Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/Volume 2/Book 4/Chapter 7
DAVID IV.
From 1714 to 1719.
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[1], his Betwudet, and Abra Hezekias his master 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 an 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 lift 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 Tifills, 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 Azalessi, 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[2], 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 Itchegnè'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 Babery, 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 Itcheguè'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 prosession 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 paired 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 Itcheguè amidst the acclamations of a prodigious number of people.