him about the king, and
what his opinion was of him. The young man answered, he had never
formed any. Bacuffa, however, still plied him with questions, while he
continued washing the cloak, without giving him any answer at all; at
last, being able to hold out no longer, he gathered Bacuffa’s cloak in
his arms, wet as it was, and threw it to him: “I thought, says he, when
you prayed me to take your cloak, that I was doing a charitable action
to some poor Galla fainting with fatigue, and perhaps with hunger;
but, since I have had it in my hands, I have found you an instructor
of kings and nobles, a leader of armies and maker of laws. Take your
cloak, therefore, and wash it yourself, which is what Providence has
ordained to be your business; it is a safer trade, and you will have
less time to censure your superiors, which can never be a proper or
useful occupation to a fellow like you.”
The king took his wet cloak, and the rebuke along with it, and, on his
return, he sent for the man to Gondar, and raised him in a short time
to the first offices in the state. He possessed his entire confidence;
and he deserved it. He was the only man to whom the king had confided
his fears of the usurper Welleta Georgis. While Bacuffa was supposed
to be ill, the queen and this officer only present, he mentioned, for
the first time, some surprise that no such person as Welleta Georgis
had appeared during so long and so many inquiries, and could not help
dropping some words as if he doubted the truth of this prophecy.
Badjerund Waragna, for that was the name of the king’s friend,
maintained modestly that it might be a temptation of the devil to
mislead him to his destruction. He told the king, that, by his own
account of it, this Welleta Georgis was to have no power over _him_, as
he was only to appear in his son’s time. He begged him, therefore, to
lay aside all further thoughts of his prophecy, whilst he trusted his
son’s succession to God’s mercy, and to the prayers, the charity, and
prudence of the queen. The Iteghé all this time was lost in silence.
She desired the king to repeat to her the whole circumstances of the
prophecy, which he distinctly did. “I wish,” says she laughing, “this
Welleta Georgis may not be now nearer us than we imagine; perhaps in
the palace.” “In the palace!” says the king, with great emotion. “I
doubt so,” says the queen; “suppose it should be me your own wife; for
Welleta Georgis was the name given to me in baptism; and your late
coronation of me, should a minority happen in the person of your son,
or even a grandson, undoubtedly leaves me regent of the kingdom by
your own intentions when you made me Iteghè.”
Whether the king was convinced or not, is not known; but he, from this
time, desisted from his persecution of Welleta Georgis; and this the
queen often told me among several anecdotes of that singular reign.
She was my great patroness while at Gondar, and from her I received
constant protection in the most disastrous times. To the credit of the
prophet, she continued regent full thirty years; till the folly and
ambition of her own family gave her a master that put an end to all her
influence, except what she enjoyed from exemplary piety, and the most
extensive works of charity and mercy.
The king died after a vigorous reign, and after having cut off the
greatest part of the ancient nobility near Gondar, who were of age
to have been concerned in the transactions of the last reigns. This
has rendered his memory odious, though it is universally confessed he
saved his country from an aristocratical or democratical usurpation;
both equally unconstitutional, as they equally struck at the root of
monarchy.
The queen, with very great prudence, concealed the day of the king’s
death; nor did any one, after the last experiment, affect rashly to
believe that his death was real. Thus all were upon their guard against
another resurrection. In that interval, she called her brothers from
Kuara, and strengthened her son’s and her own government, by putting
the principal offices of state into the hands of persons attached to
her family, so that, though her son Yasous was an infant, no attempt
was at that time made towards any resolution. Even after the king’s
death was known to be real, for many years afterwards there were people
of credit at different times found, who said they had met him at sundry
places alive; whether by instigation, for any particular purpose, or
not, is difficult to say.
[Illustration]
YASOUS II. OR, ADIAM SEGUED.
From 1729 to 1753.
_Rebellion in the beginning of this Reign--King addicted
to hunting--To building, and the Arts of Peace--Attacks
Sennaar--Loses his Army--Takes Samayat--Receives Baady King of
Sennaar under his Protection._
Besides the queen, mother of Yasous, Bacuffa had several other wives
and divers children by them; none of them, however, had any degree
of interest, or many followers, owing to the very singular practice
of Bacuffa, already mentioned, in not admitting to his bed, from the
time of his coming to the crown, any women except the queen, mother of
Yasous, without having first so far intoxicated them with liquor as to
produce an oblivion of all that passed at the interview. Some say this
arose from his own jealous ideas; but the most general opinion was,
that it was a kind of covenant with the queen, by which she pardoned
him this temporary alienation of his person, for this security, that
he was to give her no rival in his confidence. Indeed, his own temper
led him naturally to estrange himself from every intimate connection,
that could pretend to any lawful share with him in government. And this
had gone so far, that he sent his wife, favourite as she was, and his
son Yasous, to the low, hot, and unwholesome province of Walkayt, the
ordinary place to which state criminals were banished, in order that
they might be under the eye of Ain Egzie, a confidential servant of
his, and governor of that province. It is true this was done without
any mark of disgust; and the queen returned immediately by his own
command; but Yasous staid at Walkayt with Ain Egzie, till he was four
years old, without the king his father having shewn any anxiety for his
return.
The queen’s first care was to call her brothers to court. The eldest,
Welled de l’Oul, had been a favourite of the late king, and occupied
under him a very considerable post in the palace. Geta, her second
brother, was a man of slow parts, but esteemed a good soldier; being
covetous, he was not a favourite of the people, and less so of the
king. The third was Eshtè, (pronounced in that country Shitti); he was
amiable, liberal, affable, and brave, but rather given to indolence
and pleasure, which alone hindered him from being a good statesman
and general. He was a kind friend to strangers, a good master, and
placable enemy; stedfast to his promise, and on all occasions a lover
of truth; a quality so very rare in Abyssinia, that it was said there
had not been one in this respect like him since the time of Yasous the
Great. Notwithstanding this, Bacuffa liked him not, as being too great
a favourite of the people, and, for that reason, never gave him any
employment.
The next brother was Eusebius, a very brave and skilful soldier, but
rash, avaricious, passionate, and treacherous, and as great an enemy
to truth as his brother Eshtè was a friend to it. Bacuffa, upon some
slight complaint, had resolved to put him to death; and, though he was
dissuaded from this, he could never be so far reconciled to him as ever
to release him from prison. The fifth brother was Netcho, whom the
desire of living at home, or, perhaps, a want of money to defray his
expences at court, kept low and in obscurity all his life-time. Yet he
was a tried, gallant, and skilful soldier; and in later years, when
I was at Gondar, was often praised as such by Ras Michael, the best
judge, because the greatest general of his time, though, by reason of
Netcho’s private life, and absence from court, he never charged him
with any important commission. Another brother was dead, and had left a
son called Mammo, a good horseman, the only quality, as far as I know,
that he possessed to which could justly be annexed the epithet of Good.
Of these brothers, Geta and Netcho were alive in my time. Eshtè was
dead, but had left two sons, Ayto Engedan and Ayto Aylo, who were
among the most intimate of my friends, from my entering Ethiopia till
my leaving it; both were brave and good, and endowed with excellent
qualities. Engedan, without any allowance for his country, and want of
education, was, I think, by very much, the most amiable and complete
man that I have ever yet seen.
Sanuda, son of Welled de l’Oul, played a very considerable part in the
revolution that happened in my time; was of a figure more than ordinary
graceful; was brave, and did not want good dispositions; but these
were obscured by debauchery in wine and women, to which there were no
bounds. Eusebius left two sons, both more worthless and profligate than
himself, and both came to untimely ends: Guebra Mehedin, the eldest,
was slain in a private quarrel at Lebec by a near relation, Kasmati
Ayabdar, after having robbed my servants and plundered my baggage, in
Foggora, near the village Dara; and the second, Ayto Confu, was killed
in rebellion at the battle of Serbraxos, among the Begemder horse,
fighting against his sovereign.
Mammo we shall find acting insignificant parts at times, never
trusted, nor of consequence to any one. As for the queen herself,
she was reputed the handsomest woman of her time. She was descended
from Victor, eldest brother to Menas, and son of David, who died
without coming to the crown. This daughter was married to Robel,
governor of Tigré, whose mother was a Portuguese, and the queen
inherited the colour of her European ancestors; indeed was whiter than
most Portuguese. She was very vain of this her descent; had a warm
attachment to the Catholic religion in her heart, as far as she could
ever learn it; nor did she value herself less upon her beauty, as we
may judge by the several names she took at different times. The first
was Iteghè Mantuab, or _the beautiful queen_; the second was Berhan
Magwass, or _the glory of grace_; though her christened name was
Welleta Georgis, as we have already observed.
After the death of her husband, Bacuffa, she is said to have descended
to a variety of attachments of short duration. She married a man of
quality, Kasmati Netcho of Kuara, by whom she had three daughters. The
first was Ozoro Esther, of whom I shall often speak, being, next to her
mother, the greatest friend I had in Abyssinia, and one who had the
most frequent opportunities of being so. She was married, in very early
life, to Kasmati Netcho of Tcherkin, a man of great personal qualities,
and who had a very large territory, reaching down to the Pagan blacks,
or Troglodytes, called Shangalla.
This marriage was of very short duration. Netcho left one son, Ayto
Confu, my very great and firm, though young friend, who likewise
inherited his father’s fortune and virtues. She was afterwards married
to Ayo Mariam Barea, (excepting Ras Michael) reputed the best general
in Abyssinia, but who died before I came into the country. By him she
had one son and a daughter, infants. Lastly, she was married to Ras
Michael, by whom she had two sons, the favourites of Michael’s old
age. Rustic and cruel as that old tyrant was, bred up in blood, and
delighting in it, she governed him despotically, from the day of her
marriage, yet so prudently, as to excite the envy of no one, excepting
the murderers of her husband Mariam Barea, who, luckily, were also the
constitutional enemies of her country.
The second daughter of the Iteghé was Ozoro Welleta Israel, the most
beautiful woman in Abyssinia, with whom I had very little acquaintance,
she being at constant war with Ras Michael. She had married a nobleman
of the first consideration, to whom half of the large and rich province
of Gojam belonged, by whom she had Aylo, one of the largest men that I
ever saw, the only particular remarkable in him.
The third was Ozoro Altash, married to Welled Hawaryat, Ras Michael’s
son, by whom she had three children, two sons and one daughter. One of
them died of the small-pox soon after my arrival at Gondar, as did his
father also; the other son and daughter happily recovered.
Bacuffa had provided sufficiently for the security of his provinces, by
placing tried and veteran officers in his governments. Elias, indeed,
was Ras and Betwudet at Gondar, and he was suspected of wishes contrary
to his allegiance; but far before any, in the confidence of the late
king, was Waragna Shalaka, that is, colonel of a regiment of Djawi
Galla, with which he defended the provinces of Damot and Agow against
his countrymen on the other side of the Nile; for he was a Galla of
that nation himself, and his name was Usho, which signifies _a dog_.
But it was more by his interest, which he preserved with those people,
than by his arms, that he kept those barbarians from wasting that
country.
The reader will easily remember the first occasion of his coming to
Gondar was when Bacuffa saw him washing his clothes in a pool of water;
and from the reproof, and his behaviour to the king on that occasion,
as well as the duty and implicit obedience he paid to his commands
afterwards, he was called Waragna, by way of contradiction, that word
signifying a sturdy rebel, or one that stands up in defiance of the
king. That name became much more famous afterwards in the person of
his son, Waragna Fasil, to the very great detriment of the country in
general.
The first thing the queen did was to send Shalaka Waragna, and
Billetana Gueta David, with a large body of Mahometan fusileers, Djawi
and Toluma Galla, to guard the mountain of Wechné, where the males of
the royal family were imprisoned, that no competitor might be released
from thence. The next step was to marry Ozoro Welleta Tecla Haimanout
to Ras Elias, to confirm him, if possible, in his much suspected
allegiance. After which, the Ras, judges, and soldiers of the king’s
household, made this proclamation--“Bacuffa, king of kings, is dead!
Yasous, king of kings, liveth! Mourn for those that are dead, and
rejoice with those that are alive!” Orders were then given for burying
Bacuffa with all magnificence possible.
The first thing that seemed the beginning of trouble in the new
regency, and likely to destroy the calm that had hitherto subsisted,
was an information given by Azage Georgis against Tecla Saluce, a great
officer at court. Georgis accused him before the king and council, that
he had been heard to say that king Yasous was dangerously ill. Tecla
Saluce absolutely denied this charge, and said it was an invention
of his enemy Georgis, and challenged him to prove it. Evidence being
called, he was convicted in the most direct and satisfactory manner;
was therefore condemned to death, and hewn to pieces at the king’s gate
that same day by the common soldiers.
Here is a species of treason without any overt act. The imagining the
king’s death, which seems much to resemble the law of England, may
be defended from the importance of the case, but scarcely from any
principle of justice or reason.
It soon appeared that a conspiracy had been on foot; several great
men fled from court, among these Johannes, who had the charge of the
king’s horses. But Shalaka Waragna and Billetana Gueta David, being
sent immediately after him, this conspiracy was soon stifled, and
the ringleaders dispersed, mostly into Amhara, where they were taken
prisoners by Woodage governor of the province, and sent to the king.
Johannes, finding it impossible to escape, took to one of those papyrus
boats used in navigating the lake Tzana; and, being driven by the wind,
landed in an island[92] belonging to the queen, where he was taken
prisoner, with his wife and family, and delivered up, on condition that
he should not be put to death.
Kasmati Cambi, returning from Damot, fell accidentally upon Palambaras
Masmari and several others, and brought them prisoners to Gondar. A
council was thereupon held, and the conspirators put upon their trial.
Palambaras Masmari, and Abou Barea who was one of the judges, were
condemned to be hanged on the tree before the palace-gate. Johannes and
the rest were committed to close prison, in the hands of the Betwudet.
It was thought a proper expedient to check these disorders, to hasten
the coronation of the king, though very young. The judges and all the
officers being assembled in the presence-chamber, where the king sits
on his throne, (for in the council-chamber he sits in a kind of cage,
or close balcony) where no part of him is discovered, Sarach Masseri
Mammo, whose office it was, stood up with the Kees Hatzé, or king’s
almoner; when this last had anointed him with oil, Mammo placed the
crown upon his head; upon which the whole assembly, his mother only
excepted, fell down and paid him homage; and at his inauguration he
took the name of Adiam Segued.
On a separate throne, on his right hand, sat the queen-mother. She,
too, was crowned, though not anointed; but the same homage was
performed to her that had been done to the king, who sat on the throne
with his head covered; nor did the Abuna interfere, nor was his
attendance judged any part of the ceremony.
The first seeds of discontent had been sown in Damot, where a party of
rebels had attacked Kasmati Cambi in the night, cut most of his army to
pieces, and obliged Shalaka Job to fly into Gojam, and then return in
haste to Gondar.
The king found no better remedy against this rebellion than to appoint
Kasmati Waragna governor of Damot, and Sanuda guardian of Wechné, with
orders to take with him a son of the late Oustas the usurper, and
confine him with the king’s sons upon that mountain. At the same time
he appointed Ayo governor of Begemder; both these preferments being
much to the satisfaction of the whole nation. Waragna, knowing the
necessities of his province, marched from Gondar with what forces he
could collect, and took up his head-quarters at Samseen, where, on
the very night after his arrival, he was set upon by Tensa Mammo at
the head of the Agows. However unexpected this was, Waragna, a good
soldier, was not to be taken by surprise. He knew the country, and
had not a great opinion either of the force or courage of the enemy,
or capacity of their general. Presenting, therefore, only one half of
his troops, which could not be easily discovered in the dark, he sent
Fit-Auraris Tamba to make a small compass, and fall upon their rear
with the other half. Mammo’s troops, thinking this to be a fresh and
separate army, immediately took to flight, and were many of them slain,
after leaving behind them their tents, baggage, and the greatest part
of their fire-arms, which had been of very little service to them in
the dark.
Waragna, who knew the consequence of his province was the riches of
it, and the dependence the capital had upon it for constant supplies
of provisions, was loath to pursue his victory farther, if any means
could be fallen upon to bring about a pacification. To effect this,
he dispatched messengers to his friends, the Galla, on the other side
of the Nile, ordering them to be ready to pass the river on the day
he should appoint, and to lay waste the country of the Agow with fire
and sword. He then decamped with his army from Samseen, and marched to
Sacala, and took up his head-quarters in St Michael’s church, where
he found the Agows in the utmost terror from apprehension of being
over-run with barbarians. But he soon eased them of their fears by a
proclamation, in which he told them plainly, that it was owing to the
goodness of the country, and not any merit in the people, that the
king’s palace and capital was so plentifully supplied with provisions
from thence; that all his pursuit was peace, but that he was resolved
to effect that end by every possible means; therefore the time was now
come that they were to make a resolution, and abide by it, to submit
and behave peaceably as good citizens ought; or, when his army of Galla
joined him, he would extirpate them to the last man. In the mean time,
he published an amnesty of all that had passed.
The Agows knew well that they were in the hands of one who was no
trifler, nor in his heart much their friend. They ran to him, ready to
make that composition which he should raise from them for their past
transgressions and his future protection. The tribute laid upon them,
for both was moderate beyond all expectation, 2000 oxen for the king
and queen, and 500 for himself; upon which he left Sacala, and entered
Goutto, a very fertile country, between Maitsha and the Agows, where he
used the same moderation, and by these means quieted and reconciled his
whole province.
Nothing could have been more advantageous to the king’s affairs than
the prudent conduct of this wise officer, which left him at liberty to
afford him his assistance; for in the mean time a conspiracy was formed
at Gondar, which had taken deep root, and had a powerful faction,
Elias, late Ras and Betwudet, Tensa Mammo, Guebra l’Oul, Matteos and
Agnè, all principal men in Gondar, and possessed of great riches and
dependencies throughout the whole kingdom.
On the 8th of December 1734, being joined by their followers from
without, they all rendezvoused upon the river Kahha, below the
town. After holding council in the king’s house which is there, they
resolved to proclaim one of the princes upon the mountain Wechné, named
Hezekias, king. For this purpose, furnished with a kettle-drum, they
marched in three divisions, by three different ways, to the palace,
avowedly with an intention to force the gates and murder the king and
queen. But Fit-Auraris Ephraim, having intelligence of this tumult,
first shut up and obstructed all the entrances to the king’s house,
then gave advice to Billetana Gueta, Welled de l’Oul, of the rebellion
of Tensa Mammo, their design to murder the king, and their having
proclaimed Hezekias.
These immediately repaired to the king’s house to take council together
what was to be done, and to defend the place if it was necessary. The
rebels were now drawn up, and were beating their kettle-drum to make
their proclamation, “Hezekias was king!” while Shalaka Tchinsho, a
young nobleman of great hopes, who commanded the troops in the court
where was the outer gate, impatient to hear an usurper proclaimed in
the very face of his sovereign, directed the outer-court gate to be
opened, and, with two bodies of Galla, Djawi and Toluma, and several
corps of lances, which compose the king’s household, however inferior
in number, he rushed upon the rebels so suddenly, that they were soon
obliged to think of other occupation.
The first that fell was Asalessi Lensa, who stood by the drum, and was
slain by Shalaka Tchinsho with his own hand; his drum taken and sent to
the king as the first fruits of the day. The soldiers, encouraged by
the example of their leader, fell fiercely upon the rebels, dispersed
and broke through them wherever they saw the greatest number together;
a great slaughter was made, and Tensa Mammo, with difficulty, escaped.
The victory indeed would have been complete, had not an accidental
shot from a distance wounded Shalaka Tchinsho mortally. His own people
carried him within the gate of the palace, where he gloriously expired
at the feet of his sovereign.
The rebels, notwithstanding this check, increased every day in number
and resolution, when the news arrived that Waragna had composed all the
differences in Damot, Agow, and Goutto, and, at the head of a numerous
army, was waiting the king’s orders. This intelligence first had the
effect to disconcert the rebels, who suddenly left the capital in their
way to Wechné.
