Two weeks after the mobilization order was given, Yohannes found himself at the head of over 20,000 troops. Almost all the northern chiefs had rallied to his call, including Dajjach Walda-Mikael Solomon of Hamasen, who was to change sides in the next battle, as previously stated, and who created endless trouble for Yohannes in subsequent years. The Egyptian invading force numbered some 2,000 men, led by a Danish commander, Colonel Arendrup. The two forces met at Gundat (Gudagude), just to the north of the Marab river, in the early hours of 16 November.
The battle turned out to be one of the shortest yet militarily most decisive in Ethiopian history. Lured into the steep valley by the tactical manoeuvres of the Ethiopian troops, the Egyptian army was almost wiped out. The hopeless situation in which the invading troops found themselves is narrated in the vivid words of the American Colonel Dye, himself to take part in the next battle as member of the Egyptian general staff:
No cry of quarter, no supplication to the Son or the Prophet, could stay the bloody hand. In vain, appeals were made to the conquering foe by upright or prostrate forms transfixed by lance or spear, by men with armless bodies or nearly headless trunks, their life blood pouring from every gashing wound. Nothing could stay the bloody carnage. Doomed, – doomed, as they are taught, – mercilessly fated was this little band. They escaped the bullet only to feel the scimitar, or resisted the club only to be lanced.
(Dye, 139)
Such a disaster called for either resignation or revenge. Ismail chose 52 the latter. Before the year 1875 was out, he sent a much larger force (estimated at about 15,000) under his commander-in-chief, Muhammad Ratib Pasha. Veterans of the American Civil War introduced the latest techniques in the science of warfare. One of them, General Loring, was in fact chief of staff and second-in-command. Colonel Dye, as we have seen, was destined to be the impassioned chronicler of the Egyptian débâcle. The better preparation of the Egyptians made the Battle of Gura a relatively more protracted affair: it lasted three days, from 7 to 9 March 1876. The Egyptians fought from well-fortified positions; disaster began to strike them only when they came out of their forts. Still, Gura was less of an unmitigated disaster for them than the Battle of Gundat. The Ethiopian losses were correspondingly higher. But the end result was the same – yet another blow to Egyptian expansion.
For sheer valour in face of a far better-armed enemy, the Ethiopian performance at Gundat and Gura has few parallels in modern Ethiopian history. Dye’s narrative gives an explicit picture of this valour:
Boom after boom was now heard along the entire line, and far over the plain went the echoing shell. Rockets, too, from the right and the centre, in awful concert, began their terrific flights. Battalion after battalion fired volley upon volley from right and left, sending death-dealing missiles at long range upon the swift-advancing foe. With steady tramp, the Abyssinians closed in upon the Egyptians. Riderless horses bolted their ranks in response to exploding shell; yet on the army came.
(Dye, 359)
In a way, the Gundat and Gura victories were even more remarkable than their famous successor, the Battle of Adwa, for, while Menilek was to lead a united Ethiopia against the Italians, Yohannes faced the Egyptians as the head of a divided house. For Egypt, the defeat had more deadly effects than was to be the case for Italy two decades later. The Ethiopian victory hastened Ismail’s downfall and the subsequent British occupation of Egypt. Yohannes, on the other hand, came out of the conflict with material and psychological gains. The modern arms, including some twenty cannon that he captured from the enemy, strengthened his military position vis-à-vis his internal rivals like Menilek. The victory itself enhanced his prestige as the defender of faith and motherland.
Yet, in the immediate aftermath, the Gundat and Gura victories were to remain hollow. Ethiopia gained little in practical terms. The Egyptian conditions for peace soon after their defeat leave us uncertain as to who was the victor and who the vanquished. Not only did they demand the repatriation of the Egyptian prisoners and guarantees of free trade, but they also required the restoration of their captured arms and the cessation of Ethiopian troop movements in the Hamasen.
Conversely, Yohannes persisted in his policy of restraint. He followed up his victory not with a march to Massawa, but with letters to Victoria and Ismail once again suing for peace. He renounced the military option either because his army was in no condition to continue the fighting, or because he feared further military action would antagonize the European governments. Thus began Yohannes’s diplomatic efforts to crown his victory with a peace treaty – something that was to elude him for almost a decade. He started by sending to Cairo a certain Blatta Gabra-Egziabher as envoy in the summer of 1876. His conditions for peace were basically two: restoration of occupied Ethiopian territory and free access to the sea. The detention of his envoy for over two months and his eventual return without any discussion of the issues did not augur well for the future of a negotiated settlement.
Early in 1877, Ismail in turn sent an envoy – the British governor-general of the Sudan, Colonel (later General) Charles Gordon. The conditions for peace that he brought with him were hardly acceptable to Yohannes. There were to be no changes in the boundary: Bogos was to remain in Egyptian hands. Although free trade and free passage of envoys and letters via Massawa were to be guaranteed, there was to be a limit on the vital import of arms and ammunition. Subsequent developments showed that the British, to whom Yohannes has repeatedly appealed for mediation, were not ready to give him the unrestricted access to the sea that was the corner-stone of his policy. Not even when he shifted his request from Massawa to Zula or Anfilla, minor ports to the south, were they ready to listen. The heart of the matter was that the British did not wish to see the consummation of the Ethiopian victory over the Egyptians. As early as 1879, they started grooming a power to replace the Egyptians on the Red Sea coast and at the same time serve as watch-dog of British interests. Gordon’s parting recommendation for the cession of Zula to the Italians, who had already occupied Assab to the south, was a prelude to their installation in Massawa in 1885, through the good offices of Britain.
But, before that eventuality came about, developments took place which appeared to facilitate the realization of Yohannes’s objectives. In 1881, the Mahdist movement, combining Muslim revivalism and nationalism, broke out in Sudan. In the following two or three years, it engulfed the northern and central parts of the country, and effectively cut off the Egyptian garrisons in the east. It therefore fell to the British, who with their unilateral occupation of Egypt in 1882 had assumed responsibility for her possessions, to try and extricate the imperilled Egyptian troops. It was then that they were forced to abandon their policy of indifference bordering on arrogance vis-à-vis Ethiopia and to start an assiduous soliciting of Ethiopian assistance. That was the setting for what has come to be known as the Hewett or 54 Adwa Peace Treaty, named respectively after the British negotiator Rear Admiral Sir William Hewett or the place where the treaty was signed on 3 June 1884.
On the surface, Yohannes obtained more or less what he had sought in vain for the preceding eight years. Free import of goods, ‘including arms and ammunition’, was guaranteed. Bogos was restored to Ethiopia. There were in addition clauses for the reciprocal extradition of offenders, and Egyptian facilitation of the appointment of bishops (abun) for Ethiopia. In real terms and in the long run, the peace treaty did Yohannes more harm than good. The retrocession of Bogos, which relatively speaking was the only positive gain, might well have been achieved without British intercession, as the Egyptian hold over the territory was becoming tenuous; Yohannes’s governor of the Marab Melash, Ras Alula, had already been levying tribute in the region. The reciprocal extradition clause became meaningless when Dajjach Dabbab Araya, who had rebelled against his cousin the emperor, was given asylum in Massawa. As for the free transit of goods through Massawa, it failed to pass its first test when the Egyptians delayed delivery of a church bell ordered by Yohannes, on the grounds that duty had to be paid on it. More significantly, about three months after ratifying the treaty, the British entrusted Massawa to the Italians, who