706. Queen Victoria’s Revenge: Storming the Citadel (Part 2)

The background of the Abyssinian crisis

0:00This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realises, or rather everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there.

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1:16A commotion at the doorway brought me back to life, trying to start up and failing thanks to the weight of those infernal clanking manacles. As the door crashed shut again, I was aware of a swaying figure in the middle of the room, bare to the waist. How are you? How are you, my dear friend? My best of friends? Cries this apparition, whooping with laughter. Thank God I am well. Are you well? Ah, my good friend! My heart rejoices to see you for the friendship I have entertained for you has not diminished.

1:55Be of good cheer, for though you are bound with fetters of Samson and Zedekiah were bound even with fetters of brass, yet, yet, yet, yet, yet, his voice trailed away, muttering, and, and who else? Yes, Joachim also was bound, and Manasseh, and they were bound by the power of God, and so was Joseph, who was sold for a servant, whose feet they hurt with fetters, and he was laid in iron.

2:30And then he gave another crazy laugh, and almost fell over. But have no fear, for the hour of your deliverance is at hand. My eyes had recovered from the lamp glare, but I could hardly believe them. For the newcomer was Theodore, King of Abyssinia, and he was staggeringly drunk. So that was the great Victorian hero, Sir Harry Flashman, remembering his first meeting with the Emperor Theodros II in his memoir,

3:00Flashman, on the march. It is, to reiterate, a novel, not a work of history, but it is very, very deeply rooted in all the historical records. And in the book, Flashman has been sent on a secret mission to recruit allies against the Abyssinian Emperor, Theodros II, as part of a British expedition to rescue several dozen European hostages. And even though Flashman's part of it, as we've said, is invented,

3:33all the most jaw-dropping parts of the story in the novel, Theodros, his mountain lair, the British expedition, are absolutely true. And today, we have reached the melodramatic climax of the story. And Dominic, this is ultimately, it's a British imperial version of the Iranian hostage crisis, isn't it? Yes. And if only Jimmy Carter had paid attention to the lesson that could have been learnt from our glorious boys in 1868, the way that they solved the problem of hostages in the hands of an unfriendly regime.

4:13So true, Tom. I'm not sure his knowledge of Victorian imperial history is as good as it should be. I mean, one of the flaws, he spent too much time fighting rabbits. The key, as far as I can tell, is to involve railways and elephants. Elephants! Which may be where Carter went wrong. Definitely. So let's remind people where and when we are. Now, summer of 1867, so for four years or so, this crisis has been rumbling on in the mountain kingdom of Abyssinia. And at the root is the Emperor Theodros' simmering rage at the fact that Queen Victoria has not

4:47been answering his letters. And he has taken a group of Europeans hostage. So most of the missionaries, but also to remind people, the British consul, Captain Charles Duncan Cameron and the Foreign Office's agent, Hormuz Rassam, and he's holding them in his mountaintop lair, his citadel of Magdala. And the hostages have been smuggling out these increasingly desperate messages, reporting that Theodros is descending into insanity and basically begging the Foreign Office to use force. And last time he ended with Lord Derby's Conservative government, sending an ultimatum to Abyssinia,

5:22giving Theodros three months to release them.

Britain plans a military intervention

5:25So let's pick up the story on the 19th of August in London. We are at 10 Downing Street and chairing the cabinet is Lord Derby. And Lord Derby is a proper Victorian grandee, formerly a Whig, now a Conservative, incredibly rich. He has coal mines in Lancashire. He is classically educated. He's a brilliant debater. He's a man who likes shooting and horse racing. He's sort of Victorian politics bingo. And he runs the country in cahoots with his sort of ally in the Commons, Benjamin Disraeli.

6:00He was the longest serving Conservative political leader ever. Yeah, 22 years. He was Prime Minister multiple times, but only for very short spells. Yeah. And he never had a majority. No. And he relied, I mean, he's in the Lords and he relied on Disraeli to run things in the Commons. Anyway, they meet his cabinet and they agree this cannot stand. As British governments always do, they blame their predecessors, the Liberals. And they say the Liberals should have sorted this out. However, they didn't. And here we are.

6:30And we are being embarrassed in the eyes of the world. In particular, we're being embarrassed in the eyes of our subjects in India and in South Arabia and places like Aden. And we cannot lose face in front of these people. We cannot be humiliated by an African king. So, Lord Darby's ministers have already been in touch with officials in Bombay to discuss an intervention plan. The army in India has been put on alert and they've agreed that the British authorities in India will meet all the costs. An important point, although they do, as Flashman and his interlocutor were discussing in our

7:05first episode, they do end up putting a penny on income tax to pay for it all. So, British governments love raising spending to fund defence, don't they? They do. Well, there's a lesson here for Andy Burnham, I think. Anyway, they've also appointed a guy who will run the expedition. And this is the veteran British commander in chief in Bombay, who is Lieutenant General Sir Robert Napier of the Royal Engineers. He's a tremendous man. Napier is a tremendous man, actually. He's one of the stars of the British army. He's one of those, in an age when British commanders actually quite often turn out to

7:39be unbelievably useless, buffoons. He is not a buffoon. He's not a buffoon at all. He was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, into an army family. He'd fought in two wars against the Sikhs. He'd commanded the defence of Lucknow in the Indian mutiny. He'd led troops into Beijing in the Second Opium War. He's incredibly popular with his men. Everyone agrees that Napier is a charming, polite, brave, level-headed, very methodical

8:10commander who doesn't like wasting the lives of his men. He looks as he should. He's a big man. He's got this incredibly kind of weather-beaten face. And he's got this very large, but also slightly sad, melancholy moustache, which again, I think is in keeping. But not an ineffectual man, because he's an engineer, isn't he? Yes, exactly. Exactly. He gets things done. He gets things built. He doesn't faff around. Yeah. And that's key to this whole story, really, I guess. Our American listeners will perhaps welcome a comparison with Ulysses S. Grant, who's been

8:44distinguishing himself at this time. Though he's not as corrupt as Ulysses S. Grant. Not, of course. And not as boring. So I think American listeners always enjoy it when we make those points. He's 57. His wife, his beloved wife, to whom he's been very happily married, has just died. And so Napier has ventured again into the lists. And he's just got married to an 18-year-old. Well, I don't know what to say about that. What do you make of that? Well, I'm waiting for you to say the salient fact about this woman.

9:14What is the salient fact? She's from Montgomeryshire. She's Welsh. Oh, my word. How did I overlook that? So yet another series about Welsh history. Oh, mad that I missed that. My apologies go to the people of Wales for missing that important detail. Yeah, you're just blanking Welsh history again, Dominic. And can I tell you one other amazing thing? Do you know when she died? 1944. Very close, 1930. Wow. Aged 89. That's bonkers, isn't it?

9:45She lived so long. It is, isn't it? She lived long enough to listen to jazz and to go to the cinema to see King Kong. She lived a long time. She saw the jazz singer. She did. That's what killed her. Yes. All right. So Napier.