The king, now master of Gondar, ordered a proclamation to be made for
all persons whatever holding fiefs of the crown, as also all others,
to assemble before him on a short day, where the Itchegué and Abuna,
holding the picture of our Saviour, with the crown of thorns[93], up
before the people, did administer to them a solemn oath, to live and
die with the king and Iteghé; a feeble experiment, often tried by a
weak government. The only consequence of this was present expence to
the crown in a distribution of beef, honey, butter, wheat, and all
kinds of provisions; after which each man returned to his house, ready
to repeat the perjury ten times a day for the same emolument, and same
sincerity.
Messengers were next dispatched to Kasmati Waragna, ordering him to
come to Gondar with the greatest force he could raise. The same day
Azage Kyrillos, whom the king had made governor of Wechné, and Azage
Newaia Selassé, went to the mountain, pretending that king Yasous was
dead, and that the choice of the principal members of government had
fallen upon Hezekias, who thereupon was delivered to him, and saluted
king; and, without losing time, they marched to Kahha, and encamped on
that river below Gondar.
In the mean while, the great men and officers of the court, and in
particular those who had estates and houses in Gondar, began to
consider the danger of the town at the so near approach of the rebels.
Several districts, or streets, situated on eminences, by shutting up
access to them, were made tenable posts, and, having filled them with
good soldiers, they set about the defence of the town and annoying the
enemy. Hezekias had removed to the house of Basha Arkillidas; and it
was agreed to send their whole forces to see if they could succeed in
forcing the king’s house. But before this another stratagem was tried
to alienate the minds of the people of Gondar from their sovereign. It
was said that certain Roman Catholic priests had arrived at Gondar;
that they were shut up privately in the palace with the king and queen;
and, upon the Abuna and Itchegué coming to Hezekias to ask him how he
happened to be proclaimed king, without making to them some confession
of his faith, (a question they put to all young or weak princes),
Hezekias answered, It was because he had heard the Itchegué, and the
rest of the clergy, seemed to be careless about the true faith, by
suffering Catholic priests to live with the king in the palace. A
great ferment immediately followed; all the monks, priests, and madmen
that could be assembled, (and on these occasions they gather quickly),
with the Itchegué and Abuna at their heads, went to Dippabye, the open
place before the palace, and pronounced the Iteghè, Yasous, and all
their abettors, accursed and given up to burn with Dathan and Abiram.
For several days and nights attempts were made to set fire to, and
break open the gate. But the loyalists charged them so vigorously upon
all these occasions, especially Billetana Gueta Welled de l’Oul, and
the walls of the palace were so exceedingly thick and strong, that
little progress was made in proportion to the men these attempts cost
daily. However, on that side of the palace called Adenaga, the rebels
had lodged themselves so near as to set part of it on fire.
The king’s house in Gondar stands in the middle of a square court,
which may be full an English mile in circumference. In the midst of
it is a square tower, in which there are many noble apartments. A
strong double wall surrounds it, and this is joined by a platform roof;
loop-holes, and conveniences for discharging missile weapons, are
disposed all around it. The whole tower and wall is built of stone and
lime; but part of the tower being demolished and laid in ruins, and
part of it let fall for want of repair, small apartments, or houses of
one storey, have been built in different parts of the area, or square,
according to the fancy of the prince then reigning, and these go now
by the names of the ancient apartments in the palace, which are fallen
down.
These houses are composed of the frail materials of the country, wood
and clay, thatched with straw, though, in the inside, they are all
magnificently lined, or furnished. They have likewise magnificent
names, which we have mentioned already. These people, barbarous as they
are, have always had a great taste for magnificence and expence. All
around them was silver, gold, and brocade, before the Adelan war, in
which they lost the commerce of that country, by losing their connexion
with India.
The next night the soldiers of Elias made their lodgments so near the
walls, that, with fiery arrows, they set one of these houses, called
“Werk Sacala,” within the square, in flames; but Welled de l’Oul, with
the Toluma Galla, sallying at that instant, surprised Elias’s soldiers,
not expecting such interruption, and put the greatest part of them to
the sword, setting on fire the houses that were near the palace, till
part was entirely burnt to the ground. The next night, an attempt was
made upon the gate to blow it up with gunpowder; but, before it was
completed, the two rebels employed in the work were shot dead from the
wall, and their train miscarried.
On the 25th of December they burned a new house in the town built by
the king, called Riggobee Bet. These frequent fires had turned the
minds of people in general very much against Hezekias the rebel. The
night after, there was another great fire in the king’s house; Zeffan
Bet, and another large building, were destroyed by the rebels, as was
the church of St Raphael. Gondar looked like a town that had been taken
by an enemy, and battles were every day fought in the streets, with no
decisive advantage to either party. Some part of the town was on fire
every night; nobody knew for what reason, nor what was the quarter that
was next to be burnt.
In the mean time, Azage Georgis arrived in the country of the Agows
at Basil Bet, where Waragna was, and delivered him the king’s order,
that he should make all possible haste to his assistance at Gondar,
with as large an army as he could suddenly bring; and these dispatches
conferred upon him at the same time, as a mark of favour, the post of
Ibaba Azage, or governor of Ibaba, together with Elmana and Densa, two
districts inhabited by Galla, subjects to the king, which posts were
then held by Tensa Mammo, and forfeited by his rebellion.
The next morning Waragna left his head-quarters at Basil Bet; thence he
marched to Gumbali, and thence to Sima. At Sima he heard, that, the day
before, it had been proclaimed at Ibaba, by orders of Tensa Mammo, that
Yasous was dead, and Hezekias was now king; upon this intelligence he
marched from Sima, and, while it was yet early in the day, he came to
Ibaba.
The first inquiry was concerning the Shum (or chief of the town) left
there by Tensa Mammo; and this man, coming readily to him to receive
his commands, and offer him any service in his power, was asked by
whose orders the proclamation of Hezekias was made? Being answered,
by Tensa Mammo’s, he directed the Shum and his two sons to be hanged
on three separate trees in the middle of the town; the Shum with
the nagareet round his neck which had served in the proclamation
of Hezekias; he then declared Tensa Mammo a rebel and outlaw, and
confiscated his estate to the king’s use.
At Ibaba he met Fit-Auraris Tamba, with a large body of Damots and
Djawi; then he decamped from Ibaba, and, at the bridge over the
Nile, was met by Azage Georgis, with all Maitsha, Elmana, and Densa
following, and thence proceeded to Waira, where he set Arkillidas at
liberty. This officer, after distinguishing himself before all others
in the king’s defence, had been taken prisoner by Tensa Mammo, and
sent thither. Advancing into Foggora, with a large army, he halted
at Gilda, and sent some soldiers on the road to Gondar, to see if he
could apprehend any travellers, especially those going or coming to or
from market. But, after three days waiting on the road, the soldiers
returned without any person or intelligence, by which he judged the
town was already in great straits. In two days after, he advanced to
Wainarab, and thence he sent his Fit-Auraris forward to set a house
at Tedda on fire, to shew to the king at Gondar that he was thus
far advanced to his assistance. This barbarous custom of burning a
house wherever an army encamps, though but for an hour, is invariably
practised, as a signal by armies, throughout all Abyssinia.
At this time there was a treaty begun between the king and Tensa Mammo.
The rebels, weary of the little advantage they had gained, and hearing
Waragna was about to march against them, offered the queen her own
terms, provided she published a general amnesty, and that each man
should be allowed to keep the posts he had before the rebellion. The
queen, weary and terrified with war, readily agreed to this proposal;
and this facility, instead of accelerating the treaty, gave the rebels
an opportunity of asking further terms, and a settlement was spoken of
for the king Hezekias, in some of the low provinces near Walkayt.
Welled de l’Oul, the queen’s brother, a man in whom the rebels had
trust, seconded his sister’s desire, and carried on the treaty, but
from different motives; it was his opinion, that, to make peace with
the rebels, leaving their party unbroken, was to spread the infection
of rebellion all over the kingdom; and to let them keep their posts,
was leaving a sword in their hands to enable them to defend themselves
on any future occasion. He therefore thought, that, as the king had
Waragna now at his command, they should make use of him to pluck up
this rebellion by the roots, cut off all the ringleaders, and disperse
the faction; but, in the mean time, in order to be able to effect this,
they should keep up the appearance of being anxious for agreeing, in
order to lull the enemy asleep, till Waragna made his instructions and
designs known to the king.
From Wainarab, Waragna sent a messenger to let the king and queen know
of his arrival; and with him came Arkillidas, that no doubt might
remain of the truth of the message. This officer told the king, that
Waragna should advance to Tedda, and offer the rebels battle there; but
if they retired (as he heard they intended) to Abra, he would follow
them thither. He desired the king also to issue his orders to the
several Shums to guard the roads, that as few of the ringleaders of the
rebels might escape as possible.
Hezekias, with his army, decamped, taking the road to Woggora; and
Waragna, following him, came up with him at Fenter, on January 20th
1735. The rebels, inferior in number, though they did not wish an
engagement at that time, were too high-minded to avoid it when offered.
Both armies fought a long time with equal fortune; and though Waragna
at the first onset had slain two men with his own hands, and taken
two prisoners, the battle was supported with great firmness till the
evening, when Waragna ordered all his Galla, the men of Maitsha,
Elmana, and Densa, to leave their horses, and charge the enemy on foot.
This confident step, unknown and unpractised by Galla before, had the
desired effect. The Galla now fought desperately for life, not for
victory, being deprived of their only means of saving themselves by
flight.
Most of the principal officers among the rebels being killed or
wounded, their army at last was broken, and took to flight. Hezekias
was surrounded and taken, fighting bravely; being first hurt in
the leg, and then beat off his horse with a stone. The pursuit was
presently stayed. Tensa Mammo escaped safely through Woggora, a
disaffected province; and had now passed the Tacazzé, when he was taken
by the men of Siré, and brought to the king for the reward that had
been offered for his head by Waragna.
Hezekias was brought to his trial before the king, nor did he presume
to deny his guilt. He was therefore sentenced to die, and committed to
close prison. Tensa Mammo was arraigned, and, although he confessed
the treason, he pleaded the peace he had made with the king before
the arrival of Waragna at Gondar. This plea was unanimously over-ruled
by the judges, because the treaty had not been completed. He was,
therefore, sentenced to die, and immediately carried out to the
daroo-tree before the palace, and hanged between two of his most
confidential counsellors.
The Abuna and Itchegué were next ordered to appear, and answer for the
crime of high treason in excommunicating the king; they declared they
proceeded on no other grounds than an information, that the king and
queen were turned Franks, and had two Catholic priests with them in
the palace. The men complained of were produced, and proved to be two
Greeks; Petros, a native of Rhodes, and Demetrius. This explanation
being given, the Abuna and Itchegué thereupon asked pardon of the king
and queen, and were ordered to make their recantation at Dippabye,
which they immediately did, declaring they were wrong, and had
proceeded on false information.
It was on the 28th of January that Sanuda and Adero were ordered to
carry king Hezekias to Wechné, which they did, and left him there
without disfiguring him in any part of his body, as is the cruel, but
usual custom in such cases. But both the Iteghè and her son were of the
most merciful disposition; and the general reputation they had for this
was often the cause of tumults and rebellions that would not have had
birth in severer reigns.
It was not long after this when there appeared a pretender to the
crown, very little expected. He said he was the old king Bacuffa; that
he had given it out that he was dead, for political reasons, and was
come again to claim his crown and kingdom. Never was resurrection
so little wished for as this; a violent fear fell upon part of the
multitude for some time; but his name making no party, whether true or
false, he was seized upon without bloodshed, tried, and condemned to
die. This punishment was changed into one of a _supposed_ gentler kind,
the cutting off his leg, and sending him to Wechné. The operation,
always performed in the grossest manner by an ax, high up the leg, and
near the knee, is generally fatal; for there is no one, having either
skill or care, to take up the ends of the veins and arteries separated
by the amputation; they only apply useless stiptics and bandages, of
no effect, till the patient bleeds to death. This is the common case,
so that the pretended Bacuffa died, in consequence of the operation,
before he came to Wechné, though he was by his sentence reprieved from
death.
The king, now arrived at the seventh year of his reign, proclaimed a
general hunt, which is a declaration of his near approach to manhood;
but he pursued it no length, and again returned to Gondar.
At that time, a great party of the queen’s relations was made against
Ayo governor of Begemder, It began by a competition between Kasmati
Geta the queen’s brother, and Ayo, who should have that province. The
common voice was for Ayo, not only as a man of the greatest interest
in the province, but in all respects unexceptionable throughout the
kingdom. Welled de l’Oul, (brother to Geta) however, being now Ras
and Betwudet, Geta governor of Samen, Eusebius, and all the rest of
them in high places at court, Geta was preferred to the government
of Begemder. Ayo, though avowedly a good subject of the king, was
determined not to be made a sacrifice to a party. He therefore refused
to resign his government, and prepared to defend himself.
Upon this, Adero, governor of Gojam, with the whole forces of that
province, passed the Nile, and entered Begemder; Geta on the side of
Samen, and last of all Welled de l’Oul marched with a royal army to
join the forces that had already begun to lay waste the country, where
unusual excesses were committed. Ayo’s house was burned to the ground,
so were all those of his party, and their lands destroyed, greatly to
the general damage of the province and capital. Ayo was now obliged to
save himself by flight. It was said, that the king (though his army was
ready) refused to march against Ayo; but with a party of his own set
out for Aden, on the frontiers of Sennaar, to hunt there; nor did he
return till the executions were over in Begemder.
Adero fell back to Gojam, and Welled de l’Oul to Gondar soon after.
The king himself appeared very much contented with his own expedition,
in which he had shown great dexterity and bravery, having killed
two young elephants, and a gomari, or hippopotamus, with his own
hands. Nor did he stay any time at Gondar, or make any preferments,
the usual consequences of victories, but prepared again for another
hunting-expedition, or an attack upon the Shangalla. The queen and
Welled de l’Oul opposed strongly his resolution. But Yasous seemed to
be weary of being governed. He was fast advancing to manhood, and of
a disposition rather forward for his age. His expedition against the
Shangalla was attended with no accident; and he returned to Gondar on
the 3d of June, with a number of slaves, much better pleased that he
had neglected, rather than taken, his mother’s advice.
It was on the 23d day of December that Yasous again set out on another
hunting-party, and killed two elephants and a rhinoceros. He then
proceeded to Tchelga, and from Tchelga to Waldubba; thence he went
to the rivers Gandova and Shimfa. These are two rivers we shall have
occasion frequently to speak of in our return through Sennaar, in which
kingdom the one is called Dender, the other Rahad. Here he exercised
himself at a very violent species of hunting, that of forcing the
gieratacachin, which means long-tail; it is otherwise called giraffa in
Arabic. It is the tallest of beasts; I never saw it dead, nor, I think,
more than twice alive, and then at a distance. It is, however, often
killed by the elephant-hunters. Its skin is beautifully variegated when
young, but turns brown when arrived at any age. It is, I apprehend, the
camelopardalis, and is the only animal, they say, that, in swiftness,
will beat a horse in the fair field.
It was not with a view to hunt only, that Yasous made these frequent
excursions towards the frontiers of Sennaar. His resolution was formed
(as it appeared soon after) in imitation of his forefather Socinios,
to revive his right over the country of the _Shepherds_, his ancient
vassals, who, since the accession of strength by uniting with the
Arabs, had forgot their ancient tribute and subjection, as we have
already observed.
The king in five days marching from Gidara came to a station of the
Daveina, which is a tribe of shepherds, by much the strongest of any
in Atbara. He fell into their encampments a little before the dawn of
day. The first shew they made was that of resistance, till they had got
their horses and camels saddled; they then all fled, after the king
had killed three of them with his own hand. Ras Woodage signalized
himself likewise by having slain the same number with the king. The
cattle, women, and provisions fell all into the king’s hand, and were
driven off to Gondar. Their arrival gave the town an entertainment to
which they had a long time been strangers. Many thousand camels were
assembled in the plain, where stands the palace of Kahha, (upon a river
of that name) large flocks of horned cattle, of extraordinary beauty,
were also brought from Atbara, which the king ordered to be distributed
among his soldiers, and the priests of Gondar, and such of the officers
of state as had been necessarily detained on account of the police, and
had not followed the army.
This year, 1736, there happened a total eclipse of the sun which very
much affected the minds of the weaker sort of people. The dreamers and
the prophets were everywhere let loose, full of the lying spirit which
possessed them, to foretel that the death of the king, and the downfal
of his government were at hand, and deluges of civil blood were then
speedily to be spilt both in the capital and provinces. There was not,
indeed, at the time any circumstance that warranted such a prediction,
or any thing likely to be more fatal to the state, than the expenditure
of the large sums of money that the turn the king had taken subjected
him to.
He had built a large and very costly church at Koscam, and he was
still engaged in a more expensive work in the building of a palace at
Gondar. He was also rebuilding his house at Riggobee-ber, (the north
end of the town) which had been demolished by the rebels; and had begun
a very large and expensive villa at Azazo, with extensive groves, or
gardens, planted thick with orange and lemon trees, upon the banks of
a beautiful and clear river which divides the palace from the church
of Tecla Haimanout, a large edifice which, some time before, he had
also built and endowed. Besides all these occupations, he was deeply
engaged in ornamenting his palace at Gondar. A rebellion, massacre,
or some such misfortune, had happened among the Christians of Smyrna;
who, coming to Cairo, and finding that city in a still less peaceable
state than the one which they had left, they repaired to Jidda in their
way to India; but missing the monsoon, and being destitute of money
and necessaries, they crossed over the Red Sea for Masuah, and came
to Gondar. There were twelve of them silver-smiths, very excellent in
that fine work called filligrane, who were all received very readily by
the king, liberally furnished both with necessaries and luxuries, and
employed in his palace as their own taste directed them.
By the hands of these, and several Abyssinians whom they had taught,
sons of Greek artists whose fathers were dead, he finished his
presence-chamber in a manner truly admirable. The skirting, which in
our country is generally of wood, was finished with ivory four feet
from the ground. Over this were three rows of mirrors from Venice, all
joined together, and fixed in frames of copper, or cornices gilt with
gold. The roof, in gaiety and taste, corresponded perfectly with the
magnificent finishing of the room; it was the work of the Falasha, and
consisted of painted cane, split and disposed in Mosaic figures, which
produces a gayer effect than it is possible to conceive. This chamber,
indeed, was never perfectly finished, from a want of mirrors. The king
died; taste decayed; the artists were neglected, or employed themselves
in ornamenting saddles, bridles, swords, and other military ornaments,
for which they were very ill paid; part of the mirrors fell down; part
remained till my time; and I was present when the last of them were
destroyed, on a particular occasion, after the battle of Serbraxos, as
will be hereafter mentioned.
The king had begun another chamber of equal expence, consisting of
plates of ivory, with stars of all colours stained in each plate at
proper distances. This, too, was going to ruin; little had been done in
it but the alcove in which he sat, and little of it was seen, as the
throne and person of the king concealed it.
Yasous was charmed with this multiplicity of works and workmen. He
gave up himself to it entirely; he even wrought with his own hand,
and rejoiced at seeing the facility with which, by the use of a
compass and a few straight lines, he could produce the figure of a
star equally exact with any of his Greeks. Bounty followed bounty. The
best villages, and those near the town, were given in property to the
Greeks that they might recreate themselves, but at a distance, always
liable to his call, and with as little loss of time as possible. He
now renounced his favourite hunting-matches and incursions upon the
Shangalla and Shepherds of Atbara.
