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

Who was Lieutenant General Napier, the man set out to rescue the European hostages held by Emperor Tewodros II? How did he plan to attack the emperor’s fortress, Magdala? And, did they manage to successfully escape Abyssinia? Join Dominic and Tom as they conclude the story of one of the most epic expeditions in the history of the British Empire. 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] _______ 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?

  This episode is brought to you by AutoTrader. Now, if car shopping feels like a massive faff, buying your car online at AutoTrader makes it way easier, really.

• 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.

• 3:04Tom Holland?

  A 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.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  How are you? How are you, my dear friend, my best friend?

• 3:27Tom Holland?

  cries this apparition, whooping with laughter.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  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. Be of good cheer, for though you are bound with fetters of Samson and Zedekiah were bound even with fetters of brass, yet, yet... His voice trailed away, muttering, and, and who else? Yeah, Yerchem also was bound, and Manasseh. They were bound by the power of God, and so was Gojim, who was sold for

• 4:11Speaker 02

  a servant, whose feet they hurt with fetters, and he was laid in iron.

• 4:19Tom Holland?

  And 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 Theodor, 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, Flashman 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

• 5:04Tom Holland?

  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, all 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?

• 5:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 5:44Tom Holland?

  And if only Jimmy Carter had paid attention to the lesson that could have been learnt from, from our glorious boys in 1868, the way that they solved the problem of hostages in the hands of an unfriendly regime.

• 6:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  So true, Tom. I'm not sure his knowledge of Victorian imperial history is as good as it should be. One of the, one of the flaws, he spent too much time fighting rabbits.

• 6:09Tom Holland?

  The key, as far as I can tell, is to, is to involve railways and elephants.

• 6:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Elephants.

• 6:15Tom Holland?

  Which may be where Carter went wrong.

• 6:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Definitely. So let's remind people where and when we are. 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's simmering rage at the fact that Queen Victoria has not been 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 Rasam. And he's holding them in his mountain top lair, his citadel of Magdala. And the hostages have been smuggling out these increasingly desperate messages, reporting that Theodros is descending into

• 7:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  insanity and basically begging the Foreign Office to use force. And last time, we ended with Lord Derby's Conservative government sending an ultimatum to Abyssinia, giving Theodros three months to release them. So 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, is a brilliant debater. He's a man who likes shooting and horse racing. He's sort of Victorian politics bingo,

• 7:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  and he runs the country in cahoots with his sort of ally in the Commons, Benjamin Disraeli.

• 7:48Tom Holland?

  He was the, the longest-serving Conservative political leader ever. 22 years.

• 7:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  He was Prime Minister multiple times, but only for very short spells. Yeah.

• 7:57Tom Holland?

  And he never had a majority?

• 7:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And 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 Derby'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,

• 8:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 first episode, they do end up putting a penny on income tax to pay for it all.

• 8:58Tom Holland?

  British governments love for raising spending to fund defence, don't they?

• 9:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  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.

• 9:17Tom Holland?

  Oh, he's a tremendous man.

• 9:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Napier is a tremendous man, actually. He's one of the stars of the British Army, and he's one of those, in an age when British commanders actually quite often turn out to be unbelievably useless.

• 9:29Tom Holland?

  Buffoons.

• 9:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  He is not a buffoon. He's not a buffoon at all. He was born in Salon, 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.

• 9:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's incredibly popular with his men. Everyone agrees that Napier is a charming, polite, brave, level-headed, very methodical commander, 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. Um, which again, I think is in keeping.

• 10:15Tom Holland?

  But not an ineffectual man, because he's an engineer, isn't he?

• 10:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:20Tom Holland?

  He gets things done. He gets things built. He doesn't faff around.

• 10:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Tom Holland?

  And that's key to this whole story, really, I guess.

• 10:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Our American listeners will perhaps welcome a comparison with Ulysses S. Grant, who's been distinguishing himself at this time.

• 10:34Tom Holland?

  Though he's not as corrupt as Ulysses S. Grant.

