2.4 Negus Takla-Haymanot, hereditary ruler of Gojjam from 1881–1901
Side by side with his policy of controlled regionalism, Yohannes pursued another of maintaining a political and military equilibrium between his two main vassals, Menilek of Shawa and Adal of Gojjam. In view of the fact that the actual as well as potential challenge to the throne came from Menilek rather than from Adal, this policy in effect meant that the emperor found himself more often on the side of the Gojjame rather than on that of the Shawan ruler.
Initially, however, relations between Adal and Yohannes were anything but smooth. This is not surprising, as Adal had been Takla-Giyorgis’s protégé. But the emperor’s campaigns to subdue the Gojjame lord were frustrated by the latter’s resort to guerrilla tactics – a pattern of confrontation that was to be repeated in later times. In an effort to undermine Adal’s authority in Gojjam, the emperor then made Dasta Tadla (son of the rebel Tadla Gwalu, who had given Tewodros such a hard time) ras and governor of Gojjam. Adal’s victory over Dasta in July 1874 ensured his supremacy in Gojjam, and induced both the emperor and Adal to seek a rapprochement. After assurances from Yohannes that he would honour Adal’s legitimate rights to the throne of Gojjam, Adal submitted at Ambachara in October 1874.
Thereafter, Yohannes began to support Adal as a counterweight to Menilek. He also apparently gave his blessing to Adal’s expansion south of the Abbay river in order to forestall the Shawan ruler. Adal reciprocated by suppressing rebellions in Bagemder and Semen in 1875–1876, while Yohannes was engaged with the Egyptians. In 1878, at Leche, as a member of the emperor’s entourage, Adal had the satisfaction of witnessing the chastening of his rival, Menilek. The high point of the Yohannes-Adal accord came in January 1881, when the emperor made Adal negus of Gojjam and Kafa, thereby publicizing his desire to deprive Menilek of the resource-rich south-west, and to stifle his bid for imperial power. The Battle of Embabo one year later, when Menilek ensured for himself mastery of the south-west by defeating Negus Takla-Haymanot (as Adal had come to be called), was thus a source of serious alarm to the emperor, as it significantly upset his policy of equilibrium. The ultimate failure of this policy came in 1888, when the two vassals created a common front against Yohannes. The emperor reacted by devastating Gojjam, the land of his relatively more favoured vassal, with a fury which he himself found hard to explain: ‘I do not know whether it is through my sin or that of the peasant, but I went on devastating the country’ (Heruy, 83).
Menilek’s challenge to Yohannes began soon after he returned in 1865 to Shawa from his ten-year captivity in Maqdala. He had inherited an area of relative prosperity, and it also had a tradition of strong autocratic leadership. With this secure base, he began to expand to the north, partly because this was a natural line of expansion at the time and partly to enhance his credentials for the throne. In the process, he founded the town of Warra Illu, north of the border between Shawa and Wallo. His expansion was challenged locally by Mastawat, one of the rulers of Wallo, and later by her son Amade Liban (alias Abba Wataw), and nationally by Emperor Yohannes himself. Soon, Wallo developed into a bone of contention between the emperor and Menilek. But they did not come into a direct clash over it. Instead they fought the war through the surrogates they had groomed from the two rival houses of Wallo: Abba Wataw for Yohannes and Muhammad Ali for Menilek. In the early 1870s, however, Yohannes was too absorbed in the Egyptian menace to give any meaningful help to his candidate. Towards the end of 1875, therefore, Menilek successfully captured the stronghold of Maqdala, imprisoned Abba Wataw and appointed Muhammad Ali as governor of Wallo.
Yohannes’s victories over the invading Egyptians at Gundat (1875) and Gura (1876), both near the Marab river where it turns north into what is now Eritrea, changed the situation. In the aftermath of the battles, Yohannes moved south to deal with a problem that had been nagging him since his coronation, but which he had never previously had the time to solve. With the adroitness which was to be the hallmark of his political career, Muhammad Ali shifted allegiance from Menilek to the more powerful emperor. Yohannes kept on pushing southwards, determined to solve the problem of Menilek once and for all. In January 1878, he entered the district of Manz, in north-west Shawa. Menilek gave the order for mobilization. There were even some minor clashes, after which Menilek retreated to Leche. It was there that, urged by his advisers, he made his submission; with his supplies dwindling, the emperor was probably not unenthusiastic about a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
The Leche Agreement, as it has come to be known, took place on 20 March 1878, and forms a landmark in the history of the Ethiopian state. It resolved the political uncertainty of the post-Tewodros period. Yohannes’s suzerainty was unequivocally recognized, and in very dramatic circumstances indeed. In the formal ceremony of submission, Menilek had to carry the traditional stone of penitence and prostrate himself in front of his overlord, as the azmari (minstrels) chanted songs chiding him for his ambition. The Shawan ruler also agreed to pay annual tribute to the emperor and to provide supplies for the imperial army when it passed through Shawa.
Yet the agreement was also a clear demonstration of the emperor’s liberal approach to the issue of political power, his objective of being a feudal suzerain rather than an absolute autocrat. He left Menilek defeated but not shattered; he made him renounce the title of negusa nagast which he had paraded since the death of Tewodros; but he sanctioned Menilek’s assumption of the title of negus with the following words:
You are accordingly king and master of a land conquered by your forebears; I shall respect your sovereignty if you will be faithful to the agreements decided between us. Whoever strikes your kingdom, strikes me, and whoever makes war on you, makes it on me. You are accordingly my eldest son.
(Marcus, Life and Times, 56)
On Menilek’s side, too, his decision to submit was a mark of his tactical wisdom. Humiliated though he was, he came out militarily intact. The big lesson that he learned from the whole encounter was the need for patience. And, in the following decade, he was to work patiently, but assiduously, for the throne which he had earlier mistakenly thought to be within easy reach. After the Leche Agreement, Wallo was no longer his exclusive preserve. He was reduced to the role of a junior partner to the emperor, who began to subjugate Wallo with extraordinary ruthlessness. But, for Menilek, his frustration in the north was to prove a blessing in disguise. It opened his eyes to the south. His southern campaigns were to provide him with the resources, hence the military power, to pose a more formidable challenge to the throne, so that, when Yohannes died at the Battle of Matamma against the Sudanese Mahdists in March 1889, Menilek’s succession was an almost foregone conclusion.
2.5 Ras Alula Engeda, Emperor Yohannes’s governor of the Marab Melash, and implacable opponent of Italian encroachment, shown in Arab costume, 1887
While Yohannes was content to exercise only indirect control in Gojjam and Shawa, he could not afford to pursue a similar policy in the area most threatened by foreign intrusion – the Marab Melash, the territory north of the Marab river and stretching to the Red Sea. The defection in 1876 of its ruler, Walda-Mikael, to the Egyptian side spelt out the inherent dangers of indirect rule only too clearly. Soon after the Battle of Gura, therefore, Yohannes entrusted the administration of the Marab Melash to his trusted general, Alula Engeda, after promoting him from shalaqa (the Ethiopian army equivalent of major) to ras. Being of humble origin and owing his position entirely to the emperor, Alula showed steadfast loyalty. He executed his task as frontier governor with extraordinary energy and dedication. On the other hand, his meteoric rise provoked the disgruntlement of the Tegrean nobility. One of its members, Dajjach Dabbab Araya, a cousin of the emperor, was to provide as shefta a constant challenge to Alula’s authority on the Massawa coast until his submission in 1888.