The extraordinary manner in which the king employed his time soon made
him the object of public censure. Pasquinades began to be circulated
throughout the capital; one in particular, a large roll of parchment,
intituled, “The expeditions of _Yasous the Little_.” The king in
reality was a man of short stature. The Ethiopic word Tannush, joined
to the king’s name Yasous el Tannush, applied both to his stature and
actions. So Tallac, the name given to another Yasous, his predecessor,
signified great in capacity and atchievement, as well as that he was of
a large and masculine person.
These expeditions, though enumerated in a large sheet of parchment,
were confined to a very few miles; from Gondar to Kahha, from Kahha
to Koscam, from Koscam to Azazo, from Azazo to Gondar, from Gondar to
Koscam, from Koscam to Azazo, and so on. It was a similar piece of
ridicule upon his father Philip, as we are informed, that, in the last
century, cost Don Carlos, prince of Spain, his life.
This satire nettled Yasous exceedingly; and, to wipe off the imputation
of inactivity and want of ambition, he prepared for an expedition
against Sennaar. It was not, however, one of those inroads into Atbara
upon the Arabs and Shepherds, whom the Funge had conquered and made
tributary to them; but was a regular campaign with a royal army, aimed
directly at the very vitals of the monarchy of Sennaar, the capital
of the Funge, and at the conquest or extirpation of those strangers
entirely from Atbara.
We have seen, in the course of our history, that these two kingdoms,
Abyssinia and Funge, had been on very bad terms during several of the
last reigns; and that personal affronts and slights had passed between
the cotemporary princes themselves. Baady, son of L’Oul, who succeeded
his father in the year 1733, had been distinguished by no exploits
worthy of a king, but every day had been stained with acts of treachery
and cruelty unworthy of a man. No intercourse had passed between Yasous
and Baady during their respective reigns; there was no war declared,
nor peace established, nor any sort of treaty subsisting between them.
Yasous, without any previous declaration, and without any provocation,
at least as far as is known, raised a very numerous and formidable
army, and gave the command of it to Ras Welled de l’Oul; and Kasmati
Waragna was appointed his Fit-Auraris. The king commanded a chosen
body of troops, separate from the rest of the army, which was to act
as a reserve, or as occasion should require, in the pitched battle.
This he ardently wished for, and had figured to himself that he was
to fight against Baady in person. Yasous, from the moment he entered
the territory of Sennaar, gave his soldiers the accustomed licence
he always had indulged them with, when marching through an enemy’s
country. He knew not, in these circumstances, what was meant by mercy;
all that had the breath of life was sacrificed by the sword, and the
fire consumed the rest.
An universal terror spread around him down to the heart of Atbara. The
Shepherds and Arabs, as many as could fly, dispersed themselves in
the woods, which, all the way from the frontiers of Abyssinia to the
river Dender, are very thick, and in some places almost impenetrable.
Some of the Arabs, either from affection or fear, joined Yasous in
his march; among these was Nile Wed Ageeb, prince of the Arabs; others
taking courage, gathered, and made a stand at the Dender, to try their
fortune, and give their cattle time to pass the Nile, and then, if
defeated, they were to follow them. Kasmati Waragna, (as Fit-Auraris)
joined by the king, no sooner came up with these Arabs on the banks
of the Dender, than he fell furiously upon them, broke and dispersed
them with a considerable slaughter; then leaving Ras Welled de l’Oul
with the king, and the main body to encamp, taking advantage of the
confusion the defeat of the Arabs had occasioned, he advanced by a
forced march to the Nile, to take a view of the town of Sennaar.
Baady had assembled a very large army on the other side of the river,
and was preparing to march out of Sennaar; but, terrified at the king’s
approach, the defeat of the Arabs, and the velocity with which the
Abyssinians advanced, he was about to change his resolution, abandon
Sennaar, and retire north into Atbara.
There is a small kingdom, or principality, called Dar Fowr, all
inhabited by negroes, far in the desert west of Sennaar, joining with
two other petty negro states like itself, still farther westward,
called Selé and Bagirma, while to the eastward it joins with Kordofan,
formerly a province of Dar Fowr, but conquered from it by the Funge.
Hamis, prince of Dar Fowr, had been banished from his country in a late
revolution occasioned by an unsuccessful war against Selé and Bagirma,
and had fled to Sennaar, where he had been received kindly by Baady,
and it was by his assistance the Funge had subdued Kordofan. This
prince, a gallant soldier, could not bruik to see the green standard
of his prophet Mahomet flying before an army of Christians; and, being
informed of the king’s march and separation from the main body nearly
as soon as it happened, he proposed to Baady, that, as an allurement
to Yasous to pass the river with only the troops he had with him, he
should do from prudence what he resolved to do from fear, and fall
back behind Sennaar, leaving it to Yasous to enter; but, in the mean
time, that, he should dispatch him with 4000 of his best horse, armed
with coats of mail, to pass the Nile at a known place below, on the
right of Welled de l’Oul, on whom he should fall by surprise, and, if
lucky enough to defeat him, as was probable, he would then close upon
Yasous’s rear, which would of necessity either oblige him to surrender,
or lose his life and army in attempting to repass the river between
the two Nubian armies. This counsel, for many reasons was perfectly
agreeable to Baady, who instantly fell back from covering Sennaar, and
then detached Hamis to make a circuit out of sight, and cross the Nile
as proposed.
In the mean time, Yasous advanced to Basboch, where he found
the current too rapid, and the river too deep for his infantry.
He dispatched, therefore, a messenger to Welled de l’Oul for a
reinforcement of horse, and gave his infantry orders to retire to
the main body upon the arrival of the reinforcement of cavalry. This
resolution he had taken upon advancing higher up the river from
Basboch, till opposite to the town of Sennaar, and when divided only
from it by the Nile. He there saw the confusion that reigned in that
large town. No preparation for resistance being visible, the cries
of women at the sight of an enemy so near them, and the hurry of
the men deserting their habitation loaded with the most valuable of
their effects, all increased the king’s impatience to put himself in
possession of this capital of his enemy.
It happened that an Arab, belonging to Nile Wed Ageeb, had seen the
manœuvre of Hamis and his cavalry. This man, crossing the Nile at the
nearest ford, came and told his master, Wed Ageeb, what he had seen,
who informed the king of his danger. Upon interrogating the Arab, it
was found that the affair of Welled de l’Oul would certainly be over
before the king could possibly join him; and in that case he must
fall in the midst of a victorious army, and his destruction must then
be inevitable, if he attempted it. It was, therefore, agreed, as the
only means possible to save the king and that part of the army he had
with him, to retreat in the route Shekh Nile should indicate to them,
marching up with the river Nile close on their right hand, and leaving
the desert between that and the Dender, which is absolutely without
water, to cover their left. This was executed as soon as resolved.
In the mean time, Hamis had crossed the Nile, and continued his march
with the utmost diligence, and, in the close of the evening, had fallen
upon Welled de l’Oul as unexpectedly as he could have wished. The
Abyssinians were everywhere slaughtered and trodden down before they
could prepare themselves for the least resistance. All that could fly
sheltered themselves in the woods: but this refuge was as certain death
as the sword of the Funge; for, after leaving the river Dender, all the
country behind them was perfectly destitute of water. Ras Welled de
l’Oul, and some other principal officers, under the direction of some
faithful Arabs, escaped, and, with much difficulty, two days after,
joined the king.
Besides these, the army, consisting of 18,000 men, either perished
by the sword, by thirst, or were taken prisoners; all the sacred
reliques, which the Abyssinians carry about with their armies to ensure
victory, and avert misfortune; the picture of the crown of thorns,
called _sele quarat rasou_; pieces of the true cross; a crucifix
that had on many occasions spoke, (which should ever after be dumb
since it spoke not that day); all these treasures of priestcraft were
taken by the Funge, and carried in triumph to Sennaar. Great part of
those Arabs, who had joined the king in his march northward, had now
quitted him and attached themselves to the pursuit of the fugitive
remains of Welled de l’Oul’s army. As these Arabs were those that lived
nearest the Abyssinian frontier, and to whom the king had done no
harm, because they had mostly joined him, no sooner was he informed of
their treachery, but just arrived in their country, and scarcely out
of danger from the pursuit of the Funge, Yasous turned short to the
left, destroying with fire and sword all the families of those that had
forsaken him, and so continued to do till arrived on the banks of the
Tacazzé.
The Arabs and Shepherds there, many of whom had just returned from
the destruction of Welled de l’Oul’s army at Sennaar, and were now
rejoicing their families with the news of so complete a victory, and
that all danger from the Christian army was over, were astonished
to see Yasous at the head of a fresh and vigorous army, burning and
destroying their country, and committing all sort of devastation, when
they thought him long ago dead, or fugitive, and skulking half-famished
on the banks of the Dender.
The king returned in this manner to Gondar, carrying more the
appearance of a conqueror than one who had suffered the loss of a
whole army, his soldiers being loaded with the spoils of the Arabs,
and multitudes of cattle driven before them. It was but too visible,
however, by the countenances of many, how wide a difference there was
between the loss and the acquisition.
It was, indeed, not from the presence or behaviour of the king, nor yet
from his discourse, that it could be learned any such misfortune had
befallen him. On the contrary, he affected greater gaiety than usual,
when talking of the expedition; and said publicly, and laughing, one
day, as he arose from council, “Let all those who were not pleased
with the song of Koscam sing that of Sennaar.” From this many were
of opinion, that he enjoyed a kind of malevolent pleasure from the
misfortune which had befallen his army, who, not content with seeing
him cultivate and enjoy the arts of peace, had urged him to undertake a
war of which there was no need, and for which there was no provocation
given, though in it there was every sort of danger to be expected.
Although Yasous gave no consolation to his people, the priests and
fanatics soon endeavoured to prepare them one. Tensa Mammo arrived from
Sennaar with the crown of thorns, the true cross, and all the rest of
that precious merchandise, safe and entire, only a little profaned by
the bloody hands of the Moors. Ras Welled de l’OuL’s army, consisting
of 18,000 of their fellow-citizens, was lying dead upon the Dender.
It was no matter; they had got the speaking crucifix, but had paid
8000 ounces of gold for it. Still it was no matter; they had got the
crown of thorns. The priests made processions from church to church,
singing hallelujahs and songs of thanksgiving, when they should have
been in sackcloth and ashes, upon their knees deprecating any further
chastisement upon their pride, cruelty, and profaneness. All Gondar was
drunk with joy; and Yasous himself was astonished to see them singing
the song of Sennaar much more willingly than that of Koscam.
At this time died Abuna Christodulus; and it was customary for the king
to advance the money to defray the expence of bringing a successor. But
Yasous’s money was all gone to Venice for mirrors; and, to defray the
expence of bringing a new Abuna, as well as of redeeming of the sacred
reliques, he laid a small tax upon the churches, saying merrily, “that
the Abuna and the crosses were to be maintained, and repaired by the
public; but it was incumbent upon the church to purchase new ones when
they were worn out.”
Theodorus, priest of Debra Selalo, Likianos of Azazo, and Georgis
called Kipti, were consigned to the care of three Mahometan merchants
and brokers at court, whose names were Hamet Ali, Abdulla, and
Abdelcader, to go to Cairo and fetch a successor for Christodulus. They
arrived at Hamazen on April 29th 1743, where the Mahometan guides chose
rather to pass the winter-season than at Masuah, as at that place they
were apprehensive they would suffer extortions and ill-usage of every
sort. We know not what came of Georgis Kipti; but, as soon as the rainy
season was over, Theodorus and Likianos came straight to Masuah.
As soon as the Naybe got the whole convoy of priests and Mahometans
into his hands, he demanded of them half of the money the king had
given them to defray the expences of fetching the Abuna. He pretended
also, that both Mahometans and Christians should have passed the rainy
season at Masuah. He declared that this was his perquisite, and that
he had prepared great and exquisite provisions for them, which, being
spoiled and become useless, it was but reasonable they should pay as if
they had consumed them: till this was settled, he declared that none of
them should embark or stir one step from Masuah.
The news of this detention soon arrived at Gondar; and Yasous gave
orders that Michael Suhul, governor of Tigré, (afterwards Ras) and
the Baharnagash, should with an army blockade Masuah, so as to starve
the Naybe into a more reasonable behaviour. But, before this could be
executed, the Naybe had called the priests before him, and declared,
if they did not surrender the money that instant, he would put them to
death; and, in place of giving them time to resolve, he gave them a
very plain hint to obey, by ordering the executioner to strike off the
heads of two criminals condemned for other crimes, after having brought
them into their presence. The poor wretches, Theodorus and Likianos,
did not resemble Portuguese, who would have braved these threats in the
pursuit of martyrdom. The sight of blood was the most convincing of
all arguments the Naybe could use. They gave up the money, leaving the
division of it to his own discretion. He then hurried them on board a
vessel, giving Michael and the Baharnagash notice that they were gone
in safety, and that he had obeyed the king’s orders in all respects.
Michael was at that time in the strictest friendship with the Naybe,
who was his principal instrument in collecting fire-arms in Arabia
to strengthen him in the quarrel he was then meditating against his
sovereign.
On the 8th of February 1744 the priests and their guides sailed from
Masuah; and they did not arrive at Jidda till the 14th of April. There
they found that the ships for Cairo were gone, and that they had lost
the monsoon; and, as no misfortune comes single, the Sherriffe of Mecca
made a demand upon them for as much money as they had paid the Naybe;
and, upon refusal, he put Abdelcader in prison, nor was he released for
a twelvemonth after, when the money was sent from Abyssinia; and it
was then agreed, that 75 ounces of gold[94] should in all future times
be paid for leave of passage to those who went to Cairo to fetch the
Abuna; and 90 ounces a piece to the Sherriffe, and to the Naybe, for
allowing him to pass when chosen, and furnishing him with necessaries
during his stay in their respective government; and this is the
agreement that subsists, to this day.
In this interim, Likianos of Azazo, one of the priests, weary of the
journey and of his religion, and having quarrelled with Abdulla,
renounced the Christian faith, and embraced that of Mahomet; and
Theodorus, Abdulla, and Hamet Ali, being the only three remaining,
hired a vessel at Jidda to carry them to the port of Suez, the bottom
of the Arabic Gulf. Before they had been a month at sea, Abdulla died,
as did Hamet Ali seven days after they arrived at Suez. They had been
on sea three months and six days from Jidda to that port, because they
sailed against the monsoon.
It was the 25th of June that Theodorus arrived at Cairo, delivered the
king’s present, the account of the Abuna’s death, and the king’s desire
of having speedily a successor. The patriarch, having called together
all his bishops, priests, and deacons, conferred the dignity on a
monk of the Order of St Anthony, the only Order of monks the Coptic
church acknowledges. These pass a very austere life in two convents
in a dreary desert, never tasting flesh, but living on olives, salt
sardines[95], wild herbs, and the worst of vegetables. Yet so attached
are they to this solitude, that, when they are called to be ordained to
this prelature of Abyssinia, a warrant from the basha, and a party of
Turks, is necessary to bring this elect one to Cairo in chains, where
he is kept in prison till he is ordained; guarded afterwards, and then
forced on board a vessel which carries him to Abyssinia, whence he is
certain never to return.
The Abuna departed from Suez the 20th of September; the beginning of
November he arrived at Jidda; in February 1745 he sailed from Jidda,
taking with him Abdelcader, now freed from prison; he arrived at Masuah
the 7th of March, and immediately sent an express to notify his arrival
to the king and queen, and to Ras Welled de l’Oul. Congratulations
upon the event were returned from each of them; they requested he would
immediately come to court; but this the Naybe refused to permit, till
he had first received his dues; and Yasous seemed inclined to pay no
more for him than what he had cost already.
The priests, and devout people in Tigré, were very desirous to free
the Abuna from his confinement in Masuah. They saw that the king was
not inclined to advance money, and all of them knew perfectly, that,
whatever face he put upon the matter, the Ras would not give an ounce
of gold to prevent the Abuna from staying there all his life. In this
exigency they applied to Janni, a Greek, living at Adowa, (of whom
I shall hereafter speak), a confidential servant and favourite of
Michael, and also well acquainted at Masuah, to see if he could get him
released by stratagem. Janni concerted the affair with the monks of
the monastery of Bizan, two of whom conducted the Abuna by night out
of the island of Masuah, and landed him safely in their monastery in
the wilderness, with the _myron_, or consecrated oil, in one hand, and
his missal, or liturgy, in the other. So far the escape was complete;
but unluckily no orders had been given for Theodorus, who accordingly
remained behind at Masuah.
The Naybe, exasperated at the Abuna’s flight, wrecked his vengeance on
poor Theodorus; he put him in irons, and threw him into close prison,
where he remained for two months. There was no remedy but paying
80 ounces of gold to the Naybe for his release; he might else have
remained there for ever.
The king, not a little surprised at these frequent insolences on the
part of the Naybe, began to inquire what could be the reason; for
he perfectly knew, not only Suhul Michael, the governor of Tigré,
but even the Baharnagash could reduce Masuah to nothing with their
little finger; and he was informed, that a strong friendship subsisted
between the Naybe and Suhul Michael, and that it was by relying on his
friendship that the Naybe adventured to treat the king’s servants, at
different times, in the manner he had done.
Yasous, desirous to verify this himself, and to dissolve the bands of
so unnatural a friendship, marched into Tigré with a considerable army.
Passing by Adowa, the residence of Suhul Michael, he was pleased with
the warlike appearance of this his feat of government, and the perfect
order and subordination that reigned there. Certain disorders and
tumults were said to prevail in the neighbouring province of Enderta
where Kasmati Woldo commanded. The savage people, called Azabo, living
at Azab, the low country below Enderta and the Dobas, (a nation of
_Shepherds_ near them, still more savage, if possible, than them) had
laid waste the districts that were next to their frontier, burning the
churches, and slaying the priests in the daily inroads which they made
into Abyssinia. All these things, bad enough indeed, were at this time
aggravated, as was thought, for two reasons; the first was to cast
an odium upon Kasmati Woldo, Michael’s great enemy, as incapable of
governing his province; the second, to prevent the king in his progress
to Masuah, as he openly professed his fixed intention was to punish the
Naybe with the utmost severity.
The protection of his subjects, therefore, from the savages, was
represented to the king as the most pressing service; and, marching
with his usual diligence straight to Enderta, he was met there by
Kasmati Woldo, an old experienced officer, who aiming at no preferment,
paying his tribute punctually, and having been constantly occupied in
repelling the incursions of the Pagans on the frontier, had not been at
court since the reign of Theophilus.
After receiving the necessary information about the country he intended
to enter, and taking Kasmati Woldo’s two sons with him, the king
descended into the low country of Dancali, once a petty Mahometan
kingdom, and friendly to Abyssinia, now a mixture of Galla and the
natives called Taltal. Without delay he pushed on to Azab, spreading
desolation through that little province, always desert enough from its
nature, though formerly, from its trade, one of the richest spots in
the world.
The king then turned to the right upon the Dobas, who, not expecting
an army of that strength, fled and left their whole cattle a prey to
Yasous and his soldiers; a greater number was scarce ever seen in
Abyssinia. The king now returned to Enderta, where he confirmed Kasmati
Woldo in his government with distinguished marks of favour; and he this
year again came back victorious to Gondar, leaving his campaign against
the Naybe for another season.
In passing by Adowa, a fray happened among the king’s troops and those
of Michael; several were killed on both sides; and, as the dispute
was between Tigré and Amhara, the two great divisions of the country,
it threatened to create a party-quarrel between the soldiers of one
division and those of the other. No notice was taken of this when
Yasous marched eastward; but, on his return, Michael begged the king
to interfere, and make peace between the two parties. To this Yasous
answered, That he did not think it worth his while, for they would make
peace themselves when they were tired of quarrelling.
