SERTZA DENGHEL had several daughters, one of whom was married to Kefla Wahad, governor of the province of Tigré, and another to Athanasius, governor of Amhara. These two were the most powerful men then in the kingdom. The empress and her two sons-in-law saw plainly, that the succession of Za Denghel, a man of ripe years, possessed of every requisite for reigning, was to exclude them from any share in government but a subaltern one, for which they were to stand candidates upon their own merits, in common with the rest of the nobility. Accordingly, no sooner was Sertza Denghel dead, perhaps some time before, but a conspiracy was formed to change the order of succession, and this was immediately executed by order of this triumvirate, who sent a body of soldiers and seized Za Denghel, and carried him close prisoner to Dek, a large island in the lake Tzana, belonging to the queen, where he was kept for some time, till he escaped and hid himself in the wild inaccessible mountains of Gojam, which there form the banks of the Nile. They carried their precautions still further; and subsequent events after shewed, that these were well-grounded. They sent a party of men at the same time to surprise Socinios, but he, sufficiently upon his guard, no sooner saw the fate of his cousin, Za Denghel, than he withdrew himself, but in such a manner that shewed plainly he knew the value of his own pretensions, and was not to be an unconcerned spectator if a revolution was to happen. In order to understand perfectly the claims of those princes, who were by turns placed on the throne in the bloody war that followed, it will be necessary to know that the emperor David III. had three sons: The eldest was Claudius, who succeeded him in the empire; the history of whose reign we have already given: The second was Jacob, who died a minor before his brother, but left two sons, Tascar and Facilidas: The third son was Menas, called Adamas Segued, who succeeded Claudius his brother in the empire; whose reign we have likewise given in its proper place. Menas had four sons; Sertza Denghel, called Melec Segued, who succeeded his father in the empire, and whose history we have just now finished; the second Aquieter; the third Abatè; and the fourth, Lesana Christos; whose son was that Za Denghel of whom we were last speaking, appointed to succeed to the throne by his uncle Sertza Denghel, when on his death-bed. Tascar, the son of Jacob, died a minor; he rebelled against his uncle Menas, in confederacy with the Baharnagash, as we have already seen; and his army being beat by his uncle and sovereign, he was, by his order, thrown over the steep precipice of Lamalmon, and dashed to pieces. Facilidas, the second remaining son of the same minor Jacob, lived many years, possessed great estates in Gojam, and died afterwards in battle, fighting against the Galla, in defence of these possessions.