• 10:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Not of course. And, uh, and not as boring. So I think the 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, 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'd you make of that?

• 10:58Tom Holland?

  Well, I'm waiting for you to say the, the salient fact about this woman.

• 11:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  What is the salient fact?

• 11:03Tom Holland?

  She, she's from, um, Montgomeryshire. She's Welsh.

• 11:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh my word, how did I overlook that?

• 11:09Tom Holland?

  So yet another series about Welsh history.

• 11:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, mad that I didn't miss that. Um, my apologies go to the people of Wales for missing that important detail.

• 11:18Tom Holland?

  Yeah, you're just blanking Welsh history again, Dominic. Um, and can I get, tell you one other amazing thing? Do you know when she died?

• 11:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  1944.

• 11:27Tom Holland?

  Very close, 1930.

• 11:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow.

• 11:29Tom Holland?

  Aged 89.

• 11:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's bonkers, isn't it? That, uh, she lived so long.

• 11:34Tom Holland?

  It is, isn't it?

• 11:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  She lived long enough to listen to jazz and to, um, go to the cinema to see King Kong.

• 11:41Tom Holland?

  She lived a long time.

• 11:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  She saw The Jazz Singer.

• 11:43Tom Holland?

  She did.

• 11:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's what killed her.

• 11:45Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 11:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  All right, so, um, Napier. This is quite a tough gig for Napier. Now, you may think, are the Europeans against, um, an African kingdom a little bit 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 the war Afghanistan, the first Anglo Afghan war. The retreat from Kabul in 1842, an absolute shambles, tens of thousands of British casualties, an utter humiliation.

• 12:18Tom Holland?

  Flashman's first adventure.

• 12:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 a hundred thousand men. The campaign was notorious for disease, terrible conditions, kind of industrial slaughter, very miserable.

• 12:39Tom Holland?

  And we will be talking about this in a month or so.

• 12:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  We will indeed. While this Abyssinian crisis has been brewing, the world's attention has been on Mexico, where the 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. Uh, intel is absolutely useless. The climate is punishingly hot. There's cholera, there's typhoid, there's lions, there's snakes.

• 13:21Tom Holland?

  Baboons.

• 13:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  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.

• 13:41Tom Holland?

  That's reassuring.

• 13:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 against 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.

• 14:06Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. So we'll need another 10,000 men to guard the supply lines. Then we 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, uh, book, The Barefoot Emperor, from Liverpool to Woolwich, Chatham to Bombay.

• 14:50Tom Holland?

  Chatham.

• 14:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  That was a little gift to you.

• 14:51Tom Holland?

  Oh, great.

• 14:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  So this is really another story about Chatham High Street. Aidan 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.

• 15:29Tom Holland?

  Champagne.

• 15:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  They had to take champagne with them.

• 15:31Tom Holland?

  That's essential, isn't it?

• 15:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of course they do.

• 15:33Tom Holland?

  You can't fight a war in Abyssinia without plentiful supplies of champagne.

• 15:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  They stockpiled bibles and prayer books and pickaxes and gunpowder. And one of the things they stockpiled very tellingly, copper telegraph wire. So this is going to be, it's described in the time as a campaign to rival the adventures of Alexander the Great or Hernán Cortés or Pizarro, whatever. But this is going to be the most technologically advanced military campaign in history. So 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.

• 16:16Tom Holland?

  So it's kind of the great, the great exhibition on manoeuvres.

• 16:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, the touring great exhibition. Like Napoleon in Egypt, he is taking, Napoleon called them, they called them savants, didn't they?

• 16:28Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  The French campaign. So he's got, uh, geographers and meteorologists, he's got a boat from the Bombay Zoological Society, he'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. And British agents in Africa report, they say, well, that neck of the woods in East

• 17:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Africa, there's only one, uh, commonly accepted universal currency. And this is, believe it or not, the Austrian silver tala, which was minted first by Maria Theresa in 1741.

• 17:24Tom Holland?

  How come it's so popular in Abyssinia?