Whether this was the motive of sending for Michael to Gondar, or
whether it was the story of the Naybe, or what else was the king’s
motive, we do not know; but, so soon as he was arrived in the capital,
he sent Kasmati Ephraim, and Shalaka Kefla, into Tigré, commanding
Michael’s attendance at Gondar. This Michael absolutely refused; he
pretended Kasmati Woldo had estranged the king’s affection from him,
and that Yasous had called him to Gondar now to put him to death,
upon a pretence of his soldiers quarrel with the king’s troops. This
refusal was repeated to Yasous, without any palliation whatever; and
he instantly marched from Gondar, and encamped upon the river Waar,
where he was reinforced a few days afterwards by Ras Welled de l’Oul,
whose intention was to persuade Michael to submission; for he had been
advised not to trust the king’s oath of forgivenness unless he had
likewise that of Welled de l’Oul.
The king’s readiness disconcerted Suhul Michael. Tho’ well armed and
appointed himself, as also an excellent general, he did not risk the
presenting himself against the king on a plain; for Yasous was much
beloved by the soldiers, and always very kind and liberal to them.
The mountain Samayat, though not the most inaccessible in Tigré, was a
place of great consequence and strength, when possessed by an army and
officer such as Michael. To this natural fortress he carried all his
valuable effects, occupied and obstructed all the avenues to it, and
resolved there to abide his fortune. The king, with his army, sat down
at the foot of the mountain; and, encircling it with troops, he ordered
it to be assaulted on four sides at once; on one, by Kasmati Ayo,
governor of Begemder; on the second, by Kasmati Waragna; the third, by
Kasmati Woldo; and the fourth, by Ras Welled de l’Oul. The king himself
went round about to every place, giving his orders, encouraging his
men, and fighting himself in the foremost ranks like a common soldier.
The mountain was at length carried, with much bloodshed on both sides,
and Michael was beat from every part of it but one, which, though not
strong enough to hold out against the king’s army, if well defended
could not be carried without great loss of men.
Here Michael desired to capitulate. But, before he left the mountain
and surrendered to the king, he desired that an officer of trust
might be sent to him, because he had then upon the mountain a large
collection of treasure, which he desired to keep for the king’s use,
otherwise it would be dissipated and lost in the hands of the common
soldiers. The Ras sent two confidential officers, who took from the
hands of Michael a prodigious sum of gold, the precise amount of which
is not named. He then descended the mountain, carrying, as is the
custom of the country for vanquished rebels, a stone upon his head, as
confessing himself guilty of a capital crime. A violent storm of rain
and wind prevented, for that day, his coming into the presence of the
king; and the devil, as the Abyssinians believe, began in that storm a
correspondence with him which continued many years; I myself have often
heard him vaunt of his having maintained, ever since that time, an
intercourse with St Michael the archangel.
On the morning of the 27th of December, Ras Welled de l’Oul ordered
Michael to attend him in the habit of a penitent; and, followed by his
companions in misfortune, (that part of his troops which was taken
on the mountain) and surrounded by a number of soldiers, with drums
beating and colours flying, he was carried into the king’s presence.
Ras Welled de l’Oul had, with difficulty, engaged the king’s promise
that he was not to put him to death. The good genius of Yasous and his
family was labouring by one last effort to save him. On seeing Michael
upon the ground, Yasous fell into a violent transport of rage, spurned
him with his foot, declaring he retracted his promise, and ordered him
to be carried out, and put to death before the door of his tent. Ras
Welled de l’Oul, Kasmati Waragna, Kasmati Woldo, and all the officers
of consideration, either of the court or army, now fell with their
faces upon the ground, crying to the king for mercy and forgivenness.
Yasous, if in his heart he did not relent, still was obliged to pardon
on such universal solicitation; and this he did, after making the
following observation, which soon after was looked on as a prophecy:
“I have pardoned that traitor at your instance, because I at all times
reward merit more willingly than I punish crimes; but I call you all to
witness, that I wash my hands before God to-day of all that innocent
blood Michael shall shed before he brings about the destruction of his
country, which I know in his heart he has been long meditating.”
I cannot help mentioning it as an extraordinary circumstance, that
at the time I was at Gondar, in the very height of Suhul Michael’s
tyranny, a man quarrelled with another who was a scribe, and accused
him before Michael of having recorded this speech of the king, as I
have now stated it, in a history that he had written of Yasous’s reign.
The book was produced, the passage was found and read; and I certainly
expected to have seen it torn to pieces, or hung upon a tree about
the author’s neck. On the contrary, all the Ras said was, “If what he
writes is true, wherein is the man to blame?” And turning with a grin
to Tecla Haimanout, one of the judges, he said, “Do you remember? I
do believe Yasous did say so.” The book was restored to the author,
and no more said of the matter, not even an order was given to erase
the passage. He had no objection to Yasous and to his whole race being
prophets; he had only taken a resolution that they should not be kings.
A general silence followed this speech of Yasous, instead of the
acclamations of joy usual in such cases. The king then ordered Ras
Welled de l’Oul to lead the army on to Gondar, which he did with
great pomp and military parade, while the king, who could not forget
his forebodings, retired to an island, there to fast some days in
consequence of a vow that he had made. This being finished, Yasous
returned to Gondar; and, as he was now in perfect peace throughout his
kingdom, he began again to decorate the apartments of his palace. A
large number of mirrors had arrived at this time, a present from the
Naybe of Masuah, who, after what had happened to his friend Michael,
began to feel a little uneasy about the fate of his island.
While Yasous was thus employed, news were sent him from Kasmati Ayo,
governor of Begemder, that he had beat the people of Lasta in a pitched
battle in their own country, had forced their strong-holds, dispersed
their troops, and received the general submission of the province,
which had been in rebellion since the time of Hatzè Socinios, that is,
above 100 years. Immediately after these news, came Ayo himself to
parade and throw his _unclean_ trophies of victory before the king,
and brought with him many of the principal people of Lasta to take the
oaths of allegiance to the king.
Yasous received the accounts of the success with great pleasure, and
still more so the oaths and submissions made to him. He then added
Lasta to the province of Begemder, and cloathed Ayo magnificently, as
well as all those noblemen that came with him from Lasta. The end of
this year was not marked with good fortune like the beginning. A plague
of locusts fell upon the country, and consumed every green thing, so
that a famine seemed to be inevitable, because, contrary to their
custom, they had attached themselves chiefly to the grain. This plague
is not so frequent in Abyssinia as the Jesuits have reported it to be.
These good fathers indeed bring the locusts upon the country, that, by
their pretended miracles, they may chace them away.
Michael had continued some time in prison, in the custody of Ras Welled
de l’Oul. But he was afterwards set at full liberty; and it was now
the 17th year of Yasous’s reign, when, on the 17th of September 1746,
at a great promotion of officers of state, Michael, by the nomination
of the king himself, was restored to his government of Tigré; and,
a few days after, he returned to that province. All his ancient
friends and troops flocked to him as soon as he appeared, to welcome
him upon an event looked upon by all as nearly miraculous. Nor did
Michael discourage that idea himself, but gave it to be understood,
among his most intimate friends, that a vision had allured him that
he was thenceforward under the immediate protection of St Michael the
archangel, with whom he was to consult on every emergency.
As soon as he had got a sufficient army together, the first thing he
did was to attack Kasmati Woldo, without any provocation whatever;
and, after beating him in two battles, he drove him from his province,
and forced him to take refuge among the Galla, where, soon after, by
employing small presents, he procured him to be murdered; the ordinary
fate of those who seek protection among those faithless barbarians.
It will seem extraordinary that the king, who had such recent
experience of both, the one distinguished for his duty, the other for
his obstinate rebellion, should yet tamely suffer his old and faithful
servant to fall before a man whom in his heart he so much mistrusted.
But the truth is, all Michael’s danger was past the moment he got
free access to the king and queen, though he was deservedly esteemed
to be the ablest soldier in Abyssinia of his time, he was infinitely
more capable in intrigues, and private negociations at court, than
he was in the field, being a pleasant and agreeable speaker in common
conversation; a powerful and copious orator at council; his language,
whether Amharic or Tigré, (but above all the latter) correct and
elegant above any man’s at court; steady to the measures he adopted,
but often appearing to give them up easily, and without passion, when
he saw, by the circumstances of the times, he could not prevail: though
violent in the pursuit of riches, when in his own province, where he
spared no means nor man to procure them, no sooner had he come to
Gondar than he was lavish of his money to extreme; and indeed he set no
value upon it farther than as it served to corrupt men to his ends.
When he surrendered his treasure at the mountain Samayat, he is said to
have divided it into several parcels with his own hand. The greatest
share fell to the king, who thought he had got the whole; but the
officers who received it, and saw different quantities destined for the
Iteghé and Ras Welled de l’Oul, took care to convey them their share,
for fear of making powerful enemies. Kasmati Waragna had his part;
and even Kasmati Woldo, though Michael soon after plundered and slew
him. All Gondar were his friends, because all that capital was bribed
on this occasion. It was gold he only lent them, to resume it, (as he
afterwards did) with great interest, at a proper time.
It still remained in the king’s breast to wipe off his defeat at
Sennaar, as he had, upon every other occasion, been victorious; and
even in this, he still flattered himself he had not been beat in
person. He set out again upon another expedition to Atbara; instead
of coasting along the Dender, he descended along the Tacazzé into
Atbara, where, finding no resistance among the Shepherds, he attached
himself in particular to the tribe called Daveina, which, in the former
expedition, had joined Welled de l’Oul’s army. Upon the first news of
his approach they had submitted; but, notwithstanding all promises and
pretences of peace, he fell upon them unawares, and almost extirpated
the tribe.
Suhul Michael, while the king was thus occupied in the frontier of his
province, did every thing that a faithful, active subject could do.
He furnished him constantly with the best intelligence, supplied him
with the provisions he wanted, and made, from time to time, strong
detachments of troops to reinforce him, and to secure such posts as
were most commodious and important in case of a retreat becoming
necessary.
Yasous, who had succeeded to his wish, was fully sensible of the value
of such services, and sent, therefore, for Michael, commanding his
attendance at Gondar. There was no fear, no hesitation now, as before
in the affair of Samayat. He decamped upon the first notice, even
before the rainy season was over, and arrived at Gondar on August 30th
1747, bringing with him plenty of gold; few soldiers, indeed, but those
picked men, and in better order, than the king had ever yet seen troops.
It was plain now to everybody, that nothing could stop Michael’s
growing fortune. He alone seemed not sensible of this. He was humbler
and less assuming than before. Those whom he had first bribed he
continued still to bribe, and added as many new friends to that list
as he thought could serve him. He pretended to no precedency or
pre-eminence at court, not even such as was due to the rank of his
place, but behaved as a stranger that had no fixed abode among them.
One day, dining with Kasmati Geta, the queen’s brother, who was
governor of Samen, and drinking out of a common-glass decanter called
Brulhé, when it is the privilege and custom of the governor of Tigré
to use a gold cup, being asked, Why he did not claim his privilege? he
said, All the gold he had was in heaven, alluding to the name of the
mountain Samayat, where his gold was surrendered, which word signifies
Heaven. The king, who liked this kind of jests, of which Michael was
full, on hearing this, sent him a gold cup, with a note written and
placed within it, “Happy are they who place their riches in heaven;”
which Michael directed immediately to be engraved by one of the Greeks
upon the cup itself. What became of it I know not; I often wished
to have found it out, and purchased it. I saw it the first day he
dined, after coming from council, at his return from Tigré, after the
execution of Abba Salama; but I never observed it at Serbraxos, nor
since. I heard, indeed, a Greek say he had sent it by Ozoro Esther, as
a present to a church of St Michael in Tigré.
Enderta was now given him in addition to the province of Tigré, and,
soon after, Siré and all the provinces between the Tacazzé and the Red
Sea; so he was now master of near half of Abyssinia.
The rest of this king’s reign was spent at home in his usual amusements
and occupations. Several small expeditions were made by his command,
under Palambaras Selassé, and other officers, to harrass the Shepherds,
whom he conquered almost down to Suakem. His ravages, however, had
been confined to the peninsula of Atbara, and had not ever passed to
the eastward of the Tacazzé, but he had impoverished all that country.
After this, by his orders, the Baharnagash, and other officers, entered
that division called Derkin, between the Mareb and the Atbara, and,
still further, between the Mareb and the mountains, in a part of it
called Ajam. In this country Hassine Wed Ageeb was defeated by the
Baharnagash with great slaughter; and the Shekh of Jibbel Musa, one of
the most powerful of the Shepherds, was taken prisoner by Palambaras
Selassé, without resistance, and carried, with his wife, his family,
and cattle, in triumph to Gondar, where, having sworn allegiance to the
king, he was kindly treated, and sent home with presents, and every
thing that had been taken from him.
This year, being the 24th of Yasous’s reign, he was taken ill, and died
on the 21st day of June 1753, after a very short illness. As he was but
a young man, and of a strong constitution, there was some suspicion he
died by poison given him by the queen’s relations, who were desirous to
secure another minority rather than serve under a king, who, by every
action, shewed he was no longer to be led or governed by any, but least
of all by them.
Yasous was married very young to a lady of noble family in Amhara,
by whom he had two sons, Adigo and Aylo. But their mother pretending
to a share of her husband’s government, and to introduce her friends
at court, so hurt Welleta Georgis the Iteghé, or queen-regent, that
she prevailed on the king to banish both the mother and sons to the
mountain of Wechné.
In order to prevent such interference for the future, the Iteghé
took a step, the like of which had never before been attempted in
Abyssinia. It was to bring a wife to Yasous from a race of Galla. Her
name was Wobit, daughter of Amitzo, to whom Bacuffa had once fled when
he escaped from the mountain before he was king, and had been kindly
entertained there. Her family was of the tribe of Edjow, and the
division of Toluma, that is, of the southern Galla upon the frontiers
of Amhara. They were esteemed the politest, that is, the least
barbarous of the name. But it was no matter, they were Galla, and that
was enough. Between them and Abyssinia, oceans of blood had been shed,
and strong prejudices imbibed against them, never to be effaced by
marriages. She was, however, brought to Gondar, christened by the name
of Bessabéc, and married to Yasous: By her he had a son, named Joas,
who succeeded his father.
[Illustration]
JOAS.
From 1753 to 1768.
_This Prince a Favourer of the Galla his Relations--Great
Dissentions on bringing them to Court--War of Begemder--Ras
Michael brought to Gondar--Defeats Ayo--Mariam Barea refuses to
be accessary to his Death--King favours Waragna Fasil--Battle
of Azazo--King Assassinated in his Palace._
UPON the first news of the death of king Yasous, the old officers and
servants of the crown, remembering the tumults and confusion that
happened in Gondar at his accession, repaired to the palace from their
different governments, each with a small well-regulated body of troops,
sufficient to keep order, and strengthen the hands of Ras Welled de
l’Oul, whom they all looked upon as the father of his country. The
first who arrived was Kasmati Waragna of Damot; then Ayo of Begemder,
and very soon after, though at much the greatest distance, Suhul
Michael, governor of Tigré. These three entered the palace, with
Welled de l’Oul at their head, and received the young king Joas from
the hands of the Iteghé his grandmother, and proclaimed him king, with
the usual formalities, without any opposition or tumult whatever.
A number of promotions immediately followed; but it was observed with
great discontent by many, that the Iteghé’s family and relations were
grown now so numerous, that they were sufficient to occupy all the
great offices of state without the participation of any of the old
families, which were the strength of the crown in former reigns; and
that now no preferment was to be expected unless through some relation
to the queen-mother.
Welled Hawarayat, son to Michael governor of Tigré, had married Ozoro
Altash, the queen’s third daughter, almost a child; and long before
that, Netcho of Tcherkin had married Ozoro Esther, likewise very
young; and Ras Michael, old as he was, had made known his pretensions
to Ozoro Welleta Israel, the queen’s second daughter, immediately
younger than Ozoro Esther. These proposals, from an old man, had been
received with great contempt and derision by Welleta Israel, and she
persevered so long in the derision of Michael’s courtship, that it left
strong impressions on the hard heart of that old warrior, which shewed
themselves after in very disagreeable consequences to that lady all the
time Michael was in power.
The first that broke the peace of this new reign was Nanna Georgis,
chief of one of the clans of Agows of Damot. Engaged in old feuds with
the Galla on the other side of the Nile, the natural enemies of his
country, he could not see, but with great displeasure, a Galla such
as Kasmati Waragna, however worthy, governor of Damot, and capable,
therefore, of over-running the whole province in a moment, by calling
his Pagan countrymen from the other side.
Waragna, though this was in his power, knew the measure was unpopular.
Kasmati Eshté was the queen’s brother, and governor of Ibaba, a royal
residence, which has a large territory and salary annexed to it. When,
therefore, at council, he had complained of the injury done to him by
Nanna Georgis, he refused the taking upon him the redressing these
injuries, and punishing the Agows, unless Kasmati Eshté was joined in
the commission with him.
The reason of this was, as I have often before observed, that, as the
Agows are those that pay the greatest tribute in gold to the king,
and furnish the capital with all sorts of provisions, any calamity
happening in their country is severely felt by the inhabitants of
Gondar; and the knowledge of this occasions a degree of presumption and
confidence in the Agows, of which they have been very often the dupes.
This, indeed, happened at this very instant. For Waragna and Eshtè
marched from Gondar, and with them a number of veteran troops of the
king’s household of Maitsha, depending on Ibaba; and this army, without
bringing one Galla from the other side of the Nile, gave Nanna Georgis
and his Agows such an overthrow that his clan was nearly extirpated,
and many of the principal of that nation slain.
Nanna Georgis, who chiefly was aimed at as the author of this revolt,
escaped, with great difficulty, wounded, from the field; and the feud
which had long subsisted between Waragna’s family and the race of
the Agows, received great addition that day, and came down to their
posterity, as we shall soon see by what happened in Waragna’s son’s
time at the bloody and fatal battle of Banja.
The next affair that called the attention of government, was a
complaint brought by the monks of Magwena, a ridge of rocks of but
small extent not far from Tcherkin, the estate of Kasmati Netcho.
These mountains, for a great part of the year, almost calcined under a
burning sun, have, in several months, violent and copious showers of
rain, which, received in vast caves and hollows of the mountain, and
out of the reach of evaporation, are means of creating and maintaining
all sorts of verdure and all scenes of pleasure, in the hot season of
the year, when the rains do not fall elsewhere; and as the rocks have
a considerable elevation above the level of the plain, they are at no
season infected with those feverish disorders that lay the low country
waste.
Netcho was a man of pleasure, and he thought, since the monks, by
retiring to rocks and deserts, meant thereby to subject themselves to
hardship and mortification, that these delightful and flowery scenes,
the groves of Magwena, were much more suited to the enjoyment of
happiness with the young and beautiful Ozoro Esther, than for any set
of men, who by their austerities were at constant war with the flesh.
Upon these principles, which it would be very difficult for the monks
themselves to refute, he took possession of the mountain Magwena, and
of those bowers that, though in possession of saints, did not seem to
have been made for the solitary pleasures of one sex only. This piece
of violence was, by the whole body of monks, called Sacrilege. Violent
excommunications, and denunciations of divine vengeance, were thundered
out against Kasmati Netcho. An army was sent against him; he was
defeated and taken prisoner, and confined upon a mountain in Walkayt,
where soon after he died, but not before the Iteghè had shewn her
particular mark of displeasure, by taking her daughter Ozoro Esther,
his wife, from him, that she, too, and her only son Confu, might not
be involved in the monk’s excommunications, and the imputed crime of
sacrilege.
At this time died Kasmati Waragna, full of years and glory, having,
though a stranger, preserved his allegiance to the last, and more than
once saved the state by his wisdom, bravery, and activity. He is almost
a single example in their history, of a great officer, governor of a
province, that never was in rebellion, and a remarkable instance of
Bacuffa’s penetration, who, from a single conversation with him, while
engaged in the vilest employment, chose him as capable of the greatest
offices, in which he usefully served both his son and grandson.
