Читать книгу Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia - Sebastian O’Kelly - Страница 17

Amedeo did not need binoculars to see the men on top of a small hill about a kilometre away. In their white robes, the Ethiopian skirmishers stood out clearly against the burned brown of the rocky landscape. For the Spahys di Libya it was the first sight of the enemy since crossing the frontier three days before. At the front of the invasion force, Amedeo had looked back that first day from a high amba and seen three long columns of men, 100,000 in all, fording the Mareb river. And above flew the aeroplanes of La Disperata, whose first bomb, dropped on an unsuspecting village near Adowa, was released by a journalist friend of Ciano’s from Corriere della Sera. Mussolini had got his war at last.

Major Ajmone Cat lowered his field glasses and turned in the saddle towards his officers, singling out Amedeo. His feelings towards the general’s nephew had thawed over the past three months. Indeed, Amedeo had become something of a favourite with the irascible commander, who was impressed by his conscientiousness. He had wanted to leave the lieutenant behind at Barentu, as he was still weakened by malaria, but Amedeo had persuaded him that he was fit enough to serve. The young man may have been a little too eager. At dusk on the first day in enemy territory, Amedeo had strode up to his commanding officer, who was standing alone some way off, to report that the camels carrying the tents and supplies had been unloaded and that the encampment was secure for the night. The major had grunted in acknowledgement and turned his back; Amedeo had continued, ‘Comandante …’ Again the major turned away. For a third time, ‘Com …’ The major exploded: ‘Damn it man! Can’t you leave me to piss in peace!’ Amedeo’s excess of zeal had been a source of great amusement. But now, faced with the first appearance of the enemy, there was no trace of levity when the major held the lieutenant’s eyes for a moment, and said: ‘Guillet, clear that hill, if you please.’

So that was how it was done, Amedeo thought. Only a few short words, casually spoken as though he were being asked to round up a loose horse. But what they meant was vast. This was how it must have been for his father when he was ordered into action on the Carso for the first time. He could feel the eyes of the other officers on him, and he looked away towards the hill for a moment. Without a word, he calmly eased Sandor into a turn, taking care not to yank the bit in his excitement, and cantered down the column to his men. Although it was a hot afternoon and the Spahys had been marching all day, the major’s words had shaken off Amedeo’s torpor, and he felt as clear and focused as he had to be during the final jump-off in the showjumping ring.

‘Shumbashi Sarduk, have the squadron draw up in line behind me,’ Amedeo told his senior sergeant.

He watched his eighty horsemen detach themselves from the rest, sending up puffs of dust as they sorted themselves out and formed a long line, each rider three or four metres apart. Amedeo turned to face the hill, and began trotting towards it over the uneven rock and sand. He closed his eyes for a second and thought of his mother, before whom he had knelt to be blessed with the sign of the cross before he had left for war. The black sword of his father was strapped to the saddle behind his leg. In his dreams, war was still something out of a painting by Baron Gros, serried ranks of cuirassiers crying Vive l’empereur! Now was the moment of his awakening. He took his Glisenti revolver out of its holster, unravelled the cord attached to its grip and placed it like a noose around his neck.

The white figures on the hill were moving about excitedly, some taking cover behind rocks. But Amedeo was less anxious about those he could see. There could not have been more than a couple of dozen, probably poorly armed tribesmen. It was what they would encounter on the far side of the hill that concerned him.

‘Canter march!’ He ordered, putting a slight pressure on Sandor to ease him up a gait.

The enemy began firing and Amedeo could hear the shots whistling over his head. Four hundred metres away from the enemy, he turned in the saddle and shouted: ‘Caricat! Charge!’

At last he gave Sandor his head, letting him surge forward into a furious gallop straight towards the hill. The horse was plunging up the slope towards the enemy when Amedeo turned again behind him and felt his heart miss a beat. Only Sarduk and two others were still with him. Of the rest there was no sign.

The shumbashi caught his appalled expression. ‘Keep going, Comandante. Don’t stop!’

It was too late for that anyway. Amedeo cursed and invoked divine protection at the same time, digging in his spurs to keep Sandor bounding in cat-leaps up the hill. It was only when nearly at the top that he saw that his Spahys had fanned out, and were charging up at the enemy from all directions.

‘Comandante! Watch out to your left!’ cried the shumbashi again.

Amedeo turned to see a crouching figure level his rifle at him. He quickly aimed and fired his revolver, and a small dark circle instantaneously appeared on the man’s forehead and he jerked back against a rock. Other Spahys had reached the crest, firing their rifles with one hand at a gallop, reloading and firing again. Complete panic set in among the enemy, who stumbled and ran down the far side of the hill.

Almost as soon as it had begun, the charge was over. Amedeo’s heart was pounding. He had survived without a scratch, and felt elated and proud. He had not hesitated, even when he thought that he had been abandoned. And at the price of one wounded Spahy, five or six of the enemy had been killed, and several captured. The rest had fled into the dense woodland.

