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 fo 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 lift 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.