• 17:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  This I have been unable to, um, determine.

• 17:30Tom Holland?

  Seems improbable.

• 17:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  So apparently the silver tala that they wanted most was the 1780 edition. I don't know why, but 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.

• 17:50Tom Holland?

  Goodness.

• 17:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  These Maria Theresa, um, 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 many 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.

• 18:28Tom Holland?

  God, amazing.

• 18:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  So all this takes a lot of money. Darby's government has set a budget of £2 million. Uh, even before they set off, it balloons to £4 million and it ends up costing the British, uh, taxpayer £10 million. 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.

• 18:52Tom Holland?

  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.

• 19:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  No talk of regime change, no talk of anything.

• 19:03Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  But the hostages.

• 19:05Tom Holland?

  And secondly, they are doing this ultimately, you think, not for humanitarian reasons, but to affirm the prestige of the British Empire in the face of the Ottomans, the French. That's, that's ultimately the reason.

• 19:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  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, um, response to the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. The plight of the hostages in that story became, you know, tear jerking. It was on American newspapers and bulletins all the time.

• 19:39Tom Holland?

  But it is also about prestige.

• 19:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  But in the minds of the policymakers, it's inseparable, really, I guess.

• 19:45Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Um, and I, 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.

• 19:58Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  But I think if you're Lord Darby or Benjamin Disraeli, you care far more about British prestige. Britain cannot afford to be humiliated.

• 20:05Tom Holland?

  Because it is billions, billions and billions in today's spending.

• 20:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes.

• 20:10Tom Holland?

  And, and we know, you know, we see now how, how governments hate spending money on the military.

• 20:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  They do, but it was equally governments sometimes think that they, this degree of face they cannot possibly lose. The humorous magazine Punch.

• 20:23Tom Holland?

  They got a joke.

• 20:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, slightly unamusing rhyme. Um, 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, you know, the balance sheet, that actually in the long run, it's better to pay the money now. Anyway. 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-like cavalry and engineers and sappers, have landed in a place that they call Annesley Bay. And if you look it up, it is now the Gulf of Zula in Eritrea. They've found an anchorage for 100 ships.

• 21:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  And then they send back measurement specifications for three large piers, which they will build to help them unload the ships. And so in the next few weeks, more men, more supplies follow. I mean, it's mind boggling, the enterprise. Hundreds of tonnes 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.

• 21:44Tom Holland?

  That is seven more elephants than Hannibal took.

• 21:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Really? Seven more?

• 21:48Tom Holland?

  To Italy, yeah.

• 21:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hereafter 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 theatre, political theatre. He 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.

• 22:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 all 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.

• 23:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  And behind, he has 7,000 men who will guard his supply lines. And 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. There are the 44 elephants who are dragging the field guns, the kind of heavy guns. God, Teodros would love that.

• 23:59Tom Holland?

  Yeah, I mean, that's all his Christmases come at once.

• 24:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  And they have military bands playing the whole time. So, I mean, they're basically like a sort of roaming orchestra. And they, 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. So they've been on the road for a month or so. And he enters the territory of one of Teodros's key rivals, who is a guy called Ras Kasa, who is the king of Tigray. And basically the road to Magdala runs through this, this kingdom of Tigray. And Napier, he's a, he's a great diplomat. He waits for this guy, he stops, he waits. He wants to greet him with full military honours.

• 24:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  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, I'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 Kasa, 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, I will bring you weekly supplies of food, which he does. And 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.

• 25:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Napier knows this man expects him to deal with Teodros once and for all. That that is the quid pro quo.

• 25:41Tom Holland?

  You've been comparing this to the conquistadors in America. And this is a very familiar story, isn't it?

• 25:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Tom Holland?

  You know, whether it's the Aztecs or the Incas, that the local, not necessarily even subject peoples, but inferior rivals who want to throw off the hegemony of the local big power that they team up with the Europeans.

• 26:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. 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. What have they been up to? They've been stuck in their huts at Magdala. They've been playing cards and, I mean, they're, they're kind of manacled. So I don't know how easy that is.

