KING THEODORE'S HOUSE, MAGDALA.
Consul Plowden had been residing six years at Massowah when he heard that the Prince to whom he had been accredited, Ras Ali, had been defeated and dethroned by an adventurer, whose name, a few years before, had been unknown outside the boundaries of his native province. This was Lij Kâsa, better known by his adopted name of Theodore. He was born of an old family, in the mountainous region of Kwara, where the land begins to slope downwards towards the Blue Nile, and educated in a convent, where he learned to read, and acquired a considerable knowledge of the Scriptures. Kâsa's convent life was suddenly put an end to when one of the marauding Galla bands attacked and plundered the monastery. From that time he himself took to the life of a freebooter and, through his superior intelligence and undaunted courage, soon attained the reputation of being successful in all his enterprises. Adventurers flocked to his standard; his power continually increased; and in 1854 he defeated Ras Ali in a pitched battle, and made himself master of central Abyssinia. His ambition widened in proportion to its gratification; he now sent to Oobye, the ruler of Tigré, requiring that he should pay him tribute, and insisted that the Abuna, then resident at the Court of Oobye, should be sent to Gondar, which, since the fall of Ras Ali, had been Kâsa's capital. His demands were scornfully rejected, and the Abuna excommunicated him. But Kâsa was equal to the occasion. Monseigneur de Jacobis, a Roman Catholic missionary of great ability and saintly life, was at that time in Abyssinia, with the authority of Vicar-Apostolic; him Kâsa threatened to recognise as bishop unless the Abuna came to Gondar. The Abuna then yielded, revoked the excommunication, and came to live at Gondar, thus giving a kind of religious sanction to the adventurer's power. Fortune still attended the arms of Kâsa. In 1855 he defeated Oobye at a place called Derezgye, in the province of Semyen, and all Tigré submitted to the conqueror. He now resolved to assume a title commensurate with the wide extent of his dominion. In the church of Derezgye he had himself crowned by the Abuna as King of the Kings of Ethiopia, taking the name of Theodore, because an ancient tradition declared that a great monarch so called would one day arise in Abyssinia. Courtly genealogists were not wanting who deduced his pedigree from the line of the ancient kings.
These startling events reached the ears of Mr. Plowden at Massowah and he resolved to visit the new monarch. He arrived at the camp of Theodore in March or April, 1855, and found that a former fellow-traveller, an Englishman named Bell, who had married an Abyssinian lady, was already in Theodore's service, with the title and functions of Grand Chamberlain. At this time Theodore's character and aims were such as to command the admiration and respect of Plowden and Bell, both of whom were able and excellent men. "Plowden said of him that he was generous to excess, and free from all cupidity, merciful to his vanquished enemies, and strictly continent; but subject to violent bursts of anger and possessed of unyielding pride and fanatical religious zeal." His views of government were far more enlightened than those of the majority of his countrymen. He abolished the slave trade, put an end to many vexatious imposts on commerce, and aimed at curtailing or suppressing the feudal privileges of a number of petty chiefs, who were the tyrants of the districts over which they ruled. Consul Plowden thus concluded his report on Theodore's character and policy:—"Some of his ideas may be imperfect, others impracticable; but a man who, rising from the clouds of Abyssinian ignorance and childishness, without assistance and without advice, has done so much, and contemplates such large designs, cannot be regarded as of an ordinary stamp."
Some years passed and the power of Theodore was ever on the rise. After his coronation, the first object which he set before him was the subjugation of the Galla tribes in Abyssinia; after which he said that any Galla who would not abjure Islam and receive baptism should be expelled from the country. This object he partly accomplished by the subjection of the Wolo Gallas to his rule. To keep these wild tribes in check, and also to serve as his own principal stronghold, he about this time made choice of Magdala, an amba, or natural fortress, beyond the river Beshilo, east of the Lake of Dembea, and in the midst of the territory of the Wolo Gallas. He then invaded and reduced Shoa, taking Ankober, the capital, and bringing away with him Menelek, the young heir of Shoa, to bring up with his own son. The whole of Abyssinia was now subject to his power. But a series of misfortunes presently fell upon him and changed the whole aspect of his career. In 1860 his true and judicious friend and counsellor, Consul Plowden, while journeying to his camp, was intercepted by an ally of the chief Negussye, who had set up the standard of revolt in Tigré; and in the fight that ensued Plowden was mortally wounded and taken prisoner. Theodore immediately raised from the merchants of Gondar the sum demanded for his ransom and procured his release; but Plowden died a few days afterwards. About the same time Bell, the King's Grand Chamberlain, fell in battle; and within a few months Theodore lost his first wife, the beautiful and virtuous Tawabeteh. His naturally violent temper was soured and embittered by these losses. He took a terrible revenge on the chiefs who had been instrumental in the deaths of Bell and Plowden; and he bade farewell for the rest of his life to that marital fidelity for which, while Tawabeteh lived, he had been conspicuous. He married for his second wife the daughter of Oobye, the Tigré chief whom he had dethroned; but the union was one of policy, not of affection, and Theodore's illicit amours were both numerous and scandalous. In 1861 he got the rebel Negussye into his power, together with his brother, and put them to death with horrible cruelty.