Soon after, Ayo governor of Begemder, an older officer still than
Waragna, arrived in Gondar, and resigned his government into the
queen’s hands. This resignation was received, because it was understood
that it was directly to be conferred upon his son Mariam Barea, by far
the most hopeful young Abyssinian nobleman of his time. Another mark
of favour, soon followed, perhaps was the occasion of this. Ozoro
Esther, the very young widow of Netcho, was married, very much against
her own consent, to the young governor of Begemder, and this marriage
was crowned with the universal applause of court, town, and country;
for Mariam Barea possessed every virtue that could make a great man
popular; and it was impossible to see Ozoro Esther, and hear her speak,
without being attached to her for ever after.
Still the complaint remained, that there was no promotion, no
distinction of merit, but through some relation to the queen-mother;
and the truth of this was soon so apparent, and the discontent it
occasioned so universal, that nothing but the great authority Ras
Welled de l’Oul, the Iteghé’s brother, possessed, could hinder this
concealed fire from breaking out into a flame.
The queen, mother to Joas, was Ozoro Wobit, a Galla. Upon Joas’s
accession to the throne, therefore, a large body of Galla, said to be
1200 horse, were sent as a present to the young king as the portion
of his mother. A number of private persons had accompanied these;
part from curiosity, part from desire of preferment, and part from
attachment to those that were already gone before them. These last were
formed into a body of infantry of 600 men, and the command given to a
Galla, whose name was Woosheka; so that the regency, in the person of
the queen, seemed to have gained fresh force from the minority of the
young king Joas, as yet perfectly subject to his mother.
There were four bodies of household troops absolutely devoted to the
king’s will. One of these, the Koccob horse, was commanded by a young
Armenian not 30 years of age. He had been left in Abyssinia by his
father in Yasous’s time, and care had been taken of him by the Greeks.
Yasous had distinguished him by several places while a mere youth, and
employed him in errands to Masuah and Arabia, by which he became known
to Ras Michael. Upon the death of Yasous, the Iteghè put him about her
grandson Joas, as Baalomal, which is, _gentleman of the bed-chamber_,
or, _companion to the king_. He then became Asaleffa el Camisha, which
means _groom of the stole_, but at last was promoted to the great
place of Billetana Gueta Dakakin, _chamberlain_, or _master of the
household_, the third post in government, by which he took place of all
the governors of provinces while in Gondar.
There is no doubt Joas would have made him Ras, if he had reigned as
long as his father. Besides his own language, he understood Turkish,
Arabic, and Malabar, and was perfect master of the Tigré. But his
great excellence was his knowledge of Amharic, which he was thought to
speak as chastely and elegantly as Ras Michael himself. He is reported
likewise to have possessed a species of jurisprudence, whence derived
I never knew, which so pleased the Abyssinians, that the judges often
requested his attendance on the king; at which time he sat at the head
of the table, where it is supposed the king would place himself did he
appear personally in judgment, (which, as it may be learned from divers
places in this history, he never does); certain mornings in the week,
therefore, he sat publicly in the market-place, and gave judgment soon
after the break of day.
I saw this young man with his father at Loheia. He understood no
European language; was just then returned from India, and had a
considerable quantity of diamonds, and other precious stones, to
sell. He spoke with tears in his eyes of Abyssinia, from which he was
banished, and urged that I should take him there with me. But I had
too much at stake to charge myself with the consequences of anybody’s
behaviour but my own, and therefore refused it.
The great favour the Galla were in at court encouraged many of their
countrymen to follow them; and, by the king’s desire, two of his uncles
were sent for, and they not only came, but brought with them a thousand
horse. These were two young men, brothers of the queen Wobit, just now
dead. The eldest was named Brulhé, the younger Lubo. In an instant,
nothing was heard in the palace but Galla. The king himself affected to
speak nothing else. He had entirely intrusted the care of his person
to his two uncles; and, both being men of intrigue, they thought
themselves sufficiently capable to make a party, support it, and place
the king at the head of it; and this they effected as soon as it was
conceived, whilst the Abyssinians saw, with the utmost detestation and
abhorrence, a Gallan and inimical government erected in the very heart
or metropolis of their country.
Woodage had been long governor of Amhara. He had succeeded Palambaras
Duré in Bacuffa’s time, when he had been promoted to the dignity of
Ras.
These two were heads of the only great families in Amhara, who took
that government as it were by rotation. Woodage, in one of the
excursions into Atbara, had made an Arab’s, or a Shepherd’s daughter,
prisoner, baptized her, and lived with her as his mistress. The
passion Woodage bore to this fair slave was not, however, reciprocal.
She had fixed her affections upon his eldest son, and their frequent
familiarities at last brought about the discovery. This very much
shocked Woodage; but, instead of having recourse to public justice, he
called his brothers, and some other heads of his family before him, and
examined into the fact with them, desiring his son to defend himself.
The crime was clearly proved in all its circumstances. Upon which
Woodage, by his own authority, condemned his son to death; and not only
so, but caused his sentence to be put in execution, by hanging the
young man over a beam in his own house. As for the slave, he released
her, as not being bound to any return of affection to him, from whom
she had only received evil, and been deprived of her natural liberty.
It seems this claim of _patria potestas_ was new in Abyssinia; and
Bacuffa took it so ill, that he deprived Woodage of his office, and
banished him to Amhara, then governed by Palambaras Duré. To this loss
of influence another circumstance contributed. He was a relation of
Yasous’s first wife, who, by the Iteghé’s intrigues, had been sent
with her two sons to the mountain of Wechné, and Joas, a young son of
Yasous, preferred in their places.
It happened that Palambaras Duré died; and as the succession fell
regularly upon the unpopular Woodage, the king’s uncle, Lubo obtained
a promise of the government of Amhara for himself. All Gondar was
shocked at this strange choice: Amitzo and his Edjow were already upon
the southern frontiers of that province, domiciled there; and there
was no doubt but this nomination would put Amhara into his possession
for ever. All the inhabitants of Gondar were ready to run to their
arms to oppose this appointment of the king; and it was thought that,
underhand, the Iteghè fomented this dissatisfaction. The king, however,
terrified by the violent resentment of the populace, at the instance of
Ras Welled de l’Oul, recalled his nomination.
At this time Michael, who saw the consequence of these disputes, but
abstained from taking any share, because he knew that both parties were
promoting his interest by their mutual animosity, came to Gondar in
great pomp, upon an honourable errand.
Baady, son of l’Oul, king of Funge, or, as they are called in the
Abyssinian annals, Noba[96], who had defeated Yasous at Sennaar, after
a tyrannical and bloody reign of thirty-three years, was deposed in
1764 by Nasser his son, whom his minister Shekh Adelan, with his
brother Abou Kalec, governor of Kordofan, had put in his place; and
Baady had fled to Suhul Michael, whose fame was extended all over
Atbara. Michael received him kindly, promised him his best services
with Joas, and that he would march in person to Sennaar, and reinstate
him with an army, if the king should so command.
Michael conducted him into the presence of the king, where, in a
manner unbecoming a sovereign, and which Joas’s successor would not
have permitted, he kissed the ground, and declared himself a vassal
of Abyssinia. The king assigned him a large revenue, and put him in
possession of the government of Ras el Feel upon the frontier of
Sennaar, where Ras Welled de l’Oul advised him to wait patiently till
the dissensions that then prevailed at court were quieted, when Michael
should have orders to reinstate him in his kingdom. This was a wise
counsel, but he to whom it was given was not wise, and therefore did
not follow it. After some short stay at Ras el Feel he was decoyed from
this place of refuge by the intrigues of Adelan, and brought to trust
himself in Atbara, where he was betrayed and taken prisoner by Welled
Hassen, Shekh of Teawa, and murdered by him in Teawa privately, as we
shall hereafter see, two years after his flight from Gondar.
At this time, Ras Welled de l’Oul’s death was a signal for all parties
to engage. Nothing had withheld them but his prudence and authority;
and from that time began a scene of civil blood, which has continued
ever since, was in its full vigour at the time when I was in Abyssinia,
and without any prospect that it would ever have an end.
The great degree of power to which the brothers and their Galla
arrived; the great affection the king shewed to them, owing to their
having early infected him with their bloody and faithless principles,
gave great alarm to the queen and her relations, whose influence they
were every day diminishing. The last stroke, the death of Welled
de l’Oul, seemed to be a fatal one, and to threaten the entire
dissolution of her power. In order to counterbalance this, they
associated to their party and council Mariam Barea, who had lately
married Ozoro Esther, and was in possession of the second province
in the state for riches and for power, and greatly increased in its
importance by the officer that commanded it. Upon the death of Welled
de l’Oul, the principal fear the party of the Galla had was, that
Mariam Barea should be brought to Gondar as Ras. The union between him
and Kasmati Eshtè, formerly as strong by inclination as now it was by
blood, put them in terror for their very existence, and a stroke was to
be struck at all hazards that was to separate these interests for ever.
Eshte, upon taking possession of the province of Damot, found the
Djawi, established upon the frontiers of the province, very much
inclined to revolt. Notwithstanding peace had been established among
the Agows ever since Nanna Georgis had been defeated at the last
battle, the Galla had still continued to rob and distress them,
contrary to the public faith that had been pledged to them.
Eshte was too honest a man to suffer this; but the truth was, the Djawi
had felt the advantage of having a man like the late Waragna governor
of Damot; and they wanted, by all means, to reduce the ministers to the
necessity of making that command hereditary in his family, by Fasil his
son being preferred to succeed him.
This Fasil, whom I shall hereafter call Waragna Fasil, a name which
was given to distinguish him from many other Fasils in the army, was a
man then about twenty-two, whom Eshté had kept about him in a private
station, and had lately given him a subaltern command among his own
countrymen, the Djawi of Damot. From the services that he had then
rendered, it was expected a greater preferment was to follow.
The insolence of the Djawi had come to such a pitch that they had
offered Eshté battle; but they had fled with very little resistance,
and been driven over the Nile to their countrymen whence they came.
Eshté, roused from his indolence, now shewed himself the gallant
soldier that he really was. He crossed the Nile at a place never
attempted before; and though he lost a considerable number of men
in the passage, yet that disadvantage was more than compensated by
the advantage it gave him of falling upon the Galla unexpectedly. He
therefore destroyed, or dispersed several tribes of them, possessed
himself of their crops, drove off their cattle, wives, and children,
and obliged them to sue for peace on his own terms; and then repassed
the Nile, re-establishing the Djawi, after submission, in their ancient
possessions.
Upon news of Welled de l’Oul’s death, and the known intention of the
queen that Eshté should succeed him in the office of Ras, he was
mustering his soldiers to march to Gondar: Damot, the Agows, Goutto,
and Maitsha, all readily joined him from every quarter; and Waragna
Fasil had been sent to bring in the Djawi with the rest. Eshtè had
marched by slow journies from Buré, slenderly attended, to arrive at
Goutto the place of rendezvous; and, being come to Fagitta, in his
way thither, he encamped upon a plain there, near to the church of St
George.
It was in the evening, when news were brought him that the whole Djawi
had come out, to a man, from goodwill, to attend him to Gondar. This
mark of kindness had very much pleased him; and he looked upon it
as a grateful return for his mild treatment of them after they were
vanquished. A stool was set in the shade, without a small house where
he then was lodged, that he might see the troops pass; when Hubna
Fasil, a Galla, who commanded them, availing himself of the privilege
of approaching near, always customary upon these occasions, run him
through the body with a lance, and threw him dead upon the ground. The
rest of the Galla fell immediately upon all his attendants, put them to
flight, and proclaimed Waragna Fasil governor of Damot and the Agows.
This intelligence was immediately sent to their countrymen, Brulhé and
Lubo, at Gondar, who prevailed upon the king to confirm Waragna Fasil
in his command, though purchased with the murder of the worthiest man
in his dominions, who was his own uncle, brother to the Iteghè; and
this was thought to more than counterbalance the accession of strength
the queen’s party had received from the marriage of Ozoro Esther with
Mariam Barea.
In critical times like these, the greatest events are produced from the
smallest accidents. Ayo, father to Mariam Barea, had always been upon
bad terms with Michael. It was at first emulation between two great
men; but, after Ayo had assisted the king in taking Michael prisoner
at the mountain Samayat, this emulation had degenerated into perfect
hatred on the part of Michael.
Just before Kasmati Ayo had resigned Begemder to his son, and retired
to private life, two servants of Michael had fled with two swords,
which they used to carry before him, claiming the protection of Kasmati
Ayo. Michael had claimed them before the king, who, loath to determine
between the two, not being at that time instigated by Galla, had
accepted the proposal of Michael to have the matter of right tried
before the judges; but, upon his resignation of the province, and
retiring, the thing had blown over and been forgotten.
Soon after this accession of Mariam Barea, Michael intimated to him
the order the king had given that the judges should try the matter
of difference between them. Mariam Barea refused this, and upbraided
Michael with meanness and prostitution of the dignity he bore, to
consent to submit himself to the venal judgment of weak old men, whose
consciences were hackneyed in prejudice or partiality, and always
known to be under the influence of party. He put Suhul Michael in
mind also, that, being both of them the king’s lieutenant-generals,
representatives of his person in the provinces they governed, noble by
birth, and soldiers by profession, they had no superior but God and
their sovereign, therefore it was below them to acknowledge or receive
any judgment between them unless from God, by an appeal to the sword,
or from the king, by a sentence intimated to them by a proper officer;
that Suhul Michael might choose either of these manners of deciding the
difference as should seem best unto him; and if he chose the latter,
of abiding by the sentence of the king, he would then restore him the
swords upon the king’s first command, but he despised the judges, and
disowned their jurisdiction.
This spirited answer was magnified into the crime of disobedience and
rebellion. Michael pursued it no further. He knew it was in good hands,
which, when once the matter was set agoing, would never let it drop.
Accordingly, to every one’s surprise but Michael’s, a proclamation
was made, that the king had deprived Mariam Barea of his government
for disobedience, and had given it to Kasmati Brulhé his uncle, now
governor of Begemder.
All Abyssinia was in a ferment at this promotion. The number, power,
and vicinity of that race of Galla being considered, this was but
another way of giving the richest and strongest barrier of Abyssinia
into the hands of his hereditary and bloody enemy. There could be no
doubt, indeed, but that, as soon as Brulhé should have taken possession
of his government, it would be instantly over-run by the united force
of that savage and Pagan nation; and there was nothing afterwards to
avert danger from the metropolis, for the boundaries of Begemder reach
within a very short day’s journey of Gondar.
Mariam Barea, one of the noblest in point of birth in the country where
he lived, setting every private consideration aside, was too good a
citizen to suffer a measure so pernicious to take place quietly in his
time, while the province was under his command. But, besides this,
he considered himself as degraded and materially hurt both in honour
and in interest, and very sensibly felt the affront of being, himself
and his kindred, subjected to a race of Pagans whom he had so often
overthrown in the field.
The king’s army marched, under the command of his uncle Brulhé, to take
possession of his government; it was with much difficulty, indeed, that
Joas could be kept from appearing in person, but he was left under the
inspection and tuition of his uncle Lubo, at Gondar. Brulhé made very
slow advances; his army several times assembled, as often disbanded
of itself; and near a year was spent before he could move from his
camp on the lake Tzana, with a force capable of shewing or maintaining
itself in Begemder, from the frontiers of which he was not half a day’s
journey.
Mariam Barea remained all this time inactive in Begemder, attending to
the ordinary duties of his office, with a perfect contempt of Brulhé
and his proceedings. But, in the interim, he left no means untried
to pacify the king, and dissuade him from a measure he saw would be
ruinous to the state in general.
Mariam Barea, though young, had the prudence and behaviour of a man
of advanced years. He was esteemed, without comparison, the bravest
soldier and best general in the kingdom, except old Suhul Michael, his
hereditary rival and enemy. But his manners were altogether different
from those of Michael. He was open, chearful, and unreserved; liberal,
even to excess, but not from any particular view of gaining reputation
by it; as moderate in the use of victory as indefatigable to obtain it;
temperate in all his pleasures; easily brought to forgive, and that
forgivenness always sincere; a steady observer of his word, even in
trifles; and distinguished for two things very uncommon in Abyssinia,
regularity in his devotions, and constancy to one wife, which never was
impeached. In his last remonstrance, after many professions of his
duty and obedience, he put the king in mind, that, at his investiture,
“The laws of the country imposed upon him an oath which he took in
presence of his majesty, and, after receiving the holy sacrament, that
he was not to suffer any Galla in Begemder, but rather, if needful, die
with sword in hand to prevent it; that he considered the contravening
that oath as a deliberate breach of the allegiance which he owed to God
and to his sovereign, and of the trust reposed in him by his country;
that the safety of the princes of the royal family, sequestered upon
the mountain of Wechné, depended upon the observance of this oath;
that otherwise they would be in constant danger of being extirpated
by Pagans, as they had already nearly been in former ages, at two
different times, upon the rocks Damo and Geshen; he begged the king,
if, unfortunately, he could not be reconciled to him, to give his
command to Kasmati Geta, Kasmati Eusebius, or any Abyssinian nobleman,
in which case he would immediately resign, and retire to private life
with his old father.”
He concluded by saying, that, “As he had formed a resolution, he
thought it his duty to submit it to the king; that, if his majesty
was resolved to march and lead the army himself, he would retire till
he was stopt by the frontiers of the Galla, and the farthest limits
of Begemder; and, so far from molesting the army in their route, the
king might be assured, that, though his own men should be straitened,
abundance of every kind of provision and refreshment should be left in
his majesty’s route. But if, contrary to his wish, troops of Galla,
commanded by a Galla, should come to take possession of his province,
he would fight them at the well of Fernay[97], before one Galla should
drink there, or advance a pike-length into Begemder.”
This declaration was, by orders of Ras Michael, entered into the
Deftar, and written in letters of gold, after Mariam Barea’s death, no
doubt at the instigation of Ozoro Esther, jealous for the reputation
of her dead husband. It is intitled, _the dutiful declaration of the
governor of Begemder_; and is signed by two Umbares, or judges. Whether
the original was so or not, I cannot say.
The return made to this by the king was of the harshest kind, full of
taunts and scoffs, and presumptuous confidence; announcing the speedy
arrival of _Brulhé_, as to a certain victory; and, to shew what further
assistance he trusted in, he ordered Ras Michael to be proclaimed
governor of Samen, the province on the Gondar side of the Tacazzé, that
no obstacle might be left in the way of that general from Tigré, if it
should be resolved upon to call him.
In Abyssinia there is a kind of glass bottle, very light, and of the
size, shape, and strength of a Florence wine-flask; only the neck is
wider, like that of our glass decanters, twisted for ornament sake,
and the lips of it folded back, such as we call cannon-mouthed. These
are made at Trieste on the Adriatic; and thousands of packages of
these are brought from Arabia to Gondar, where they are in use for
all liquors, which are clear enough to bear the glass, such as wine
and spirits. They are very thin and fragil, and are called _brulhé_.
Mariam Barea, provoked at being so undervalued as he was in the king’s
message, returned only for answer, “Still the king had better take my
advice, and not send his _brulhé’s_ here; they are but weak, and the
rocks about Begemder hard; at any rate, they do right to move slowly,
otherwise they might break by the way.”
As soon as this defiance was reported to the king and his counsellors
all was in a flame, and orders given to march immediately. The whole
of the king’s household, consisting of 8000 veteran troops, were
ordered to join the army of Brulhé. This, tho’ it added to the display
of the army, contributed nothing to the real strength of it; for all,
excepting the Galla, were resolved neither to shed their own blood nor
that of their brethren, under the banners of so detested a leader.
