2
Unification and Independence 1855–1896
1. The first response: Kasa - Tewodros
The man who represented the first effective response to both the internal and the external challenge – to the squabbling princes as well as to the ‘Turk’ – was Kasa Haylu, who, on his coronation in 1855 as Emperor Tewodros II, inaugurated the modern history of Ethiopia. Kasa became Tewodros largely by dint of his own personal qualities: his sense of mission, his military skill and valour and his extraordinary intelligence. He was essentially a self-made man. Kasa the shefta (bandit) became Tewodros the emperor. Although his career was initially formed within the politics of the Zamana Masafent, finally he proved to be its antithesis.
Yet it would be drawing too idealized a picture if we ignored his family background in discussing Kasa’s rise to power. It was this background which gave him both his territorial base on the Ethio-Sudanese border – Qwara – and a taste of conventional politics. Kasa was related, if at a considerable distance, to Dajjach Maru of Dambya (south-west of Gondar), one of the leading participants in the Zamana Masafent. Maru in turn was a relation by marriage to both the Yajju dynasty and Dajjach Webe Hayla-Maryam of Semen. Ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly in the context of the period, it was fighting against these relatives that Maru met his death at the Battle of Koso Bar in October 1827. But his name survived in the fief which was grudgingly given to Dajjach Kenfu Haylu of Dambya by the Empress Manan Liban, mother of the Yajju Ras Ali II. The fief was known as Ya Maru Qammas (literally ‘What has been tasted by Maru’, a collective name for the scattered possessions of Dajjach Maru, which included Qwara). Kasa himself, who went to Qwara after the Battle of Koso Bar, was sometimes called Kasa Maru.
In Qwara, Kasa grew up in the family of Kenfu of Dambya, who was developing a reputation as a stalwart defender of the Ethiopian frontier against Egyptian encroachment. In 1837, Kenfu moved to the offensive when he defeated an Egyptian force at Wad Kaltabu, deep inside Sudanese territory. But the association between Kasa and Kenfu was not entirely a happy one, as the latter was apprehensive of Kasa’s claim to Ya Maru Qammas, which Kenfu wanted to reserve for his own sons. But his concern was all in vain. On his death in 1839, neither his sons nor Kasa could lay their hands on Qwara; it was appropriated by Empress Manan. The path of legitimate succession thus blocked, Kasa became a shefta in the plains of Qwara. He soon came to head a group of bandits composed of other disgruntled persons and ordinary robbers.
Kasa’s shefta days were probably the most formative period of his life. It was then that some of the enduring features of his personality were confirmed. Two of these were his simplicity and disdain for pomp. He lived the life of his followers, taking part even in ploughing and sowing. Another feature was his concern for social justice. His distribution of money that he had acquired by robbery to the peasants, so that they could buy ploughs, had an element of Robin Hood about it. It presaged his fateful decision to expropriate the Orthodox Church of some of its land to feed his soldiers.
Most significantly, his shefta life in Qwara brought him into direct conflict with the Egyptians. This conflict was at the root of his lifelong obsession with the ‘Turk’, and his wild dream of liberating Jerusalem from their rule. At the same time, it brought about the only major military defeat of his career. At the Battle of Dabarqi in 1848, Kasa’s troops, whose only advantage lay in their blind courage, were mown down by the artillery wielded to deadly effect by the disciplined Egyptian troops. Kasa came out chastened from the whole experience. At the same time was born his abiding interest in discipline and artillery. The former he tried to instil in his troops, with the assistance first of some Egyptian advisers and then of his trusted British friend John Bell. Tewodros’s interest in artillery culminated in the forging of his overvalued mortar, ‘Sebastopol’, whose final ineffectualness symbolized the futility of his life.
Kasa’s growing prominence in Qwara attracted the attention of the Yajju lords. In a desire to tame him, they resorted to diplomacy. Qwara, which Kasa had already come to control by dint of his military force, was formally given to him, and the daughter of Ras Ali, Tawabach, was also given to him in marriage. While his love for the daughter endured, the rapprochement with father and grandmother was short-lived. Embittered by the humiliation and contempt that seemed to have been reserved for him in the Yajju court, Tewodros resumed his shefta life. The campaign to subdue him ended in humiliating defeats, firstly of Dajjach Wandyerad, who had boasted to his Yajju overlord that he would haul back ‘the koso-vendor’s son’ (for there was a common gibe that Kasa’s mother sold koso flowers for tapeworm treatment), and secondly of Empress Manan herself, who spent some time in ignominious captivity.
2.1 Emperor Tewodros II’s mortar ‘Sebastopol’ being dragged up the slopes of Maqdala: the emperor is outlined in the background
These early victories of Kasa foreshadowed the major and even more decisive victories of the 1850s. In a series of battles which demonstrated his extraordinary talent as military leader and strategist, he defeated one major leader of the Zamana Masafent after another. In the Battle of Gur Amba (27 November 1852), the Gojjame war-lord and one-time patron of Kasa, Dajjach Goshu Zawde, was crushed fighting under orders from Ras Ali. The day-long battle claimed many casualties, including Goshu himself. The proximity of the battle-site to Gondar, the capital city of the north, was an indication that Kasa was no longer content to roam in the borderlands and that he was staking out his claims to control the centre. Some five months later, on 12 April 1853, Kasa defeated four of Ras Ali’s and Dajjach Webe of Semen’s vassals, each ranking as dajjazmach, of whom two were killed in battle. The turn of the masters themselves was not long in coming. Ali’s force was routed at the Battle of Ayshal (29 June 1853), and he was forced to flee to Yajju territory. This victory of Kasa over the last of the Yajju princes in effect symbolized the end of the Zamana Masafent. Between Kasa and the imperial throne, there remained only one obstacle, Dajjach Webe, the last of the warring princes. On 8 February 1855, Kasa defeated Webe at the Battle of Darasge, north-west of Gondar; and in the church that Webe had constructed for his own anticipated coronation, at the hands of the very same abun (Abuna Salama) that Webe had brought from Egypt, Kasa became Tewodros II, King of Kings of Ethiopia.
It is a mark of the breadth of Tewodros’s vision that he did not see his victories over the northern regional rulers as the fulfilment of his goals. Soon after the Battle of Darasge, he turned his attention to the south – to Wallo and Shawa. With that action, he brought to an end the northern focus of the Zamana Masafent. One of the ultimate results of this turning southward of Tewodros’s aims was that Shawa was now irreversibly drawn into the orbit of imperial politics – a process which was to culminate in the coronation of Menilek II as emperor of Ethiopia, and the evolution of Shawa as the geopolitical centre of the empire.
By Ethiopian standards, the campaign in Wallo was prolonged, and presaged the chronic problem, partly of his own making, of insubordination which Tewodros was to face in that region. Started in March 1855, in the middle of the arduous fasting season of Lent, nearly two months long, hostilities continued – in defiance of Ethiopian military tradition – during the rainy season, and ended only towards the middle of September. In the process, Tewodros matched the fierce resistance of the Wallo people with a ruthless policy of terror, marked by the amputation of limbs that was to become proverbial. Tewodros’s seizure of the stronghold of Maqdala on 12 September 1865 terminated his Wallo campaign – for the time being. With that event, there was established a place which was to have great significance, both actual and symbolic, in the life of Tewodros. Maqdala became the centre of his model government. It was the den to which he retreated in his final hours of distress. It was the site where, in 1868, in a dramatic act of defiance that was to captivate the minds of future generations of Ethiopians, he committed suicide as British troops rushed in to capture him.
As in Wallo, the overlapping campaign in Shawa