Theodore was now at the height of his power, and European Governments evinced a considerable desire to court his friendship. The French Government nominated M. Lejean as French Consul at Gondar, but on account of some real or imagined affront paid to an emissary whom Theodore had sent to Paris, with a letter to the Emperor, M. Lejean was sent at a day's notice out of the country. The British Government, on hearing of the death of Plowden, immediately replaced him at Massowah by the appointment of Captain Cameron. This gentleman arrived at Massowah in February, 1862, and visited Theodore at his camp in the following October, bearing a few presents, and a letter in the Queen's name, thanking him for his exertions in ransoming poor Plowden. Captain Cameron was very well received. Theodore told him that he had executed 1,500 of the followers of the chief who had killed Plowden, to revenge his death, and that he might thereby win the friendship of the Queen of Great Britain. He also spoke with great bitterness of the encroachments of the Turks and Egyptians, both on the sea-coast and also on his north-western boundary, on what he called his ancestral dominions. In the following month, when Cameron left his camp, he entrusted him with the famous letter to the Queen of England; the postage of which, as Colonel Sykes said, cost us five millions. In this letter the two ideas then prominent in his mind—to deserve and win the friendship of the Queen, by executing wholesale vengeance on those who had killed Englishmen; and to gain her help in his darling project of humbling the Mussulman—received distinct expression.
The reader already knows what became of this remarkable letter when it reached England. Consul Cameron—after expediting the letter to Massowah, whence it was conveyed to Aden, and home by the Indian mail steamer—turned aside to visit the district of Bogos, a little Abyssinian upland, nearly surrounded by the Egyptians and other Mussulmans of the plains. The Christians of Bogos had on some former occasion complained to the Consul at Massowah of ravages committed in their territory by the neighbouring tribes, and Captain Cameron wished to know whether things were now quiet there, and also whether there was any opening for trade. Mainly with this latter object, he next visited the Egyptian town of Kassala. He arrived at Djenda, near the Lake of Dembea, in August, 1863, calculating that he would thus be in the country when the expected reply from England to the King's letter arrived. It appears that Theodore, who had become prone to suspicion, was offended when he heard that Consul Cameron had been at Kassala, among his mortal enemies the Egyptians; and his dissatisfaction, probably through the channel of Mr. Walker, the Vice-consul at Massowah, had become known at the Foreign Office. Moreover, Lord Russell—who wrote soon after this to a British agent, that "he trusted that interference on behalf of a Christian country, as such, would never be the policy of the British Government"—entirely disapproved of the consul's interesting himself in the Bogos people because they were Christians; his business was only to promote trade. The letter already alluded to contained a proposal by Theodore to the Queen of Great Britain for an offensive and defensive alliance against the Moslem powers. It was well known that if that eccentric offer had been rejected, which, of course, could not have been otherwise, the danger of Consul Cameron and the other British subjects, who were in the power of Theodore, would become very grave. However, through the indiscretion of Consul Cameron in having returned to Abyssinia without an answer to the King's letter, when the missionaries had already got into disgrace, he had to share their misfortune in ill-treatment and imprisonment. The Rev. Mr. Stern had fallen under the heavy displeasure of the King, and had been flogged, almost to death, for having, as Theodore alleged, intruded one day on his privacy before giving a notice of his intended visit in accordance with the Abyssinian court etiquette. Stern had also written a book, entitled "Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia," in which he had reflected upon the avocation of Theodore's mother as a vendor of a purgative herb called kosoo. Mr. Stern was called upon to divulge the name of his informant (who was supposed to be the Coptic Metropolitan of Abyssinia), and, as he refused to do so, the King had him tortured, together with his companion Mr. Rosenthal, Consul Cameron, and other British subjects, until he was forced to confess. They were shortly afterwards sent to the fortress at Magdala, and put in irons.
Absolute power and sensual indulgence had by this time turned Theodore's head, and many of his subsequent actions seem hardly to be those of a sane man. His cruelty, fickleness, and suspicion made his rule more and more intolerable to all his subjects. Rebellions were plotted in every province and after a time broke out. Menelek, the young heir of Shoa, escaped from confinement and, expelling Theodore's lieutenant, established himself as the independent ruler of that country. The chief Gobazye raised the standard of revolt in central Abyssinia, and one of his lieutenants, a chief of the best blood of Tigré, rebelling against his principal, made himself independent in that province. The fabric of Theodore's Christian empire, ruined through his own degeneracy, was fast crumbling to pieces. Meanwhile, the news of Captain Cameron's imprisonment had caused considerable sensation in Britain. Government resolved to send out a regular mission, bearing a letter, signed by the Queen, in answer to Theodore's long-neglected epistle, to demand the release of Cameron and the other captives. The head of the mission was Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, of Chaldean nationality, born at Mossul, near ancient Nineveh, since so well known in connection with Assyrian and Babylonian discoveries. He had held different important political appointments under the Indian Government. He was then acting as first Assistant Political Resident at Aden, and possessed great influence amongst the Arabian and African tribes along the coasts of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. To Rassam were added Dr. Blanc and Lieutenant Prideaux, two officers from the Bombay establishment.
MR RASSAM'S INTERVIEW WITH KING THEODORE. (See p. [480].)