This was not unknown to Mariam Barea; but neither the advantage
of the ground, the knowledge of Brulhé’s weakness, nor any other
consideration, could induce him to take one step, or harrass his enemy,
out of his own province; nor did he suffer a musket to be fired, or a
horse to charge, till Brulhé’s van was drawn up on the brink of the
well Fernay. After he had placed the horse of the province of Lasta
opposite to the Edjow Galla, against whom his design was, the armies
joined, and the king’s troops immediately gave way. The Edjow, however,
engaged fiercely and in great earnest with the horse of Lasta, an enemy
fully as cruel and savage as themselves, but much better horsemen,
better armed, and better soldiers. The moment the king’s troops turned
their backs, the trumpets from Mariam Barea’s army forbade the pursuit;
while the rest of the Begemder horse, who knew the intention of their
general, surrounded the Edjow, and cut them to pieces, though valiantly
fighting to the last man.
Brulhé fell, among the herd of his countrymen, not distinguished by any
action of valour. Mariam Barea had given the most express orders to
take him alive; or, if that could not be, to let him escape; but by no
means to kill him. But a menial servant of his, more willing to revenge
his master’s wrongs than adopt his moderation, forced his way through
the crowd of Galla, where he saw Brulhé fighting; and, giving him two
wounds through his body with a lance, left him dead upon the field,
bringing away his horse along with him to his master as a token of his
victory. Mariam Barea, upon hearing that Brulhé was dead, foresaw in a
moment what would infallibly be the consequence, and exclaimed in great
agitation, “Michael and all the army of Tigré will march against me
before autumn.”
He was not in this a false prophet; for no sooner was Brulhé’s defeat
and death known, than the king, from resentment, fear the fatal ruler
of weak minds, the constant instigation of Lubo, and the remnant of
Brulhé’s party, declared there was no safety but in Ras Michael.
An express was therefore immediately sent to him, commanding his
attendance, and conferring upon him the office of Ras, by which he
became invested with supreme power, both civil and military. This was
an event Michael had long wished for. He had nearly as long foreseen
that it must happen, and would involve both king and queen, and their
respective parties, equally in destruction; but he had not spent his
time merely in reflection, he had made every preparation possible,
and was ready. So soon then as he received the king’s orders, he
prepared to march from Adowa with 26,000 men, all the best soldiers in
Abyssinia, about 10,000 of whom were armed with firelocks.
It happened that two Azages, and several other great officers, were
sent to him into Tigré with these orders, and to invest him with the
government of Samen. Upon their mentioning the present situation of
affairs, Michael sharply reflected upon the king’s conduct, and that
of those who had counselled him, which must end in the ruin of his
family and the state in general. He highly extolled Mariam Barea as the
only man in Abyssinia that knew his duty, and had courage to persevere
in it. As for himself, being the king’s servant, he would obey his
commands, whatever they were, faithfully, and to the letter; but, as
holding now the first place in council, he must plainly tell him the
ruin of Mariam Barea would be speedily and infallibly followed by that
of his country.
After this declaration, Michael decamped with his army encumbered by no
baggage, not even provisions, women, or tents, nor useless beasts of
burden. His soldiers, attentive only to the care of their arms, lived
freely and licentiously upon the miserable countries through which they
passed, and which they laid wholly waste as if belonging to an enemy.
He advanced, by equal, steady, and convenient marches, in diligence,
but not in haste. Not content with the subsistence of his troops,
he laid a composition of money upon all those districts within a
day’s march of the place through which he passed; and, upon this not
being readily complied with, he burnt the houses to the ground, and
slaughtered the inhabitants. Woggora, the granary of Gondar, full of
rich large towns and villages, was all on fire before him; and that
capital was filled with the miserable inhabitants, stript of every
thing, flying before Ras Michael as before an army of Pagans. The
king’s understanding was now restored to him for an instant; he saw
clearly the mischief his warmth had occasioned, and was truly sensible
of the rash step he had taken by introducing Michael. But the dye was
cast; repentance was no longer in season; his all was at stake, and he
was tied to abide the issue.
Michael, with his army in order of battle, approached Gondar with a
very warlike appearance. He descended from the high lands of Woggora
into the valleys which surround the capital, and took possession of the
rivers Kahha and Angrab, which run through these valleys, and which
alone supply Gondar with water. He took post at every entrance into the
town, and every place commanding those entrances, as if he intended to
besiege it. This conduct struck all degrees of people with terror, from
the king and queen down to the lowest inhabitant. All Gondar passed
an anxious night, fearing a general massacre in the morning; or that
the town would be plundered, or laid under some exorbitant ransom,
capitation, or tribute.
But this was not the real design of Michael; he intended to terrify,
but to do no more. He entered Gondar early in the morning, and did
homage to the king in the most respectful manner. He was invested with
the charge of Ras by Joas himself; and from the palace, attended
by two hundred soldiers, and all the people of note in the town, he
went straight to take possession of the house which is particularly
appropriated to his office, and sat down in judgment with the doors
open.
Marauding parties of soldiers had entered at several parts of the town,
and begun to use that licence they had been accustomed to on their
march, pilfering and plundering houses, or persons that seemed without
protection. Upon the first complaints, as he rode through the town, he
caused twelve of the delinquents to be apprehended, and hanged upon
trees in the streets, sitting upon his mule till he saw the execution
performed. After he had arrived at his house, and was seated, these
executions were followed by above fifty others in different quarters of
Gondar. That same day he established four excellent officers in four
quarters of the town. The first was Kefla Yasous, a man of the greatest
worth, whom I shall frequently mention as a friend in the course of my
history; the second, Billetana Gueta Welleta Michael, that is, first
master of the household to the king. He had given that old officer that
office, upon superseding Lubo the king’s uncle, without any consent
asked or given. He was a man of a very morose turn, with whom I was
never connected. The third was Billetana Gueta Tecla, his sister’s
son, a man of very great worth and merit, who had the soft and gentle
manners of Amhara joined to the determined courage of the Tigran.
Michael took upon himself the charge of the fourth district. He did
not pretend by this to erect a military government in Gondar; on the
contrary, these officers were only appointed to give force to the
sentences and proceedings of the civil judges, and had not deliberation
in any cause out of the camp. But two Umbares, or judges, of the twelve
were obliged to attend each of the three districts; two were left in
the king’s house, and four had their chamber of judicature in his.
The citizens, upon this fair aspect of government, where justice
and power united to protect them, dismissed all their fears, became
calm and reconciled to Michael the second day after his arrival, and
only regretted that they had been in anarchy, and strangers to his
government so long.
The third day after his arrival he held a full council in presence of
the king. He sharply rebuked both parties in a speech of considerable
length, in which he expressed much surprise, that both king and queen,
after the experience of so many years, had not discovered that they
were equally unfit to govern a kingdom, and that it was impossible to
keep distant provinces in order, when they paid such inattention to
the police of the metropolis. Great part of this speech applied to the
king, who, with the Iteghè and Galla, were in a balcony as usual, in
the same room, though at some distance, and above the table where the
council sat, but within convenient hearing.
The troubled state, the destruction of Woggora, and the insecurity of
the roads from Damot, had made a famine in Gondar. The army possessed
both the rivers, and suffered no supply of water to be brought into the
town, but allowed two jars for each family twice a-day, and broke them
when they returned for more[98].
Ras Michael, at his rising from council, ordered a loaf of bread, a
brulhé of water, and an ounce of gold, all articles portable enough to
be exposed in the market-place, upon the head of a drum, without any
apparent watching. But tho’ the Abyssinians are thieves of the first
rate, tho’ meat and drink were very scarce in the town, and gold still
scarcer, though a number of strangers came into it with the army, and
the nights were almost constantly twelve hours long, nobody ventured to
attempt the removing any of the three articles that, from the Monday
to the Friday, had been exposed night and day in the market-place
unguarded.
All the citizens, now surrounded with an army, found the security and
peace they before had been strangers to, and every one deprecated
the time when the government should pass out of such powerful
hands. All violent oppressors, all those that valued themselves as
leaders of parties, saw, with an indignation which they durst not
suffer to appear, that they were now at last dwindled into absolute
insignificance.
Having settled things upon this basis, Ras Michael next prepared to
march out for the war of Begemder; and he summoned, under the severest
penalties, all the great officers to attend him with all the forces
they could raise. He insisted likewise that the king himself should
march, and refused to let a single soldier stay behind him in Gondar;
not that he wanted the assistance of those troops, or trusted to them,
but he saw the destruction of Mariam Barea was resolved on, and he
wished to throw the odium of it on the king. He affected to say of
himself, that he was but the instrument of the king and his party, and
had no end of his own to attain. He expatiated, upon all occasions,
upon the civil and military virtues of Mariam Barea; said, that he
himself was old, and that the king should walk coolly and cautiously,
and consider the value that officer would be of to his posterity and to
the nation when he should be no more.
Upon the first news of the king’s marching, Mariam Barea, who was
encamped upon the frontiers near where he defeated Brulhé, fell back
to Garraggara the middle of Begemder. The king followed with apparent
intention of coming to a battle without loss of time; and Mariam Barea,
by his behaviour, shewed in what different lights he viewed an army, at
the head of which was his sovereign, and one commanded by a Galla.
No such moderation was shewn on the king’s part. His army burnt and
destroyed the whole country through which they passed. It was plain
that it was Joas’s intention to revenge the death of Brulhé upon the
province itself, as well as upon Mariam Barea. As for Ras Michael,
the behaviour of the king’s army had nothing in it new, or that could
either surprise or displease him. Friend as he was to peace and good
order at home, his invariable rule was to indulge his soldiers in
every licence that the most profligate mind could wish to commit when
marching against an enemy.
It was known the armies were to engage at Nefas Musa, because Mariam
Barea had said he would fight Brulhé, to prevent him entering the
province, but retreat before the king till he could no longer avoid
going out of it. The king then marched upon the tract of Mariam Barea,
burning and destroying on each side of him, as wide as possible, by
detachments and scouring parties. Allo Fasil, an officer of the king’s
household, a man of low birth, of very moderate parts, and one who used
to divert the king as a kind of buffoon, otherwise a good soldier, had,
as a favour, obtained a small party of horse, with which he ravaged the
low country of Begemder.
The reader will remember, in the beginning of this history, that a
singular revolution happened, in as singular a manner, the usurper
of the house of Zaguè having voluntarily resigned the throne to the
kings of the line of Solomon, who for several hundred years had been
banished to Shoa. Tecla Haimanout, founder of the monastery of Debra
Libanos, a saint, and the last Abyssinian that enjoyed the dignity of
Abuna, had the address and influence to bring about this revolution,
or resignation, and to restore the ancient line of kings. A treaty
was made under guarantee of the Abuna, that large portions of Lasta
should be given to this prince of the house of Zaguè, free from all
tribute, tax, or service whatever, and that he should be regarded as
an independent prince. The treaty being concluded, the prince of Zaguè
was put in possession of his lands, and was called Y’Lasta Hatzè, which
signifies, not the king of Lasta, but _the king_ at or in Lasta[99].
He resigned the throne, and Icon Amlac of the line of Solomon, by the
queen of Saba, continued the succession of princes of that house.
That treaty, greatly to the honour of the contracting parties, made
towards the end of the 13th century, had remained inviolate till the
middle of the 18th; no affront or injustice had been offered to the
prince of Zaguè, and in the number of rebellions which had happened, by
princes setting up their claims to the crown, none had ever proceeded,
or in any shape been abetted, by the house of Zaguè, even though Lasta
had been so frequently in rebellion.
As Joas was a young prince, now for the first time in the province of
Begemder and passing not far from his domains, the prince of Zaguè
thought it a proper civility and duty to salute the king in his
passage, and congratulate him upon his accession to the throne of
his father. He accordingly presented himself to Joas in the habit of
peace, while, according to treaty, his kettle-drums, or nagareets, were
silver, and the points of his guard’s spears of that metal also. The
king received him with great cordiality and kindness; treated him with
the utmost respect and magnificence; refused to allow him to prostrate
himself on the ground, and forced him to sit in his presence. Michael
went still farther; upon his entering his tent he uncovered himself
to his waist, in the same manner as he would have done in presence of
Joas. He received him standing, obliged him to sit in his own chair,
and excused himself for using the same liberty of sitting, only on
account of his own lameness.
The king halted one entire day to feast this royal guest. He was an old
man of few words, but those very inoffensive, lively, and pleasant;
in short, Ras Michael, not often accustomed to fix on favourites at
first sight, was very much taken with this Lasta sovereign. Magnificent
presents were made on all sides; the prince of Zaguè took his leave and
returned; and the whole army was very much pleased and entertained at
this specimen of the good faith and integrity of their kings.
He had now considerably advanced through his own country, Lasta, which
was in the rear, when he was met by Allo Fasil returning from his
plundering the low country, who, without provocation, from motives
of pride or avarice, fell unawares upon the innocent, old man, whose
attendants, secure, as they thought, under public faith, and accoutred
for parade and not for defence, became an easy sacrifice, the prince
being the first killed by Allo Fasil’s own hand.
Fasil continued his march to join the king, beating his silver
kettle-drums as in triumph. The day after, Ras Michael, uninformed of
what had passed, inquired who that was marching with a nagareet in
his rear? as it is not allowed to any other person but governors of
provinces to use that instrument; and they had already reached the
camp. The truth was presently told; at which the Ras shewed the deepest
compunction. The tents were already pitched when Fasil arrived, who,
riding into Michael’s tent, as is usual with officers returning from
an expedition, began to brag of his own deeds, and upbraided Michael,
in a strain of mockery, that he was old, lame, and impotent.
This raillery, though very common on such occasions, was not then
in season; and the last part of the charge against him was the most
offensive, for there was no man more fond of the sex than Michael was.
The Ras, therefore, ordered his attendants to pull Fasil off his horse,
who, seeing that he was fallen into a scrape, fled to the king’s tent
for refuge, with violent complaints against Michael. The king undertook
to reconcile him to the Ras, and sent the young Armenian, commander
of the black horse, to desire Michael to forgive Allo Fasil. This he
absolutely refused to do, alledging, that the passing over Fasil’s
insolence to himself would be of no use, as his life was forfeited for
the death of the prince of Zaguè.
The king renewed his request by another messenger; for the Armenian
excused himself from going, by saying boldly to the king, That, by the
law of all nations, the murderer should die. To the second request the
king added, that he required only his forgivenness of his insolence
to him, not of the death of the prince of Zaguè, as he would direct
what should be done when the nearest of kin claimed the satisfaction
of retaliation. To this Ras Michael shortly replied, “I am here to
do justice to every one, and will do it without any consideration or
respect of persons.” And it was now, for the first time, Abyssinia ever
saw a king solicit the life of a subject of his own from one of his
servants, and be refused.
The king, upon this, ordered Allo Fasil to defend himself; and things
were upon this footing, the affair likely to end in oblivion, though
not by forgivenness. But, a very short time after, the prince of
Zaguè’s eldest son came privately to Michael’s tent in the night; and,
the next morning, when the judges were in his tent, Michael sent his
door-keeper (Hagos) reckoned the bravest and most fortunate in combat
of any private man in the army, and to whom he trusted the keeping of
his tent-door, to order Allo Fasil to answer at the instance of the
prince of Zaguè, then waiting him in court, Why he had murdered the
prince his father? Fasil was astonished, and refused to come: being
again cited in a regular manner by Hagos, he seemed desirous to avail
himself of the king’s permission to defend himself, and call together
his friends. Hagos, without giving him time, thrust him through with
a lance; then cut off his head, and carried it to Michael’s tent,
repeating what passed, and the reason of his killing him.
As a refusal in all such instances is rebellion, this had passed
according to rule: a party of Tigrans was ordered to plunder his
tent; and all the ill-got spoils which he had gained from the poor
inhabitants of Begemder were abandoned to the soldiers. Fasil’s head
was given to the prince of Zaguè, as a reparation for the treaty being
violated; the silver nagareet and spears were returned; and, highly
as this affair had been carried by Ras Michael, the king never after
mentioned a word of it. But this was universally allowed to be the
first cause of their disagreement.
Mariam Barea, seeing no other way to save his province from ruin but by
bringing the affair to a short issue, resolved likewise to keep his
promise. He retired to Nefas Musa, and encamped in the farthest limits
of his province: behind this are the Woollo Galla, relations of Amitzo
the king’s parents. Joas and Ras Michael followed him without delay,
and, having called in all the out-posts, both sides prepared for an
engagement.
About nine in the morning, Mariam Barea presented his army in order
of battle. Michael had given orders to Kefla Yasous and Welleta
Michael how to form his. He then mounted his mule, and with some of
his officers rode out to view Mariam Barea’s disposition. The king,
anxious about the fortune of the day, and terrified at some reports
that had been made him, by timid, or unskilful people, of the warlike
countenance of Mariam Barea’s army, sent to the Ras, whom he saw
reconnoitring, to know his opinion of what was likely to happen. “Tell
the king,” says the veteran, “that a young man like him, fighting with
a subject so infinitely below him, with an army double his number,
should give him fair play for his life and reputation. He should send
to Mariam Barea to encrease the strength of his center by placing the
troops of Lasta there, or we shall beat him in half an hour, without
either honour to him or to ourselves.” The king, however, did not
understand that sort of gallantry; he thought half an hour in suspence
was long enough, and he ordered immediately a large body of musquetry
to reinforce Fasil, who commanded the center, and thereby he weakened
his own right wing.
Michael, who commanded the right of the royal army, had placed himself
and his fire-arms in very rough ground, where cavalry could not
approach him, and where he fired as from a citadel, and soon obliged
the left wing of the rebels to retreat. But the king, Kefla Yasous,
and Lubo on the right, were roughly handled by the horse of Lasta, and
would have been totally defeated, the king and Lubo having already left
the field, had not Kefla Yasous brought up a reinforcement of the men
of Siré and Temben, and retrieved the day, at least brought things upon
an equal footing.
Fasil, with the horse of Foggora and Damot, and a prodigious body
of the Djawi and Pagan Galla, desirous to shew his consequence, and
confirm himself in his ill-got government by his personal behaviour,
attacked the Begemder horse in the center so irresistibly, that
he not only broke through them in several places, but threw the
whole body into a shameful flight. Mariam Barea himself was wounded
in endeavouring to stop them, and hurried away, in spite of his
inclination, crying out in great agony, “Is there not one in my army
that will stay and see me die like the son of Kasmati Ayo?” It was all
in vain; Powussen, and a number of his own officers, surrounding him,
dragged him as it were by force out of the field. The country behind
Nefas Musa is wild, and cut with deep gullies, and the woods almost
impenetrable; they were therefore quickly out of the enemy’s pursuit,
and safe, as they thought, under the protection of the Woollo Galla.
The whole army of Begemder was dispersed, and Michael early forbade
further pursuit.
The account of this battle, and what preceded it, from the murder of
the prince of Zaguè, is not in the annals or history of Abyssinia,
which I have hitherto followed; at least it has not appeared yet,
probably out of delicacy to Ozoro Esther, fear of Ras Michael, and
respect to the character of Mariam Barea, whose memory is still dear to
his country. But the whole was often, at my desire, repeated to me by
Kefla Yasous, and his officers who were there, whom he used to question
about any circumstance he did not himself remember, or was absent from;
for he was a scrupulous lover of truth; and nothing pleased him so much
as the thought that I was writing his history to be read in my country,
although he had not the smallest idea of England or its situation.
As for the conversation before the battle, it was often told me by Ayto
Aylo and Ayto Engedan, sons of Kasmati Eshté, who were with the Ras
when he delivered the message to the king, and were kept by him from
engaging that day in respect to Mariam Barea, who was married to their
aunt Ozoro Esther.
The king and Lubo sent Woosheka to their friends among the Woollo, who
delivered up the unfortunate Mariam Barea, with twelve of his officers
who had taken refuge with him. Mariam Barea was brought before the king
in his tent, covered with blood that had flowed from his wound; his
hands tied behind his back, and thus thrown violently with his face to
the ground. A general murmur which followed shewed the sentiments of
the spectators at so woful a sight; and the horror of it seemed to have
seized the king so entirely as to deprive him of all other sentiments.