• 26:35Tom Holland?

  Yeah, I just, I suppose they're bent over. I mean, cards is one thing you can't do if you're bent over.

• 26:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 and stuff. So that's all, 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 traveller 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

• 27:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  that few can realise who have not passed through months of mental agony and then been suddenly overcome with joy. So it's incredibly 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 cease 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. But that autumn, 1867, he too began to head inland.

• 28:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 favourite things, which are his guns. So listeners may remember that he was getting these Swiss and German missionaries to try and build guns for him. And they have finally managed to cast what he really wanted, which is a giant mortar. And this is a 70 tonne mortar. Its mouth is two feet wide, so it's a huge calibre.

• 28:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 and 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.

• 29:09Tom Holland?

  Can I ask, Dominic, these missionaries, these Swiss and German missionaries?

• 29:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Tom Holland?

  Obviously, making guns, we said in the first episode, isn't really part of what they're about.

• 29:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  No.

• 29:19Tom Holland?

  But have they upped their game by this point? Are these functioning?

• 29:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, that is a great question. And do you know what?

• 29:26Tom Holland?

  We're going to find out.

• 29:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  We're going to find out what happens because Teodros.

• 29:30Tom Holland?

  Has not yet fired it.

• 29:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Teodros has experimented a little bit with these guns, but he's never really fired them in anger.

• 29:35Tom Holland?

  Okay, exciting.

• 29:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  And this is something for listeners to look forward to. Now, he knows at this point, so let's say with the beginning of 1868, he knows the British have landed. His agents have intercepted messages from Napier to the local chiefs, you know, basically trying to get the local chief's support. Teodros's reaction, people who are fans of his erratic behaviour, 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, I'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.

• 30:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 an 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.

• 30:51Tom Holland?

  That's modest of him.

• 30:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, even so, you know, he's very keen, he's very excited. He's also started re-bombarding his old crush, Hormuzd Rasam, the British agent, the guy from Mosul, who used to be an archaeologist and a British descent.

• 31:08Tom Holland?

  But is he still chained up at this point?

• 31:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's chained up at Magdala in his mount, in the mountain lair. But Teodros has started writing, sending him love letters again.

• 31:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, the same 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.

• 31:35Tom Holland?

  It's kind of the opposite of the Stockholm syndrome, isn't it?

• 31:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, where you're captor.

• 31:39Tom Holland?

  The captor falls in love with the captive.

• 31:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And the mad thing, the maddest thing is that Teodros says to him, the thing I'm really looking forward to is I'm going to, 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.

• 31:59Tom Holland?

  So basically Sebastopol for Teodros is a bit like the owl man for the Aztecs.

• 32:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, it is.

• 32:06Tom Holland?

  It's the ultimate weapon that will, that will definitely win him the war.

• 32:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  It will win him the war and also win him the undying affection of Rassam.

• 32:15Tom Holland?

  Right.

• 32:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  So finally, Teodros arrives at the mountain top on the 27th of March, 1868. It's a very Gothic scene. So a storm is breaking overhead, thunder, pouring rain. He arrives on the mountain top 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 country with a mad greeting. Today we must all be English.

• 32:58Tom Holland?

  And what does he mean by that?

• 33:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  God knows.

• 33:01Tom Holland?

  Wear unsuitable clothing for the hot temperature.

• 33:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  React to everything with sort of insouciant understatement. But that's not his style at all.

• 33:09Tom Holland?

  No, he loves a voluble explosion.

• 33:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And also today, when I get to see, when I get to see you again. I mean, it's so unsettling. Callum, our producer would enjoy that, 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.

• 33:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  But then Teodros's mood changes abruptly and he says to Rassam, I hope, Mr. Rassam, that when your people arrive, they will not despise me because I am black. And then, and though to 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.

• 34:14Tom Holland?

  Keep up with all this.

• 34:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, keep up. And the maddest thing of all, right? So Teodros, almost tearful with his love of Rassam and, you know, morbid thoughts and all this. And then as soon as his guards take Rassam out, Teodros turns, just gorgeous and says very bitterly, Rassam has made asses of us, a fool of me.

