Chapter 26A
“And behind regulars and irregulars alike the wild Arab tribes of the desert and the hardy blacks of the Abyssinian plateau, goaded by suffering and injustice, thought the foreigners the cause of all their woes, and were delayed only by their inability to combine from sweeping them off the face of the earth.”
__________________________________________________
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of the 19th Century”, ed James Radcliffe, Novak 1977)
“BATTLE OF ADI QUALA: 1894 battle between Italian troops and the Abyssinian army under the Emperor Yohannes IV. After taking the northern Tigrayan town of Asmara several weeks before, the invading Italians, under the command of General Oreste Baratieri, pressed their advance towards the city of Axum. As the Italians marched south they were met by a large Abyssinian force under the personal command of the Emperor Yohannes IV. While the Abyssinian force was large it was mostly comprised of the peasantry, the majority of the Emperor’s trained troops being deployed in the west against the British. On the morning of September 2nd, Baratieri launched a frontal attack on the Abyssinian camp; while he was eventually forced to withdraw, he inflicted heavy casualties and Yohannes decided to retreat southwards.
Unfortunately, the Emperor had over-estimated the morale and capabilities of his troops; the ordered retreat quickly tuned into chaos, and Baratieri doggedly pursued the retreating Abyssinians, defeating enemy forces at Ghergis, the Mereb crossing, and Rama. Chastened and realising that he would need time to rebuild his forces, the Emperor elected to leave Axum to the Italians and retreated into the impenetrable fastness of the Simien Mountains.”
(Taken from ‘The Equatorian wars, 1884-1899’ by Arnold Stephens, Garnholm 1978)
It was at this point that the Emperor’s plans fell apart. As Yohannes retreated southwards away from Tigray and the homes of his soldiers, warriors began to vanish, slipping away from camp by twos and threes to return home for the harvest. By the time he had reached the Simien, only his most loyal followers remained. It is a mystery why at this point Yohannes did not decide to ride for Gondar to raise yet another army. Perhaps he knew the effort to be futile; perhaps, as he was by now an old man, he was simply tired of fighting.
Whatever the reason, for a while the Emperor moved from village to village, demanding the hospitality of local people. Unfortunately though, the inhabitants of the Simien at that time were not Tigrayan, like the Emperor, but rather Tebiban[1], the few remaining Abyssinian Jews, who had been persecuted for generations and had no love for their ruler despite his claimed descent from Solomon. Sometime in late September or early October, the Emperor obviously outstayed his welcome; there was a skirmish and Yohannes was mortally wounded. His final resting place is not known, although Italian researchers in the 1920s found an old woman living near the village of Sona who claimed that she had given water to a dying Prince who she later buried.
Though it was not necessarily apparent at that point, the death of Yohannes marked the end of Abyssinia’s long history as an independent nation. Although Abyssinia had endured against the Ottomans, the Jesuits, Britain, Portugal and almost all her neighbours, she would fail to prevail against the Italians. It would take some months for this to become apparent; however, the final act in the long Abyssinian drama had begun.
(Taken from “Abyssinia” by Huw Constantine, Star 1967)
Ras Menelik has become one of the more reviled figures in Abyssinian history; at best, the Shewan version of Claudius’ Verica[2], at worst their Benedict Arnold. Those Abyssinians who care to mention Menelik at all term him “Menelik mäkdat”; or “Menelik the betrayer”. Yet this is a myth, carefully promoted by the Italians, who had no desire to see the Ras remembered as the staunchest and most dangerous foe of their rule in the region. Was Menelik, in trying to deal with the colonial power threatening his nation, any different from the heroes Boudicca or Arminius?
It is easy, with hindsight, to criticise Menelik; but he had no idea of what was to befall his nation. When the news reached him in mid October that the Emperor was dead, he acted swiftly to forestall his rivals. Declaring himself Nägusä Nägäs[3], he immediately sent messengers to his ally Tekle Haymanot and Mengesha Yohannes in Gondar demanding fealty. From the former, he obtained submission and the promise of soldiers; from the latter, he merely received the severed head of the courier. Mengesha had proclaimed himself Emperor, as legitimate successor to his father; despite the European invasion, he knew that the only way to ensure his succession to the throne was to destroy the usurper. Leaving a small force behind to guard the western approaches to Gondar from the British, Mengesha gathered his army and marched south into Gojiam. In Shewa, Menelik marshalled his own forces and moved northwards. It was fitting that Abyssinia’s independence should end in an Amharic Ragnarok; the Zemene Mesafint[4] was about to blow itself out in bloodshed worthy of the nation’s troubled history..."
(Taken from ‘The Equatorian wars, 1884-1899’ by Arnold Stephens, Garnholm 1978)
“As October 1894 wore on, the European columns encamped at Axum and at Gaderaf became increasingly perplexed at the apparent disappearance of the Abyssinian forces ranged against them. The Italians in Tigray took the opportunity to rest and prepare for further advances; in the west however, Major Macdonald increasingly chafed at Kitchener’s caution, and continued his lobbying and a march on Gondar. Finally, on October 7th the new Governor of the Sudan relented, and Macdonald, well supplied and at the head of a column of mostly Sudanese troops itching for combat, was given the order to advance.
By the time he did so however, the real drama was occurring elsewhere. As he moved southwards to meet the oncoming Shewans, Mengesha Yohannes had decided to boost his army’s morale, and his own legitimacy, by seeking the blessing of the priests at the Monastery of the Felege Ghion, the source of the Blue Nile[5]. While passing through the nearby town of Finote Selam Menelik heard of the prince’s location, and decided to strike north. The two pretenders met in battle on the foothills of Mt Gish on October 29th.
