705. Queen Victoria’s Revenge: The Mad Emperor of Abyssinia (Part 1)

Who was Emperor Tewodros II, the colourful and controversial Emperor of Abyssinia? Why did he brutally imprison a number of British emissaries, and how did Queen Victoria respond? And, how would this spark one of the most ambitious expeditions undertaken by the British Empire…? Join Dominic and Tom as they launch into one of the most extraordinary military expeditions in all world history. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[email protected]⁠ _______ This episode is sponsored by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Try Claude for free today at http://Claude.ai/restishistory. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions, there's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.

• 0:24Tom Holland?

  For thousands of years, humanity was defenseless against it. But thankfully, we live in a time of incredible ingenuity and American scientists and partners around the world are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation.

• 0:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, so they're creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90% of mosquitoes. That leads to a 50% drop in malaria, saving lives and protecting vulnerable communities. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search gatesfoundation.org/mosquito to learn more.

• 1:04Tom Holland?

  This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

• 1:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure for the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

• 1:46Tom Holland?

  So they asked over 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.

• 2:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Ask yours at claude.ai/restishistory and keep thinking.

• 2:10Tom Holland?

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• 2:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  So you can shop loads and loads of cars online, you can compare prices, you can check the financing and trade-in options. And of course, you can do it from wherever you are. You start online, go to the dealer for your test drive, and finish wherever works for you. Your information, your data stays with you, so there is no starting over. Plus, you are working with local dealers and there are real people there to help.

• 2:48Tom Holland?

  So buy your car online on AutoTrader, really.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  At Soas, one of our navy sloops will take you down the Red Sea. They'll have you at Zola, that's the port for Abyssinia, by the middle of February. And it can't take above a week to get the silver up country to this place called Atigrat. That's where General Napier will be. Napier? Not Bob the Bug Hunter? What the blazes is he doing in Abyssinia? We haven't got a station there. Ah, we have by now, you may be sure. He was laughing in disbelief. You mean to tell me you haven't heard? Why, he's invaded the place with an army

• 3:44Speaker 02

  from Inja. The silver is to help fund his campaign, don't you see? Good God, Flashy, where have you been? Held up. Held up, can't you? Why is he invading? To rescue the captives. Our consul, envoys, missionaries. They're held prisoner by this mad cannibal king. And he's chaining them and flogging them and kicking up no end of a row. Teodros, his name is. And you mean to say, you've not heard of him? I'll be damned. Why, there's been uproar in parliament? Our gracious queen writing letters? A penny or more on the income tax? It's true.

• 4:29Tom Holland?

  So that is from a memoir by one of Victorian Britain's most decorated officers, General Sir Harry Flashman, VC, recalling his part in what he, in his memoir, calls the strangest campaign in the history of British arms. And this is the subject of today's episode and our next episode, the Abyssinian Expedition of 1868. And I think it's fair to say that this isn't an expedition that is particularly well known, not one of the kind of the classic Victorian expeditions, but it is a banger. And if you go to pretty much any of Britain's leading museums, so the British Museum, the British Library,

• 5:14Tom Holland?

  the V and A, the Bodleian, you will find manuscripts, or relics, or jewels, or treasures that were brought back to Britain from this expedition. And Dominic, we get complaints sometimes, don't we, from Canadian listeners, that we don't have enough mentions of Canada on this podcast. But I gather that some of this loot even found its way to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

• 5:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  So that's a lovely little nod to our Canadian listener, Mark Carney, there. Because I know he's a big fan of the Rest is History, and he will enjoy that, that moment. So yeah, those are treasures carried off by British troops after they stormed the mountain citadel of Magdala to rescue almost 60 European hostages this emperor, Theodore Teodros II was holding. And as you say, it's not a terribly well-known Victorian escapade, but it is surely the maddest. So in Sir Harry Flashman's memoirs, he recalls, and I quote, "The screaming charge of long-haired warriors swinging their hideous sickle blades against the Sikh bayonets, the huge mound of rotting corpses under the precipice at Islamji, the ghastly forest

• 6:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  of crucifixes at Gondar."

• 6:27Tom Holland?

  Who doesn't love a ghastly forest of crucifixes?

• 6:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, exactly. Above all, he recalls, and I quote, "The transformation of an urbane cultivated monarch into a murderous tyrant, shrieking with hysterical glee as he slashed and hacked at his bound victims."

• 6:45Tom Holland?

  I mean, I don't want to rain on the parade, but obviously, this is from a novel. Flashman isn't real. He's an invented character by George MacDonald Fraser, for the avoidance of any doubt. But how much of this exaggerated? How much is true, do we think?

• 6:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  A little bit of it is exaggerated, but there's an awful lot of truth in this. So among the war correspondents who went, who were embedded with the British troops, the British expedition that went to Magdala, one was Henry Morton Stanley, and another was the future imperial novelist, G A. Henty. And Henty said, this was an expedition to rank alongside the adventures of Enan Cortez and Francisco Pizarro, which we've done on the show. And he's not wrong.

• 7:24Tom Holland?

  Do you think this inspired him in his novels? Because as I remember, I read some of them.

• 7:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Tom Holland?

  They were always kind of with Clive to Calcutta, with Hannibal across the Alps, all that kind of stuff. And it always involved a journey.

• 7:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, completely. Like King Solomon's Mines or something. The late Victorians and Edwardians, they love a journey. They love a quest and an expedition. And I think the fact that Henty had been on this incredible, you know, this incredible odyssey into the Highlands of Abyssinia from the Red Sea coast undoubtedly informed his writing. And there is something, there's something terribly tragic about this story, but something really thrilling about it as well.

• 8:03Tom Holland?

  And Abyssinia is Ethiopia. And Ethiopia famously is the country in Africa that was never colonized.

• 8:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:12Tom Holland?

  But interesting that the British do get there even so.

• 8:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So and Tom, you will know this better than anybody, well, anybody outside Ethiopia. It's also the second oldest Christian country in the world, isn't it, after Armenia? So I think it embraced Christianity in 330 AD.

• 8:28Tom Holland?

  Though when Band-Aid asked, do they know it's Christmas? Yeah, they absolutely know it's Christmas.

• 8:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Absolutely did, yeah.

• 8:35Tom Holland?

  They have done for much longer than we have.

• 8:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  But after that, just to give people a sense, so Abyssinia, as it was called in the 19th century, it became effectively cut off from sort of the Mediterranean and the world that became Christendom. And so it became shrouded in mystery. And people in medieval Europe used to love the idea of Prester John, didn't they? This kind of lost Christian king who might be in India, or he might be in somewhere in Africa. And, you know, people have often wondered whether this was some sort of buried ancestral memory of this lost Christian realm of Abyssinia. Anyway, in the 1520s, the Portuguese turned up. It's always the Portuguese. And then for the next few centuries, very slowly, the

• 9:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  outside world intrudes on this kind of mountain kingdom. So you have the Ottomans, who are on the Red Sea. And then the early 19th century, the Egyptians. So the Egyptians are sort of pushing up the Nile through Sudan.

• 9:30Tom Holland?

  And both of these powers are Muslim. And Ethiopia, obviously, is Christian. So that's adding a further dimension of tension.

• 9:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So there's a strain of nativism that runs through this story, I think, of nationalism, I suppose, and a fear of encirclement by Muslim powers, and a fear that other Christians, heretical Christians, will sell them out.

• 9:51Tom Holland?

  Well, we did an episode on the Ark of the Covenant, which Ethiopia claims to have. And the Ethiopian royal family claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. So they have, you know, they have very, very deep links to the kind of the mythology of the Bible in a way that no other Christian kingdom does.