• 34:36Tom Holland?

  Oh, no.

• 34:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's pretending to be my friend, but he's been plotting to slaughter us, ravish our wives and reduce our people to bondage.

• 34:44Tom Holland?

  It's kind of a 16 year old girl with a crush. I love him. I love him. He hates me.

• 34:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

• 34:52Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  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.

• 35:03Tom Holland?

  His moustache and his keen interest in engineering projects.

• 35:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 sunscorch, barren terrain. It's hard work now. They're a long way from the coast. They've travelled 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. And 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 Predo,

• 35:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. Every morning, Teodros very excitedly has been scanning the mountains with his telescope.

• 36:11Tom Holland?

  Is that the telescope he got given?

• 36:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Tom Holland?

  He got given, he threw it away. So he didn't smash it.

• 36:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, clearly it didn't break. He's, 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 Bashilo Gorge. And he shouts, perhaps unexpectedly, he shouts very loudly with excitement when he sees them. He shouts, hurrah, there go the donkeys.

• 36:38Tom Holland?

  Does he, the donkeys are the British, not all these mules that Napier's had brought over.

• 36:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  The 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 Valma, who he's very keen on. And he says to Valma in a very jaunty way, there you will see your brethren who have come from England to kill me.

• 37:00Tom Holland?

  Tra la.

• 37:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And Rassam said rather disparagingly, he looked more like a harlequin than a sovereign.

• 37:22Tom Holland?

  It's something really sad about that, that he, you know, he, he, he's trying to look regal. He's trying to make a splash, only to be the victim of massive British snobbery.

• 37:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he's, he's dressed inappropriately.

• 37:35Tom Holland?

  And Rassam has obviously become very naturalized.

• 37:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  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.

• 37:43Tom Holland?

  The Kaiser.

• 37:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  The Kaiser. He, he and the Kaiser would have gone on so well.

• 37:48Tom Holland?

  There are similarities there.

• 37:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  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, this little gesture to the British, choose 70 of these Abyssinian captives and let them go. And 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.

• 38:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 and 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, your Majesty, until those asses make their appearance and we will tear them to pieces. And everybody shouts, huzzah, yay.

• 39:15Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Teodros greets that, this man, you old fool. Have you ever seen an English soldier? Before you know where you are, your belly will be filled with bullets.

• 39:26Tom Holland?

  Oh, my God, it's like Henry V of the Ashen Corps.

• 39:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  So if you're one of his men, he's sending very mixed messages.

• 39:34Tom Holland?

  He is, yes, he is.

• 39:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. Now, before that, he said to his generals, okay, 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, 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

• 40:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  that the guards are taking too long to get their shackles off. Teodros 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 it'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 and asking for forgiveness. Saying, please don't count it against me because drink had been taken.

• 41:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  I don't know what God's view of that was, actually.

• 41:07Tom Holland?

  I don't think very approving, to be honest.

• 41:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 at Magdala. They should be there by the afternoon and this will be it. This will be the moment of decision.

• 41:34Tom Holland?

  And we will find out what happens in that moment of decision after the break.

• 41:44Tom Holland?

  This episode is sponsored by How the Tudors Lost Their Heads on National Geographic.

• 41:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  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?

• 42:02Tom Holland?

  A 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.

• 42:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 his ulcer. I'd like to have forensic scientists looking at it, how he got the ulcer, how it was treated. I 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.

• 42:41Tom Holland?

  Well, Dominic, the only way to find out is to watch How the Tudors Lost Their Heads on Sunday at 8pm on National Geographic.

• 42:53Tom Holland?

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• 43:06Dominic Sandbrook?

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• 44:35Tom Holland?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is History, where it is Good Friday, 1868, and the Emperor Teodros is preparing for his final showdown with Lieutenant General Sir Robert Napier. And the two generals are very different characters, aren't they, Dominic?