Preparing the expedition against Teodros

10:00This is quite a tough gig for Napier. Now, you may think, are the Europeans against an African kingdom a little bit of walkover? Not a bit of it. The history of European intervention in these years does not give great grounds for confidence. So the most famous or infamous British intervention of recent years was probably Afghanistan, the first Anglo-Afghan war, the retreat from Kabul in 1842, an absolute shambles, tens of thousands of British casualties, unutter humiliation.

10:31Flashman's first adventure. Flashman's first adventure. Flashman then pitched up in the Crimea in the mid-1850s. Now, there, of course, Britain technically won, but the British and French between them lost more than 100,000 men. The campaign was notorious for disease, terrible conditions, kind of industrial slaughter, very miserable. And we will be talking about this in a month or so. We will indeed. While this Abyssinian crisis has been brewing, the world's attention has been on Mexico, where

11:01the French had intervened with their puppet Emperor Maximilian Habsburg, friend of the show. And the French had lost almost 10,000 men. And again, they had been defeated. So, European interventions in this period have a pretty checkered record. And people say at the time, this is going to be the hardest yet. The Abyssinian interior is not properly mapped. It's mountains. It's gorges. It could not be more challenging. Intel is absolutely useless. The climate is punishingly hot. There's cholera. There's typhoid.

11:32There's lions. There's snakes. Baboons. Baboons. Everything could go wrong. In Bombay, Napier's officers prepare by going to every library in Bombay and scouring every single history and travel book they can find for references to Abyssinia. And then they write in a report. And the report concludes, there are few countries about which we know less. That's reassuring. So, to give you some examples of what they don't know, they don't really know where Teodros is. They don't know how much support he has. They don't have any relations whatsoever with the local warlords, the people who are rebelling

12:06against him. They don't have any sense of which way they will jump. They don't know where to land. They don't know what route to take to Magdala. And they don't know how they're going to get out again without being attacked. But as you said, Napier is an engineer. Yeah. So, he is the perfect man for the job, really. He plans this really methodically. And he says, all right, let's work backwards. What we would need, we'd need 5,000 men to get these people out. And what would those 5,000 men need? They would need supply lines stretching back to the coast, stretching for hundreds of miles.

12:37So, we'll need another 10,000 men to guard the supply lines. Then we'll need a coastal base. And we ideally want two connections, one going up the Red Sea to Suez and another going across the Indian Ocean to Bombay. And to plan all this, we're going to draw on the resources of the entire British Empire. So, as Philip Marsden says in his book, The Barefoot Emperor, from Liverpool to Woolwich, Chatham to Bombay. Chatham. That was a little gift to you. Oh, great. So, this is really another story about Chatham High Street.

13:08Aidan to Madras, quartermasters and storekeepers, technicians and chemists, coolies and cooks, design clerks, bookkeepers and stevedores began to work towards freeing the captives from the grip of what the newspapers called the Gorilla King. And they go into incredible detail. Marsden's book is brilliant on this. They work out, you know, to the sort of last pound, exactly how much salt beef, salt pork they'll need, how much vinegar and mustard, how much rum and champagne and beer.

13:42Champagne. They take champagne with them. That's essential, isn't it? Of course they do. You can't fight a war in Abyssinia without plentiful supplies of champagne. They stockpile Bibles and prayer books and pickaxes and gunpowder. And one of the things they stockpile, very tellingly, copper, telegraph, wire. So, this is going to be, it's described at the time as a campaign to rival the adventures of Alexander the Great or Hernán Cortés or Pizarro or whatever. But this is going to be the most technologically advanced military campaign in history.

14:16So, Napier is taking seven photographers. He's taking a portable telegraph system. He's taking all kinds of water pumps and things. He's taking flares to light up the camp in case they're attacked at night. So, it's kind of the great exhibition on manoeuvres. Yeah. The touring great exhibition. Like Napoleon in Egypt, he's taking, Napoleon called them, they called them savants in the French campaign. So, he's got geographers and meteorologists. He's got a boat from the Bombay Zoological Society.

14:47He's got a geologist from Calcutta. He's got a British Museum archaeologist who's coming along to kind of check for relics. And the press are with them. So, we mentioned in the first episode, Henry Morton Stanley of the New York Herald, G.A. Henty of the Standard, which is a London paper. So, they've got all that. They also are going to take a lot of cash. And this is an incredible story. They will need cash to buy supplies when they get to Abyssinia and also to pay off the local warlords.

15:18And British agents in Africa report. They say, well, that neck of the woods. In East Africa, there's only one commonly accepted universal currency. And this is, believe it or not, the Austrian silver tala, which was minted first by Maria Teresa in 1741. How come it's so popular in Abyssinia? This, I have been unable to determine. Seems improbable. So, apparently, the silver tala that they wanted most was the 1780 edition. I don't know why.

15:49But this was the one that was regarded as the, I was about to say the gold standard, the silver standard, that was very popular in East Africa. And mind-bogglingly, people were still using this as currency in the 1950s. Goodness. These Maria Teresa silver coins. And for some reason, they have just become entrenched and accepted in East Africa. But they're no longer making them in Vienna. And Napier's agents, first of all, Napier sends agents to Central Europe to buy up as

16:20many of these old coins as they can. And then he sends a representative to the official mint in Vienna to persuade them. He says, the British will supply you with silver. And can you produce these talas? And the official mint in Vienna is turning out 20,000 of these a week purely for the expeditionary force. God, amazing. So all this takes a lot of money. Derby's government has set a budget of two million pounds. Even before they set off, it balloons to four million and it ends up costing the British

16:52taxpayer 10 million pounds. So when you do the calculation, that is the equivalent of tens of billions of pounds today. This was an extremely expensive enterprise by the standards of the day. Can I just ask, this is a surgical strike. They have no plans to occupy Abyssinia or anything like that. It's in and out. No talk of regime change, no talk of anything but the hostages. And secondly, they are doing this ultimately, you think, not for humanitarian reasons, but

17:24to affirm the prestige of the British Empire in the face of the Ottomans, the French. That's ultimately the reason. Yes. I think it's hard to distinguish those two things. And I think people at the time would have found it very hard to distinguish them. In the same way, let's go back to the comparison with Iran in 1980, the response to the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. The plight of the hostages in that story became, you know, tear-jerking. It was in American newspapers and bulletins all the time. But it is also about prestige. But in the minds of the policymakers, it's inseparable, really, I guess.

17:57Yeah. And from the question of prestige, and I think the same is true here. Ultimately, I think they don't care that much about the hostages, about some missionaries. I mean, it's brilliant for the press, right? The press care. Yeah. But I think if you're Lord Darby or Benjamin Disraeli, you care far more about British prestige. Britain cannot afford to be humiliated. Because it is billions, billions and billions in today's spending. Yes. And we see now how governments hate spending money on the military.

18:27They do. But equally, governments sometimes think that there's a degree of face they cannot possibly lose. The humorous magazine Punch. They got a joke. Yeah. Slightly unamusing rhyme. But dash the expense. However immense, we can nothing cheaper than fight. And I think what they mean by that is the cost to the British people of losing face will ultimately be greater than that of the balance sheet. That actually, in the long run, it's better to pay the money now.

