He solicited the assistance of the
Moslem princes, and by inflaming their religious zeal, obtained a
reinforcement of 2000 musqueteers from the Arabs, and a train of artillery
from the Turks of Yemen.
Animated by these succours, he marched out of his
trenches to enter those of the Portuguese, who received him with the
utmost bravery, destroyed many of his men, and made frequent sallies, not,
however, without sustaining considerable losses.
Don Christopher had already one arm broken and a knee shattered by a
musket shot. Valour was at length oppressed by superiority of numbers: the
enemy entered the camp, and put the Christians to the spear. The
Portuguese general escaped the slaughter with ten men, and retreated to a
wood, where they were discovered by a detachment of the enemy. [16]
Mohammed, overjoyed to see his most formidable enemy in his power, ordered
Don Christopher to take care of a wounded uncle and nephew, telling him
that he should answer for their lives, and upon their death, taxed him
with having hastened it. The Portuguese roundly replied that he was come
to destroy Moslems, not to save them. Enraged at this language, Mohammed
placed a stone upon his captive's head, and exposed him to the insults of
the soldiery, who inflicted upon him various tortures which he bore with
the resolution of a martyr. At length, when offered a return to India as
the price of apostacy, the hero's spirit took fire. He answered with the
highest indignation, that nothing could make him forsake his Heavenly
Master to follow an "imposter," and continued in the severest terms to
vilify the "false Prophet," till Mahommed struck off his head. [17] The
body was divided into quarters and sent to different places [18], but the
Catholics gathered their martyr's remains and interred them. Every Moor
who passed by threw a stone upon the grave, and raised in time such a heap
that Father Lobo found difficulty in removing it to exhume the relics. He
concludes with a pardonable superstition: "There is a tradition in the
country, that in the place where Don Christopher's head fell, a fountain
sprang up of wonderful virtue, which cured many diseases, otherwise past
remedy."
Mohammed Gragne improved his victory by chasing the young Claudius over
Abyssinia, where nothing opposed the progress of his arms. At last the few
Portuguese survivors repaired to the Christian emperor, who was persuaded
to march an army against the King of Adel. Resolved to revenge their
general, the musqueteers demanded the post opposite Mohammed, and directed
all their efforts against the part where the Moslem Attila stood. His
fellow religionists still relate that when Gragne fell in action, his wife
Talwambara [19], the heroic daughter of Mahfuz, to prevent the destruction
and dispersion of the host of Islam, buried the corpse privately, and
caused a slave to personate the prince until a retreat to safe lands
enabled her to discover the stratagem to the nobles. [20]
Father Lobo tells a different tale. According to him, Peter Leon, a
marksman of low stature, but passing valiant, who had been servant to Don
Christopher, singled the Adel king out of the crowd, and shot him in the
head as he was encouraging his men. Mohammed was followed by his enemy
till he fell down dead: the Portuguese then alighting from his horse, cut
off one of his ears and rejoined his fellow-countrymen. The Moslems were
defeated with great slaughter, and an Abyssinian chief finding Gragne's
corpse upon the ground, presented the head to the Negush or Emperor,
claiming the honor of having slain his country's deadliest foe. Having
witnessed in silence this impudence, Peter asked whether the king had but
one ear, and produced the other from his pocket to the confusion of the
Abyssinian.
Thus perished, after fourteen years' uninterrupted fighting, the African
hero, who dashed to pieces the structure of 2500 years. Like the
"Kardillan" of the Holy Land, Mohammed Gragne is still the subject of many
a wild and grisly legend. And to the present day the people of Shoa retain
an inherited dread of the lowland Moslems.
Mohammed was succeeded on the throne of Adel by the Amir Nur, son of
Majid, and, according to some, brother to the "Left-handed." He proposed
marriage to Talwambara, who accepted him on condition that he should lay
the head of the Emperor Claudius at her feet. In A.D. 1559, he sent a
message of defiance to the Negush, who, having saved Abyssinia almost by a
miracle, was rebuilding on Debra Work, the "Golden Mount," a celebrated
shrine which had been burned by the Moslems. Claudius, despising the
eclipses, evil prophecies, and portents which accompanied his enemy's
progress, accepted the challenge. On the 22nd March 1559, the armies were
upon the point of engaging, when the high priest of Debra Libanos,
hastening into the presence of the Negush, declared that in a vision,
Gabriel had ordered him to dissuade the Emperor of AEthiopia from
needlessly risking life. The superstitious Abyssinians fled, leaving
Claudius supported by a handful of Portuguese, who were soon slain around
him, and he fell covered with wounds. The Amir Nur cut off his head, and
laid it at the feet of Talwambara, who, in observance of her pledge,
became his wife. This Amazon suspended the trophy by its hair to the
branch of a tree opposite her abode, that her eyes might be gladdened by
the sight: after hanging two years, it was purchased by an Armenian
merchant, who interred it in the Sepulchre of St. Claudius at Antioch. The
name of the Christian hero who won every action save that in which he
perished, has been enrolled in the voluminous catalogue of Abyssinian
saints, where it occupies a conspicuous place as the destroyer of Mohammed
the Left-handed.
The Amir Nur has also been canonized by his countrymen, who have buried
their favourite "Wali" under a little dome near the Jami Mosque at Harar.
Shortly after his decisive victory over the Christians, he surrounded the
city with its present wall,--a circumstance now invested with the garb of
Moslem fable.
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