• 44:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  They are. They could not be more different. Napier's probably been studying engineering measurements overnight. Teodros drinking, feeling bad that he's been massacring people, throwing 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 drudging up and down this mountain.

• 45:23Tom Holland?

  A miserable business.

• 45:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  They've had a very confusing time, I think.

• 45:27Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And Teodros says, I will do no such thing as he has been sent by a woman.

• 45:41Tom Holland?

  Meaning Queen Victoria.

• 45:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  So he was all talk about Queen Victoria beforehand.

• 45:45Tom Holland?

  Yeah, it's not very gallant at all.

• 45:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, exactly. He's let himself down there. That's, that's very poor from Teodros. Teodros 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 loyalists. He wants them to charge the British as soon as the British arrive on the plateau. And 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 the king.

• 46:18Tom Holland?

  So Churchillian.

• 46:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Now meanwhile, Napier's men are climbing onto the Plain of Aroji 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. There 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.

• 47:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And 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.

• 47:23Tom Holland?

  I mean, part of the, 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.

• 47:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly 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're now stumbling out, it's about four o'clock, onto this plain from the valley. And 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.

• 48:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  But remember, David smote 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. There'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 had been waiting gave a great kind of cheer and a kind of war whoop. And they charge onto the plain themselves, some of them on horseback, some of them running,

• 49:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  they've levelled their spears, they're singing their war songs. It's the kind of ride of the Rahirim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields or something. And a tremendously rousing and exciting moment as they, they race towards the British. And for a moment, you know, if you're watching the film of this, it looks as if Teodros's 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.

• 49:50Tom Holland?

  That's the lesson of history.

• 49:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  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.

• 50:00Tom Holland?

  Has he fired Sebastopol at this point?

• 50:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  I don't know that he ever does fire Sebastopol.

• 50:05Tom Holland?

  Oh, no.

• 50:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  But one of the guns early on, one of the guns explodes, it bursts. And at this point, I think some of the gunners lost heart.

• 50:16Tom Holland?

  Shoddy Swiss workmanship.

• 50:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So often the way with the Swiss, isn't it?

• 50:21Tom Holland?

  Yeah, isn't it?

• 50:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  Now meanwhile, the, the sort of his assault troops or whatever are charging at the British.

• 50:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Now, the British are taking aim with their rifles. But the Abyssinians know, yeah, 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. The British have bought for the first time state of the art Snyder breach loading rifles. So these are rifles that you can reload with a breach in seconds.

• 51:03Tom Holland?

  Yeah, we have got the Snyder breach loading rifle and they have not.

• 51:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And 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.

• 51:32Tom Holland?

  That is ironic.

• 51:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  So they're sitting ducks. They are shot down, their men keep coming and then the bullets just, the hail of bullets just knock them down in their 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. The last dusk begins to fall and the fighting dies down. And the survivors straggle back to Teodros's camp. And in the dark, he calls out to them, where is so and so? Where's so and so? Naming his chiefs. They're all dead. All the people he knows by name are dead. So in all, he's lost about a thousand men, just under a thousand men, thousands more wounded.

• 52:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  The British have lost two men killed and about 20 wounded. I mean, you could hardly imagine a more lopsided battle. Teodros 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 Rasam, I think is his general approach. So he sends Rasam another of his mad notes. How have you passed the day? Thank God I am well.

• 53:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  I, being a king, could not allow people to come and fight me without attacking them first. I have done so and my tribus 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 Rasam scribbles him a note and says, I completely agree. At dawn, I think you should send a delegation to Napier. Maybe send that missionary, the Reverend Flad and Lieutenant Predo. And they can, you know, carry your peace offer to Napier. So that night, nobody can sleep because it's just a lot of wailing as the Abyssinians mourn their dead.

• 53:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  And at four o'clock in the morning, Teodros summons Flad and Predo, as Rasam 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. And 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.

• 54:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  If 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's 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? And 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.

• 55:11Tom Holland?

  His guns, yeah.