‘An interesting manoeuvre, Guillet,’ said Major Ajmone Cat, when he rode up. But he was pleased. The Spahys’ first engagement of the war had been a triumph, and the officers celebrated that evening with bottles of the major’s chianti.

A few days later, the Libyan cavalry were the first to arrive at Axum. Three huge granite columns, venerating the southern Arabian deities of the sun and the moon, rose above the juniper trees, and beside them many others were lying broken on the ground. These were all that remained of the ancient city of the Queen of Sheba, where she returned after her seduction by Solomon, according to the Ethiopian version of the biblical story. From the church of Mariam priests emerged carrying gold Coptic crosses of beautiful intricacy. The Spahy officers dismounted and kissed them: the first Christian invaders to seize the land of the mythical Prester John. Adowa was taken at the same time and Amedeo made a point of riding over the plain where Barattieri’s army had been destroyed forty years before. Little fields rippled down the contours of the hills, newly ploughed or filled with ripe crops. But of the populace there was hardly a trace. Only slowly and hesitantly did the inhabitants of Adowa emerge from their huts, the older ones remembering the last time the Italians had come south across the Mareb.

Later, column after column of Italian infantry and Eritrean ascari, wearing high red fezes, marched into Adowa and Axum, led by officers mounted on horses or mules, the flags and pennants of the unit behind them. The whole of Tigre seemed there for the taking, but instead of pressing on, General De Bono halted the advance. He had not been surprised by the lack of resistance. During the months of waiting, considerable efforts, and funds, had been expended to turn the Tigrean nobles against the emperor. The biggest catch was Haile Selassie Gugsa, the twenty-seven-year-old lord of Makalle, who had been married to the emperor’s favourite daughter until her early death. A notoriously debauched young man, he declared for Italy, but instead of bringing over an army of 30,000 warriors, as he had promised, only 1200 followed him in his treachery. The spark De Bono had hoped would set the empire ablaze fizzled out. Tigre might be his, but he was going to have to fight his way to Addis Ababa, and for that he had little appetite. For nearly a month the army stood idle, while its commander pleaded with Rome for yet more men.

But time was working against Mussolini. In the British general election in mid-November, the Labour Party pledged to close the Suez Canal to Italian shipping: virtually an act of war. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, chief of the general staff, and Alessandro Lessona, the colonies minister, were sent to Africa to assess the situation. The army was eager to fight, morale was high and the condition of the crack Italian regiments and the Eritrean ascari was excellent, Badoglio reported (though noting the poor state of 2nd Corps mules and horses after the mandef epidemic). The chief problem was De Bono, ‘a tired, almost totally exhausted man’. After much prodding, De Bono hesitantly resumed the advance, seizing Makalle without a fight, but then again halted. Mussolini’s patience finally snapped. He bumped his old friend up to marshal and reluctantly handed the command of the regular army over to Badoglio.

In the British elections, the National government of Stanley Baldwin was returned, but though less bellicose than Labour, it pledged ‘all sanctions short of war’. These were imposed on Italy by the League of Nations on 18 November 1935. A ‘Black Day’ of mourning was declared by the Duce and the wives of Italy, wearing widows’ weeds, followed Queen Elena in donating their gold wedding rings to the Patria. Amedeo’s mother became the first woman to do so in Capua, receiving an iron one in return.

For Nazi Germany, the breakdown of the old First World War alliance was an opportunity. German coal and steel were freighted into Italy from the north, ensuring that the League’s sanctions were ineffective. If an oil embargo, which remained to be discussed in mid-December, were imposed, Mussolini’s war machine would grind to a halt and he would have to begin negotiations. He need not have worried. The resolve of the democracies was already cracking. Both Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, the French prime minister, were appalled that Italy was being thrown into the arms of Hitler on account of Ethiopia. The only solution, which at any rate was preferable to full conquest, was a secret pact whereby a large chunk of Ethiopia – all Tigre, some of the Ogaden – was handed over to the Duce.

It was the first of many acts of appeasement in the coming years, but when details of the ignominious deal leaked out, it caused outrage. Coinciding with the news of the Italian bombing of Dessie, during which the emperor was photographed gallantly firing an anti-aircraft gun, the public indignation was uncontrollable, particularly in Britain where Hoare had been praised for his previously tough stand. Both he and Laval were swept from office. But in the resulting furore the issue of oil sanctions on Italy was quietly dropped. The Duce’s war went on.