The march into the highlands

18:58Anyway, let's move forward to the autumn of 1867. So by the final week in October, the advance party, which is made up of Bombay Marines and Bombay Light Cavalry and engineers and sappers, have landed in a place that they call Annersley Bay. And if you look it up, it is now the Gulf of Zula in Eritrea. They've found an anchorage for 100 ships. And then they send back measurement specifications for three large piers, which they will build to help them unload the ships.

19:30And so in the next few weeks, more men, more supplies follow. I mean, it's mind boggling, the enterprise. Hundreds of tons of coal. There are tramway sets. There's pile driving machinery. And so by the new year of 1868, they have landed 13,000 soldiers, 20 miles of railway track, and 44 elephants, which were shipped across the Indian Ocean in specially reinforced transports. So that is seven more elephants than Hannibal took. Really? Seven more?

20:01To Italy, yeah. Hurrah from Napier. And while they're doing that, their sappers are literally blasting away through the cliffs to find the best route to get to the Highland Plateau. So they're going to have to head up 8,000 feet above sea level, and then they're going to have to travel through the kind of gorges and the ravines for another 350 miles until they get to Magdala. On the 7th of January, Napier himself comes ashore from the SS Octavia. And Napier, like all proficient commanders, has a great sense of theater, political theater.

20:31He is dressed in his full uniform. He's got all his medals. The ship's guns are firing a salute. There's a marine band playing. He comes ashore. Everyone cheers. And Napier is a, I mean, he's a very, very proficient commander. He's not bothered about the costs. He says, look, the government of India will pay, and the British government will back them up. I want more mule drivers. My men need more boots. You know, his men love him for this reason. And within a couple of weeks, they have started work on the railway, and the railway will bring

21:03all their supplies inland from the coast. And they've also set up, I mean, this is an incredible achievement. They have basically a field telegraph all the way to their advance guard. They'll travel with that the whole way, basically unspooling copper wire. As they go. So by the 25th of January, 1868, Napier is ready to set off for the great trek to Magdala. And as planned, he has 5,000 men that will go ahead as the spearhead. And behind, he has 7,000 men who will guard his supply lines.

21:34And as they set off, they must look absolutely outlandish to, you know, the locals. I mean, they must look, it must look like people have landed from Mars or something. Because the British cavalry lead the way. And when I say British, this is British and Indian. There are Sikhs. There are recruits from across the Indian subcontinent. So there's lots of, you know, people in turbans and stuff. But they're all wearing their British Army red jackets. Then there's a supply chain seven miles long behind them.

22:05There are the 44 elephants who are dragging the field guns, the kind of heavy guns. God, T.R. Dross would love that. Yeah. I mean, that's all his Christmases come at once. And they have military bands playing the whole time. So, I mean, they're basically like a sort of roaming orchestra. And they trudge into the highlands, making very slow progress. Napier is, of course, conscious. The big issue that they face is if people attack them en route, if the warlords attack them. And the key moment really comes at the end of February.

22:37So they've been on the road for a month or so. And he enters the territory of one of T.R. Dross' key rivals, who is a guy called Raskasa, who is the king of Tigray. And basically, the road to Magdala runs through this kingdom of Tigray. And Napier, he's a great diplomat. He waits for this guy. He stops. He waits. He wants to greet him with full military honors. He has his troops drawn up very smartly. When this bloke arrives, he says, would you like to inspect our guns? Here, I've brought you presents.

23:07I've brought you an Arabian horse. I've got your rifle for you. I've got some nice glassware for you. And he says to Kassa, my troops will not loot. They will not steal so much as a kind of, you know, a loaf of bread. We will pay for every sack of grain. If you help us, I promise you the friendship of Queen Victoria. And it works very well. This guy says to him, well, you're a very impressive person. He gives him a lion's skin cloak. And he says, I will bring you weekly supplies of food, which he does.

23:38And I think there's an implicit understanding here. It is never written down. And it's never explicitly stated. But I think it's pretty clear. And Napier knows this man expects him to deal with Teodros once and for all. That that is the quid pro quo. So you've been comparing this to the conquistadors in America. And this is a very familiar story, isn't it? Yeah. You know, whether it's the Aztecs or the Incas, that the local, not necessarily even subject

24:08peoples, but inferior rivals who want to throw off the hegemony of the local big power that they team up with the Europeans. I think that's exactly it. The difference, I guess, is that the British don't want to stay. You know, the conquistadors want to stay. They have their own agenda. The British really just didn't want to get in and get out. Now, this is probably a good point to ask. What has happened to the hostages? We haven't seen them for a while. So we last saw them in the summer of 1867. So almost a year ago.

24:39What have they been up to? They've been stuck in their huts at Magdala. They've been playing cards. And I mean, they're kind of manacled. So I don't know how easy that is. I suppose they're bent over. I mean, cards is one thing you can do if you're bent over. They've been reading the Bible. They're allowed to use all their old stores. And actually, so they've been eating very well at Magdala because they brought up a lot of their old kind of stores and stuff. So insanely, they've been having like four course meals, soup, a starter, a main course

25:09and stuff. So that's the good news. The bad news is they're still in chains. Some of them are very ill. They're very depressed. But then in December 1867, a traveler arrived in Magdala with a message for Dr. Blanc. And this was the news that the British had landed on the coast. The first British sort of engineers had landed on the coast. Dr. Blanc said later, it was one of those exciting moments in a man's life that few can realize who have not passed through months of mental agony and then been suddenly overcome

25:41with joy. So it's grandiously exciting for the hostages. The British are on their way. But of course, they're now in a state of unbearable tension because Teodros has been gone for years, two years almost. Will Teodros get back to Magdala before the British? And if so, will he have them all killed or will he agree to see sense? They don't know. And this, of course, brings us to Teodros himself. As I said, he's been gone for ages on campaign. He has been fighting rebels and stuff.

26:13But that autumn, 1867, he too began to head inland. He left his northern capital to head back to Magdala. And with him, he brought his army. He brought a huge horde of camp followers, a huge horde of prisoners that he had taken. So he's got about 50,000 people with him. And above all, his favorite things, which are his guns. So listeners may remember that he was getting these Swiss and German missionaries to try and

26:44build guns for him. And they have finally managed to cast what he really wanted, which is a giant mortar. And this is a 70-ton mortar. Its mouth is two feet wide, so it's a huge caliber. And he calls it Sebastopol because he loves the Crimean War. So Napier had been told Teodros has got these guns. And Napier assumed, well, when Teodros goes back to Magdala, he'll obviously leave these guns behind because they're so heavy.

27:14And he's not going to try and drag them. But no, Teodros is dragging these guns back to Magdala. And he's very excited about the chance of using them. Can I ask, Dominic, these missionaries, these Swiss and German missionaries, obviously making guns, we said in the first episode, isn't really part of what they're about. No. But have they upped their game by this point? Are these functioning? Well, that is a great question. And do you know what? We're going to find out. We're going to find out what happens. Because Teodros has not yet fired it. Teodros has experimented a little bit with these guns, but he's never really fired them in anger.

27:47Okay, exciting. And this is something for listeners to look forward to.