• 10:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. And they feel, well, they feel they own the story. And other people are newcomers and parvenus and so on. Anyway, let's kick off in 1843. So 1843, this young British visitor arrives in Abyssinia. And his name is Walter Plowden, and he's 23 years old. Plowden was born in India to a civil service family. But he's a kind of restless, adventurous sort of young man. He's eager to see action. And he was going back to England when he stopped in Suez and he met a Scottish sailor called John Bell. And John Bell said to him, you know, I've always had this dream of going to look for the source of the White Nile. And Plowden said, brilliant, why don't we do it? I'll come along.

• 10:48Tom Holland?

  Yeah, because that's a peak Victorian activity.

• 10:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is. So they set off, they went south, they went into the mountains of Abyssinia and they absolutely loved it. And this guy Plowden, he wrote about it afterwards. He said, it's absolutely brilliant. It's, it's basically like going back in time to the High Middle Ages. It's warlords, it's feasts, it's battles, it's chivalry. He says, you know, life in, in Britain and in Western Europe now is very boring and industrial and suburban. But this, this is fantastic. There is no parallel to it, he said, in this steaming and telegraphing world. Well, the steam and the, and the steamship and the telegraph and the railway are things we'll be talking about in a little while. So they went into Abyssinia, Bell married an Abyssinian woman and became a kind of military officer in Abyssinia.

• 11:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Plowton had all kinds of mad adventures and escapades and captures and escapes. And eventually he decided to go back to England. Inevitably, he was shipwrecked in the Red Sea. But finally he got back and in 1848, he was appointed by the Foreign Office as Britain's first consul at a place called Massawa, which is a Red Sea port. It's now in Eritrea. And Massawa was basically the gateway from the sea into this landlocked kingdom of Abyssinia. And Plowton's great dream, he's a huge, I don't know if this is a word, Abyssinia file. And his dream is to arrange a permanent treaty that will cement Anglo Abyssinian friendship. The problem is that Abyssinia is very turbulent. It's basically locked into this permanent Wars of the Roses.

• 12:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  So you already mentioned, there's an ancient dynasty that is descended from Solomon and therefore from David. But they have basically become powerless. And it's this huge infighting between warlords and pretenders and kingmakers and different kind of provincial strongmen and whatnot. Impossible to follow. And perhaps as a result, as a reaction to this instability, there is a tradition in Abyssinia by the 19th century that a Messiah descended from Solomon and David will one day arise, he will crush all his rivals. He will unite this fractured country. He will wipe the floor with their enemies, the Egyptians. And he will march all the way to Jerusalem to restore the true faith in the Holy City.

• 13:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  And tradition has it that his name will be Theodros, Theodore, the gift of God. And there are occasionally kind of false Theodors, false Theodroses, but none of them kind of stick. And then in March 1855, Plowden sends a message to the Foreign Office in London. He says, there is at last some chance that Abyssinia may be united under one sovereign and such a one as shall merit the support and friendship of Her Majesty's government. And the bloke he's talking about is a man called Cassa, who's from the north of Abyssinia. And what we know of this guy, Cassa, he was born in 1818 or thereabouts. So he's probably in his mid 30s at this point.

• 13:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  He has an obscure background. He seems to have been educated in a monastery, uh, which was attacked by bandits and then he escaped. He became an outlaw himself, a kind of bandit leader.

• 13:54Tom Holland?

  But no hint, no hint that he's descended from a biblical king.

• 13:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, at this point, no hint that he's descended from Solomon. Although of course he will claim descent from Solomon later, of course. So Cassa is a sort of bold, courageous, charismatic man. He's obviously a good leader of men. He beats one rival after another in the 1840s, early 1850s. Then in January 1855, he beats his last major rival and he assembles all his troops and he says, I've won. I'm the new emperor of Abyssinia and to mark the occasion, I am taking a new name and that name is Theodros.

• 14:31Tom Holland?

  So he is Theodros the second, isn't he? And I was thinking, well, who was Theodros the first? So I, I did some

• 14:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Tom Holland?

  detailed research in the Bodleian.

• 14:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  In the Bodleian Library.

• 14:41Tom Holland?

  Yeah. He's kind of King Arthur figure who reigned around the same time that Henry V was winning the Battle of Agincourt for about nine months. And James Bruce, an explorer in the 19th century, said, there must have been something very brilliant that happened under this prince, but no one can remember what it is.

• 14:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. So anyway, this guy, Cassa, now Theodros, is the protagonist of our story. Flashman, you may recall, called him a murderous tyrant shrieking with hysterical glee. And Alan Moorhead, who wrote two brilliant books on the history of the Nile, said, he has a reputation in the historiography of a mad dog let loose. A sort of black reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible. But I think this is very unfair because actually when Plowton first visited this guy's camp, Theodros liked to spend a lot of time on campaign. So he was always intense. He visits his camp in summer 1855 and he's actually very impressed by Theodros. He finds him kind of reclining on a divan, surrounded by musicians playing flutes and banging drums.

• 15:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  So very kind of, this is absolute, you know, European meeting indigenous king bingo.

• 15:47Tom Holland?

  Reclining on a divan is pretty much obligatory, isn't it?

• 15:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. And actually in his report to the Foreign Office, he said, this guy is very charming and very impressive. He's young, he's vigorous, he's polite and engaging when pleased and mostly displaying great tact and delicacy. He said, Theodros is very dedicated to the idea of restoring the glories of the Ethiopian empire and achieving great conquests. He's man of untiring energy. His personal and moral daring is boundless. Now, there are a couple of flaws that Plowden notes as well. His violent anger at times, his unyielding pride as regards his kingly and divine right, and his fanatical religious zeal. However, Plowden says, this is a man we can do business with. He wants to reclaim Abyssinia's ancient borders.

• 16:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  He dreams of retaking Egypt for Christianity, marching all the way to Cairo and Alexandria. And then, and I quote, a triumphant march to the Holy Sepulchre.

• 16:44Tom Holland?

  Can I ask, the Foreign Office in London wouldn't necessarily approve of these goals, would they?

• 16:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think they're mad goals because this of course is the period when they're starting to think about Suez Canal.

• 16:55Tom Holland?

  They don't want to offend the Ottomans.

• 16:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, they don't want to offend the Ottomans particularly with whom they, of course, they're allied in the Crimean War. I mean, British interests in Egypt are extremely important to them. They do not want to alienate the Egyptians. And this, as we will see, becomes a problem.

• 17:09Tom Holland?

  So on top of that, Britain is Christian power, Ethiopia is Christian power. Is there any sense that therefore they are natural allies? Or is Britain simply, it's all about realpolitik, it's all about imperial priorities? The Christian element just doesn't really enter the, the, the calculations of diplomats in London.

• 17:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's important to some people. It's definitely important to Plowton. It's important, as we will see, to lots of missionaries and missionary organisations.

• 17:34Tom Holland?

  But not to the government.

• 17:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  But to the government, I would argue, probably not. I think they, they, they certainly have religious prejudices. But there's an awful lot of realpolitik in this, as we will find out. Anyway. Plowden says to Theodros, um, would you like to sign a treaty with Britain? And Theodros hesitates. What he doesn't want to do is sign a treaty that would give British agents in Abyssinia diplomatic immunity. He says, you know, my word is law and anything that undermines our sovereignty, I'm not happy with. So I don't really want to sign a treaty with you actually. And Plowton thinks, well, fine, maybe he'll come around in time. And actually, Theodros doesn't seem like a terrible investment. So Flashman paints him as this, you know, demonic kind of drunken maniac.