It was not long, however, before he was complaining about Marshal Badoglio’s interminable delays. A cautious man, the chief-of-staff was a Piedmontese of the higher peasantry, devoted to the king, who had raised him to marchese after the Great War. Having witnessed at first hand the disaster of Caporetto, he knew that it was best to leave nothing to chance with his troops. Like the legions of Rome, the invaders advanced with painstaking attention to their lines of communication. Behind the army, a labour corps of many thousand began building a network of roads and bridges of a quality Tigre had never seen before. Only when these were complete would the army nudge forward again.

But now the initiative passed to the Ethiopians. While the main armies faced each other thirty miles apart, a daring Ethiopian attack was launched against the exposed 2nd Corps of General Maravigna at Axum. Ras Imru was one of the emperor’s most devoted followers, and his best general. Before the war, he had been entrusted with the governorship of Gojjam, a rich and semi-autonomous province separated from the rest of the country by the Blue Nile. From here he had marched north, over four hundred kilometres, with 25,000 men. In early December, he had been bombed from the air for the first time and his force had been halved, with the Gojjam levies heading for home. He had made good his losses with the forces of Dejaz Ayeluw Birru of Gondar, a princeling – he was a ‘commander of the threshold’ – who seemed to be hedging his bets in the fighting with the Italians, although not risking open treachery.

By fast night marches through the mountain massif of Semien, Ras Imru arrived unspotted by Italian air reconnaissance at the river Takazze, which divided western Tigre, held by the Italians, and the Ethiopian province of Beghemeder. Again under darkness, his men crossed the river, overwhelming the Italian guard posts. Army command in Axum sent forward to recoinnoitre a gruppo bande of 250 Eritrean infantry, supported by a squadron of ten two-man Fiat Ansaldo tanks. These were commanded by Captain Ettore Crippa, who had been the motorised cavalry instructor during Amedeo’s time at Pinerolo. At the pass of Dembeguina, the tanks encountered Ras Imru’s vanguard, which fled when the Italians opened up with their machine-guns. Taking advantage of their flight, Crippa’s unit then drew to a halt in a clearing amid acacia trees and attempted to refuel. Unaccountably separated from their infantry support, it was a further misfortune that the reserve supplies were stored on the roofs of the vehicles.

All of a sudden, the Italians were ambushed by hundreds of screaming warriors, who charged forward firing their rifles and hacking down the crewmen with swords and spears. Within seconds the clearing was a scene of carnage. Running warriors hurled burning brushwood onto the miniature tanks, which burst into flames. According to colourful accounts, Balambaras Uvene Tashemma, a ‘commander of a fort’, displaying the cool head and cunning that Amedeo would later appreciate, sneaked up behind a machine and began hammering on the turret. The stupefied crew opened the hatch, and with sweeping sword Tashemma beheaded them both.

Some kilometres away, the Eritreans were also surrounded and outnumbered by Ras Imru’s advance guard. Cunningly, they drove out their baggage train of mules in the hope that the Ethiopians would be distracted by loot. But when this ruse failed they broke out of their encirclement, charging with the bayonet. Having lost a fifth of their force, the Eritreans were chased back to Ende Selassie, which was hastily abandoned. Ras Imru had come within eighteen kilometres of Axum.

Two days after the disaster a dishevelled, bloody figure appeared at the Spahys’ camp. He was Sergeant Bruno of the tank squadron, and the only survivor of Crippa’s unit to make it back to Italian lines. The ambush had been so sudden that the crewmen had been unable to do anything, he said. And he cursed the Fiat Ansaldo tanks, which were supposed to be one of the Italian army’s few modern weapons. During the rare periods when they did not cast off their tracks, they deafened their occupants and the twin machine guns had only a 15-degree traverse. In the confusion of the Ethiopian attack, the sergeant fled to safety down a crevice. He had wandered the countryside before stumbling across the Spahys, followed by a family of baboons.

Two weeks passed before the Italians could return to the scene of the massacre. Ajmone Cat ordered Amedeo to have his squadron bury the dead at Dembeguina and look for other survivors. There were none. In the clearing were the burned-out hulks of the tanks, and the rest of the debris of the massacre. The vehicles were neatly parked side by side, caught completely by surprise by Ras Imru’s warriors. The hatches had been flung wide open and beside the hulks were the stripped corpses of the crews, which had been partially eaten by hyenas. Amedeo only recognised Crippa’s by the strands of his grey hair. A jovial, heavy man, the captain had been so proud of his machines at Pinerolo, telling the young cavalry officers that the age of the horse in war was over. Perhaps, but not quite yet, Amedeo reflected, as he watched his Spahys bury Crippa’s body. He rode away from the clearing grateful that he had gone to war on Sandor’s back, rather than in a metal box.

The speed and success of the Ethiopian advance appalled the Italian command. Ras Imru was in a position to outflank Maravigna’s 2nd Corps and attack the Italian supply lines that stretched back deep into Eritrea. To stop him, General Appiotti’s division of 12,000 Black Shirts was ordered forward from Axum; the Spahys di Libya sent ahead to provide reconaissance.

