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Eyewitnesses of the dramatic Battle of Adwa are hard
to find these days. Old age and death have consumed
them over time and reduced many almost to
extinction. For many of us, the Battle of Adwa means
little more than grey-haired veterans of war
parading clad in old military outfits, decorated
with wartime medals of gallantry and signs of
credentials.
These veterans on occasions sing and shout the
shilela, a typical war song where a soloist
would sing in a high tone using galvanising lyrics
appealing to the feeling of manhood accompanied by
the characteristic chorus and hurrahs of bravery
moving back and forth, high to low and shivering to
express motivation uttering words of vows and
swearing.
They brandish their weaponry dramatising the actual
battle to elate the esprit de corps of the
fighting forces. The memory is still fresh in our
minds in light of the essence of the millennium and
the renaissance of national history and unity more
than ever before.
The sparking pretext for the war was the Wuchalle
Agreement which was written in two versions. A
clause in the Italian version was deliberately
misconstrued to effectively put the sovereign
country under Italian colony. This could not be
accepted by Menelik II who had used his wisdom and
advice of Etegue Taytu, his spouse, on the stage set
for one of Ethiopia’s most famous battles waged
against a foreign power on the African soil.
The Italian troops under the command of General
Baratieri amounted to about 17,000-18,000 and 56
artillery and unknown numbers of allies from
Eritrea. The Ethiopian forces under the command of
Menelik II outnumbered the Italians by about
fivefold and had some 80,000 rifles and a number of
artillery. The Italians must have underestimated the
Ethiopian forces to be a bunch of unskilled horsemen
and untrained peasants that had come riding and
walking from hundreds of miles away.
The Italians, on the other hand, had organised their
troops into four brigades and had moved in three
parallel directions to assume their attacking posts
from the tops of the hills surrounding Adwa. The
centre stage from where Albertone gave command was
the summit known as Kidane Mihret.
Fortunately for the Ethiopian forces, Albertone had
the wrong sketch of Kidane Mihret and fell directly
into the hands of Ras Alula. The Ethiopian forces
had moved earlier to hold their positions on the
hills overlooking Kidane Mihret. The battle began at
6:00 in the morning with Albertoni’s askaris rushing
into the Ethiopian line.
The Ethiopian artillery, rattling fire from their
rifles and shouting fighters boosted the moral of
the gallant warriors who were able to create
confusion and trepidation among the Italian forces
that never imagined the prevalence of such a
stunning force. General Albertone was captured
within two hours and his command was in disarray and
fleeing to no-man’s land for dear life.
The terrain was rocky and slippery for their heavy
boots. Many of them being new conscripts as some
historians would like us to believe, were tumbling
and rolling down the ridges and cliffs and meeting
their death or got wounded.
The Italians had perhaps misread the Battle at
Magdella, where Emperor Tewdros lost and had
committed suicide. They must have disregarded the
fact that Ethiopians were born and bred in an
environment where fighting battles was just a way of
life and that they needed little training to fight
in the European style.
Perhaps they were also banking on the century old
rifts that existed between the nobles and little
kingdoms. The Ethiopians were able to prove the
Italian generals wrong by bringing the short-sighted
battle to an end in a matter of hours.
What the Italians did not know was that the
nation-building vision that was started by Twedros
and strengthened by Atse Yohannes had gone a long
way during Menelik II and that it was able to put up
a strong resistance to the overwhelming Italian
might. Indeed the victory had sent an unequivocal
message that Ethiopia was not a disintegrated nation
having unskilled and untrained troops that would
flee at the sound of rattling weaponry.
Men like Ras Alula, chief military advisor of the
Emperor, Ras Sibhat, Ras Mengesha from Tigray,
Wagshum Gwangul from Lasta, Ras Michael from Wollo,
Nigus Tekle Haimanot from Godjam, Ras Gobena and
Dejazmatch Balcha from Oromia, Ras Wole from Yeju,
Fitawrari Takele from Wellega, Ras Makonnen from
Harrar and other prominent loyal men in power were
able to draw forces from all over the country
underpinned by the new tenant-soldier relation
tenure system that helped logistics a lot.
The chain of command and spying on the enemy’s
movement and intent seem to have been well organised
and effective. The enemy believed that Menelik and
his men will go to church at dawn to pray for divine
guidance and assistance. At dawn on March 2, 1896,
the Italian troops rushed from three different
directions. Both sides fought bitterly and paid
heavily.
The Italians were about to break through the
Ethiopian camp when Menelik commanded his reserve of
25,000 cavalry to sweep the invading forces. The
enemy retreated in disarray. Some tried to flee to
Eritrea. By noon, the battle was over. About 7,000
Italians were killed against 3,000-5,000 Ethiopians;
1,500 were wounded and 3,000 were captured. About
7,500 Ethiopians were wounded.
That was exactly 112 years ago today. But the memory
of the Victory of Adwa remains afresh in the minds
of Africans in general and Ethiopians in particular
and hopefully lingers on through the march of time.
Among the symbolic traces of the Battle of Adwa are
veterans and monuments.
At
the time of going to press there were words that
full-fledged preparations were underway to celebrate
the Anniversary of the victory at Adwa itself, some
1,000 miles north of Addis Abeba. The victory and
its memory are closer and a binding chain for
Africans.
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