Teodros reacts to the invasion

27:51Now, he knows at this point, so let's say we're at the beginning of 1868, he knows the British have landed. His agents have intercepted messages from Napier to the local chiefs, basically trying to get the local chiefs support. Teodros' reaction, people who are fans of his erratic behavior will be pleased to hear that he reacts in a very peculiar way. So first of all, he says to his German missionary gunsmiths, he says, this is brilliant. The one thing I've always wanted to see is a really disciplined European army, and finally

28:22I'm going to get the chance. So his plan appears to be that he will get to Magdala first, he will line up all his guns, then he will test them against the British army. He thinks that when the British see Sebastopol in action, they will respect him and they will see what a great king he is, and what an impressive person he is, and they'll definitely want to come to an arrangement with him and perhaps sign a treaty. This is his thinking. He tells his courtiers, he says, I've heard a prophecy that a European king will meet with

28:53an Ethiopian king in this country, and after this, a great king will come. But I don't know whether I shall be that great king or someone else. That's modest of him. Yeah, even so, he's very keen, he's very excited. He's also started re-bombarding his old crush, Hormuzd Rassam, the British agent, the guy from Mosul who used to be an archaeologist in the British descent. But is he still chained up at this point? He's chained up at Magdala in the mountain lair, but Teodros has started writing, sending

29:28him love letters again. I mean, an insane thing to write to somebody who you're keeping as a hostage. How are you? How are you, my friend? The nearer I approach towards you, the happier I feel. Oh, my friend, do not think I bear any hatred towards you. I've placed you in a present position in order that I may come to know the people of your country. It's kind of the opposite of the Stockholm syndrome, isn't it? Yeah, where your captor. The captor falls in love with the captive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the mad thing, the maddest thing is that Teodros says to him, the thing I'm really

29:59looking forward to is I can't wait to show you Sebastopol. I have had a large mortar cast, which is to tame me on the road. But when I reach Magdala and you see it and admire it, I will forget all the trouble it has given me. So basically, Sebastopol for Teodros is a bit like the owl man for the Aztecs. Yes, it is. It's the ultimate weapon that will definitely win him the war. It will win him the war and also win him the undying affection of Rassam. So finally, Teodros arrives at the mountaintop on the 27th of March, 1868.

30:34It's a very Gothic scene. So a storm is breaking overhead, thunder, pouring rain. He arrives on the mountaintop and his guards immediately bring in Rassam. And Rassam is shocked to see that Teodros has aged a lot in the last couple of years. He looks very gaunt, very haggard. Now, Rassam probably hasn't aged brilliantly because he's been chained up in a hut. But Teodros has been off on campaign. His mental health isn't great, to be honest. And he greets Rassam, his hostage, against the backdrop of the British invasion of his

31:06country with the mad greeting, today we must all be English. And what does he mean by that? God knows. Wear unsuitable clothing for the hot temperature. React to everything with sort of insouciant understatement. But that's not his style at all. No, he loves a voluble explosion. No, I think what he means by this, he means he's just, I think he just is so excited that the British are coming in a weird way. And he says, I can't wait to show you Sebastopol. And he says, the two happiest days in my life are when Sebastopol was cast.

31:38And also today, when I get to see you again. I mean, it's so unsettling. Callum, our producer, will enjoy this reference. There's a scene in I'm Alan Partridge, when Alan Partridge is effectively taken prisoner by a crazed fan called Jed. And this is basically Rassam's situation. He's been taken prisoner by Teodros. But then Teodros' mood changes abruptly. And he says to Rassam, I hope, Mr. Rassam, that when your people arrive, they will not

32:10despise me because I am black. And then a note of fatalism. One day you may see me dead. And while you stand by my corpse, it may be that you curse me for my bad conduct towards you. Rassam, I think, finds it hard to know. Keep up with all this. Yeah, keep up. And the maddest thing of all, right? So Teodros, almost tearful with his love of Rassam and morbid thoughts and all this. And then as soon as his guards take Rassam out, Teodros turns to his courteous and says

32:44very bitterly, Rassam has made asses of us and a fool of me. He's pretending to be my friend, but he's been plotting to slaughter us, ravish our wives and reduce our people to bondage. It's kind of a 16-year-old girl with a crush. I love him. I love him. He hates me. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. This is exactly his attitude to Rassam. Now, that's Teodros. General Napier, a very different kind of man with his…

33:15His moustache and his keen interest in engineering project. Exactly. His men have now trudged all the way to the edge of the Jidda Gorge, which is about 50 miles from Magdala. We're now early April. So this is very sort of sun-scorched, barren terrain. It's hard work now. They're a long way from the coast. They've traveled more than 300 miles. And on the 6th of April, they get their first glance of the summit of Magdala in the distance. So one war correspondent said it rose like a great ship out of the surrounding billows.

33:48And Napier now sends ahead a messenger with a final ultimatum. By command of the Queen of England, I am approaching Magdala with my army in order to recover from your hands, Envoy Rassam, Consul Cameron, Dr. Blanc, Lieutenant Prido, and the other Europeans now in your majesty's power. I request your majesty to send them to my camp as soon as it is sufficiently near to admit of their coming in safety. There is no reply. But Teodros does know that the British are very close now. Now, every morning, Teodros very excitedly has been scanning the mountains with his telescope.

34:24Is that the telescope he got given? Yeah. He got given. He's thrown it away. So he didn't smash it. No, clearly it didn't break. He's been staring through his telescope. And on the 7th of April, which is the Tuesday before Easter, he sees the first red British uniforms on the other side of the Bishilo Gorge. And he shouts, perhaps unexpectedly, he shouts very loudly with excitement when he sees them. He shouts, hurrah, there go the donkeys. Does he, the donkeys of the British? Not all these mules that Napier's had brought over.

34:56The British have got mules with them. So maybe that's what he's talking about. Who knows? And then he hands the telescope to this Swiss missionary called Theophilus Valbier, who he's very keen on. And he says to Valbier in a very jaunty way, there you will see your brethren who have come from England to kill me. Tre lah. Yeah. So the next day is a Wednesday. Teodros gets up before dawn. Now, usually he dressed quite austerely with a white robe and a red border. But today, because the British have come, he's very excited. He's wearing, we're told, a silk gold-threaded robe with white pantaloons.

35:30And Rassam said, rather disparagingly, he looked more like a harlequin than a sovereign. It's something really sad about that. I know. He's trying to look regal. He's trying to make a splash, only to be the victim of massive British snobbery. Yeah, he's dressed inappropriately. Rassam has obviously become very naturalised. You know who Teodros will get on absolutely superbly with? And it's a man we're always pleased to get back on this podcast. The Kaiser. The Kaiser. He and the Kaiser would have got on so well.

36:00There are similarities there. At this point, Teodros orders that all the prisoners be brought down. He's got a military camp lower down the mountain. And he has all the prisoners brought down. So this is the hostages, but also this great horde of Ethiopian captives. So these are, as I said before, captured rebels, rival chiefs, criminals, all of this. And these blokes he's treated very badly. They're ravaged by disease and half-starved. And Teodros says, you know, as a little gesture to the British, choose 70 of these Abyssinian captives and let them go.