Cautiously, the Spahys pushed deeper into enemy territory towards Ende Selassie, along narrow rocky gorges which were ideal for ambush. They were wary, too, of having to rely on Black Shirts for support. Of varying quality, they could be among the most excitable units in the army, but at least Appiotti’s division seemed to be made up of middle-aged veterans of the Great War, and all the officers, including the general himself, were seconded from the regular army. Like most of his friends, Amedeo had little regard for the pretensions of the full-time Milizia officers. Many had transferred from the army to the Black Shirt legions because their careers had stalled, and their evocative ancient Roman ranks – console, centurione, capo manipolo – were regarded with irreverence. In spite of the official favour of the Duce, the extravagant black uniforms, the bloodcurdling songs and the dramatic oaths declared over unsheathed daggers, among the public at large there was no social comparison between a Milizia officer and one in an elite regiment of the regular army.

Towards Ende Selassie the landscape became more dramatic.

As the morning mist cleared, the serried levels of the mountain ambas slowly emerged. Often several kilometres wide, the plateaux were perfectly flat, until the level ground suddenly fell away in steep, precipitous ravines. Before dusk each evening, the Spahys rode up narrow goat tracks to set up camp on the ambas, which were safest from surprise attack.

The officers celebrated Christmas Eve 1935 with the last of their bottles of chianti. At first light the next morning, they were awoken by excited pickets and the sound of shots. Large numbers of Ethiopians were emerging from the gorge below onto the amba of Selaclaca. Several hundred were advancing at a run, spreading out into the cover of the woods and rocks. There was every sign that there were many more to follow.

Amedeo ordered his men to saddle up as fast as possible, seeing to Sandor himself. Captain Fausto Pittarelli and his squadron moved off first to scatter the Ethiopians as they climbed up from the ravine below. But nearly 350 of them were working their way around through the woods to the far side of the Spahys. If they succeeded, the horsemen would be caught in crossfire. Ajmone Cat recognised the danger, and ordered Amedeo to stop them immediately, while he himself held back with two hundred men until the scale and direction of the enemy attack became clear.

With his shumbashi behind him, Amedeo galloped towards the skirmishers in the woods, hearing the reassuring shouts of 140 Spahys behind him: Uled! Uled! Uled! On boys! On! On! But this time, the Ethiopians did not break and run. The fighting became a chaotic free-for-all, the horsemen lashing out at scurrying figures, bludgeoning them with their rifles and slashing with their swords. Amedeo had been taught that a horse was a cavalryman’s main weapon and that few men on foot would keep a steady aim if you galloped straight towards them. Sandor pounded forward, scattering all the men in his path, while Amedeo fired into the mêlée with his revolver. He wheeled around sharply and charged again, spreading terror and confusion. But a chilling feeling ran down his spine. The impetus of the initial charge had gone, milling figures surrounded the horsemen and casualties were rising.

Amedeo cursed to see the number of riderless horses galloping in and out of the trees, adding to the mayhem, when suddenly an enemy warrior grabbed his waist and began pulling him out of the saddle. His revolver, hanging uselessly from the cord, its six shots fired, was somewhere underneath his attacker. With his left hand Amedeo stretched down to reach for the black sword. He eased it partially out of the scabbard, but could not pull it clear with his attacker pinioning his right arm. If he fell, Amedeo knew that he would be dead, his body castrated by his victor according to Ethiopian custom. He pulled Sandor out of a panic-stricken, spinning circle, and spurred him into a canter, the three of them plunging awkwardly forward as Amedeo hammered the hilt of his sword on to the Ethiopian’s head.

At last, the attacker’s hold broke and he fell sprawling. Amedeo pulled the sword clear, shifted his weight in the stirrups to straighten the saddle, and then galloped back through the throng. He made sharp whipping cuts at a couple of scurrying figures, and hearing one scream in pain behind him, wheeled and prepared to charge again. But something was wrong. He could sense a rifle being aimed at him a split second before he heard the shot. There was a sudden pain in his left hand and at the same time Sandor leapt sharply sideways, nearly throwing him from the saddle. Amedeo looked down at his left hand holding the reins; it was covered in blood, the thumb dangling awkwardly. A dum-dum bullet had hit the pommel of his saddle, sending fragments into his hand and Sandor’s withers. He had been lucky; had it hit a fraction higher, the bullet would have torn his intestines to shreds. In the excitement of the moment, the pain was bearable and his grip still strong enough to hold his horse once he had wiped the blood off his reins. The Ethiopians at last had had enough, he saw with relief, running in panic back towards the edge of the ravine pursued through the wispy acacia trees by ululating Spahys.

