But the queen, Malacotawit, no sooner heard that Yasous her husband was sick at Tchekla Wunze, than she sent to her son Tecla Haimanout to leave his unwholesome station, and march back immediately to Gondar; and, as soon as he was returned, she dispatched her two brothers, Dermin and Paulus, with a body of soldiers and two Mahometan musqueteers, who, entering the island Tchekla Wunze by surprise, shot and disabled the king while sitting on a couch; immediately after which, Dermin thrust him through with a sword. They attempted afterwards to burn the body, in order to avoid the ill-will the sight of it must occasion: In this, however, they were prevented by the priests of the island and the neighbouring nobility, who took possession of the body, washed it, and performed all the rites of sepulture, then carried it in a kind of triumph, with every mark of magnificence due to the burial of a king, interring it in the small island of Mitraha, where lay the body of all his ancestors, and where I have seen the body of this king still entire. Nor did the prince his son, Tecla Haimanout, now king, discourage the people in the respect they voluntarily paid to his father. On the contrary, that parricide himself shewed every outward mark of duty, to the which inwardly his heart had been long a stranger. Poncet, who saw this king, gives this character of him: He says he was a man very fond of war, but averse to the shedding of blood. However this may appear a contradiction, or said for the sake of the antithesis, it really was the true character of this prince, who, fond of war, and in the perpetual career of victory, did, by pushing his conquests as far as they could go, inevitably occasion the spilling of much blood. Yet, when his army was not in the field, though he detected a multitude of conspiracies among priests and other people at home, whose lives in consequence were forfeited to the law, he very rarely, either from his own motives, or the persuasion of others, could be induced to inflict capital punishments though often strongly provoked to it. Upon his death the people unanimously gave to him the name of Tallac, which signifies _the Great_, a name he has ever since enjoyed unimpeached in the Abyssinian annals, or history of his country, from the which this his reign is taken. [Illustration] TECLA HAIMANOUT I. From 1704 to 1706. _Writes in Favour of Du Roule--Defeats the Rebels--Is assassinated while hunting._