James Bruce

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 709 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 138 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 40 the Mahometans a greater victory than the regaining all he had conquered. ”