But now, instead of a few hundred, there were more than a thousand enemy warriors spread across the amba. Amid them, hopelessly outnumbered, were Pittarelli’s men, supported by the squadrons of Cavarzerani and Second Lieutenant Francesco Azzi. As they plunged into the horde, Azzi was in the act of drawing his sword when he was shot through the spine and mortally wounded. ‘Avenge me!’ he shouted as he fell from his horse. To Amedeo’s astonishment, Cavarzerani was making his horse do perfect haute école dressage movements, as though he were one of Eugene of Savoy’s cavaliers at Blenheim. The horse leapt forward, kicking behind in a capriole, while Cavarzerani fired his pistol elegantly over its shoulder. Then he too was hit, falling back slumped in his saddle. Shot through the neck, he was pulled from the fray by two Spahys, who held him upright in the saddle until they rejoined the main force.

Ajmone Cat had been watching the events fixedly, holding back his men until the moment he knew for sure that he only had the enemy in front of him to deal with. Suddenly, the major took off his red cummerbund, stood in his stirrups and waved it over his head, shouting: ‘Spahys of the Bir Tagrift! Caricate! Charge!’ As the Spahys galloped past his flank, Amedeo had his squadron fall in with the charge. Faced with 350 galloping horsemen, their flowing burnous adding to their diabolic appearance – ‘like a stampeding herd of centaurs’, according to the regimental account – the Ethiopian warriors ran to the safety of the valley below.

That night the Spahys sheltered behind makeshift walls of stone on the edge of the amba, and kept their horses saddled. With darkness the resolve of the enemy returned and isolated attacks began to be made on their positions. During one of these a delirious Cavarzerani staggered out of his tent, blood spurting from his neck wound, and shouted, ‘Where’s my squadron? Where’s my squadron?’ and fired his pistol wildly in the air. Amedeo had to throw him to the ground, holding him down with his knee, while he returned the enemy fire. Three times the Spahys issued forth beyond their wall, pushing the attackers back down the ravine, where they could be showered with grenades. With more than thirty-five horsemen killed that night, and an equal number of wounded, only the uncoordinated nature of the enemy attacks saved the Spahys from annihilation.

The next morning Amedeo rode over the amba, which was strewn with corpses. Lying in the dust, he saw the old Spahy who had given him Sandor. The berrima, the evil eye on his horse’s coat, had claimed its victim after all.

Among Ethiopians it hardened into historical certainty that Ras Imru’s brilliant offensive was broken up and destroyed by the Italians deploying poisonous gas. Badoglio was sufficiently concerned by the threat to sanction the use of his most infamous weapon. But the cited example of a gas attack at this time took place in the Tekazze valley on the morning of 23 December – two days before the fighting at Selaclaca. The Ethiopians had grown used to aerial bombing, taking cover whenever aircraft flew overhead. But this time instead of bombs the planes dropped cylinders, which broke open on impact releasing a colourless liquid. Exposed hands, feet and faces were instantly burned, and some warriors were blinded. The Italian tanks may have been useless, but the effect of mustard gas was immediate. Panic set in among Ras Imru’s warriors, who scattered, even though the gas, old First World War materiel, dropped on an enemy not hemmed in by trenches, who could usually flee to higher ground, was seldom fatal. ‘It was a terrifying sight,’ Ras Imru later said. ‘I myself fled as though death was on my heels.’

To Amedeo and the Spahy officers – including Ajmone Cat, whose brother was the commander of the Regia Aeronautica in Ethiopia – it was a shameful act. The Ethiopians may have been fighting dirtily, killing prisoners and castrating the dead – neither of which had been a feature of the Adowa campaign in 1896 – but that did not justify the use of gas. The Spahys had fought the enemy hand to hand all’arma bianca, ‘white weapons’ of swords and bayonets, and had won. To bomb them with gas, a weapon Italy had declared in 1926 that it would never use, tainted the Spahys’ victory. Some weeks later, as the horsemen rode down the valleys towards Hamle, they came across villagers with burns on their hands and faces. The doctors of Appiotti’s division treated the blistering wounds as best they could. The use of gas proclaimed the Ethiopians’ victimhood in this vicious war, for although the Italian army tried to keep the bombings secret, and great efforts were made by diplomats to obfuscate the issue, the news leaked out.

Many times Mussolini had spoken of his hatred of mandolin-playing Italians, given to gaiety and laughter; he loathed too, as Ciano sniggeringly recalled in his diary, museums filled with Raphaels and Leonardos, instead of enemy flags. Italians should aspire to be feared rather than liked, the Duce declared. As his pilots bombed and gassed tribesmen from the impunity of the air, the latter part of his wish was fulfilled.

With Ras Imru’s offensive checked, Badoglio resumed his meticulous preparations for attack. Facing a fluctuating horde of up to 100,000 Ethiopians, who were picking the country clean without any prospect of re-supply, he had no intention of rushing matters. Meanwhile, the Regia Aeronautica bombed and strafed anything that moved on the narrow mule tracks between the front and the emperor’s headquarters at Dessie, 270 miles south. Like a good First World War general, Badoglio concentrated a mass of artillery in front of the enemy stronghold at Amba Aradam, and set about pounding it for weeks, again using gas.