36:31And so they let these people go. They go off and head off towards the British. And then Teodros draws up his army and he gives a truly deranged speech to his army. He starts to inspire them. He says, the British are coming. And be in no doubt, the British are much better than we are. They are better equipped and they're stronger. Their very dress is bedecked with gold. To say nothing of their treasures, which can only be borne by elephants. Are you ready to fight?

37:01And enrich yourselves with the spoils of these white slaves? Or will you disgrace me by running away? I mean, that's a sort of a leap. He's gone from saying the British are better to saying, we'll get all their treasure. And a kind of grizzled old veteran steps forward and says, only wait to your majesty until those asses make their appearance and we will tear them to pieces. And everybody shouts, huzzah! Yay! Yeah. And Teodros greets that by saying to this man.

37:31You old fool. Have you ever seen an English soldier? Before you know where you are, your belly will be filled with bullets. Oh my God. It's like Henry V Attachian Corps. So if you're one of his men, he's sending very mixed messages. He is. Yes. He is. It was slightly deflated, I think. So the next day, Thursday, Thursday before Easter, Teodros has been drinking a lot, probably too much, I think. And he drinks a lot that morning. And after lunch, he decides to retire to sleep it off.

38:05Now, before that, he said to his generals, OK, you can release all the remaining Abyssinian prisoners. Release them all now. Now, these people have all been shackled up as well. I mean, the people manufacturing chains in the kingdom of Abyssinia must have been making an absolute killing. And it's taking ages to get all their shackles off. And about four o'clock that afternoon, a very hungover Teodros is woken by the sound of prisoners complaining that the guards are taking too long to get their shackles off.

38:38Teodros goes berserk at this. He calls for a sword and he immediately stabs two of the prisoners to death. Then he says, how many are left? And there's about 300 left. He says, bring them all up to me. They line them all up on the cliff. And then one by one, he has them thrown over the cliff to their deaths. And then he tells the guards, go down and finish all the survivors off. The whole thing takes two hours. It's a horrendous scene, obviously. But Teodros does feel bad about it afterwards because that evening, apparently, one of his servants heard him praying aloud, telling God, confessing to God that he was drunk when he ordered the massacre.

39:13And asking for forgiveness, saying, please don't count it against me because drink had been taken. I don't know what God's view of that was, actually. I don't think very approving, to be honest. Surely not. So we come to the crucial day. And this is the 11th of April, 1868. It is Good Friday. Teodros knows that the British are very close now. He knows that they are about to reach, in a few hours, the plateau of Aroji, which is just below the fortress of Magdala. They should be there by the afternoon. And this will be it.

39:43This will be the moment of decision. And we will find out what happens in that moment of decision after the break. This episode is sponsored by how the Tudors lost their heads on National Geographic. You and I think we know the story of the Tudors, don't we? But this series puts them in a very different light because it asks, what if the biggest Tudor stories were investigated like modern true crime cases?

40:14A brilliant idea. So just to emphasise, this is very much not a traditional history documentary and we could not be more excited about it. So this is a series that explores some of the best known figures of the Tudor era and also some of the less well-known. And it uncovers fresh evidence that shines a new light on the stories behind their demise. Yeah, I'd really love to get into some of these Tudor stories. You know that the one that's always fascinated me is Henry VIII and is Ulcer. I'd like to have forensic scientists looking at it, how he got the ulcer, how it was treated.

40:48I don't know if that's one of the cases they're doing, but I know they're doing the absolute best cases, so it probably will be. Well, Dominic, the only way to find out is to watch how the Tudors lost their heads on Sunday at 8pm on National Geographic. We are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board. The great gay strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

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41:44Are you prepared to come in? We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order. Or FRAGO. Or a FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia. Yes.

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The battle of Aroji

42:49Welcome back to The Rest is History. Where it is Good Friday, 1868. And the Emperor Theodros is preparing for his final showdown. With Lieutenant General Sir Robert Napier. And the two generals are very different characters. Aren't they, Dominic? They are. They could not be more different. Napier's probably been studying engineering measurements overnight. Theodros drinking. Feeling bad that he's been massacring people.

43:19Throwing them off cliffs. He gets up early and he goes to church. Then he orders. All the European hostages are still at his lower camp. He says, I've changed my mind. Take them all back up to the top of Magdala. I mean, all they have been doing for about the past two years is trudging up and down this mountain. It's a miserable business. They've had a very confusing time, I think. Yeah. Rasam, who's still on speaking terms with him, says to him, please, this is probably your last chance to ask General Napier for terms.

43:51And Theodros says, I will do no such thing as he has been sent by a woman. Meaning Queen Victoria. So he was all talk about Queen Victoria beforehand. Yeah. It's not very gallant at all. No, exactly. He's let himself down there. That's very poor from Theodros. Theodros now divides his forces. He will stay on the heights with his guns, which he's very excited about. And the rest of his men, so he's got about 7,000 sort of loyalists. He wants them to charge the British as soon as the British arrive on the plateau.

44:22And he gives them a slightly disconcerting send-off, as is his want. He says to them, take leave of your families, for today you will have the honour to die with a king. So Churchillian. Now, meanwhile, Napier's men are climbing onto the plain of Oroji. And they're climbing up through this valley in punishing heat. It's a really gruelling march. I mean, they've come a hell of a long way. They're wearing these very heavy packs. They haven't got much water. The weather, I mean, you know, the gods have written the story.

44:52There is thunder in the air. The storm is going to break. It's a very ominous atmosphere. And, of course, I already mentioned the best-known British intervention overseas at this point is probably still 1842 Afghanistan. You know, this is the obvious parallel. They know that these things don't always end well, despite their technological superiority. Henry Morton Stanley, war correspondent, said at the time, you know, he remembered this terrible, suspicious silence as they advanced up the valley onto the plateau.

45:26And I think a lot of them probably are thinking this has got kind of Afghanistan Mark II written all over it. At some point, people will emerge over the horizon and we will all be butchered. I mean, part of the kind of the vibe of the Afghan war was British soldiers in red uniforms being shot at by snipers from behind rocks and things like that. This is a key moment in the history of the British Army, isn't it? Because they are not wearing their red coats.

45:57Exactly right. Exactly. They have brought along with them, for the first time in combat, khaki battle uniforms. As you say, previously they had worn their kind of bright, resplendent red, but they finally decided to compromise with reality and to bring – and this is the first time that a British Army has gone into combat wearing khaki. They don't all wear khaki, I think, but certainly a proportion of them do. So they are now stumbling out. It's about four o'clock onto this plane from the valley.

46:28And on the heights above, Teodros has been watching their advance. And now he sees them coming and he shouts to his men, Be not afraid of these English soldiers, because they are like the Philistines who made war against David. But remember, David smoked them, and in the name of God I shall conquer. Look at those slaves. They're women. Look at them. They bring you clothes and riches and pay. Go down and help yourselves. And at this moment, you know, proper Hollywood stuff, the storm breaks.