• 18:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  But there are lots of ways in which he's actually quite forward thinking. He's a, he's a would be moderniser actually. He wants to stamp out the power of the regional warlords. He wants to build a new road network. He wants a new system of royal justice. You could see him as a sort of Henry the Seventh or something. You know, wanting to impose order after years of chaos. He wants to, um, fight slavery because of course slave, the slave trade across the, uh, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean is controlled by his Muslim rivals.

• 18:50Tom Holland?

  And is that a kind of a gesture of economic warfare against the Ottomans? Or is there any humanitarian impulse there at all?

• 18:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  That is a hard thing to say because all that we know of, we don't really have that much insight into his inner world. I suspect there's an awful lot of kind of, um, political expediency in it, frankly. He also wants, very Peter the Great like, he wants to change the way people dress. So he wants Abyssinians to wear proper clothes. He wants them to wear, um, shirts with special coloured sleeves if they've done great service to the state. So that's nice. And he's absolutely fascinated by the outside world. So he loves meeting travellers. He loves hearing about Britain and France. He's obsessed with the Crimean War. That's something that will be coming up in the rest of his history before the end of the year, isn't it?

• 19:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  We'll be doing a series about the Crimean War. So Theodros would have loved that because when travellers come, he always sort of says, what news from Balaclava? Tell me of Sebastopol. You know, he cannot wait to get all this sort of stuff.

• 19:52Tom Holland?

  Doesn't he end up having a gun called Sebastopol in due course?

• 19:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  He does. Very, his favourite possession, a gun called Sebastopol.

• 19:59Tom Holland?

  So it really has had an impact on him.

• 20:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. But the Crimean War fascinates him and bewilders him. He cannot get his head around the fact that Christian Britain and France are allied with Muslim, the Muslim Turkey, the Ottoman Empire against another Christian power, Russia. He really struggles to comprehend that. And that makes him wonder whether the British are quite as devoted to Christianity as they should be. Anyway, a year later, end of 1856, he has the highest ranking visitor he will ever receive. And this is the Coptic patriarch Cyril the Fourth, who is the sort of spiritual father of the Ethiopian church. And he comes to visit from Alexandria and Cyril turns up and he is very, very down on Abyssinian religious practice. Cyril says, look, you have far too many holidays, holy days.

• 20:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  You have far too many saints and they're all wrong. Your calendar is bonkers, all of this. And Theodros, he, he's completely conforms to Plowden's picture of him because he, Plowden said he was very hot tempered and proud. He goes ballistic at this. He locks up the patriarch for a little while. And rumours sweep Abyssinia, well, Theodros has fallen under the sway of the English. Maybe he's going to convert to Protestantism. And he doesn't. Eventually, he releases this patriarch and he kneels to ask his forgiveness. And he says, I'm sorry, I locked you up. And Cyril says, the problem with you is you've been listening to English visitors. Don't trust the English. They're only pretending to be your friends. They are plotting, and I quote, to undermine your power and conquer your country. Which they're not, to be fair to the English.

• 21:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, which they're not, which they're absolutely not. But this is a thread that will run through this story. I think because the Abyssinians have been so isolated for so long, they have got it into their heads that their, you know, their neighbours are all plotting to sell them out or undermine them or conquer them or whatever. I suppose to be fair to him, I mean, the British do have a certain track record in. They do. Well, I mean, at this point, if you listen to the French, they do. But Theodros is actually still quite devoted to the British. She still craves their approval. He recognises that they're the, you know, the most powerful, the richest, the most modern country on earth. And so when the patriarch leaves, he takes with him two letters. And one of them was dictated by Theodros himself. And this was a letter dictated to Queen Victoria.

• 22:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  May this letter, sent by the King of Kings, Theodros of Ethiopia, reach the Queen of England, Victoria. How are you? Are you well? I am well, thank God. I have received your envoy with love and friendship. Now you are the child of Christ and I am the child of Christ. For the love of Christ, I want friendship. So that's nice. It's a great letter. It's a fantastic letter. How are you? Are you well? I'm well. I love it. I think he's my favourite Abyssinian king. It's basically like a cold call from a call centre, isn't it? How are you? How's your day going? No, it's not. It's like a pen pal. Yes. At school. That's what it's like. So, um, the other letter is from Plowden to the Foreign Office. And Plowden says, I think we should cement the relationship with Abyssinia.

• 22:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Could you please send Theodros some guns and ammunition and a handsome piece for his own use, like a hunting rifle? This is in 1857 and two years go by and Plowden and Theodros hear nothing back. And then at last Plowden gets a message from the coast. London have sent him a package. What is it? There's a rifle, a screwdriver and a case. I'm not sure, it's unclear whether the case is for the rifle or the screwdriver. It's for the screwdriver. And that is it. And his, and his heart sinks because he knows this won't go down well with Theodros. Not even a letter. And the truth is, of course, the Foreign Office don't really care. Abyssinia is like a massive backwater. No one really cares about it. It's also, they've had the Indian mutiny raging, haven't they? So they've had other things on their mind.

• 23:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  They've got other things on their mind. Anyway, time goes by. Theodros gets on with fighting the kind of regional warlords and trying to unite the kingdom, but it's much bloodier and more gruelling than he expected. He stamps out one rebellion, another breaks out in the next door province. And at one point, he says to Plowden, I have deceived myself. This is a stiff-necked people and it is necessary to chastise them before they enjoy the blessings which providence has intended. He speaks always in this very kind of rolling biblical cadences. And then in 1858, um, a key moment, I think, his wife, who was always a moderating influence on him, it was called Tewabak. She died in her late twenties and he was absolutely bereft.

• 24:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  He married again for political reasons. He married a woman called Tyrenesh. I say a woman, she was 12 and they didn't really get on. Whenever Theodros went to her tent, he would find her reading the Psalms and she would just say to him very coldly and curtly, I'm conversing with a greater king than you. Get out. He clearly finds this distressing because he starts drinking very heavily at around this point. He starts sleeping with random women in the camp. And he confesses to visiting European missionaries. He says, I'm leading a very un-Christian and disreputable life. And he feels bad about it. So there's that. Now, the second key moment is in 1860, two years later. Plowden, his friend, is travelling across Abyssinia when his party is ambushed by rebels.

• 25:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Plowden is wounded with a spear and he dies nine days later. So that's the end of him. He had a, he had an exciting time, but it ended prematurely. But I guess it's the way he would have wanted to go. It is exactly. Absolutely, it is. So the British now need to appoint a new representative on the Red Sea coast. Again, it's not a priority for them. So it takes them two years to finally send somebody out. And during that time, Theodros's mental state declines from bad to worse. So missionaries who are writing back say, he's, he's increasingly vengeful and angry. He's like a man on the verge of a Titanic explosion. And part of this is obviously, you know, contextual. Abyssinia is a very violent place. There are constant uprisings. There's also, I think, a slight degree of paranoia.

• 25:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's terrified that the British are conspiring, as we said, with the Ottomans and with the Egyptians. He's obsessed with the idea that people in his entourage are plotting against him. So he will regularly hold purges of his senior officers and he would cut off their hands and feet, or sometimes just one hand and one foot. And then he'd throw them outside to be devoured by hyenas. That's a horrible fate. So there's that. We already encountered him saying to Plowden, you know, the people of Abyssinia are rather letting me down. And he really comes to believe this. When he goes into rebel provinces, he's, he's increasingly merciless. He calls himself the flail of the wicked. And he likes to, um, quote this, one of the Psalms. The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.