With no movement on the front, the Spahys, badly mauled at Selaclaca, were relegated to policing duties far behind Italian lines. Thousands of labourers and Black Shirt volunteers were building a network of roads in northern Tigre that stretched all the way back to Eritrea. But this conquered territory was still far from secure. Late one afternoon, near Axum, the Spahys came across an encampment of two hundred Italian workmen with the Gondrand construction enterprise. Huge bulldozers were parked behind a barbed wire enclosure, where neat rows of tents had been erected. A powered water pump operated a washroom with showers, and from the kitchen wafted the aroma of pasta al forno. The men were building a road and among those supervising them was Count Enrico di Colloredo Mels, an engineer whom Amedeo had befriended at Udine, when he was serving with his Uncle Ernesto’s regiment. The Spahys stopped and watered their horses, while Colloredo invited the officers to have a glass of marsala and something to eat. As they sat and chatted, Amedeo was surprised when an attractive Italian woman joined them. She was the wife of the project manager, Signor Rocca, who had decided to join her husband, believing that Tigre was safely in Italian hands.

Colloredo himself seemed less convinced, asking Amedeo quietly whether he could spare some bullets for his revolver. He handed over a box of fifty and the Spahys rode on. A couple of hours later, darkness had fallen and they were beginning to unsaddle and make camp when they heard gunfire down the valley. Ajmone Cat ordered the Spahys to mount again.

‘Whenever you hear shooting, it means that a friend is in danger,’ he said, leading the column into a fast canter, their path lit by a full moon.

The whole encampment seemed to be on fire. Flames were licking around a bulldozer, several tents were burned out and the camp, so orderly that afternoon, had been plundered. Broken boxes of supplies, upturned beds and clothing lay scattered between the tents. And amid the destruction lay the bodies of the dead and dying labourers, all of whom had been castrated. A dozen of the straggling looters were still behind the barbed wire, running in terror from one end of the camp to another as the Spahys cantered into the enclosure. A few succeeded in scrambling over the wire into the darkness, while the rest were shot.

Only one workman had survived the massacre, having thrown himself over the barbed wire perimeter and climbed a tree. Amedeo found Colloredo’s body lying in the doorway of the Rocca’s hut, where he had made a stand. Beside him were two dead Ethiopians. Inside lay the body of Signora Rocca, who had been stripped naked and had had one breast cut off. Her husband lay dead and castrated beside her. Only Colloredo had not been mutilated, perhaps in tribute to his valour.

Ajmone Cat turned to Amedeo. He was to gather up his squadron and pursue the enemy through the night in the direction of Adi Ghilte. These were Ras Imru’s men, and at some point they would make for the Tekazze valley and the bulk of his forces.

Grey mist swathed the village as Amedeo and his men approached at first light the next day. A brushwood wall surrounded the tukuls, the faint shapes of their thatch roofs discernible in the half light. In the centre stood two high juniper trees in front of the stone church. Amedeo rode through the open gate, told his men to spread out and search all of the houses, and then approached the church with eight or so horsemen. A priest emerged, in a faded red cape and a tall hat, covered in intricate braid. Amedeo kissed the cross which the priest held up to him and dismounted.

Speaking through the Tigrinian interpreter who accompanied the Spahys, the priest said he had seen no sign of the men the comandante was pursuing. Ignoring his protests, Amedeo entered the small stone church followed by his Muslim troops. A solitary figure was kneeling before the altar, over a wooden hatch in the floor. He was a leper, the priest explained, who came to pray before the rest of the village was awake. Amedeo scrutinised the priest’s face for an instant and decided he was lying. He drew his revolver and shouted at the kneeling figure to move aside. Guns at the ready, the Spahys opened the wooden door and went down into the crypt below. They emerged carrying some Italian rifles and a metal hatch from one of Captain Crippa’s tanks destroyed at Dembeguina a month before, which was now being kept as a trophy in the church.

At that moment, they heard gunfire from the edge of the village. Amedeo ran outside to find that his look-outs were being shot at by a band of a hundred Ethiopians. On foot and on horseback, the Spahys charged, driving the enemy back. They retreated to a large cave in a rockface that overshadowed the village. After a fierce exchange of fire, the Spahys began to close in on their adversaries. Back in Italy, incensed by the Gondrand massacre, the scene was later made famous by Beltrami, whose Boys’ Own style illustrations appeared on the cover of Domenica del Corriere magazine. The Spahys, wrongly depicted wearing fezes, were being led by an unrecognisable Amedeo, in a pith helmet and khaki. The perpetrators of the Gondrand massacre were ‘exemplarily punished’, readers were assured.