I have often said, the Mosaical law, or law of retaliation, is
constantly observed over all Abyssinia as the criminal law of the
country, so that, when any person is slain wrongfully by another, it
does not belong to the king to punish that offence, but the judges
deliver the offender to the nearest relation of the party murdered, who
has the full power of putting him to death, selling him to slavery, or
pardoning him without any satisfaction.
Lubo saw the king relenting, and that the greatest crime, that of
rebellion, was already forgiven. He stood up, therefore, and, in
violent rage, laid claim to Mariam Barea as the murderer of his
brother: the king still saying nothing, he and his other Galla hurried
Mariam Barea to his tent, where he was killed, according to report,
with sundry circumstances of private cruelty, afterwards looked upon
as great aggravations. Lubo, with his own hand, is said to have cut
his throat in the manner they kill sheep. His body was afterwards
disfigured with many wounds, and his head severed and carried to
Michael, who forbade uncovering it in his tent. It was then sent to
Brulhé’s family in their own country, as a proof of the satisfaction
his friends had obtained; and this gave more universal umbrage than did
even the cruelty of the execution.
Several officers of the king’s army, seeing the bloody intentions of
the Galla, advised Powussen, and the eleven other officers that were
taken prisoners, to make the best use of the present opportunity, and
fly to the tent of Michael and implore his protection. This they most
willingly did, with this connivance of Woosheka, who had been intrusted
with the care of them, and Lubo having finished Mariam Barea, came
to the king’s tent to seek the unhappy prisoners, whom he intended
as victims to the memory of Brulhé likewise. Hearing, however, that
they were fled to Michael’s tent, he sent Woosheka to demand them;
but that officer had scarce opened his errand, in the gentlest manner
possible, when Michael, in a fury, cried out, Cut him in pieces before
the tent-door. Woosheka was indeed lucky enough to escape; but we shall
find this was not forgot, for his punishment was more than doubled soon
afterwards.
At seeing Mariam Barea’s head in the hands of a Galla, after
forbidding him to expose it in his tent, Michael is said to have made
the following observation: “Weak and cowardly people are always in
proportion cruel and unmerciful. If Brulhé’s wife had done this, I
could have forgiven her; but for Joas, a young man and a king, whose
heart should be opened and elated with a first victory, to be partaker
with the Galla, the enemies of his country, in the murder of a nobleman
such as Mariam Barea, it is a prodigy, and can be followed by no good
to himself or the state; and I am much deceived if the day is not at
hand when he shall curse the moment that ever Galla crossed the Nile,
and look for a man such as Mariam Barea, but he shall not find him.”
And, indeed, Michael was very well entitled to make this prophecy,
for he knew his own heart, and the designs he had now ready to put in
execution.
It is no wonder that these free communications gave the king reason to
distrust Michael. And it was observed that Waragna Fasil had insinuated
himself far into his favour: his late behaviour at the battle of
Nefas Musa had greatly increased his importance with the king; and
the number of troops he had now with him made Joas think himself
independent of the Ras. Fasil had brought with him near 30,000 men,
about 20,000 of whom were horsemen, wild Pagan Galla, from Bizamo and
other nations south of the Nile. The terror the savages occasioned
in the countries through which they passed, and the great disorders
they committed, gave Ras Michael a pretence to insist that all those
wild Galla should be sent back to their own country. I say this was
a pretence, because Michael’s soldiers were really more cruel and
licentious, because more confident and better countenanced than these
strangers were. But the war was over, the armies to be disbanded, these
Pagans were consequently to return home; and they were all sent back
accordingly, excepting 12,000 Djawi, men of Fasil’s own tribe, and some
of the best horse of Maitsha, Agow, and Damot.
This was the first appearance of quarrel between Fasil and Ras Michael.
But other accidents followed fast that blew up the flame betwixt them;
of which the following was by much the most remarkable, and the most
unexpected.
At Nefas Musa, near to the field of battle, was a house of Mariam
Barea, which he used to remove to when he was busy in wars with
the neighbouring Galla. It was surrounded with meadows perfectly
well-watered, and full of luxuriant grass. Fasil, for the sake of his
cavalry, had encamped in these meadows; or, if he had other views, they
are not known; and though all the doors and entrances of the house
were shut, yet within was the unfortunate Ozoro Esther, by this time
informed of her husband’s death, and with her was Ayto Aylo, a nobleman
of great credit, riches, and influence. He had been at the campaign of
Sennaar, and was so terrified at the defeat, that, on his return, he
had renounced the world, and turned monk. He was a man of no party, and
refused all posts or employments; but was so eminent for wisdom, that
all sides consulted him, and were in some measure governed by him.
This person, a relation of the Iteghé’s, had, at her desire, attended
Ozoro Esther to Nefas Musa, but, adhering to his vow, went not to
battle with her husband. Hearing, however, of the bad disposition of
the king, the cruelty of the Galla, and the power and ambition of
Fasil, whose soldiers were encamped round the house, he told her that
there was only one resolution which she could take to avoid sudden
ruin, and being made a sacrifice to one of the murderers of her husband.
This princess, under the fairest form, had the courage and decision of
a Roman matron, worthy the wife of Mariam Barea, to whom she had born
two sons. Instructed by Aylo, early in the morning, all covered from
head to foot, accompanied by himself, and many attendants and friends,
their heads bare, and without appearance of disguise, they presented
themselves at the door of Michael’s tent, and were immediately
admitted. Aylo announced the princess to the Ras, and she immediately
threw herself at his feet on the ground.
As Michael was lame, tho’ in all other respects healthy and vigorous,
and unprepared for so extraordinary an interview, it was some time
before he could get upon his feet and uncover himself before his
superior. This being at last accomplished, and Ozoro Esther refusing to
rise, Aylo, in a few words, told the Ras her resolution was to give him
instantly her hand, and throw herself under his protection, as that of
the only man not guilty of Mariam Barea’s death, who could save her and
her children from the bloody cruelty and insolence of the Galla that
surrounded her. Michael, sanguine as he was in his expectations of the
fruit he was to reap from his victory, did not expect so soon so fair a
sample of what was to follow.
To decide well, instantly upon the first view of things, was a talent
Michael possessed superior to any man in the kingdom. Tho’ Ozoro Esther
had never been part of his schemes, he immediately saw the great
advantage which would accrue to him by making her so, and he seized
it; and he was certain also that the king, in his present disposition,
would soon interfere. He lifted Ozoro Esther, and placed her upon his
seat; sent for Kefla Yasous and his other officers, and ordered them,
with the utmost expedition, to draw up his army in order of battle, as
if for a review to ascertain his loss. At the same time he sent for
a priest, and ordered separate tents to be pitched for Ozoro Esther
and her household. All this was performed quickly; then meeting her
with the priest, he was married to her at the door of his own tent in
midst of the acclamations of his whole army. The occasion of these loud
shouts was soon carried to the king, and was the first account he had
of this marriage. He received the information with violent displeasure,
which he could not stifle, or refrain from expressing it in the
severest terms, all of which were carried to Ras Michael by officious
persons, almost as soon as they were uttered, nothing softened.
The consequences of the marriage of Ozoro Esther were very soon seen
in the inveterate and determined hatred against the Galla. Esther,
who could not save Mariam Barea, sacrificed herself that she might
avenge his death, and live to see the loss of her husband expiated by
numberless hecatombs of his enemies and murderers. Mild, gentle, and
compassionate as, from my own knowledge, she certainly was, her nature
was totally changed when she cast back her eyes upon the sufferings of
her husband; nor could she be ever satiated with vengeance for those
sufferings, but constantly stimulated Ras Michael, of himself much
inclined to bloodshed, to extirpate, by every possible means, that
odious nation of Galla, by whom she had fallen from all her hopes of
happiness.
Fasil, as being a Galla, the first man that broke thro’ the horse of
Begemder, and wounded and put to flight her husband Mariam Barea, was
in consequence among the black list of her enemies. Fasil, too, had
murdered Kasmati Eshté, who was her favourite uncle, fast friend to
Mariam Barea, and the man that had promoted her marriage with him.
The great credit of Fasil with the king had now given Ras Michael
violent jealousy. These causes of hatred accumulated every day, so that
Michael had already formed a resolution to destroy Fasil, even though
the king should perish with him. In these sentiments, too, was Gusho of
Amhara, a man of great personal merit, of whose father, Ras Woodage, we
have already spoken, who had filled successively all the great offices
in the last reign. He was immensely rich; had married a daughter of Ras
Michael, and afterwards six or seven other women, being much addicted
to the fair sex, and was lately married to Ozoro Welleta Israel, the
Iteghé’s daughter. Nor was he in any shape an enemy to wine; but very
engaging, and plausible in discourse and behaviour; in many respects
a good officer, careful of his men, but said to be little solicitous
about his word or promise to men of any other profession but that of a
soldier.
An accident of the most trifling kind brought about an open breach
between the king and the Ras, which never after was healed. The weather
was very hot while the army was marching. One day, a little before
their arrival at Gondar, in passing over the vast plain between the
mountains and the lake Tzana, (afterwards the scene of much bloodshed)
Ras Michael, being a little indisposed with the heat, and the sun at
the same time affecting his eyes, which were weak, without other design
than that of shading them, had thrown a white cloth or handkerchief
over his head. This was told the king, then with Fasil in the center,
who immediately sent to the Ras to inquire what was the meaning of that
novelty, and upon what account he presumed to cover his head in his
presence? The white handkerchief was immediately taken off, but the
affront was thought so heinous as never after to admit of atonement.
It must be here observed, that, when the army is in the field, it is a
distinction the king uses, to bind a broad fillet of fine muslin round
his head, which is tied in a double knot, and hangs in two long ends
behind. This, too, is worn by the governor of a province when he is
first introduced into it; and, in absence of the king, is the mark of
supreme power, either direct or delegated, in the person that wears it.
Unless on such occasions, no one covers his head in presence of the
king, nor in sight of the house or palace where the king resides: But
it was not thought, that, being at such a distance in the rear, he was
in the king’s presence, nor that what was caused by infirmity was to
be construed into presumption, or weighed by the nice scale of jealous
prerogative.
The armies returned to the valleys below Gondar, and encamped
separately there, Fasil upon the river Kahha, and Ras Michael on the
Angrab. Gusho was on the right of Michael and left of Fasil, a little
higher up the Kahha, near Koscam, the Iteghè’s palace; but he was on
the opposite side of the river from Fasil, where he had a house of
his own, and several large meadows adjoining. Gusho’s servants and
soldiers now began cutting their master’s grass, and were soon joined
by a number of Fasil’s people, who fell, without ceremony, to the same
employment. An interruption was immediately attempted, a fray ensued,
and several were killed or wounded on both sides, but at last Fasil’s
people were beat back to their quarters.
Gusho complained to Ras Michael of this violation of his property; and
he being now in Gondar, and holding the office of Ras, was, without
doubt, the superior and regular judge of both, as they were both out
of their provinces, and immediately in Michael’s. Upon citation, Fasil
declared that he would submit to no such jurisdiction; and, the
case being referred to the judges next day, it was found unanimously
in council, that Ras Michael was in the right, and that Fasil was
guilty of rebellion. A proclamation in consequence was made at the
palace-gate, superseding Fasil in his government of Damot, and in every
other office which he held under the king, and appointing Boro de Gago
in his place, a man of great interest in Damot and Gojam, and with the
Galla on both sides of the Nile, and married to a sister of Kasmati
Eshté’s, by another mother, otherwise a man of small capacity.
Fasil, after a long and private audience of the king in the night,
decamped early in the morning with his army, and sat down at Azazo, the
high road between Damot and Gondar, and there he intercepted all the
provisions coming from the southward to the capital.
It happened that the house in Gondar, where Ras Michael lived, was but
a small distance from the palace, a window of which opened so directly
into it, that Michael, when sitting in judgment, could be distinctly
seen from thence. One day, when most of his servants had left him, a
shot was fired into the room from this window of the palace, which,
though it missed Michael, wounded a dwarf, who was standing before
him fanning the flies from off his face, so grievously, that the page
fell and expired at the foot of his master. This was considered as the
beginning of the hostilities. Nobody knew from whose hand the shot
came; but the window from which it was aimed sufficiently shewed, that
if it was not by direction, it must at least have been fired with the
knowledge of the king.
Joas lost no time, but removed and encamped at Tedda, and sent Woosheka
to Michael with orders to return to Tigré, and not to see his face;
and, at the same time, declared Lubo governor of Begemder and Amhara.
The Ras scarcely could be brought to see Woosheka; but did not deign
to give any further answer than this, “That the king should know, that
the proper persons to correspond with him as Ras, upon the affairs of
the kingdom, were the judges of the town, or of the palace; not a slave
like Woosheka, whose life, as well as that of all the Gallas in the
king’s presence, was forfeited by the laws of the land. He cautioned
him from appearing again in his presence, for if he did, that he should
surely die.”
The next day a message came from the king, by four judges, forbidding
the Ras again to drink of either the Angrab or the Kahha, but to strike
his tents and return to Tigré upon pain of incurring his highest
displeasure.--To this Michael answered, “That, true it was, his
province was Tigré, but that he was now governor of the whole realm;
that he was an extraordinary officer, called to prevent the ruin of
the country, because, confessedly, the king could not do it; that the
reason of his coming existed to that day; and he was very willing to
submit it to the judges for their solemn opinion, whether the kingdom,
at present in the hands of the Galla, was not in more danger from the
power of those Galla than it was from the constitutional influence of
Mariam Barea. He added, that he expected the king should be ready to
march against Fasil, for which purpose he was to decamp on the morrow.”
The king returned an absolute refusal to march: The Ras thereupon made
proclamation for all the Galla, of every denomination to leave the
capital, the next day, upon pain of death, declaring them outlawed, and
liable to be slain by the first that met them, if, after twenty-four
hours, they were found in Gondar or its neighbourhood, or, after ten
days, in any part of the kingdom. After this, accompanied by Gusho, he
decamped to dislodge Fasil from the strong post which he held at Azazo.
By the king’s refusal to march with Ras Michael in person, it was
supposed that his household troops would not join, but remain with him
to garrison his palace. Joas, however, was too far decided in favour
of Fasil to remain neuter. Michael had encamped the 21st of April in
the evening, on the side of the hill above Azazo, in very rough and
rocky ground, as unfavourable for Fasil’s horse as the slope it had was
favourable for Michael’s musquetry.
The battle was fought on the 22d in the morning, and there was much
blood shed for the time that it lasted. A nephew of Michael, and
his old Fit-Auraris, Netcho, were both slain, and Fasil was totally
defeated. The Galla, who had come from the other side of the Nile, were
very much terrified at Michael’s fire-arms, which contained what they
called the zibib, or grape, meaning thereby the ball. Fasil retired
quickly to Damot, to increase and collect another army again, and to
try his fortune after the rains.
It happened, unfortunately, that among the prisoners taken at Azazo
were some of the king’s black horse. These being his slaves, and
subject only to his commands, sufficiently shewed by whose authority
they came there. They were, therefore, all called before Michael;
two of them were first interrogated, whether the king had sent them
or not? and, upon their denying or refusing to give an answer, their
throats were cut before their companions. The next questioned was
a page of the king, who seeing, from the fate of his friends, what
was to follow his denial, frankly told the Ras, that it was by the
king’s special orders they, and a considerable body of the household
troops, had joined Fasil the night before; and further, that it was the
Armenian, who, by the king’s order, had fired at him, and killed the
dwarf who was fanning the flies from him.
Upon this information all the prisoners were dismissed. The army
returned the same night to Gondar, and, though they had been fasting
all day, a council was held, which sat till very late, at the rising of
which a messenger was dispatched to Wechné for Hatzé Hannes, who was
brought to the foot of the mountain the next day. In the same night
Shalaka Becro, Nebrit Tecla and his two sons, Lika Netcho and his two
sons, and a monk of Tigré, called Welleta Christos, were sent to the
palace to murder the king, which they easily accomplished, having found
him alone. They buried him in the church of St Raphael, as we shall
find from the regicide’s own confession, when he was apprehended, when
we shall relate the particulars.
At the same time Michael exhibited a strange contrast in his behaviour
to the Armenian, who had fled to the house of the Abuna for refuge.
He sent and took him thence, and banished him from Abyssinia, but so
considerately, that he dispatched a servant with him to Masuah to
furnish him with necessaries, to see him embark, and save him from the
cruelty and extortions of the Naybe.
[Illustration]
HANNES II.
1769.
_Hannes, Brother to Bacuffa, chosen King--Is brought from
Wechné--Crowned at Gondar--Refuses to march against Fasil--Is
poisoned by Order of Ras Michael._
HANNES, a man past seventy years of age, made his entry into Gondar
the 3d of May 1769. He was brother to Bacuffa, and having in his time
escaped from the mountain, and being afterwards taken, his hand was cut
off by order of the king his brother, and he was sent back to the place
of his confinement.
It is a law of Abyssinia, as we have already observed, derived from
that of Moses, that no man can be capable either of the throne or
priesthood, unless he be perfect in all his limbs; the want of a hand,
therefore, certainly disqualified Hannes, and it was with that intent
it had been cut off. When this was objected to him in council, Michael
laughed violently, and turned it into ridicule; “What is it that a king
has to do with his hands? Are you afraid he shall not be able to saddle
his own mule, or load his own baggage? Never fear that; when he is
under any such difficulty, he has only to call upon me[100], and I will
help him.”
Hannes, besides his age, was very feeble in body; and having had no
conversation but with monks and priests, this had debilitated his mind
as much as age had done his body. He could not be persuaded to take any
share in government. The whole day was spent in psalms and prayers;
but Ras Michael had brought from the mountain with him two sons,
Tecla Haimanout the eldest, a prince of fifteen years of age, and the
younger, called George, about thirteen.
Guebra Denghel, a nobleman of the first family in Tigré had married
a daughter of Michael by one of his wives in that province. By her
he had one daughter, Welleta Selassé, whom Michael in the beginning,
while Joas and he were yet friends, had destined to be queen, and to
be married to him. Hannes was of the age only to need a Shunnamite;
and Welleta Selassé, young and beautiful, and who merited to be
something more, was destined as this sacrifice to the ambition of her
grandfather. A kind of marriage, I believe, was therefore made, but
never consummated. She lived with Hannes some months in the palace,
but never took any state upon her. She was a wife and a queen merely
in name and idea. Love had in that frozen composition as little share
as ambition, and those two great temptations, a crown and a beautiful
mistress, could not animate Hatzé Hannes to take the field to defend
them. Every possible method was taken by Michael to overcome his
reluctance, and do away his fears. All was vain; he wept, hid himself,
turned monk, demanded to be sent again to Wechné, but absolutely
refused marching with the army.
Michael, who had already seen the danger of leaving a king behind him
while he was in the field, and finding Hannes inexorable, had recourse
to poison, which was given him in his breakfast; and the Ras, by this
means, in less than six months became the deliberate murderer of two
kings.
[Illustration]
TECLA HAIMANOUT II.
1769.
_Succeeds his Father Hannes--His Character and prudent
Behaviour--Cultivates Michael’s Friendship--Marches willingly
against Fasil--Defeats him at Fagitta--Description of that
Battle._
TECLA HAIMANOUT succeeded his father. He was a prince of a most
graceful figure, tall for his age, rather thin, and of the whitest
shade of Abyssinian colour, such are all those princes that are born
in the mountain. He was not so dark in complexion as a Neapolitan or
Portugueze, had a remarkably fine forehead, large black eyes, but
which had something very stern in them, a straight nose, rather of
the largest, thin lips, and small mouth, very white teeth and long
hair. His features, even in Europe, would have been thought fine. He
was particularly careful of his hair, which he dressed in a hundred
different ways. Though he had been absent but a very few months from
his native mountain, his manners and carriage were those of a prince,
that from his infancy had sat upon an hereditary throne. He had an
excellent understanding, and prudence beyond his years. He was said
to be naturally of a very warm temper, but this he had so perfectly
subdued as scarcely ever to have given an instance of it in public. He
entered into Ras Michael’s views entirely, and was as forward to march
out against Fasil, as his father had been averse to it.