• 26:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. Washing his feet in the blood of the wicked is very much what Theodros is about by the 1860s. And in order to do this, he's become particularly obsessed with guns. No one in history, not even the people who go to your brother on Al Murray's festival, their World War Two festival, not even those people are as interested in artillery as this guy. He loves guns. He has turned to a group of Swiss and German missionaries who had settled in a place called Gifat in northern Abyssinia. And he had allowed these missionaries in because they had presented themselves as craftsmen. They said, oh, we'd like to teach, you know, interesting, transferable skills to the Abyssinian people.

• 27:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  And they'd built huts and a water wheel and a school and all this kind of thing. I mean, that's missionary kind of activity, isn't it? Yeah, missionaries are always building water wheels. They love that kind of thing. But building artillery is, is, is, is less of a missionary activity, I would guess. Exactly. He loves this one bloke who's Swiss called Theophilus Waldmeyer, who apparently is very good at mending muskets, very good with his hands. And, um, he's always on to this guy Waldmeyer. Can you not build me a massive cannon? And over time, he says to these, uh, sort of German speaking Swiss missionaries, could you please build me bigger and bigger guns? And he gets them to build blast furnaces and things. This, the conditions of them staying in his country. And the blast furnaces keep exploding or, because actually ultimately they're not, they're

• 28:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  not gunsmiths, they're missionaries. No. It's a big ask if you've never done it before. Theodros is very impatient and he says to them, if you say, I want you to build me bigger guns. And I quote, if you say you don't know how, I shall regard you as liars and you know what I do with those who deceive me. Oh dear. So, so that is ominous for these men of God. And it's against this background that the British finally appoint their new envoy. And he is a man called Captain Charles Duncan Cameron. And he rides into your, into Theodros's camp in October, 1862. And Cameron is a career soldier. He'd served in South Africa and indeed in the Crimea before coming to Massawa on the Red Sea coast. And when he arrives, he has a present for Theodros.

• 28:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's two dueling pistols with a silver inscription. Presented to Theodore, Emperor of Abyssinia, by Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, for his kindness to her servant Plowden. Now, these pistols are important. We will come back to them later. They will have an ironic function. It's great to have some dueling pistols back on the show after Alexander Hamilton. Exactly. So, um, Cameron, he's the new guy, career soldier. He is not as a pro Abyssinia as Plowden. He's sort of stiff. He's a bit inflexible. He's shocked by Theodros's bloodthirstiness. When Theodros goes into his rants about launching a holy war against the Egyptians, this guy,

• 29:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Captain Cameron, just sort of frowns and looks a bit pained because he knows this is bonkers. Had Plowden kind of said, yeah, that's great, Your Majesty. Exactly. Plowden had been like planning the pageantry or something. With apt biblical quotes. Exactly. And so now we get to a key moment in the story. Towards the end of 1862, Cameron leaves the camp to go back to the Red Sea coast. And Theodros gives him a letter and the letter reads as follows. In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, one God in Trinity, chosen by God, King of Kings, Theodros of Ethiopia, to Her Majesty, Victoria, Queen of England. Mr. Plowden used to tell me that there was a great Christian queen who loves all Christians. I was prevented by the Turks occupying the sea coast from sending you an embassy when I was in difficulty.

• 30:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Consul Cameron arrived with a letter and presence of friendship. By the power of God, I was very glad. I have received your presence and I thank you much. Now, I wish that you may arrange for the safe passage of my ambassadors everywhere on the road. I wish to have an answer to this letter by Consul Cameron and that he may conduct my embassy to England. See how Islam oppresses the Christians. This is the letter. Cameron goes off with the letter and weeks go by and then months go by and Cameron finally returns in June, 1863. So this is about six months later. And Theodros says, has your, your mistress, the Queen of England, gosh, has she written me a reply? And Cameron says, unfortunately, I've heard nothing. I've had nothing from London.

• 30:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Your Majesty, I will give my head if after two months, the answer to your letter is not here. And then Cameron vanishes again. And Teodros hears rumours that Cameron has gone back to the coast and he's actually in Sudanese territory, he's talking to the Sudanese. Now, he is, because the Foreign Office have been asking him to investigate the local slave trade, which they're keen to stamp out. But Teodros thinks, this bloke, he didn't, he didn't seem very comfortable anyway, he was always shifty. He hasn't brought me the answer to the letter. I wonder if he's gone out there to sell me out to the Muslims. I knew the British would sell me out. This is what he's thinking. So more months go by and all the time, Teodros's paranoia is building. He cannot understand why Queen Victoria has not replied to his

• 31:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  letter. At best, it shows she doesn't care about him. At worst, it's a sign that she is actually plotting with his Muslim enemies. And then in October, his impatience and distrust finally boil over and he completely loses it. And the man who provokes him is a missionary called Henry Aaron Stern, who was German born in Hamburg. And he'd been sent to Abyssinia by a group called the London Society of Promoting Christianity Among the Jews. So they specialised in sending people to, you know, the Holy Land, to Ottoman occupied Palestine, to try to convert people. And they'd started sending people to Abyssinia as well. And Stern

• 32:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  had been in Abyssinia since 1860, and he absolutely hated it. He's published a book called Wanderings Among the Falasches, which is very caustic about Abyssinia. He said of the people of Abyssinia, "They were a false, treacherous and insolent race, absurdly superstitious in their religious belief, and revoltingly obscene in their domestic relations."

• 32:49Tom Holland?

  Can I ask, has he got an Abyssinian publishing deal? Presumably, this hasn't been translated into-

• 32:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  I don't think it's been translated, but somehow, news of it has reached Teodros. This guy hates you, hates your people, and has written disobliging things about you in the British press. Anyway, Stern doesn't like Abyssinia, he's planning to go home. And he's on his way home when by an unbelievably unfortunate coincidence, he basically runs into Teodros's army. And some of them have been drinking, there's an altercation with him. And Stern ends up being arrested and beaten up, and he's dragged to Teodros's tent. And then he's thrown into a tent and manacled by his hands and his feet. And he's, he lies there for weeks. And he's convinced that he is going to be killed. And basically,

• 33:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  the only thing that keeps him going is his Christian faith. And then five weeks later, Stern is dragged into this huge assembly of Teodros's troops. And the emperor is sitting there on his throne. And before the emperor's throne is Stern's closest colleague, who's another missionary called Henry Rosenthal. And he is also in chains. And Stern thinks, oh, no. And a scribe reads out the charges against them. Stern is accused of mocking Teodros's counsellors, of undermining Ethiopian Christianity, of slandering the emperor as a war criminal, and I quote, "Worst of all, ridiculing the emperor's genealogy."

• 34:18Tom Holland?

  He's definitely saying that he's descended from Solomon, is he?

• 34:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  He is, he is absolutely. Actually, there's a hilarious moment at this, at this camp. When they mention the genealogy thing, Teodros says to this guy Stern, "You doubt that I'm descended from Solomon. Here are the priests. They will recite my genealogy." And the priests start to recite the genealogy. And they do quite well at first. But apparently, when they got to about the 15th or 16th century, they started to falter and to stutter. And then they started to argue among themselves. And Teodros went absolutely berserk and said, "Next time I tell you this, you will know. You will know my family tree." Anyway, so this is Stern. And then Rosenthal was accused of having written that the country would

• 35:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  be better off under Egyptian rule. And Teodros says to the two of them, "You Europeans came into this country, and I loved, honoured and respected you, but you are liars." And then they read the verdict. They're sentenced to death, and they're dragged back to their tents. But then nothing happens. Days pass and the sentence isn't carried out. They're sometimes dragged out to the tents and forced to watch the, the sort of bloody execution of Abyssinian rebels and peasants. But the blade never falls on them. And in fact, their guards say to them after a few weeks, "The emperor's relented, he's probably going to release you." Like, he's going to forget all about it. And then on the 3rd of January, 1864, they're brought before the emperor once again. And they're dragged before Teodros's

• 35:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  throne. And they see, to their relief, around the throne, the British consul, Captain Cameron, and a load of other missionaries. And Stern thinks to himself, "Thank God for that. You know, they've come and interceded for us, we are free at last." And then, in his next thought, he notices the shackles on Cameron's legs. And one of the other missionaries looks at him and he whispers, "We are all prisoners now." And it's, that's the point when Stern realises that their nightmare and this whole bonkers story are only just beginning.