46:58There's a great crash of thunder overhead. And at that moment, Teodros shouts to his gunners, open fire! And the first shells shriek through the air towards Napier's men. So some of the guns are working. And at that point, down below, the Abyssinian troops that have been waiting gave a great kind of cheer and a kind of war whoop. And they charge onto the plane themselves, some of them on horseback, some of them running. They've leveled their spears. They're singing their war songs. It's the kind of ride of the Rehirim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields or something.

47:33And a tremendously rousing and exciting moment as they race towards the British. And for a moment, you know, if you're watching the film of this, it looks as if Teodros' plan has worked. It looks as if the British have walked right into a trap. They've walked into the guns. They've walked into the charge. And they're going to be swept off the plateau. But it doesn't quite work out that way. So first of all, the guns, these guns that he loved so much. I mean, never get a missionary to build you a gun.

48:04That's the lesson of history. It is the lesson of history. A Swiss missionary. The guns are so inaccurate that the shells just sail over the heads of Napier and his men. Has he fired Sebastopol at this point? I don't know that he ever does fire Sebastopol. Oh, no. But one of the guns early on, one of the guns explodes. Yeah, it bursts. And at this point, I think some of the gunners lost heart. Shoddy Swiss workmanship. Shoddy, exactly. So off in the way with the Swiss, isn't it?

48:35Yeah, isn't it? Now, meanwhile, his assault troops or whatever are charging at the British. Now, the British are taking aim with their rifles. But the Abyssinians know they've charged guns before. They've charged riflemen before. They know that basically what will happen is the riflemen will fire, but then they'll have to reload. That's a massive faff. It takes them ages. And you can be on them and you can butcher them. But what they don't know is the British have a secret technological advantage.

49:07The British have bought, for the first time, state-of-the-art Snyder breech-loading rifles. So these are rifles that you can reload with a breech in seconds. Yeah. We have got the Snyder breech-loading rifle and they have not. Correct. And that means that collectively, the British line can fire about 30 to 40 rounds a second. And there's no let-up in the rate of fire. And so the Abyssinians are charging towards them, thinking at some point they're going to stop and they're going to reload.

49:37And that moment never comes. The first to fall are the Abyssinian chiefs and kind of captains because they are wearing bright red kind of scarlet shirts. That is ironic. So they're sitting ducks. They are shot down. And their men keep coming and then the bullets, just a hail of bullets, just knock them down in the hundreds. And they keep charging. They keep charging again and again. And the British just keep on firing. It is a total bloodbath. And from the heights, Teodros is watching and he just cannot believe it. So this continues for the next couple of hours.

50:10Alas, dusk begins to fall and the fighting dies down. And the survivors straggle back to Teodros' camp. And in the dark, he calls out to them, where is so-and-so? Where is so-and-so? So naming his chiefs, they're all dead. All the people he knows by name are dead. So in all, he's lost about 1,000 men, just under 1,000 men, thousands more wounded. The British have lost two men killed and about 20 wounded. You could hardly imagine a more lopsided battle.

50:41Teodros is stunned. I mean, the weird thing is he always kind of knew, I think, that the British would be a tough challenge, but he didn't think they'd be this tough. And he retires to his tent in that sort of terrible silence. He doesn't know what to do. Does he free the hostages? Does he start killing the hostages? Does he try to run away? Well, when in doubt, send another of your letters to Rassam, I think is his general approach. So he sends Rassam another of his mad notes.

51:11How have you passed the day? Thank God I am well. I, being a king, could not allow people to come and fight me without attacking them first. I have done so, and my troops have been beaten. I thought your people were women, but I find they are men. They fought very bravely. Seeing that I'm unable to withstand them, I must ask you to reconcile me to them. And Rassam scribbles him a note and says, I completely agree. Adorn, I think you should send a delegation to Napier. Napier, maybe send that missionary, the Reverend Flad and Lieutenant Predo, and they can carry

51:49your peace offer to Napier. So that night, nobody can sleep because there's just a lot of wailing as the Abyssinians mourn their dead. And at four o'clock in the morning, Teodros summons Flad and Predo, as Rassam suggested, and says, I want you to go down to the British camp and discuss peace. So they go down the hill. They get onto the plane. The plane is covered with bodies, many of them being mangled by hyenas. So that's a bit disconcerting. Under their white flag, they get to the British camp. And when the soldiers see them coming, the soldiers will start cheering.

52:22And they're taken straight to Napier. And they say to Napier, we've come from the emperor. The emperor wants peace. And Napier says, brilliant. And Napier dictates a very gracious reply. He says, your majesty has fought like a brave man and has been overcome by the superior power of the British army. It is my desire that no more blood may be shed.

The final hours at Magdala

52:43If therefore your majesty will submit to the Queen of England and bring all the Europeans now in your majesty's hands and deliver them safely this day in the British camp, I guarantee honorable treatment for yourself and for all the members of your majesty's family. And he says, Teodros has 24 hours to decide. So the delegation go back to Teodros. And he says, I don't really understand what he means. What does he mean by honorable treatment? Do they mean to treat me honorably as a prisoner? Or do they intend to assist me in recovering my country from the rebels?

53:14And I think this is when he's got a real shock at this point, because I think he always thought that the British would fight him, be impressed by him and his big gun, and then they would help him and they would be great friends. And now he thinks, I don't want to be taken as a prisoner back to London. That is the last thing that I want. So he dictates this very rambling reply. No mention of the hostages. A lot of mention of how terrible the Abyssinian people are.

53:46A land of heathens, he describes his own country as. He says, you are brilliant people. You're a people governed by discipline. I'm very impressed with you. But he doesn't really give Napier a clear answer about the hostages. He sends this message to Napier's camp. Then he goes and sits on a rock alone. His men see him praying. They see him bow three times. And then to their horror, they see him pull a pistol from his belt and put it in his mouth and go to pull the trigger. And his officers rush at him and they yank his arm away.

54:19And he does fire, but the bullet just grazes his ear. I mean, you say to their horror, but I mean, he has led them into a complete disaster. So they're still loyal to him. But they must be horrified because they stop him shooting himself. Yeah. Because you'd think with all his ranting and his lunatic general behavior, they might think this isn't really the greatest war leader we've ever had. You might think that, but maybe some of them just think it's fun. You know, you never know where you are. No two days are the same. I don't know. Because he's busy chopping off hands and feet, isn't he?

54:51And throwing people to hyenas. Looting manuscripts. Yeah, he's doing that, of course. Maybe it's that. I don't know. He now throws himself to the ground. He's sobbing. He's disconsolate. He's just in the floods of tears. And then he dusts himself down. And for about the 17th time, he says, bring all the Europeans down from the mountaintop. It is hard to keep up, isn't it? It is. Yeah. I mean, you find it hard to keep up. Imagine having to make the notes. I mean, yeah. I just want to keep track of where everybody is. I thought you were going to say, imagine being a hostage.

55:22But no, you're the victim here. No, I'm the real victim in all this. Let's be clear. So the hostages are dragged back down. They're completely bewildered. It's very dark. It's a very sort of ominous scene. They're convinced that Teodros has gone completely mad and is going to kill them all. They get halfway down and then a guard stops them and he says, Mr. Rassam, please. The rest of you stay here. Teodros wants to speak to Rassam alone. Rassam, who's very nervous, finds the emperor standing alone by the edge of the cliff. And Teodros, who's a broken man, says to him, you know, Mr. Rassam, that you and I have always been on good terms.

