Iyasu II of Ethiopia - Reign

Reign

During Iyasu II's reign, a Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky visited his kingdom, and engaged Iyasu in talks about religion and European politics. Although he and his two companions were popular because of their medical skills, Prutky and his Catholic companion were asked to leave because of complaints from the local clergy after a year.

Despite Mentewab's counsel, Iyasu proved to be an ineffectual monarch. According to Paul Henze, Iyasu "came under criticism for devoting too much time to pleasure (he loved hunting) and for spending too many resources on embellishing the capital, paying foreign workmen, and importing luxury goods, ornaments and mirrors from Europe." Prutky, on the other hand blamed Iyasu's constrained revenues to the actions of his mother Mentewab: "Since the youthful emperor Jasu had only reached the age of eight when he ascended the throne, his mother the Queen divided out the provinces among the chief ministers in such a way that, at the time of my sojourn there, the Emperor, now over thirty years of age, saw his treasury diminished and scarcely enough for his ordinary expenses." Prutky adds that during the year Prutky was in Ethiopia (1752), the emperor was engaged in a struggle with his own sister over the revenues from Gojjam.

In a bid to gain the respect of his subjects, the Emperor Iyasu engaged in a campaign against the Kingdom of Sennar, which ended in defeat at the Battle of the Dindar River in 1738; an icon of Christ and a piece of the True Cross carried into battle were captured, and had to be ransomed for 8,000 ounces of gold. This defeat decisively ended any hope by Iyasu to prove himself competent in military affairs; as Donald Levine writes, "The subsequent subdual of Lasta, a rebel region for generations, and Iyasu's raids against tribes in the Atbara district were not sufficient to redeem that defeat or restore the force of Gondar."

During his reign two infestations of locusts afflicted the land, and an epidemic took the lives of thousands. When Abuna Krestodolos died, the treasury lacked money to pay for procurement of a new abuna. According to Edward Ullendorff, his authority "scarcely extended beyond Begemder and Gojjam; Shoa and Lasta acknowledged only a token allegiance, while in the Tigrai the long rule of the powerful Ras Mika'el had begun."

Emperor Iyasu also resented deeply the romantic liaison his mother entered into with a young member of the Imperial family. Empress Mentewab became involved with Iyasu, the son of her former sister-in-law Romanework, who was herself the sister of the late Emperor Bakaffa, and on her father's side descended in male line from another cadet line of the Solomonic dynasty. Mentewab's relationship with the much younger nephew of her late husband was considered a great scandal, and the young Prince was derisively referred to as "Melmal Iyasu", or "Iyasu the Kept". The Empress had three daughters by this Melmal Iyasu, one of whom was the beautiful Woizero Aster Iyasu who took Ras Mikael Sehul in 1769 as her third husband. Emperor Iyasu became very attached to his half-sisters, but was deeply resentful of their father. It is said that it was the Emperor himself that ordered the murder of his mother's lover by having him pushed from a cliff top near Lake Tana in 1742.