• 36:24Tom Holland?

  And we will find out what happens after a break.

• 36:30Tom Holland?

  This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps, many of them started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.

• 36:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, there's a classic example of that, Tom, 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, great pioneering voyage of discovery, and it is of course the Americas. So, you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?

• 37:14Tom Holland?

  Anthropic asked 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.

• 37:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Ask yours at claude.ai/restishistory. And keep thinking.

• 37:40Tom Holland?

  This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So go to mintmobile.com/history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB of hotspot capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

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• 38:53Tom Holland?

  Welcome back to The Rest is History. It's May 1864, and we are in London, beating heart of a mighty empire, a city of railways and telegraphs and smoke, the crucible of modernity, absolutely tremendous days. And Dominic, in Whitehall, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, is studying a scribbled pencil note which has been smuggled to the Red Sea coast and then carried by ship to London. And it reads, "Myself, Stern, Rosenthal, Cairns, Bardell, McRavy and McIlvie are all chained here. Vlad, Steger, Brandis and

• 39:35Tom Holland?

  Cornelius sent to Gafat to work for the king. No release until civil answer to king's letter arrives and it's signed CDC, Charles Duncan Cameron." And Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, asks his officials, "Oh my God, are there any letters from the King of Abyssinia that we have neglected to answer?" And what's the answer, Dominic?

• 39:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, they go digging into their files. And guess what? There is. This is Teodros's original letter that he had sent with Cameron. And what had happened to this letter? It's an interesting story, actually, a revealing story. So it had gone across the Red Sea to Aden and then went from Aden to Bombay. And then it went back across the Indian Ocean to Suez. And then it went across the desert to Alexandria and by ship from Alexandria to Marseille. And then by train to the Channel coast and then by boat across the coast and then by train to London. So the journey of this letter is a remarkable story. It tells you everything you need to know about the kind of globalised world of the British Empire. But when it finally got to the Foreign Office, the officials didn't know what to do with it.

• 40:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  They just saw it as weird and a sort of distraction from bigger issues. And one of them wrote on Cameron's accompanying note, we can expect no advantage from meddling with the politics of Abyssinia. So the British actually do not want to intervene in Abyssinia, they're not interested in it. They forwarded the letter to the India office, it was filed away in the India office and people forgot all about it. Anyway, now, eighteen months on, they dig it out again. And they draft a reply from Queen Victoria, a reply which they hope, and I quote, will tempt the savage to let our people go. It's addressed to our good friend Teodros, King of Abyssinia. And Victoria, she says, I've heard that you've detained some of our people.

• 41:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  And she says that your majesty can give no better proof of the sincerity of the sentiments which you profess towards us than by dismissing our servant and any other Europeans who may desire it from your court and by affording them every assistance and protection on their journey.

• 41:38Tom Holland?

  Is that your Queen Victoria voice?

• 41:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's Queen Victoria's voice, audio archive. And that's signed Victoria R. Balmoral, 26th of May, 1864. And they say, well, obviously we'll have to send somebody with this letter to, you know, persuade Teodros to accept it as a sign of our friendship. And the reason they're doing this is not particularly that they're worried about the missionaries. I question how much they really care about the missionaries, to be brutally honest. What they really care about is the French, of course. So this is the point when Suez Canal mania is at its height. They are very anxious that if they alienate Teodros, he will jump into bed with Paris.

• 42:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  The French will end up controlling the Red Sea coast and that would mean the French would control the route between Suez and India. And we cannot have that. So they choose somebody to take this letter and to assure Teodros of Britain's friendship. And the guy they choose is a really, really remarkable man called Hormuzd Rasam. And Tom, you should like him on all kinds of levels.

• 42:43Tom Holland?

  Well, he's born in Mosul, wasn't he? Which is the home of Omar Mohammed, who did an extraordinary bonus for us a couple of weeks back.

• 42:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, and he's a, he's an ethnic Assyrian, Hormuzd Rasam. And an archaeologist, I know you love a bit of archaeology. He did some digging at Nimrud and at Nineveh.

• 43:03Tom Holland?

  Well, Nineveh is basically Mosul, so just right on his doorstep.

• 43:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  And now I know as well, you love the British Museum. And this guy Rasam did a lot of work for the British Museum. He discovered the Palace of Ashurbanipal, which you will know far more about than I do. And he was instrumental in discovering the Epic of Gilgamesh, the tablets.

• 43:22Tom Holland?

  We must do an episode on that.

• 43:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, the Epic of Gilgamesh was brilliant. Anyway, so this guy Rasam, there should be a statue of him at the British Museum. He was such a tremendous man. He travelled to England, he went to Maudlin College, Oxford. He converted to Protestantism when he was at Oxford. He became a massive Anglophile. He's a man who I reckon would wear a tweed suit to bed.

• 43:44Tom Holland?

  In the forty degree heat of Ethiopia.

• 43:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Unquestionably. And the Foreign Office had employed him as their political agent in Aden.

• 43:54Tom Holland?

  You're right, he's a tremendous man.

• 43:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Rasam is now in his mid thirties. He's, everyone says he's brilliant. Everyone says this guy is the absolute business. He's pleasant, he's polite, he's really good at archaeology, he knows loads about Assyria. He loves digging, he loves Britain, he's great.

• 44:14Tom Holland?

  There's literally nothing not to like.

• 44:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. The only person who doesn't like him actually is Sir Harry Flashman, who found him oily in Flashman and his memoir, Flashman on the March. But every writer who's written about this says Rasam is fantastic. Good judgment, sensible, calm, level headed, all of this. Rasam arrives on the Red Sea coast at Massawa in July 1864 with two blokes, a doctor called Henry Blanc and Lieutenant Predo of the Bombay Staff Corps. They've come as his assistants.

• 44:42Tom Holland?

  Both with suspiciously French names.

• 44:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, here's the thing, there are some writers who say the British sent Rasam, Blanc and Predo deliberately because if everything went wrong and they got into trouble, the British wouldn't care. So it would play well with the newspapers because they all had foreign names. That's the cunning, you see? That's the cunning of the British Foreign Office.

• 45:04Tom Holland?

  That is the animal cunning of the British Foreign Office that has slightly gone missing recently.

• 45:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Definitely.

• 45:09Tom Holland?

  We used to be a real country.

• 45:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  So anyway, Rasam sends a letter inland to Teodros and he waits and two months go by. And all the time he's getting, trying to get intel on the guy he's got to do business with. So one, Teodros's reputation now is very bad. One trader says to him, he is the scourge of humanity, the arch enemy of humankind. But the local ruler on the Red Sea coast says, no, that's not true at all. He says he's actually a very kind man. He's just been led astray by the, by the natural bloodlust of the Abyssinian people. And then the local ruler adds the ominous remark, of course, he's also insane. So they keep waiting, it's incredibly hot. So they have to camp outside in what was once Plowden's Garden. There's cholera, there's a famine, it's all terrible.

