Theodore II of Ethiopia
Czeslaw Jesman describes the revival of the African Empire and the British expedition of 1868.
On Easter Monday, 1868, the Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia died, in all likelihood by his own hand, on the amba of Magdala, a fortified and almost impregnable mountain.
At that time its defences were being rushed by British infantry of the Anglo-Indian Expeditionary Force, commanded by Sir Robert Napier, the future Lord Napier of Magdala. Theodore disbanded the garrison of his last redoubt a few days before, and had only eighteen followers at his side, some of them elderly courtiers and hardly combatant.
Sir Robert commanded about 4,000 troops on the spot and, including garrisons of staging posts, detachments and units covering the approaches to his principal base on the Red Sea, had in Ethiopia some 32,000 men and ample artillery under his orders.
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