Both sides were more or less equal in strength. Because the approach of the harvest season made peasant recruitment impossible, the two armies were almost entirely comprised of professional warriors, armed with modern European weapons and artillery. Despite this however, the battle opened along traditional Abyssinian lines, with a charge by Mengesha against the Shewan lines during the torrential rain of the last storm of the rainy season. For most of the afternoon, there was savage hand-to-hand fighting between the two armies. Then, in the early afternoon, Menelik committed his Oromo cavalry to the battle. The charge became hopelessly bogged down in the mud, but ironically it was this that turned the battle for the Shewans; Mengesha, who by this point had entered the fray personally, became enraged at the sight of the banner of Michael of Wollo, who he believed was sworn to be loyal to him[6]. The furious Prince launched an impulsive counter-charge on the unfortunate cavalrymen, became separated from his main force, and was ruthlessly cut down by Menelik’s men as they ran to the aid of the Oromos. Unable to retreat quickly because of the rain, Mengesha’s army was largely massacred on the spot; the Prince’s head was placed on a pike and went at the head of Menelik’s army. At last, Menelik had no rival for the Abyssinian throne. After giving thanks at the Felege Ghion, the Shewans continued their march north towards Gondar...”
(Taken from “Abyssinia” by Huw Constantine, Star 1967)
“Macdonald had barely left Gaderaf when he learnt the news of the Emperor’s death. A month later, he had arrived in Aba Golja with no sign of resistance, when he heard the first reports that Mengesha had departed for the south. Realising that only a token force might be between him and Gondar, he pressed on as quickly as he could. As a result, the British ran straight into Mengesha’s covering force as he climbed the final part of the ascent into the Abyssinian plateau.
The “Battle of Chilga” was a grandiose name to give to the engagement that followed; Macdonald’s column was effectively ambushed by a determined band of Russian-trained Askari. Macdonald’s response however was more dramatic. Fearing that his beloved Sudanese were on the brink of breaking, he spurred his horse to the head of the column, shouted “God Save the King!” and charged, entirely on his own, up the hill towards the waiting enemy[7]. The Abyssinians, startled and unnerved by his act, failed to shoot him; the Sudanese, for their part, immediately charged up the hill after their commander and butchered the foe in an intense combat. The action ended there as far as Macdonald was concerned; however, six months later reports of his bravery were enough for the Scottish commander, by now firmly established as one of the War’s major heroes, to be awarded one of the forty-two Victoria Crosses awarded during the hostilities.
Two weeks later, the British column arrived at a deserted, and undefended Gondar. Most of the population, expecting the arrival of Menelik and a massacre, had fled to the shores of Lake Tana. Macdonald, who was no diplomat and was unsure of what to do next, established his headquarters in the Royal Enclosure and sent messengers to Kitchener for further orders. Luckily for him, the matter was soon taken out of his hands. On November 9th, a group of Italian officials from Baratieri’s column arrived at the Abyssinian capital, escorted by the troops of Menelik’s ally Tekle Haymanot; they had been travelling southwards to meet the Ras when they heard of the European capture of the city. Three days later, Menelik’s own army arrived. The war in Abyssinia was clearly over; all that was left now was to divide the spoils…”
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of the 19th Century”, ed James Radcliffe, Novak 1977)
TREATY OF GONDAR: 1894 treaty signed between Italian negotiators and Ras Menelik of Abyssinia following the death of Yohannes IV and the end of the Abyssinian campaign during the War of the Dual Alliance. The Treaty is famous for having two versions; the Amharic version was the generous agreement that Ras Menelik thought he had negotiated, including Italian control over Tigray and northern Abyssinia, a vague Italian sphere of influence in his native Shewa, a free hand for the Ras to conquer in the south, and the promise of the Imperial Crown. However, the Italian Count Antonelli ensured that the Italian text of the Treaty read entirely differently. The Ras had been conned into signing away his entire Empire; under the ‘official’ Treaty, he was merely a vassal of the Italian King[8]. The Abyssinians did not realise that they had been tricked until the following year; the betrayal was a direct cause of the subsequent, unsuccessful Abyssinian revolt of 1896…”
__________________________________________________
[1] Literally “Possessor of secret knowledge”, one of the Abyssinian names for the Ethiopian Jews.
[2] Verica was the British chieftain who invited Roman intervention in Britain in 43AD.
[3] “King of Kings”, the official title of the Abyssinian Emperor
[4] The Ethiopian name IOTL for the unstable period between 1769 and 1855 is the “Zemene Mesafint”, or “Time of Princes”. ITTL, the era is generally accepted as lasting until the 1890s.
[5] The Felege Ghion, which has since had the town of Gish Abay built beside it, is considered a highly holy place by the Ethiopian Church.
[6] Michael of Wollo played an influential part in Abyssinian history in the period, and OTL was the father and controller of the short-lived successor to Menelik, Iyasu V. He also commanded the Empire’s Oromo cavalry. While technically an ally of Menelik’s, Michael had been forced to swear allegiance to Yohannes IV in 1878, and ITTL successfully plays both factions off against the other, only committing himself to Menelik at the last moment.
[7] Macdonald won several decorations for bravery OTL; this seems like the sort of thing he would do.
[8] OTL, the Italians pulled exactly the same trick on Menelik with the Treaty of Wuchale; his discovery of the fraud was the trigger of the Italo-Abyssinian war and eventually the defeat at Adowa.