But before the Spahys could finish off the men in the cave, the sound of more shooting came from the far side of the village. Hundreds of figures, each carrying a rifle, were running towards them. Amedeo ordered his squadron to mount up and they rode off as fast as they could. When he got to higher ground, Amedeo looked back towards the village with his field glasses. There were about a thousand armed men below, far too many for his Spahys to deal with.

Time and again Haile Selassie had told his ras to avoid pitched battles with the better-armed enemy, and fight instead as guerrillas. But throughout its history the empire had always saved itself by staging a large, decisive battle. In this manner they had defeated the mahdi, and many other Muslim aggressors, as well as the Italians at Adowa. But against Badoglio’s powerful, and comparatively well-armed forces, such tactics were disastrous. By the time the Italians stormed Amba Aradam, there were eight thousand corpses strewn over the mountain as a result of aerial and artillery bombardment, which Ethiopians claimed included the use of gas. Ethiopian morale had crumbled before the Italians advanced up the slopes. Black Shirts were given the honour of raising the flag on the mountain peak and their war cry ‘Eia! Eia! Alalà!’ resounded over the ambas.

The retreat that followed turned into a rout as the shattered Ethiopians were harried from the air, and then the Raya Galla turned on their detested Shoan overlords. Among those killed by the wrathful tribesmen was Ras Mulugueta, Haile Selassie’s minister of war, and the commander of his now non-existent ‘army of the centre’.

Badoglio then turned his attention to Tembien, a seemingly impregnable mountain stronghold which fell after a daring night climb by the Alpini. Finally, it was the turn of Ras Imru, whose army of 25,000 was still facing off the 2nd Corps of General Maravigna. The battlefield was again Selaclaca, and again the Spahys were in action. Ras Imru’s guard and the levies of Ayelew Birru fought with great courage but, outgunned and outnumbered, were finally worn down. The Ethiopian general extricated his exhausted men under cover of night, but the Italians caught up with them the next day. As they tried to cross the Tekazze, aeroplanes dropped incendiary bombs which set light to the woods on the edge of the river, ‘rendering utterly tragic the plight of the fleeing enemy’, Badoglio wrote.

With the Spahys at the forefront, General Maravigna set off in pursuit of the remnants of Ras Imru’s army, which had fled over the highlands of the Semien. With a landscape like a parched Switzerland, its tallest peak Ras Dascian 15,000 feet high, the Amhara heartland of the Semien should have been impregnable. But Ayelew Birru, lord of Gondar, had had enough and no efforts were made to resist the advancing Italians. When Amedeo rode into mountain villages, the local priest would emerge carrying the community’s cross. Then the women would be sent out to dance in supplication to the newcomers. Finally, the men would appear.

It was a walkover, and Amedeo would bless the smiling multitude with the sign of the cross feeling like a visiting cardinal.

Poised to enter Gondar, once Ethiopia’s capital, the Spahys were suddenly ordered to halt. This prize, the most impressive city in Ethiopia with its stone palaces and forts, was to be taken by Achille Starace and his tardy motorised column of Black Shirts. When Ajmone Cat protested, General Maravigna signalled back: ‘We cannot always say no to Rome.’ The Spahys waited for several days until they saw Starace’s dust trails in the desert to the west, pounding his path towards Gondar. Remembering him well from his days when training for the Olympics, Amedeo could imagine the secretary-general of the National Fascist Party enjoying his moment of glory to the full, encouraging his 3400 men with eccentric exhortations. ‘We are a poor nation,’ Starace told them. ‘That is good, for it keeps our muscles firm and our shapes trim.’ Not like the portly inglesi, whose digestions had been ruined by centuries of wealth and, as a result, ‘their brains were addled’.

Great resentment was felt throughout the regular armed forces at the regime’s efforts to make the war a Fascist victory. Ciano, who liked to compare the excitement of war with the sexual act, received a Silver Medal for making a forced landing in a field. He deserved the Gold Medal for having the gall to accept it, said the journalists accompanying the invasion force. Nonetheless, a second Silver Medal followed after Ciano pointlessly touched down at Addis Ababa airfield, flying off quickly when the machine guns opened up. Even less deserving was Roberto Farinacci, the influential anti-conservative Fascist. He was widely ridiculed throughout the army after he too received a Silver Medal for bravery when wounded – whereas he had, in fact, blown his hand off with a grenade trying to catch fish in Lake Tana.

By mid March 1936, Haile Selassie had lost the northern half of his empire, while Graziani was pushing forward to the ancient Muslim city of Harar through the Ogaden desert to the south. The defeats of Amba Aradam, Tembien and Selaclaca had been crushing. In despair, the emperor wrote a message to Ras Imru, that never arrived for it was intercepted by the Italians:

If you think that with your troops and with such of the local inhabitants as you can collect together you can do anything where you are, do it. If, on the other hand, you are convinced of the impossibility of fighting, having lost all hope in your front, and if you think it better to come here and die with us, let us know of your decision … From the League [of Nations] we have so far derived no hope or benefit.