55:57I've always had a high regard for you. It's true I behave badly towards you, but that was because of the behavior of bad men. And Teodros says, tomorrow, when I'm taken prisoner, please stand up for me in the British camp. Put a good word in for me. I want you to bear this in mind. Unless you befriend me, I should either kill myself or become a monk. Now, goodbye. It's getting late. Try to come and see me tomorrow if you can. And they shake hands. And Rassam sees tears in Teodros' eyes.

56:31And Rassam goes on down the path. And Rassam is terrified that when he goes on down the path, he will find that all the other hostages have been butchered. But no, he meets up with the other hostages, and they all now trudge on towards the British camp. And they pass through the British lines, great cheering. They've all been freed. It's an incredibly emotional scene. They're shown to Napier's tent. The British agent in Aden, who was called Colonel Merriweather, has brought loads of champagne along just in case. See, I've mentioned the champagne.

57:01Who said that's why they brought the champagne, right? So they open the champagne. You know, it's all over. Or is it not quite? The next day is Easter Sunday. Teodros is still, you know, up on the hill. Sends Napier another letter. Very erratic. He tells Napier that he's tried to kill himself. Satan placed in me the thought that I should die by my own gun. He says, as a peace offering, I'm going to send you a thousand cows and 500 sheep. Which he does. And as the livestock is being led towards the British line, Teodros says to his officers,

57:36surely it is peace now. They've taken my power from me. Surely it is peace. But now the tragic turning point in the story. Napier refuses to accept the cows and the sheep. And I think the reason he does this is he knows that under the local custom, if he accepts them, that means it's all over. And he's accepted peace. And when Teodros sees Napier turning them away, he says bitterly to his courtiers, these people having got what they wanted, they now want to kill me.

58:07And he flirts with the idea of fleeing. He says, you know, maybe we could run away. Maybe we could get to Lake Tarna. But his men say to him, no, we're not going to flee with you. You've got to make peace now. We will stay with your majesty till death. But you must listen to our advice and come to terms with the Ferenjis, with the foreigners. And Teodros is devastated by this. They won't run away with him. And that night, he kind of wanders alone on the mountain, staring down at the British campfires. Now, Napier, meanwhile, is down with his senior officers thinking about what to do.

58:39Deep down, I don't think they want to know the battle. His men are exhausted. They've gone a long way. They're hundreds of miles from home. They have, of course, now got the hostages. They could just turn around and go back at this point. The reason they don't is it's the point that you made earlier on. Yeah. The similarity with the fall of the Aztecs. They would have to go through lands controlled by rival warlords. And he knows those warlords expect him basically to finish Teodros off. So basically, the deal is he has to finish Teodros off or else they risk being cut up as they march back to the coast.

59:15Exactly right. Exactly. And I think finishing Teodros off might well involve taking him prisoner and bringing him back to London. And Teodros is probably frightened that he's going to be dragged through the streets in chains like a captured general in a Roman triumph. Which probably would not have been the case. He would probably have had tea with Queen Victoria Osborne House and then been sort of incarcerated in some country house in Hampshire. I mean, worst case scenario, you're being exhibited at a freak show in the East End.

59:45No, they wouldn't do that. No, of course they wouldn't. Of course they wouldn't. Well, as we will discover in the bonus episode about what they do with Teodros' son, they send him to public schools.

59:56So anyway, Monday morning, Teodros has been outside all night and he climbs back up to the fortress and his men are huddled around their campfires and they watch him in silence. And Teodros says, come on, death or glory. One last stand, let's attack the British. Bring your weapons and follow me. And he leads them out of the citadel down this path. They get about halfway down the mountain and then a lot of them say, hold on, this is mad. I'm not attacking the British again. We would rather seek death in Magdala, they say.

1:00:28And a very deflated Teodros says, fine, we'll go back. So they trudge back up again. God, it's up and down, isn't it? I mean, it's all this story is. I know, constant. He's getting his steps in, that's for sure. A lot of his men slip away. Yeah, they know this is all over. So by the afternoon of Easter Monday, he's in Magdala with a dwindling band of loyalists. And they're sort of stacking boulders against the outer gate. Meanwhile, Napier has ordered his guns to start shelling the Abyssinian citadel.

1:00:59And the shells are getting closer and closer. By about four o'clock in the afternoon, the first British troops are advancing up the path towards the sort of outer gates. And the shells are now landing inside the walls between the inner and outer gates. So Teodros and his remaining loyalists begin to fall back towards the inner gate. At this point, the British have brought scaling ladders with them and they start to scale the ladders and to climb the outer ramparts. Some of them get to the outer gate and they start to force open the doors with kind of crowbars and stuff.

1:01:30Now, Teodros and his companions are kind of firing at them from the inner gateway. But it's completely pointless. There are now hundreds of British soldiers streaming up the path and towards the outer gateway. And it's at this point that Teodros shouts his last order to his men. He shouts, flee. I release you from your allegiance, but I shall never fall into the hands of an enemy. And he pulls out a gun and he puts the end in his mouth and he pulls the trigger and bang.

1:02:01That's it. He falls to the ground. And within moments, his men are melted away. The gates have opened and the British troops are pouring in and they see his body lying on the ground in the dust. And he's, of course, quite dead. And by his side lies the gun with which he took his own life. And they pick it up and they see it is the silver duelling pistol that he was given as a gift from Queen Victoria. The one you told us to remember. Exactly.

1:02:31He's killed himself with his present from Queen Victoria. You are like Agatha Christie putting the candlestick on the mantelpiece in chapter two. That Chekhov's gun. I introduce the gun in act one and it's going to recur in act five.

The aftermath and legacy

1:02:45Yes. So that is the end of Teodros, the emperor of Abyssinia. Dr. Blanc, who had been his hostage, did the postmortem. And Dr. Blanc said later, death that gave an air of calm grandeur to the features of one whose career had been so remarkable, whose cruelties are almost unparalleled in history. I mean, I think that's unfair, actually. But who at the last hour fought like a brave man and killed himself rather than surrender. And it was actually Mr. Brassam who organised the funeral, which was held in the Coptic

1:03:17church on the Magdala hilltop the next day. Teodros, he would have loved that. He would have loved that. That's what he wanted. I mean, he died as he would have wanted in some ways. And he got the funeral he would have wanted, devised by his beloved. The only thing he'd have liked, I think he'd have liked Queen Victoria to have been there. I think no. I think it's all about Brassam. Yeah, maybe. Don't forget, he'd been very rude about Queen Victoria being a woman. He had. Yes, he had. So at the end, the other defenders surrendered almost immediately. And this was the cue for the British to start piling into the manuscripts, the relics and

1:03:52the treasures. Now, as we said, this is not an entirely straightforward British bad guys plundering stuff story, because, of course, this was stuff that Teodros had basically accumulated in his campaigns. And he had an absolutely mad collection. So he had religious relics and vestments and crowns and goblets. He had a lot of manuscripts. He had musical instruments. He had, weirdly, a collection of Staffordshire pottery. He had umbrellas.

