During the battle that ensued, Mahfuz, the Goliath of the Unbelievers, was slain in single combat by Gabriel Andreas, a soldier of tried valour, who had assumed the monastic life in consequence of having lost the tip of his tongue for treasonable freedom of speech: the green standard was captured, and 12,000 Moslems fell. David followed up his success by invading the lowlands, and, in defiance, struck his spear through the door of the king of Adel. Harar was a mere mass of Bedouin villages during the reign of Mohammed Gragne, the "left-handed" Attila of Adel. [13] Supplied with Arab mercenaries from Mocha, and by the Turks of Yemen with a body of Janissaries and a train of artillery, he burst into Efat and Fatigar. In A.D. 1528 he took possession of Shoa, overran Amhara, burned the churches and carried away an immense booty. The next campaign enabled him to winter at Begmeder: in the following year he hunted the Emperor David through Tigre to the borders of Senaar, gave battle to the Christians on the banks of the Nile, and with his own hand killed the monk Gabriel, then an old man. Reinforced by Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Samen Jews, and aided by a violent famine which prostrated what had escaped the spear, he perpetrated every manner of atrocity, captured and burned Axum, destroyed the princes of the royal blood on the mountain of Amba Geshe [14], and slew in A.D. 1540, David, third of his name and last emperor of AEthiopia who displayed the magnificence of "King of Kings." Claudius, the successor to the tottering throne, sent as his ambassador to Europe, one John Bermudez, a Portuguese, who had been detained in Abyssinia, and promised, it is said, submission to the Pontiff of Rome, and the cession of the third of his dominions in return for reinforcements. By order of John III., Don Stephen and Don Christopher, sons of Don Vasco de Gama, cruised up the Red Sea with a powerful flotilla, and the younger brother, landing at Masawwah with 400 musqueteers, slew Nur the governor and sent his head to Gondar, where the Iteghe Sabel Wenghel received it as an omen of good fortune. Thence the Portuguese general imprudently marched in the monsoon season, and was soon confronted upon the plain of Ballut by Mohammed Gragne at the head of 10,000 spearmen and a host of cavalry. On the other side stood a rabble rout of Abyssinians, and a little band of 350 Portuguese heroes headed by the most chivalrous soldier of a chivalrous age.