Ignoring his own advice about guerrilla warfare, the emperor resolved on one last desperate battle on the shores of Lake Ashangi. He rallied his forces at Mai Ceu, surrounded by the greatest names of the empire, princes whose fathers, like Haile Selassie’s own, had defeated the Italians at Adowa forty years before or, as in the case of Ras Kassa, had actually fought there themselves. Haile Selassie’s presence revived the Ethiopians’ flagging morale and even the day chosen for the attack, 31 March, was deemed auspicious; according to the Coptic calender, it was St George’s Day, the patron saint of the empire. The emperor himself distributed money and gifts to the horsemen of the Azebo Galla, in whose lands the battle would be fought, in an effort to retain their dubious loyalty.

Knowing even the day of the attack, Badoglio summoned his best troops: elite regiments from Piedmont, the excellent Eritreans and the best of the Black Shirts, who took up position fortified behind barricades of thorn zeriba hedges. After their light artillery barrage with all the guns and mortars available, the Ethiopians hurled themselves against the Italian lines with desperate courage. Twice the Italians scythed them down.

In the third and final attack, the emperor threw in his Imperial Guard, which broke the 2nd Eritreans, forcing the Italians to counterattack with the bayonet. As his men faltered, Haile Selassie saw through the heavy rain the horsemen of the Azebo Galla prepare to intervene at last. But instead of descending on the Italians, they charged the rear of his own beleaguered warriors. Pursued by the Galla and bombed from the air, the Ethiopian retreat became a rout.

Gondar had fallen, Ras Imru was virtually a fugitive in rebelinfested Gojjam, and Beghemeder and Semien were refusing to fight at all. Many of the emperor’s closest friends and allies were dead, others had betrayed him. He faced not only the destruction of Menelik II’s enlarged empire, but the end of 2500 years of Ethiopian independence. For three days, a despairing Haile Selassie disappeared, retiring to the ancient carved rock churches of Lalibela, where he prayed. By the time he emerged, Badoglio’s renamed vanguard, the colonna di ferrea volontà – the column of iron will – was driving towards the capital.

The emperor contemplated his options. Some advised him to retreat to Gojjam, behind the Blue Nile, which the Italians could not cross until the end of the rains: or he could kill himself, as Emperor Theodore had done at Magdala when Lord Napier had called for his surrender; or he could appeal to the powers in Europe and shame them with his presence for abandoning him. To a hard-headed realist like Haile Selassie only the third course offered any practical assistance to his beleaguered country. On 2 May 1936 he and his family took the train down to Djibuti, where he sailed to England and five long years of exile.

All semblance of order in Addis Ababa went with him. Embittered and confused warriors crowded into the city, which they pillaged and burned. The European population barricaded themselves into their diplomatic compounds. The British minister, Sir Sidney Barton, a veteran of the Boxer siege of Peking, had taken no chances: his highly fortified residency was defended by a company of Sikhs.

After three days of looting, Badoglio finally arrived, riding a beautiful chestnut horse through the smouldering ruins of the city. As advance units of the Italian army paraded through the streets, the Europeans turned out to wave handkerchiefs and applaud them, as though greeting their saviours. But when the Black Shirts marched past Barton’s residency, above which flew the Union Jack, they began hooting and whistling. The British went inside.

On the evening of 5 May 1936, Mussolini strode out on to his balcony at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome and looked down on the vast crowd of upturned faces. Two searchlights had been placed in his office behind him, casting his huge, menacing shadow over the piazza. Flaming urns illuminated the white marble columns of the Altar of the Patria, and many in the heaving throng that stretched all the way down the Corso held lighted torches. A master showman was playing to the fullest house of his career, and his performance, punctuated by the crowd’s deafening roars, was faultless:

Blackshirts of the revolution, Italians and friends of Italy beyond the frontiers and beyond the sea: Listen! Today, on May 5 at 16.00 hours, Marshal Badoglio telegrammed: ‘At the head of victorious Italian troops, I have entered Addis Ababa.’ [Pause] I announce to the Italian people that the war is over! [Pause] I announce to the Italian people that peace is re-established! [Pause] It is not without a certain emotion and a certain pride that after seven months of bitter hostility, I pronounce these words. But it is necessary that it be understood that this is a Roman peace. One that expresses itself in this simple, irrevocable and definitive proposition: L’ETIOPIA È ITALIANA!

Four days later, Vittorio Emanuele III, Duke of Savoy and king of Italy like his father and grandfather before him, was proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. For the first time in 1500 years, the streets of Rome echoed to the cries of ‘Imperatore!’