1:04:22He had cases of wine. He had carpets. He had lion skins. He had toy soldiers and a collection of cameras, all of which ended up in the baggage of all these British soldiers. There was a massive looting free-for-all, which only ended when Napier himself arrived, came up the path. And he came up with a military band playing God Save the Queen and See the Conquering Hero Comes. And Napier said, now, come on, we're British. We don't want a massive free-for-all.

1:04:53We will distribute the booty properly. And basically, they doled out all the cash to all the troops. And then a few days later, he held a gigantic auction where all the sort of relics and stuff and the cameras and the Staffordshire pottery was auctioned off to the highest bidders. So we can talk possibly in our bonus about some of the loot. Well, the notorious one is the Tabots, isn't it? Yes. They're not books, exactly. They're kind of tablets, aren't they? Held by the British Museum, I think, aren't they? And there's one held by Westminster Abbey, I think.

1:05:24Oh. So we talk about some of the loot in our special bonus episode on this for Rest It's History Club members. We also talk about what happened to some of the hostages, like Hummus, Rassam. And we talk about two other characters that we haven't really mentioned. So one is a guy called Captain Speedy, who was one of Napier's deputies. Literally Speedy. That's not his nickname. That was his name, Captain Speedy. But Captain Speedy, before this, had been Teodros' military advisor. So he had an extraordinary career.

1:05:54He knew all about the guns. He did. And the other person is Teodros' son, Prince Alamehu. And he was sent back to England. He was introduced to Queen Victoria, and he ended up as a boarder at Rugby, a flashman's old school. So we'll talk about him and his extraordinary trajectory. But back to Napier. Now, we talked before about comparisons with other military expeditions, perhaps particularly those launched by our American cousins. And the difference with Napier is Napier has absolutely no interest in installing a client

1:06:28regime, in sorting, you know, making Abyssinia safe for democracy, any of that sort of stuff. His orders were to get in, get the hostages and get out again. And that is precisely what he's going to do. He's not interested in Abyssinia at all. He sends a message to his army the day after the auction. He says, The Queen and the people of England entrusted to you a very arduous and difficult expedition to release our countrymen from a long and painful captivity, and to vindicate the honour of our country. We've done it. We're going home.

1:06:58The message that Jimmy Carter never got to deliver. Exactly right. So the result of this, actually, is that Abyssinia is left leaderless. And the result is 20 years of chaos. Because basically, it's like they've gone in and they've kicked over an ant heap, isn't it? Yeah. Complete chaos. You sort yourselves out. I mean, the thing is, what could they have done? They could have chosen a client king. It would probably have all ended in disaster, frankly. I think they absolutely did the right thing in getting out. There's 20 years of civil war. There's then the war in the Sudan, which spills over. The Mardi, our old friend General Gordon.

1:07:30And it only ends, really, at the end of the century under a guy called Menelik II. And he really establishes himself as a kind of Abyssinian hero by beating the Italians at the Battle of Adwar in 1896, which is seen as a kind of landmark moment. Humiliation of a European army by an African one. But all that lies in the future. So Napier and co. march back to the coast. Their band's playing. Their flag's flying. They get there in June. Everything is loaded back onto the ships.

1:08:00The railway tracks, the telegraph wires, the elephants. The elephants are all right, are they? The elephants are all right. The hostages. Eight days later, Napier embarks for Suez. He goes back to England. In England, he is a hero. We rejoice that the honour of the British flag and the dignity of the British name have been vindicated. Asiatics will ponder and talk over the fate of a man who imprisoned British subjects. And they'll think twice about challenging the power that triumphed over the black king.

1:08:33So quite pungent stuff from British editorials. Napier is given the thanks of Parliament. He's given a reception by the Queen. He's promoted to field marshal. And he's given a hereditary peerage. So he becomes Baron Napier of Magdala. And there's still a Baron Napier of Magdala today. And when he dies in 1890, he's a national hero. And there's a statue put up in Kensington, a Queen's Gate. You can still see it today. But talk of statues, we should end in Abyssinia.

1:09:05So Teodros in Abyssinia, or rather Ethiopia as we now call it, is a cult figure today. So in his brilliant book on this, Philip Marston talks about going to the markets in Addis Ababa and seeing Teodros' t-shirts and badges, seeing his image stenciled on the walls of bars. He's now seen as a patriotic hero who died fighting European imperialism, a kind of symbol of Ethiopian independence. And the most obvious reminder of him, you can go to Emperor Teodros Square, which is in the center of Addis Ababa.

1:09:40And basically, this is a giant roundabout. And unbelievably, this roundabout is situated on, of all things, Churchill Avenue. Who was at the Battle of Omdaman. Who was at the Battle of Omdaman, exactly. He was no stranger to a sort of Horn of Africa battle. Now, there is no statue of Teodros, but you will be pleased to hear that in the middle of this roundabout, there is a replica of his beloved giant gun, Sebastopol. Oh, fabulous.

1:10:11So you could go and see this. If we haven't done a Rest is History trip to Addis Ababa, we'd obviously go to the… But what about the actual gun? Well, this here is the thing. The real Sebastopol still exists. 250 miles away from Addis Ababa. It's half buried on the barren mountaintop of what was once the fortress of Magdala. There's nothing there now. And it was never fired. No one ever worked out if it worked. It shows no sign of ever having been fired.

1:10:43Oh, God. So there it sits, this forgotten relic of this bizarre episode in British and, indeed, African history. And the mad thing about the whole business, as Sir Harry Flashman rightly puts it in his memoir, it could all have been avoided if only Queen Victoria had answered her letters. Well, on the subject of Queen's behaving badly and disastrous consequences ensuing, next week we are back with the French Revolution and specifically with the terror.

1:11:21So the most dramatic, the most celebrated episode in the whole of the French Revolution, this is tumbrils, guillotines, blood flowing in the streets, the deaths of Marie Antoinette, Danton, Robespierre, just incredible drama and a completely blood-soaked climax. And that, if you are a member of the Rest is History Club, you will be getting all six episodes this coming Monday. And if you're not and you would like to hear the slicing of the guillotine for six solid episodes,

1:11:57you can go to therestishistory.com. So huge excitement for that. But I think, Dominic, before we go, massive thanks for telling this forgotten but incredibly dramatic story, simultaneously tragic and darkly comic, as is so often the case with British Imperial history. Poor old. Do you feel sorry if it's yours, Ross? I'd have really liked him. You wouldn't like him if he'd shackled your... No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a hostage. But I'll tell you what I liked about him.

1:12:28I liked his style as a letter writer. Yeah. I would have loved to get a letter from him. And unlike Queen Victoria, I would have replied and become his pen pal. Maybe Rest is History listeners. If those people who feel fondly disposed to Tom, why don't you send in your letters to him in the style of Theodros II and there'll be a prize for the... The prize is Tom will take you, just the two of you, on a trip to Sebastopol to inspect the mortar in the middle of nowhere in Ethiopia. What could possibly go wrong? Take some dueling pistols with us as well.

1:12:59It'd be great. Anyway, Dominic, thank you. That was great. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

1:13:30Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.