• 45:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  They're waiting for news and finally letters arrive, not from Teodros, but from the hostages themselves. So these are Stern, Rosenthal, Cameron and the other missionaries. Now, a lot of time has passed, they have been in captivity now for eighteen months. And their conditions are sub ideal. They've been kept chained up initially in the Royal Camp. They didn't see much of Teodros. Occasionally, when he'd been drinking, he would come into the tents where they were chained up in a massive rage. He would have them bound in very tight cords, sort of like ropes. And then he would have them doused in cold water, which seems a bit, a bit mean.

• 46:36Tom Holland?

  Well, I don't know, it depends how hot it is.

• 46:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, you'd probably steam, would you? Really hot, you might steam, no one wants that.

• 46:41Tom Holland?

  If it's hot, you like a cold shower.

• 46:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  He has a massive hatred of this guy Stern, a passionate hatred of the guy who had mocked his genealogy. He said, give me the name of the man who reviled my ancestors or I'll rip it from your heart. See, he's obsessed with the idea that they have kind of local collaborators. The time goes by, their clothes are rags, they're, they're living on a handful of dried peas. It rains in the summer, they're very sodden, they're miserable, they're very ill. And then at the end of 1864, they are dragged out of their tents to join this long column of Teodros's prisoners. So these are captured rebels, disgraced officials, common criminals. They're marched out across the Highlands for seven days.

• 47:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  And after a week, they're absolutely exhausted and then finally they see ahead, their destination. The towering cliffs of Magdala, which is Teodros's mountain citadel. And this is his favourite headquarters. The writer Philip Marsden, who wrote a brilliant book about this called The Barefoot Emperor, which I recommend to the listeners. He calls Magdala his garrison, his prison, his stronghold and home, his asylum, his treasury and his dungeon. This is the Helms Deep of Abyssinia, this mountain fastness. If you go up to the top, you look out, you can see, you know, miles and miles around, people approaching. Even a small force can hold this mountain indefinitely.

• 48:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  And in the walled compound on the top of the mountain, Teodros keeps his most valuable treasures. And these are things he's looted from churches across Abyssinia.

• 48:21Tom Holland?

  Oh, okay. So the British aren't the only people who've done some looting in this story. Oh, good.

• 48:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, no, not at all. This is the stuff that will end up in Toronto. And he also keeps his most important prisoners. So his rivals, pretenders, the heirs to various regional kingdoms and things. Now, he keeps the European prisoners separately. They're in huts by the cliff edge, just twenty yards from the cliff edge, which some of them find disturbingly close. The huts are infested with spiders and rats. The hostages, the missionaries are fettered at the ankles. And then these fetters are connected by a chain to a manacle on their hands, which is the chain that is a little bit too short. So they're hunched over the whole time. And if they want to move around, they're still hunched and they develop severe spinal pain, which is not good.

• 49:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  But from here, Cameron has smuggled messages to the coast. And as Rasam on the coast reads these messages, he's quite disturbed. Because Cameron says, I'm convinced that only military action will persuade the emperor to release us. And he adds a note to Rasam, he says, for God's sake, do not come up here, he will cage you as sure as a gun. And this leaves Rasam in a bit of a quandary. You know, do I not go? Am I ever going to get a letter from the emperor himself? What shall I do? And then in August 1865, the emperor's reply finally arrives. And it's a litany of grievances against Stern and Cameron in particular.

• 49:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  But also implicitly, though not quite explicitly stated, there's an invitation to Rasam. Why don't you come and talk to me? So Rasam gets permission from London and then he heads inland with his assistants, Dr Blanc and Lieutenant Predo. The countryside by now is barren, desolate, scarred by war and rebellion and famine and plague. The people are kind of skeletal and ghostly, kind of, you know, it's like something from a zombie apocalypse or something. And all the time as they, as they advance, it's very kind of Cortes and Montesuma or something, because all the time Rasam is getting these rambling letters from Teodros

• 50:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  that lurch wildly from a kind of aggressive self pity to, you know, polite, friendly apologies. So Rasam doesn't really know what to make of this. Anyway, the 28th of January 1866, they reach Teodros's camp. And Rasam has been waiting for this moment for a year and a half. I mean, this is a very long winded enterprise. And he gets into his finery, his best blue diplomatic uniform. And Blanc and Predo are wearing the red uniforms of the British Indian Army. And once again, you'll be pleased to hear that they find Teodros reclining on a divan, surrounded by musicians and courtiers and bodyguards.

• 51:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Rasam hands over Queen Victoria's letter. And Teodros goes into a huge rant about his grievances, not just against the missionaries, but against his own people. He says, my own people are useless as well. They're rebellious and, and violent and uncivilized. I don't know what to do. I'm beset by opponents. I'm, you know, no one understands me, all this. And Rasam plays all this very skillfully. He doesn't argue with Teodros. He says, oh, I really do sympathize with you. You have a terrible job, you know, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes. You're the father of your people. Maybe the thing to do is to cultivate patience and tolerance. And maybe you can teach your people to do what is right. Anyway, I've got to let, you know, you've got a letter here from Queen Victoria. I'm confident that when you read the letter, you will forget the past and try to establish

• 52:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  amicable relations with England. And when Teodros hears this, he is delighted. He is absolutely, he's really touched. In fact, he's so touched that that night he can't sleep. He's so excited. He's finally got the reply that he wanted from Queen Victoria. And the next day, at dawn, he dictates a new letter to Victoria. He says, I know God has chosen you from all men to be the champion of religion, to be the friend of the poor and the oppressed. He says to her, you must have heard of the ignorance and blindness of us, the Ethiopian people. If you find offensive what I was bold enough to write to you, do not be angry with me.

• 52:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  Advise me for you, the queen whom God has chosen have had your eyes opened. I mean, who knows what Queen Victoria would make of this? Anyway, he summons Rasam to his tent and he says, you know, I'm feeling so happy now. I'm going to release all the captives. I'm going to bring them down from, they're on the top of the mountain. I'm going to bring them down from the mountain at Magdala and you can take them to the coast. You can have free passage. And Rasam, this is a massive result for Rasam. He has totally vindicated the Foreign Office's faith. And Teodros says, there is one catch. It's going to take quite a long time to bring the hostages down from Magdala. And in the meantime, I've got some rebels to deal with. I'd love it if you would come with me.

• 53:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Rasam says, yeah, fine. So they ride out to the head of thousands of men. And during the march, again, it's very Montesuma and Cortez or something. Teodros often says, I'd like that guy to ride with me, please. And he questions him about the British Empire, how are you getting on in West Africa against the Ashanti? All this kind of thing. It keeps pestering him with questions about the Crimean War. He cannot get his head around the fact that the British won the Crimean War, but then signed a treaty with Tsar Nicholas the first and didn't execute him. That blows his mind anyway. So there's that, right? But then there's two themes that he keeps coming back to. He's like, mind will wander and then he'll come back to these themes.

• 54:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  One of them is how the missionaries were very rude to him and rude about his genealogy. And whenever he talks about it, he starts shaking because he's so cross. And then the other thing he says, actually, I would like a formal treaty with the British, who are of course my brothers. And I would love it. He says, I know Queen Victoria is too, I know she's very important and very busy and she's, you know, I'm small fry to her. But I also know she has a lot of governors in India and I would love it if she would appoint one of her governors in India to be my sort of contact, my point man, just for me that I could talk to. And Rasam is very diplomatic, you know? He says to him, well, when I get back to London with the hostages, I will talk to Her Majesty's government and I'm sure they'll look kindly on your Majesty's proposal.