• 55:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  And then they would help him and they would be great friends. And now he thinks, I don't want to be taken in as a prisoner back to London. Like, 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. A 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.

• 55:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. And he does fire, but the bullet just grazes his ear.

• 56:07Tom Holland?

  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.

• 56:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  But they must be horrified because they stop him shooting himself.

• 56:16Tom Holland?

  Yeah. Because you'd think with all his ranting and his lunatic general behaviour.

• 56:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Tom Holland?

  They might think this isn't really the greatest war leader we've ever had.

• 56:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  You might think that, but maybe some of them just think it's, it's fun. You know, it's, you never know where you are. No two days are the same. Yeah. I don't know.

• 56:33Tom Holland?

  Because he's busy chopping off hands and, um.

• 56:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 56:36Tom Holland?

  Feet, isn't he? And throwing people to hyenas.

• 56:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Looting manuscripts.

• 56:39Tom Holland?

  Yeah, he's doing that, of course. Maybe it's that.

• 56:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  I don't know. He now throws himself to the ground and he's sobbing, he's disconsolate. He's just in floods of tears. And then he dusts himself down. And for about the 17th time, he says, bring all the Europeans down from the mountain top.

• 56:56Tom Holland?

  It is hard to keep up, isn't it?

• 56:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you find it hard to keep up. Imagine having to make the notes. I mean, yeah, yeah, trying to keep track of where everybody is.

• 57:06Tom Holland?

  I thought you were going to say, imagine being a hostage, but no, you're the victim here.

• 57:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. Rasam, please, the rest of you stay here. Teodros wants to speak to Rasam alone. Rasam, who's very nervous, finds the emperor standing alone by the edge of the cliff. And Teodros, as a broken man, says to him, you know, Mr. Rasam, that you and I have always been on good terms. I've always had a high regard for you. It's true, I behaved badly towards you, but that was because of the behaviour of bad men.

• 57:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Teodros says, um, 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 Rasam sees tears into Teodros's eyes. And Rasam goes on down the path. And Rasam 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.

• 58:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 Merryweather, has brought loads of champagne along just in case. So he's, I've mentioned the champagne.

• 58:47Tom Holland?

  Oh, so that's why they brought the champagne, right?

• 58:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  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, surely 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.

• 59:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. He flirts with the idea of fleeing. He says, you know, maybe we could run away, maybe we could get to Lake Tana. But his men say to him, no, we're not going to flee with you. Your own, 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 Farenjes, 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

• 1:00:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  campfires. Now Napier, meanwhile, is down with his senior officers, thinking about what to do. Deep down, I don't think they want another 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.

• 1:00:42Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Uh, 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.

• 1:00:54Tom Holland?

  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.

• 1:01:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly 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, you know, 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 a, in some country house in Hampshire. I mean, worst case scenario, you're being exhibited at a freak show in the East End.

• 1:01:31Tom Holland?

  No, that wouldn't, they wouldn't do that.

• 1:01:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  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's son, they send him to public schools.

• 1:01:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  So anyway, Monday morning, Theodros 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 Theodros 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. And a very deflated Theodros 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.

• 1:02:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 and the shells are getting closer and closer. By about four o'clock in the afternoon, the first British troops were 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 Theodros and his remaining loyalists begin to fall back towards the inner gate. At this point, the British brought scaling ladders with them and they start to scale

• 1:03:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. Now, Theodros 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 Theodros 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, that's it. He falls to the ground. And within moments, his men are

• 1:03:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 is 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 dueling pistol that he was given as a gift from Queen Victoria. The one you told us to remember. Exactly. He'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. Yes.

• 1:04:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  So that is the end of Theodros, the Emperor of Abyssinia. Dr. Blanc, who had been his hostage, did the post-mortem. 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 Church on the Magdala hilltop the next day. Theodros would have, 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, by his beloved.

