The first of the Tigrè troops who set this example was Guebra Mascal; he carried down to the place appointed, and surrendered, about 6000 musquets, belonging to the Ras and his family; all the rest of the principal officers followed, for the inhabitants of Gondar were willing inquisitors, so that the whole arms were delivered before the hour appointed, and locked up in the church of Ledeta, under a strong guard both without and within the church. The Tigrè soldiers, after surrendering their arms, were not suffered to depart, but a space was assigned between Gusho's tent and the town, where they were disposed that night, and centinels placed upon them, that they might not disperse. This indeed was needless; for they were every day surrounded with troops and enemies, so that all their wealth remained with their landlords in Gondar, which home they were not suffered again to enter, a measure which greatly added to Gusho's popularity in the town. A great number of flour sacks were brought down to Gusho's camp, and many mules, loaded therewith, were delivered to the disarmed army, sufficient to carry them by speedy marches to their own country, for which they had orders to set out the next morning.
Kefla Yasous alone, with about 400 men, had shut himself up in the church of Debra Berhan, where there was water, and he had carried in sufficient provisions for several days. He refused therefore to surrender upon the general summons; on which Powussen, who was encamped immediately below him, sent an officer to require him to submit, which he not only peremptorily refused, but told the officer, that, unless he instantly retired, he would give orders to fire upon him, as he had a treaty with Gusho, and, till that was ratified by Gusho himself, he would not surrender, nor suffer any other person to approach his post; at any rate, that he did not intend to surrender to a man of Powussen's low birth, however high his present post had raised him, which he no longer acknowledged, being the mere gift of Michael, one complaint against whom was that of levelling and confounding the nobility with their inferiors.
Gusho accordingly sent an officer, a man of great character, and a relation of the king, with a confirmation of his promise; whereupon Kefla Yasous surrendered, and sent down his soldiers, with what arms he pleased, to Gusho's camp, carrying the rest privately to his own house, to which he retired that very evening. Kefla Yasous was much beloved by the inhabitants of Gondar, though a Tigran, and perhaps in neither party was there a man so universally esteemed. He had done the townsmen often great service, having always stood between Michael and them in those moments of wrath and vengeance when no one else dared to speak; and, in particular, he had saved the town from burning that morning the Ras had retired with the king to Tigrè, when warned, as he said, by an apparition of Michael the archangel, or more probably of the devil, to put the inhabitants of Gondar to the sword, and set the city on fire; a measure that was supported by Nebrit Tecla, and several other leading men among the Tigrans. If the devil can speak true, here surely was one example of it, Gondar that very day had proved fatal to the Ras; and Kefla Yasous himself told me, long after Michael was gone, and all was peace, that having visited him that very evening he left Debra Berhan, Michael had privately upbraided him with having prevented his burning the town, and told him, that his guardian spirit, Saint Michael the archangel, or the devil, or whatever we may please to call it, had left him, and never appeared to him again since he had passed the river Tacazzé on his return to Gondar; and to this he attributed his present misfortunes.
All the king's arms were surrendered with the rest, and Kefla Yasous was the only man that remained unsubdued, a distinction due to his superlative merit, and preserved to him by his enemies themselves in the very heat of conquest.
As for the Ras, he had continued in the house belonging to his office, visited only by some private friends, but had sent Ozoro Esther to the Iteghé's at Koscam, as soon as he entered Gondar. He ate, drank, and slept as usual, and reasoned upon the event that had happened with great equanimity and seeming indifference. There was no appearance of guards set upon him; but every motion and look were privately, but strictly watched. The next day, when he heard how ill his disarmed men were treated by the populace, when they were dismissed to Tigrè, he burst into tears, and cried out in great agony, Had I died before this I had been happy. He played no more at drafts, by which game formerly he pretended to divine the issue of every affair of consequence, but gave his draft-board and men to a private friend; at the same time renouncing his pretended divinations, as deceitful and sinful, by the confidence he had placed in them.
The king behaved with the greatest firmness and composure; he was indeed graver than usual, and talked less, but was not at all dejected. Scarce any body came near him the first day, or even the second, excepting the priests, some of the judges, and old inhabitants of the town, who had taken no part. Some of the priests and monks, as is their custom, used certain liberties, and mixed a considerable degree of impertinence in their conversations, hinting it as doubtful, whether he would remain on the throne, and mentioning it, as on the part of the people, that he had imbibed from Michael a propensity towards cruelty and bloodshed, what some months ago no man in Gondar dared to have surmised for his life. These he only answered with a very severe look, but said nothing. One of these speeches being reported to Gusho, not as a complaint from the king, but through a by-stander who heard it, that nobleman ordered the offender (a priest of Erba Tensa, a church in Woggora) to be stript naked to his waist, and whipt with thongs three times round Aylo Meidan, till his back was bloody, for this violation of the majesty of the sovereign: and this example, which met with the public approbation of all parties, the clergy only excepted, very much lessened that insolence which the king's misfortunes had excited.