From the time of Hannes’s accession to the throne, Tecla Haimanout
called Michael by the name of Father, and during the few slight
sicknesses the Ras had, he laid by all his state, and attended him
with an anxiety well becoming a son. At this time I entered Abyssinia,
and arrived in Masuah, where there was a rumour only of Hatzé Hannes’s
illness.
The army marched out of Gondar on the 10th of November 1769, taking
the route of Azazo and Dingleber. Fasil was at Buré, and had assembled
a large army from Damot, Agow, and Maitsha. But Welleta Yasous, his
principal officer, had brought together a still larger one, from the
wild nations of Galla beyond the Nile, and this not without some
difficulty. The zibib, or bullet, which had destroyed so many of them
at Azazo, had made an impression on their minds, and been reported to
their countrymen as a circumstance very unpleasing. These wild Pagans,
therefore, had, for the first time, found a reluctance to invade their
ancient enemies the Abyssinians.
Fasil, to overcome this fear of the zibib, had loaded some guns with
powder, and fired them very near at some of his friends, which of
course had hurt nobody. Again he had put ball in his gun, and fired at
cattle afar off; and these being for the most part slightly wounded,
he inferred from thence that the zibib was fatal only at a distance,
but that if they galloped resolutely to the mouth of the gun, the grape
could do no more than the first gun he fired with powder had done to
those he had aimed at.
As soon as Fasil heard that Michael was on his march, he left Buré and
advanced to meet him, his wish being to fight him if possible, before
he should enter into those rich provinces of the Agows, from whence
he drew the maintenance of his army, and expected tribute. Michael’s
conduct warranted this precaution. For no sooner had he entered Fasil’s
government, than he laid waste all Maitsha, destroying every thing with
fire and sword. The old general indeed being perfectly acquainted with
the country, and with the enemy he was to engage, had already fixed
upon his field of battle, and measured the stations that would conduct
him thither.
Instead of taking up the time with spreading the desolation he had
begun, after the first two days, by forced marches he came to Fagitta,
considerably earlier than Fasil expected. This field that Michael had
chosen, was rocky, uneven, and full of ravines in one part, and of
plain smooth turf on the other, which divisions were separated by a
brook full of large stones.
The Nile was on Ras Michael’s left, and in this rugged ground he
stationed his lances and musquetry; for he never made great account
of his horse. Two large churches, St Michael and St George, planted
thick with cedars, and about half a mile distant from each other, were
on his right and left flanks, or rather advanced farther before his
front. A deep valley communicated with the most level of these plains,
descending gently all the way from the celebrated sources of the Nile,
which were not more than half a day’s journey distant. Michael drew up
his army behind the two churches, which were advanced on his right and
left flanks, and among the cedars of these he planted 500 musqueteers
before each church, whom the trees perfectly concealed; he formed his
horse in front, knowing them to be an object the Galla did not fear,
and likely to lead them on to charge rashly. These he gave the command
of to a very active and capable officer, Powussen of Begemder, one of
those eleven servants of Mariam Barea, whose lives Michael saved, by
protecting them in his tent after the battle of Nefas Musa. He had
directed this officer, with a few horse, to scour the small plain, as
soon as he saw the Galla advancing into it from the valley.
As soon as the sun became hot, Fasil’s wild Galla poured into the
plain, and they had now occupied the greatest part of it, which was not
large enough to contain his whole army, when their skirmishing began
by their driving Powussen before them, who fled apparently in great
confusion, crossed the brook, and joined the horse, and formed nearly
between the churches. The Galla, desirous to pursue, were impeded by
the great stones, so that they were in a crowd at the passage of the
brook.
Ayto Welleta Gabriel, factor to Ozoro Esther, was intoxicated with
liquor, but he was a brave man, very active and strong, and of a good
understanding, though, according to a custom among them, he, at times,
to divert the Ras, played the part of a buffoon. In this character,
with his musquet only in his hand, he, though on foot, skirmished in
the middle of a party of Powussen’s horse. When they turned to fly,
Welleta Gabriel found it convenient to do so likewise, and he crossed
the brook without looking behind him. Upon turning round, he saw the
Galla halt, as if in council, in the bed of the rivulet, and taking up
his gun as a bravado, he levelled at the crowd, and had the fortune to
hit the principal man among them, who fell dead among the feet of the
horses.
A small pause ensued; the cry of the Zibib! the Zibib! immediately
began, and a downright confusion and flight followed. The Galla,
already upon the plain, turned upon those coming out of the valley,
and these again upon their companions behind them. The cry of Zibib
Ali[101]! Zibib Ali! was repeated through the whole, spreading terror
and dismay wherever it was heard. Nobody knew what was the misfortune
that had befallen them. Welleta Yasous, who commanded the van, was
carried away by the multitude flying: Fasil, who was at the head of the
Damot and Agows, had not entered the valley, nor could any one tell him
what was the accident in the plain.
Even Michael himself, (as I have heard him say) when, sitting upon
his mule on a small eminence, he saw this extraordinary confusion
and retreat, was not able to assign any cause for it. Though no man
on these occasions had more presence of mind, he remained for a time
motionless, without giving any orders. The troops, however, that lay
hid in the groves of cedars before the churches, who had been silent
and attentive, and Powussen, who commanded the horse which had been
skirmishing, saw distinctly the operation of Welleta Gabriel, and the
confusion that had followed it; without loss of time they attacked the
Galla in the valley, and were soon joined by Gusho and the rest of the
army.
Fasil, in despair at a defeat of which he knew not the cause, came down
among the Galla, fighting very bravely, often facing about upon those
that pressed them, and endeavouring at least to retreat in some sort
of order; but the musqueteers from the church, commanded by Hezekias,
instead of entering the valley, had advanced and ascended the hills, so
that from the sides of them, in the utmost security, they poured down
shot upon the fliers beneath them.
Fasil here lost a great part of his army; but seeing a place in one of
the hills accessible, he left the valley, and ascended the side of the
mountain, leading a large body of his own troops; and, having gained
the smooth ground behind the musqueteers, he came up with them, whilst
intent only upon annoying the Galla, and cut 300 to pieces. Content
with this advantage, and finding his army entirely dispersed, he passed
the sources of the Nile at Geesh, descended into the plain of Assoa,
and encamped near Gooderoo, a small lake there, intending to pass the
night, and collect his scattered forces.
Michael’s army had given over pursuit, but Powussen, with some chosen
horse of Lasta and Begemder, followed Fasil upon his track, and came up
with him a little before the dusk of the evening, on the side of the
lake. Here a great slaughter of wounded and weary men ensued: Fasil
fled, and no resistance was attempted, and the soldiers, satiated with
blood, at last returned, and pursued the enemy no further.
It was the next day in the evening before Powussen joined the camp,
having put to the sword, without mercy, all the stragglers that fell in
the way upon his return. The appearance of this man and his behaviour
made Michael’s joy complete, who already had begun to entertain fears
that some untoward accident had befallen him.
This was the battle of Fagitta, fought on the 9th of December 1769, on
the very ground in which Fasil, just five years before, had murdered
Kasmati Eshté. Those philosophers, who disclaim the direction of a
divine Providence, will calculate how many chances there were, that,
in a kingdom as big as Great Britain, the commission of a crime and its
punishment should both happen in one place, on one day, in the short
space of five years, and in the life of one man.
The extraordinary severity exercised upon the army of the Galla,
after the battle, was still as apparent as it had been in the flight.
Woosheka, of whom we have had already occasion to speak, fell in
among the horse of Powussen and Gusho, and being known, his life was
spared. He was cousin-german to Lubo, but a better man and soldier
than his relation, and, in all the intrigues of the Galla at Gondar,
was considered as an undesigning man, of harmless and inoffensive
manners. He had been companion of Gusho, and many of the principal
commanders in the army, and, after the defeat at Nefas Musa, had the
guard of Powussen and the eleven officers, whom he suffered to escape
into Michael’s tent, as I have already said, while Lubo was murdering
Mariam Barea. He had been, for a time, well known and well esteemed
by Ras Michael, nor was he ever supposed personally to have offended
him, or given umbrage to any one. As he was a man of some fortune and
substance, it was thought the forfeiture of all that he had might more
than atone for any fault that he had ever committed.
It was therefore agreed on the morning after Powussen’s return from the
pursuit, that Gusho and he, when they surrendered this prisoner, should
ask his life and pardon from the Ras, and this they did, prostrating
themselves in the humblest manner with their foreheads on the earth.
Ras Michael, at once forgetting his own interest, and the quality
and consequence of the officers before him, fell into a violent and
outrageous passion against the supplicants, and, after a very short
reproof, ordered each of them to their tents in a kind of disgrace.
He then sternly interrogated Woosheka, whether he did not remember
that, at Tedda, he had ordered him out of the country in ten days?
then, in his own language of Tigré, he asked, if there was any one
among the soldiers that could make a leather bottle? and being answered
in the affirmative, he ordered one to be made of Woosheka’s skin, but
first to carry him to the king. The soldiers understood the command,
though the miserable victim did not, and he was brought to the king,
who would not suffer him to speak, but waved with his hand to remove
him; and they accordingly carried him to the river side, where they
flayed him alive, and brought his skin stuffed with straw to Ras
Michael.
It was not doubted that Ozoro Esther, then in the camp, had sealed the
fate of this wretched victim. She appeared that night in the king’s
tent dressed in the habit of a bride, which she had never before done
since the death of Mariam Barea. Two days after, having obtained her
end, she returned triumphant to Gondar, where Providence visited her
with distress in her own family, for the hardness of her heart to the
sufferings of others.
During this time I was at Masuah, where, by reason of the great
distance and interruption in the roads, these transactions were not
yet known. Hatzé Hannes was still supposed alive, and my errand from
Metical Aga that of being his Physician. I shall now begin an account
of what passed at Masuah, and thence continue my journey to Gondar till
my meeting with the king there.
_END OF THE SECOND VOLUME._
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The city of Wolves, or Hyænas.]
[Footnote 2: She had several names, as I have before said, _Judith_ in
Tigré, and in Amhara _Esther_.]
[Footnote 3: Conquetes de Portugais par Lafitan, vol. I. liv. ii. p.
90. Id. ibid. p. 144.]
[Footnote 4: It has been imagined that this number should be increased
to seventy, but I have, followed the text; there would be little
difference in the rashness of the action.]
[Footnote 5: A tribe of the Shepherds; all the rest, but the two first,
unknown in Abyssinia at this day.]
[Footnote 6: Mountain of the Testimony.]
[Footnote 7: The Moors in general are much squarer, stouter-made men,
than the Abyssinians.]
[Footnote 8: Probably Magwas, or Berhan Magwass, the Glory of Grace;
a name often used by queens; for Mogessa has no signification, that I
know, in any of the languages of Ethiopia.]
[Footnote 9: That is, while the family of Zaguè reigned, in Tigré, and
that of Solomon in Shoa, before the restoration.]
[Footnote 10: Vid. Ludolf, lib. 3. No. 29. I have this letter at length
prefixed to the large volume of Canons and Councils, a copy of which
was sent by Zara Jacob to the monks in Jerusalem.]
[Footnote 11: St. Stefano in Rotondis.]
[Footnote 12: Francisco de Branca Leon.]
[Footnote 13: One of the steep mountains used for prisons.]
[Footnote 14: Another church on a hill, one of the quarters of Gondar.
It signifies the Hill of Glory, or Brightness.]
[Footnote 15: Bilur, in the language of Samhar, signifies _fossile
salt_; if it is coloured with any mineral, so as to be either red or
green, it is, in this latter case, applied often to emeralds, and
green-rock crystal.]
[Footnote 16: A race of very barbarous people, all shepherds, having
great substance, and much resembling the nations of Galla. They are
Pagans.]
[Footnote 17: The pomegranate of gold.]
[Footnote 18: The station of David.]
[Footnote 19: Betwudet is an officer that has nearly the same power as
Ras; there were two of these, and both being slain at one battle, as we
shall see in the sequel, the office grew into disuse as unfortunate.]
[Footnote 20: The literal translation of this is, _doubly sharp_, or
_sharp to a fault_; a character he had gained in Portugal.]
[Footnote 21: See Marco Paulo’s Travels into Tartary.]
[Footnote 22: On the west side of the peninsula on the Atlantic.]
[Footnote 23: Vide Marmol, vol. i. cap. 37.]
[Footnote 24: Is a subject paying Capitation.]
[Footnote 25: Vid. David’s letter to Emanuel, king of Portugal 1524.]
[Footnote 26: Vide Map of Shoa.]
[Footnote 27: Or Governor.]
[Footnote 28: Vide Poncet’s travels, in his return through Tigré, p.
116. London edit. 12mo. 1709.]
[Footnote 29: In Barbary called _Mishta_, in Abyssinia, _Kagga_.]
[Footnote 30: This is a name of humility. He is a great officer, and
has no care or charge of asses.]
[Footnote 31: Alvarez Histoire d’Ethiopic, p. 157.]
[Footnote 32: Canso el Gauri, and Tomum Bey.]
[Footnote 33: Selim I. emperor of the Ottomans.]
[Footnote 34: It was he who, as we have seen, slew the Moor Maffudi in
single combat in the beginning of this reign.]
[Footnote 35: Constant in the faith.]
[Footnote 36: Tellez, lib. 2. cap. 27.]
[Footnote 37: Dated at Rome 16th Feb. 1555. See Tellez, lib. 2. cap.
22.]
[Footnote 38: See Bermudes’s account of these times, printed at Lisbon
by Francis Correa, A. D. 1565.]
[Footnote 39: The Mountain of Gold.]
[Footnote 40: Purch. vol. 2.]
[Footnote 41: Ludolf, lib. 2. cap. 6.]
[Footnote 42: To Geshen or Wechné.]
[Footnote 43: See Le Grande’s History of Abyssinia.]
[Footnote 44: See the article Wanzey in the Appendix.]
[Footnote 45: Jerome Lobo Hist. of Abyssinia ap. Le Grande.]
[Footnote 46: The name of infant-king seems to have been given as a
nick-name in Abyssinia, and is preserved to this day.]
[Footnote 47: We have mentioned this treaty in the reign of Icon Amlac.]
[Footnote 48: Then the metropolis upon the Lake Tzana.]
[Footnote 49: Register of the cattle; so the governor of Dembea is
called.]
[Footnote 50: See the History of the rise of this monarchy in my return
through Sennaar.]
[Footnote 51: A low territory at the foot of Lamalmon.]
[Footnote 52: It was probably part of the fruits of the new religion,
and the work of his new religious advisers.]
[Footnote 53: The words, Boren, and Bertuma Galla, have no meaning in
the Ethiopic.]
[Footnote 54: See the Map.]
[Footnote 55: See the provincial letters of the Jesuits in Tellez, lib.
iv. cap. 5.]
[Footnote 56: Which signifies the Passage.]
[Footnote 57: This will be more enlarged upon hereafter.]
[Footnote 58: Tellez, lib. iv. cap. 38.]
[Footnote 59: It is apparently a speech in a passion, for this Sela
Christos was one of the most learned of the Abyssinians; yet the words
themselves, if literally translated, are scarcely intelligible.]
[Footnote 60: I have seen them often at Madrid.]
[Footnote 61: Called by the Agows, Krihaha.]
[Footnote 62: A name of the black Pagans bordering on Sennaar to the
south-west.]
[Footnote 63: Astronom. de M. de La Lande, liv. 19. p. 366.]
[Footnote 64: See the article _kantuffa_ in the Appendix.]
[Footnote 65: The white mountain.]
[Footnote 66: The mountain of salt.]
[Footnote 67: By Chancellor of the Nation is meant the officer
immediately next the consul, who keeps the records, and has a
department absolutely independent of the Consul.]
[Footnote 68: Vid. Poncet.]
[Footnote 69: It is plain Poncet had no instruments for observation
with him, nor was he probably acquainted with the use of them.]
[Footnote 70: To be described hereafter.]
[Footnote 71: See an elevation of this in my account of Axum.]
[Footnote 72: And there he wrote his Teliamede which supposes men
were first created fishes, for which he was excommunicated. It was an
opinion perfectly worthy of alarming the Sorbonne.]
[Footnote 73: Plin. vol. 1. lib. 6. cap. 30. p. 376.]
[Footnote 74: Father Bernat, a Frenchman.]
[Footnote 75: We have seen these were recommended by M. Maillet, the
consul.]
[Footnote 76: This is not the king’s seal. It is the invention of some
Mahometan employed to write the letters.]
[Footnote 77: See the letter itself, it is the last in Le Grande’s
book, and in Latin, if I remember rightly.]
[Footnote 78: Vid. the letter as quoted above.]
[Footnote 79: Abdelcader, son of Ounsa, retired here.]
[Footnote 80: It signifies Justus.]
[Footnote 81: Vid general map.]
[Footnote 82: Juvenal, sat. 13. l. 163.]
[Footnote 83: Nisi malitia suppleat ætatem.]
[Footnote 84: Herod. lib. 3, par. 17, & seq.]
[Footnote 85: Supposed to be the Garamantica Vallis of Ptolemy.]
[Footnote 86: Dodswell’s dissertation of Hanno’s Periplus--Montesquieu,
tom. I. lib. 21. cap. 11.]
[Footnote 87: This sensation of the savage in the heart of Africa seems
to be unknown to the enemies of the slave-trade; they talk much of
heat, without knowing the material suffering of the negro is from cold.]
[Footnote 88: There seems here some contradiction which needs
explanation. It is said that the palace was burnt before Oustas went to
his tent. How then could the soldiers assemble in it afterwards? The
palace consists of a number of separate houses at no great distance,
but detached from one another with one room in each. That where the
coronation is performed is called Anbasa Bet; another, where the king
sits in festivals, is called Zeffan Bet; another is called Werk Sacala,
the gold-house; another Gimja Bet, or the brocade-house, where the
wardrobe and the gold stuffs used for presents, or received as such,
are laid. Now, we suppose Oustas in any one of these apartments, say
Zeffan Bet, which he left to go to his tent, and it was then burnt;
still there remained the coronation-house where the regalia was kept,
which the soldiers locked up that it might not be used to crown Fasil,
Oustas’s son, whom they thought the seven great men they had murdered
conspired to place upon the throne after his father.]
[Footnote 89: Mistress to Yasous, and mother to David.]
[Footnote 90: But there can be no doubt both opinions are absolute
heresy, in the most liberal sense of that word, as expressly denying
our Saviour’s consubstantiality.]
[Footnote 91: This drum is of beaten silver; the Abyssinians say, that
this metal alone is capable of conveying the sweet sound contained in
a proclamation of peace. It was carried off by the rebels after the
retreat of Serbraxos.]
[Footnote 92: Dek.]
[Footnote 93: A relict of the most precious kind, believed to have come
from Jerusalem, and been painted by St Luke.]
[Footnote 94: About one hundred and eighty-six pounds, an ounce of gold
at a medium being 10 crowns.]
[Footnote 95: This is a fish common in the Mediterranean, of the kind
of anchovies, the common food of the galley-slaves, and lower sort of
people.]
[Footnote 96: Noba, in the language of Sennaar, signifies Soldier; it
is probably from this the ancient name of Nubia first came.]
[Footnote 97: A well near Karoota, immediately on the frontiers of
Begemder.]
[Footnote 98: This is commonly done in times of trouble, to keep the
townsmen in awe, as if fire was intended, which would not be in their
power to quench.]
[Footnote 99: Nearly the same distinction as the silly one made in
Britain between the French king and king of France.]
[Footnote 100: What made the ridicule here was, Michael was older than
the king, and could not stand alone.]
[Footnote 101: They have the grape along with them.]
[Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent double quotes and capitalization are as in the original.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
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