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. Emfras69, 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 Serbraxos70, 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 Axum71 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 reputation72.
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 Nero73 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 Jesuit74 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 the75mirrors 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.
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.