He had ate nothing the first day but a small piece of wheat-loaf, dividing the rest among the few servants that attended him, who had all fared better than he, among their friends in town, though they did not own it. The second day began in the same stile, and lasted till noon, without any appearance of provisions. After the surrendry of the arms, however, came great plenty, both from the town and the camp, and so continued ever after; but he ate very sparingly, though he had generally a very good appetite; and ordered the residue to be given to his servants, or the poor about the gates of the palace, many of whom, he said, must starve by the long stay of so large an army. He seemed to be totally forgotten. About three o'clock of the second day came his secretary from Gusho, staid about an hour, and returned immediately; but what had passed I did not hear, at least at that time. There was no alteration in his looks or behaviour. He went early to bed, and had not yet changed the cloaths in which he came from the camp.
The next day the unfortunate troops of Tigrè, loaded with curses and opprobrious language, pelted with stones and dirt, and a few way-laid and slain for private injuries, were conducted up the hill above Debra Berhan, on the road through Woggora to Tigrè, by a guard of horse from Gusho's camp, who protected them with great humanity as far as they were able; but it was out of the power of any force but that of an army to protect them from the enraged populace, over whom they had tyrannised so many years. Arrived at the river Angrab, in the rear of Powussen's army, they were consigned to him, and he delivered them to Ayto Tesfos, who was to escort them across the Tacazzé. Many of the mob, however, continued to pursue them even farther; but these were all to a man disarmed, and stript naked, on their return to Gondar, by Tesfos and Powussen's soldiers, who justly judged, that in the like situation they would themselves have met with no better treatment.
While every rank of people was intent upon this spectacle, a body of Galla, belonging to Maitsha, stole privately into the town, and plundered several houses: they came next into the king's palace, and into the presence-chamber, where he was sitting alone in an alcove, whilst, just by his side, but out of sight, and without the alcove, I and two of his servants were sitting on the floor. This room, in the time of Yasous and the Iteghé, (the days of luxury and splendour of the Abyssinian court), had been magnificently hung with mirrors, brought at great expence from Venice, by way of Arabia and the Red Sea; these were very neatly fixed in copper-gilt frames by some Greek filligrane-workers from Cairo; but the mirrors were now mostly broken by various accidents, especially when the palace was set on fire, in Joas's time, upon Michael's coming from the campaign of Begemder. These savages, though they certainly saw the king at the other end of the room, attached themselves to the glass nearest the door, which was a large oblong one, and after they had made many grimaces, and a variety of antics before it, one of them struck it just in the middle with the butt-end of his lance, and broke it to shivers, which fell tinkling on the floor. Some of these pieces they took up, but in the end they were mostly reduced to powder with the repeated strokes of their lances. There were three glasses in the alcove where the king sat, as also one in the wings on each side without the alcove; under the king's right hand we three were sitting, and the Galla were engaged with a mirror near the door, at the other end of the room, on the left side, so that there was but one glass more to break before they arrived at those in the alcove where the king was sitting.
I was in great fear of the consequences, as they were about thirteen or fourteen in number; nor did we know how many more of their companions might be below, or in the town, or of what party they were, nor whether resistance on our part was lawful. We three had no arms but a short knife at our girdle, nor had the king any, so that we were in the greatest fear that, if their humour of breaking the glasses had continued when they came near the king, he would strike one of them, and we should be all massacred: We all three therefore got up and stood before the king, who made a gentle motion with his hand, as if to say, "Stay a little, or, have patience." At this instant, Tensa Christos, (a man of considerable authority in Gondar, who was understood by Gusho to be trusted with the care of the town, though he had no name or post, for there was yet no form of government settled,) hearing the Galla had plundered houses, and gone into the palace, followed them as fast as possible, with about a hundred stout young men belonging to Gondar, well-armed. The Galla soon saw there was a more serious occupation awaiting them, and ran out to the great hall of the king's chamber, called Aderasha, when one of these soldiers of Gondar shut the door of the room where the king sat. The Galla at first made a shew of resistance; but two of them being very much wounded, and seeing themselves in a house where they did not know their way, and all assistance from their comrades impossible, they surrendered their arms; they then were tied two and two, and sent in this manner down to Gusho's camp, who immediately ordered two of them to be hanged, and the rest to be whipt and dismissed.