• 54:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Teodros says, oh, great, thank you. They reach a place called Lake Tana. Here they part. Teodros is going off to attack some rebels and Rasam is going to wait for the hostages. And Rasam waits by the lakeside for the hostages. And every few days, Teodros sends him gifts and letters. So Teodros sends him some bizarre gifts. He sends him muskets, pistols, manuscripts that he's looted. He sends Rasam an antelope, two lion cubs, two monkeys and a baboon.

• 55:28Tom Holland?

  Oh, really?

• 55:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, could start his own, his own zoo with this stuff.

• 55:31Tom Holland?

  His own menagerie. What, what does Rasam do with them?

• 55:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  You know, they just hang out, just hang out, the baboon and the antelope and the lion cubs.

• 55:38Tom Holland?

  I mean, they're well known for getting on with one another.

• 55:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  What could go wrong? And also a load of irreplaceable ancient manuscripts. If ever I'm given an ancient manuscript, I make sure to, to put it with a baboon because I think what could go wrong? Anyway, on the 12th of March 1866, the hostages finally turn up. They've been marched down through the mountains. They're absolutely knackered. They're ill. There's 23 of them.

• 56:01Tom Holland?

  Seemably they, they're not still, they haven't got this kind of, they're fettered to the ankles with their curved spine.

• 56:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  They have been fettered all the way.

• 56:08Tom Holland?

  How do they walk?

• 56:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's just general trudging, I think, sort of hunched over trudging.

• 56:12Tom Holland?

  Oh, that's awful.

• 56:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  They're alive. I mean, that's the plus. Their chains, because their chains are not removed until they get to the lake. And at that point Rasam thinks, finally, you know, this is, we've sorted this out. Teodros, who at this stage appears absolutely lovesick, he's so infatuated with Rasam. He's still sending him presents. He sends him some cows. He sends him some, some money. He says, please don't go off just yet. I'm having a special medal made for you. It's called the Cross and Solomon Seal. I've also commissioned special shields for you and Dr Blanc and Lieutenant Predo and a special golden saddle for you to mark our friendship. In all, Teodros sent Rasam 23 letters.

• 56:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Rasam at this point starts to feel a little, that was, you might, a little disturbed. This friendship has got an unhealthy dimension to it. Because basically it appears that Teodros has got a massive crush on him.

• 57:11Tom Holland?

  A pash.

• 57:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  And yeah, a pash. And Rasam is, becomes genuinely concerned. Is he ever going to, is he going to let me go? Because he seems absolutely besotted with me. And at last, Teodros arrives back at the lake. And his first words to Rasam, perhaps a little bit ominous, because he, he takes him by the hand and says to him, I feel as happy as if I were visiting the Queen. So that's all brilliant. And then Teodros says, I want to introduce you to my eldest son. Can you shake hands, please? And he says, I would really love it if Queen Victoria would adopt my sons as her wards. So that when I die, they may be looked after by the English and not allowed to govern badly. And Rasam says, yeah, we can probably look into that. Fine. Now, Teodros at this point is very erratic.

• 57:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think there's probably a lot of drinking. He's still lurching between these attacks on the missionaries. And then he'll burst into tears and say how much he loves Britain and how he loves Rasam and Queen Victoria. At one point, he gets very maudlin. He says to Rasam, I know that when you go, you will forget me, you will forget your friend and all this.

• 58:16Tom Holland?

  I mean, to be fair to Rasam, Rasam is not going to forget this, is he?

• 58:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, this bloke has given you a baboon and burst into tears in front of you. You're never going to forget it.

• 58:25Tom Holland?

  You don't forget a man, a man who gives you a baboon.

• 58:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  I remember all the people who've given me baboons. So Rasam is a little bit anxious, but on the 13th of April, orders come that the camp is going to be packed up. And he thinks at last, you know, we are going to go home. The missionaries wait on the eastern side of the lake. Rasam and Dr Blanc and Lieutenant Predo cross the lake to go and say goodbye to Teodros. It's only polite to say goodbye to him. And they get to his camp and they find it oddly silent. And they're shown by the guards into Teodros's pavilion. And in his pavilion are all Teodros's courtiers and his bodyguards as usual, who are just staring at them. But the throne is at the end of the pavilion and there's no Teodros on the throne, which they find weird.

• 59:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  And at that moment, they notice there's no one on the throne. Rasam feels a hand on his arm. And then he feels a hand on his other arm and it's the guards and he realises they're under arrest.

• 59:25Tom Holland?

  No.

• 59:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, that's the twist.

• 59:28Tom Holland?

  Oh my God.

• 59:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 59:30Tom Holland?

  I believed in Teodros's love for him.

• 59:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think Teodros does love Rassam. So the missionaries, by the way, are being rounded up at this point again, again.

• 59:38Tom Holland?

  Oh, and put back in their shackles.

• 59:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  And put back in their shackles. Now, let's come to this. What's going on? Like, what is Teodros thinking? There are various possibilities. Number one is that he was lying all the time. He was playing games with Rassam.

• 59:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  Number two is that he wasn't, but at the last minute, he was overcome by his hatred of the missionaries. And number three is he loved, he did love Rassam after all.

• 1:00:01Tom Holland?

  Yeah, he couldn't bear to let him go.

• 1:00:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Couldn't bear to let him go.

• 1:00:04Tom Holland?

  I think that seems the likeliest.

• 1:00:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, in his biography of Teodros and his sort of discussion of this, Philip Marsden says, you know, Rassam couldn't really understand it. And like Rassam, we are lost in a labyrinth of contradictory messages made more confusing by the emperor's growing paranoia. However, Marsden says, probably Teodros is infatuated with Rassam and he sees Rassam as his best chance of getting friendship with Britain and get his British technology. And there's a sort of link with the outside world and he simply cannot bear to let him go. He would, he, he wants to keep him.

• 1:00:41Tom Holland?

  In a way, quite touching.

• 1:00:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, in a weird way, it is actually quite touching.

• 1:00:45Tom Holland?

  I mean, not for Rassam, obviously, but.

• 1:00:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, anyway. So three days later, the whole load of them are brought into his tent for yet another show trial. So it's now quite, there's about 30 of them. So Rassam and Predo and Blanc and whatnot.

• 1:00:58Tom Holland?

  Yeah, he's collecting quite a lot, isn't he?

• 1:01:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, Teodros is collecting hostages.

• 1:01:02Tom Holland?

  The full set.

• 1:01:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Teodros says, this is all your fault, Rassam. You should have brought the missionaries to see me before you left. It was very rude of you not to bring them when you came to say goodbye. Is this your friendship, Mr. Rassam, that you wish to leave me and take away those who have abused me? And the next day, Teodros dictates a new letter to Queen Victoria. He says, I'm actually keeping your envoy and all these people as my guests. And in the meantime, I would like you to send me some skillful artists to make me some guns.

• 1:01:34Tom Holland?

  Oh, they're always the guns.

• 1:01:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  I want blacksmiths, I want gunsmiths, I want artillery specialists. And when I'm satisfied, I shall, through the power of God, give them a splendid payment and with great honour send them back. Now, he's got to get this letter to Queen Victoria. And of course, he doesn't want to let Rassam go. So he chooses one of the missionaries to do it. And this is a German man with the terrible name of Martin Flad. And he's a reverend, the Reverend Martin Flad. The Reverend Martin Flad had also been sent by the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews. And Flad had come to Abyssinia with his wife and three children. Flad doesn't want to leave his family behind. He hates Teodros, he calls him a savage, a cruel, inhuman and sly despot. But he feels he doesn't have any choice.

