(2 of 2)
During the war the dissolute youthful Emperor Lij Yaser committed the disastrous dual stupidities of embracing the Islamic faith and the Germano-Turkish cause. Vexed, a majority of the feudal chieftains of Abyssinia, stout Christians according to their somewhat pagan lights, supported a successful pro-Christian, pro-Ally revolution. Prince Taffari, an able statesman but by lineage a mere great nephew of the revered late Emperor Menelik, was prudently installed as Regent for the Empress Zanditu, a daughter of the Emperor Menelik, and proclaimed heir to the Throne by the revolutionary feudal lords.
*Ultimate purpose: to connect the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland by a trans-Abyssinian railway tapping much fertile country which might thus be brought under Italian dominance. fEventual design: to construct certain dams and waterworks among the Abyssinian headwaters of the Nile with intent to foster cotton growing in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The British dams would inundate numerous shrines held sacred by certain Abyssinian religious cults.