• 1:05:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 the treasures. Now, as we said, this is not an entirely straightforward British bad guys plundering stuff story, because of course, this was stuff that Theodros had basically accumulated in his campaigns. And he had an absolutely mad collection. So he had religious

• 1:05:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  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. He 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, 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

• 1:06:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  a massive free for all. We 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 tablets, 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. Oh, so we talk about some of the loot in our special bonus episode on this for Rest is History Club members. We also talk about what happened to some of the hostages, like

• 1:07:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Humuz Brassam. 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. It's not his nickname. That was his name, Captain Speedy. But Captain Speedy before this had been Theodros' military advisor. So he had, he had an extraordinary career. He knew all about the guns. He did. And the other person is Theodros' 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 at 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,

• 1:08:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  perhaps particularly those launched by our American cousins. And the difference with Napier is Napier has absolutely no interest in installing a client regime, 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 in 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." The message that Jimmy Carter never got to deliver.

• 1:08:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  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, 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, there's 20 years of civil war. There's then the war in the Sudan, which spills over, the Mahdi, our old friend, General Gordon. And it only ends really at the end of the century, under a guy called Menelik the Second. 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,

• 1:09:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  humiliation of a European army by, by an African one. But all that lies in the future. So Napier and co. marched back to the coast, their bands playing, their flags flying. They get there in June. Everything is loaded back onto the ships, the 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

• 1:10:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  think twice about challenging the power that triumphed over the black king." So 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, at Queen's Gate. You can still see it today. But talk of statues, we should end in Abyssinia. So Theodros in Abyssinia, or other Ethiopia as we now call it, is a cult figure today.

• 1:10:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  So in his brilliant book on this, Philip Marston talks about going to the markets in Addis Ababa and seeing Theodros' t-shirts and badges, seeing his image stencilled 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 Theodros Square, which is in the centre of Addis Ababa. And basically, this is a giant roundabout. And unbelievably, this roundabout is situated on, of all things, Churchill Avenue. He was at the Battle of Omdmen. He was at the Battle of Omdmen, exactly. He was no stranger to a sort of Horn of Africa battle.

• 1:11:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Now, there is no statue towards Ross, but you will be pleased to hear that in the middle of this roundabout, there is a replica of his beloved giant gun, Sebastopol.

• 1:11:56Tom Holland?

  Oh, fabulous.

• 1:11:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  So you could go and see this, we invited a Rest is History trip to Addis Ababa. We'd obviously go to the-

• 1:12:03Tom Holland?

  But what about the actual, the actual gun?

• 1:12:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, this here is the thing. The real Sebastopol still exists 250 miles away from Addis Ababa. It's half buried on the barren mountain top of what was once the fortress of Magdala. There's nothing there now.

• 1:12:21Tom Holland?

  And it was never fired? No one ever worked out if it worked?

• 1:12:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  It shows no sign of ever having been fired.

• 1:12:29Tom Holland?

  Oh, God.

• 1:12:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  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 Harry Flashman rightly puts it in his memoir, "It could all have been avoided if only Queen Victoria had answered her letters."

• 1:12:51Tom Holland?

  Well, on the subject of queens behaving badly and disastrous consequences ensuing, next week, we are back with the French Revolution and specifically with the terror. So 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.

• 1:13:36Tom Holland?

  And if you're not and you would like to hear the slicing of the guillotine for six solid episodes, you 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.

• 1:14:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Poor old, you'd feel sorry if it's your dress?

• 1:14:05Tom Holland?

  I'd have really liked him.

• 1:14:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  You wouldn't like him if he shackled your-

• 1:14:09Tom Holland?

  No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a hostage. But I tell you what I liked about him. I liked his style as a letter writer.

• 1:14:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Tom Holland?

  I would have loved to get a letter from him. And unlike Queen Victoria, I would have replied and become his pen pal.

• 1:14:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Maybe Rest is History listeners, if those people who, you know, feel fondly disposed to Tom, why don't you send in your letters to him in the style of Teodros 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?

• 1:14:42Tom Holland?

  Take some dueling pistols with us as well. It'd be great. Anyway, Dominic, thank you. That was great. Thank you everyone for listening. Bye bye.

• 1:14:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Bye bye.

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