These two worthies, without any proof or intelligence but their own warm and weak imaginations, fell violently upon poor Ludolf, accusing him of falsehood, partiality, and prevarication; and, right or wrong, they would have Facilidas plunged up to the neck in troubles, wading through labyrinths of misfortunes, conspiracies, and defeats, certainly dead, or about to die some terrible death by the vengeance of heaven; and this ridiculous report is unjustly spread abroad by all the zealots of those times. _Fata obstant_;--truth will out. The annals of the country, written without a regard to either party, state, that, in the long reign of Facilidas, notwithstanding the calamitous state in which his father left him the empire, very few misfortunes only are reported to have happened either to himself or lieutenants. [Illustration] HANNES I. OR ŒLAFE SEGUED. From 1665 to 1680. _Bigotry of the King--Disgusts his Son Yasous, who flies from Gondar._ If this prince succeeded to his kingdom in peace, he had the address still to keep it so. He was not in his nature averse to war, though, besides two feeble attempts he made upon Lasta, and one against the Shangalla, all without material consequences, no military expedition was undertaken in his time; and no rebellion or competitor (so frequent in other reigns) at all disturbed his. Hannes seems to have had the seeds of bigotry in his temper; from the beginning of his reign he commanded the Mahometans to eat no other flesh but what had been killed by Christians; and gathered together the Catholic books, which the Jesuits had translated into the Ethiopic language, and burned them in a heap. Much of his attention was given to church matters, and, in regulating these, he seems to have employed most of his time. He deposed the Abuna Christadulus, appointed by his father, and in his place put the Abuna Sanuda. This last measure seems to have displeased his eldest son Yasous, who fled from the palace one night, and passed the Nile; and, though he was followed by Kasmati Aserata Christos, he was not overtaken, but staid some time in his sister’s house, and then returned to Gondar at the request of his father. A convocation of the clergy, the second in this reign, was now held, and great heats and divisions followed among two orders of monks, those of Eustathius and those of Debra Libanos. The king seems to have assisted at all these debates, and to have contented himself with holding the balance in his hands without declaring for either party. But these altercations and disputes could not satisfy the active spirit of the prince his son, who again fled from his father and from Gondar, but was overtaken at the river Bashilo, and brought back to the palace, where he found his father ill.