• 1:02:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Flad sets off with this letter. He makes very good progress. He gets to London in July 1866. And he goes to the Foreign Office and he gives them the letter and he tells them Teodros's demands. And he says to them, this bloke, Teodros is mad.

• 1:02:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Don't send troops. If you, if British soldiers set foot on Abyssinian soil, he will in a most cruel and barbarous manner slaughter out all our people. Just give him what he wants. You know, we've done hostage crises before. We did the Iran hostage crisis. And this is a problem, you know, that is a perennial issue that governments have to face. Do you intervene militarily or does that mean you risk the deaths of all the hostages? Anyway, the Foreign Office at this point think, well, we don't want to intervene in Abyssinia. They arrange for loads of stuff, a mad collection of stuff, a steam engine and gunpowder mill, smelting equipment, a hunting rifle, a telescope. This is all going to be sent to the Red Sea and they're going to send a team of workmen to do, to handle it.

• 1:03:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  However, there is a catch. They say to Flad, you go ahead with a new letter from Queen Victoria. And when Teodros releases the hostages, he can have his smelting equipment, not before. So Flad goes back to Abyssinia. He gets to the Red Sea coast. There are messages from the hostages waiting for him, including his wife and children. They're all alive, but they're having a very, very weird time as guests of the emperor. So on the one hand, Teodros has presented Rassam with his medal and his golden saddle. He threw a party for Queen Victoria's birthday and he demonstrated some of his guns.

• 1:04:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's taken Rassam's shooting and they have had some excellent chats about Alexander the Great. Because Teodros is, did you know this? Teodros is not just descended from Solomon, he's actually also descended from Alexander.

• 1:04:16Tom Holland?

  I did not know that. Goodness. So more, more complexity for his genealogists to wrestle with.

• 1:04:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. There's a lot going on there. On the other hand, occasionally, Teodros will go mad. He will force them to watch him whipping his courtiers to death. And he will go into these mad rants and things.

• 1:04:35Tom Holland?

  And do we think these stories are true? Because mad despots having rants and whipping people to death is a kind of staple of.

• 1:04:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think they're totally true. There's enough missionary, some of these missionaries are very pious and slightly dull people. They're not making stuff up. The climax of this is he locks them all in a sort of black hole of Calcutta style cellar. And then he comes, they're all in the cellar like hunched over in their chains. He comes in with a bottle of Arrack, kind of Racky type thing, and sits down and just sits there drinking and talking to them. And, and they find that very stressful.

• 1:05:09Tom Holland?

  Can I ask, what language are they talking in?

• 1:05:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  He speaks Amharic.

• 1:05:12Tom Holland?

  And do they by now speak it? I guess they do.

• 1:05:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  They must speak some. Maybe there's interpreters there that we don't know about, but I think they must understand. Maybe they can only pick up one, you know, one in every four words, but I think they get the gist.

• 1:05:24Tom Holland?

  Alexander Solomon.

• 1:05:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. He's drinking and chatting. And then at the very end, he's finished the bottle and he says to them very quietly and slightly sadly, my father was mad. And though people often say that I am mad, I never would believe it. But now I know it's true. And then Rassam says to him, don't say such a thing. And Teodros gets up and he goes to the doorway and he looks back and he says in a hoarse whisper, I am mad. Goodbye. And then off he goes. I think that's a bit disconcerting, frankly. So that's the last they see of him for almost two years.

• 1:06:02Tom Holland?

  Two years?

• 1:06:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Tom Holland?

  They're left in that cellar for two years?

• 1:06:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, no, they're brought out again.

• 1:06:06Tom Holland?

  They're brought out.

• 1:06:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  In fact, what happens to them is they're taken back up to Magdala, to the mountain citadel, 10,000 feet above sea level. And they're chained up and they're put in their huts. Teodros goes off to fight some rebels. He's now proceeding with extreme cruelty, taking thousands of prisoners, massacring villagers, stealing people's sacred books, all this. So this is the picture that greets this guy Flad when he returns to the coast. And the letters that he's got from the missionaries are all very bleak. So the Swiss missionary, Theophanes Valdemir, says, if you brought all this stuff, you might as well throw it in the sea because Teodros would rather cut all the Europeans into a thousand pieces than hand them over. And Flad's wife, Pauline, has written him a very depressing letter.

• 1:06:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  I entreat you, don't trust, don't trust, don't trust. If the workmen come, not a single soul will be able to leave the country. Flad, however, is determined to come anyway. So he rides through this sort of war ravaged landscape and he finds Teodros in his camp. And rather disconcertingly, Teodros is surrounded by the rotting bodies of starved horses. It's actually a bit like George Washington's camp.

• 1:07:16Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's a valley forge.

• 1:07:18Tom Holland?

  Not clearing them up.

• 1:07:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. And Flad presents Teodros with a telescope, a little taster of the gifts he will have when he releases the hostages. Teodros throws the telescope aside and he says, the man who sends with his telescope only wants to annoy me. Teodros says, what's your queen got to say? And Flad says, well, basically, if you don't release the hostages, you have no right to expect any further friendship. Teodros is shocked by this. He's totally silent. And then he says quietly, very well, I asked from them a sign of friendship, but it is refused to me. So be it. Flad is led away to join the hostages. So this is his reunion.

• 1:08:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, he basically voluntarily goes back into captivity to see his wife and children. And that, it seems, is that. Teodros is not going to let them go. The British are not going to give him all his equipment, a total stalemate. And the stalemate remains like that for six months. Teodros is off fighting rebels. The hostages are all huddled together at Magdala and they're hearing ever more sort of blood curdling rumours about his growing madness and cruelty. They are convinced that eventually he will come back to Magdala and he'll just say, kill the lot of them. In March 1867, Dr Blanc writes a note that is smuggled to the coast and then to the Foreign Office.

• 1:08:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  And he says, I'm going to tell you the whole story, Teodros and his rise, his crimes, our plight, his madness. And Blanc says, the time for talking to this guy is over. And I quote, only one thing remains, force. But of course, Dr Blanc doesn't know whether his note is even going to get there or whether anybody is listening or anything like this. And then one day in the early summer of 1867, a messenger stumbles into Teodros's camp and he has a letter come from the Red Sea coast. And the letter is an ultimatum from London. The British government have lost patience. They're giving him three months to release the hostages.

• 1:09:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  And after that, they will cut off all talks. And the implication is that they will begin military action. Is Teodros going to accept? Spoiler, he will not. And so it is that on the 19th of August, 1867, Lord Derby's cabinet meet in London to decide their next move. And there's never any doubt really about what that will be. Diplomacy has failed. It is time for war.

• 1:09:53Tom Holland?

  It's war. What a cliffhanger. Unbelievable drama. And members of the Rest is History Club can find out what happens next. The story of Sir Robert Napier's Abyssinian expedition and the great battle for Magdala right now. And we have a special incentive, Dominic, this week because club members will be getting a special bonus on some of the great characters of this story, the hostages, the adventurers, and particularly the mad story of what happened to Teodros's son, who improbably ended up as a schoolboy in one of England's great public schools.

• 1:10:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  And not just any school. He went to Flashman's Old School.

• 1:10:38Tom Holland?

  Rugby. Amazing. So to hear all that and to hear episode two, if you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, you can go to therestishistory.com. But for now, thank you, Dominic. Goodbye.

• 1:10:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  Goodbye.

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• 1:11:15Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 1:11:16Speaker 04

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• 1:11:19Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 1:11:41Tom Holland?

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