The Moors now found it unnecessary to keep together an army. They divided into small parties, that they might more effectually and speedily ruin the country. Part of Gragnè’s army was detached to burn Axum; the other under Simeon continued in Amhara to watch the king’s motions; and, while he attempted to relieve Axum, dispersed his army, on which the town was burnt, and with it many of the richest churches in Abyssinia, Hallelujah, Banquol, Gaso, Debra Kerbé, and many others. And, on the 7th of April, Saul, son of Tesfo Yasous, fought another detachment of the Moorish army, and was cut to pieces.
The 28th year of his reign, 1536, the king crossed the Tacazzé, and had many disastrous encounters with the people of Siré and Serawé. Tesfo l’Oul, who commanded in this latter province for the king, surprised a Turkish party under Adli, whom he slew, and met with the same fate himself from Abbas, Moorish governor of Serawé, when a great many of the principal people of that province were there slain. Galila, a large island in the lake Tzana, was plundered, and the convent upon it burnt. It was one of the principal places where the Abyssinians hid their treasure, and a great booty was found there.
In the following year, Gragnè, in a message represented to him, that he might see he was fighting against God, exhorting him to be wise, and make his peace in time, which he should have upon the condition of giving him his daughter in marriage, and he would then withdraw his army, otherwise he would never leave Abyssinia till he had reduced it to a condition of producing nothing but grass. But the king, nothing daunted, returned him for answer, That he was an infidel, and a blasphemer, used as an instrument to chastise him and his people for their many sins; that it was his duty to bear the correction patiently; but that it would soon happen, when this just purpose was answered, that he would be destroyed, and all those with him, as such wicked instruments had always been; that he the king, and Abyssinia his kingdom, would be preserved as a monument of the mercy of God, who never entirely forsook his people, though he might chastise them.
Indeed, the condition of the country was now such that a total destruction seemed to be at hand; for a famine and plague, its constant companion, raged in Abyssinia, carrying off those that the sword had spared.
Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Jews, in the high country of Samen, after having suffered much from Gragnè, had at last rebelled and joined him; and the king, who it seems continued to shew an inclination to the Catholic church, which he had imbibed during the embassy of Don Roderigo, by this had occasioned many to fall off from him, he and the court observing Easter according to the Roman kalendar, while the rest of the clergy and kingdom continued firm to that of Alexandria.
At this time Osman of Dawaro, Jonadab, Kefla, Yousef, and other rebel Abyssinians, part of Ammer’s army, one of Gragnè’s generals, surprised the king’s eldest son, Victor, going to join his father the 7th day of March; slew him, and dispersed his army. Three days after, the king himself came to action, with Ammer at Zaat in Waag, but he was there again beaten, and his youngest son Menas was taken prisoner. The king had scarce now an attendant, and, being almost alone, he took refuge among the rocks and bushes in a high mountain called Tsalem, in the district of Tsalamet. But he had not remained above a day there, when he was followed by Joram, (rebel-master of that district) and narrowly escaped being taken as he was crossing the Tacazzé on foot and alone; whence he took refuge on mount Tabor, a very high mountain in Siré, and there he passed the winter.
The amazing spirit and constancy of the king, who alone seemed not to forsake the cause of his kingdom, who now, without children or army, still singly, made war for the liberty of his country, astonished all Abyssinia as well friends as enemies. Every veteran soldier, therefore, that could escape the small parties of the Moors which surrounded the king, joined him at Tabor, and he was again at the head of a very small, but brave body of troops, though it was scarcely known in what part of the kingdom he was hid. When Achmet-eddin, lieutenant of Ammer, passed through Siré, loaded with the spoils of the churches and towns he had plundered, the king, finding him within his reach, descended from the mountain, and, by a sudden march, surprised and slew him with his own hand, leaving the greatest part of his army dead on the field. After which he distributed the booty among his small army.
Ammer, the king’s mortal enemy, who had taken upon himself the destruction of the royal family, descended into the province of Siré, and neighbourhood of Tabor, and there indulged himself in the most wanton cruelties, torturing and murdering the priests, burning churches and villages, hoping by this the king would lose his temper, and leave his strong-hold in the mountain. But hearing at the same time, that a large quantity of plate, and other treasure, belonging to the church Debra Kerbé, had been carried into an island in the lake Tzana for safety, he left the king, and seized his booty in the lake to a very great amount.
However, he there fell ill of a fever; but, on his return, was so far advanced in his recovery as to resume his schemes of destroying the king; when, the night of the 10th of February 1538, while he was sleeping in bed in his tent, a common soldier, from what quarrel or cause is not known, went secretly and stabbed him several times in the belly with a two-edged knife, so that he died instantly, to David’s great relief, and much to the safety of the whole kingdom.
It was now 12 years since Don Roderigo de Lima had sailed from Masuah, carrying with him Zaga Zaab ambassador from the king of Abyssinia. This embassy arrived safe in Lisbon, and was received with great magnificence by king John; but, as the circumstances of the kingdom when he left Masuah were really flourishing, and as the treatment he met in Portugal was better than he had, probably, ever experienced at home, he seems to have been in no haste to put an end to this embassy. On the other side, the king of Portugal’s affairs in India were arrived at that degree of prosperity and power, that little use remained for such an ally as the king of Abyssinia.