Ethiopia demands Queen returns prince
By Mike Pflanz, Africa Correspondent
11/06/2007
The Telegraph
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.
Prince Alemayehu, circa 1868, the year he was taken to Britain
But, taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace, Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds, 128 years ago.
Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium which, according to the Ethiopian calendar, falls on Sept 12 this year.
President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has written to the Queen, requesting that the prince's remains be exhumed from where they were buried in a crypt beside St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
"It really was such a tragic and short life," said Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, and the son of universal suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst.
"The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home."
Britain sent a military force to the palace of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala, in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, to bargain for the release of diplomatic hostages.
Denied an audience, the troops routed the emperor's army in a three-day battle over Easter 1868. The emperor committed suicide as his fortress fell to the British.
The seven-year-old prince's mother succumbed to illness days later. In the care of the British, he was first handed to the Raj in India, which administered Abyssinia, and then sent to Britain.
In London he was befriended by Queen Victoria, who enrolled him at Rugby School and later sent him to Sandhurst for officer training.
A woman walks past a mural in Addis Ababa depicting the prince’s father, Emperor Tewodros II
But having grown up in a royal household he never settled into British public school life. After nine unhappy years at Rugby, and less than a term at Sandhurst, he died of pleurisy at the home of his private tutor, in Leeds, in November 1879.
Queen Victoria was struck by the orphan prince's melancholy during audiences at her palace, writing in her journal at the time: "It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him...His was no happy life."
His remains have been visited by Ethiopia's last emperor Haile Selassie and by its current prime minister, Meles Zenawi.
Officials at Windsor Castle yesterday refused to discuss "private correspondence" received by the Queen, but a spokesman for Ethiopia's embassy in London said she understood that the request was "being considered".
"The prince was a prisoner of war," said Mulugeta Aserate, Haile Selassie's second cousin. "His return would ease the minds of lots of Ethiopians who believe his rightful resting place should be here with his father."
There have also been requests for the return of Ethiopian artefacts, including illuminated manuscripts and altar slabs, which are now held at the British Museum and in private collections at Windsor Castle.
dailymail.co.uk
By Mike Pflanz, Africa Correspondent
11/06/2007
The Telegraph
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.
Prince Alemayehu, circa 1868, the year he was taken to Britain
But, taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace, Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds, 128 years ago.
Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium which, according to the Ethiopian calendar, falls on Sept 12 this year.
President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has written to the Queen, requesting that the prince's remains be exhumed from where they were buried in a crypt beside St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
"It really was such a tragic and short life," said Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, and the son of universal suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst.
"The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home."
Britain sent a military force to the palace of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala, in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, to bargain for the release of diplomatic hostages.
Denied an audience, the troops routed the emperor's army in a three-day battle over Easter 1868. The emperor committed suicide as his fortress fell to the British.
The seven-year-old prince's mother succumbed to illness days later. In the care of the British, he was first handed to the Raj in India, which administered Abyssinia, and then sent to Britain.
In London he was befriended by Queen Victoria, who enrolled him at Rugby School and later sent him to Sandhurst for officer training.
A woman walks past a mural in Addis Ababa depicting the prince’s father, Emperor Tewodros II
But having grown up in a royal household he never settled into British public school life. After nine unhappy years at Rugby, and less than a term at Sandhurst, he died of pleurisy at the home of his private tutor, in Leeds, in November 1879.
Queen Victoria was struck by the orphan prince's melancholy during audiences at her palace, writing in her journal at the time: "It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him...His was no happy life."
His remains have been visited by Ethiopia's last emperor Haile Selassie and by its current prime minister, Meles Zenawi.
Officials at Windsor Castle yesterday refused to discuss "private correspondence" received by the Queen, but a spokesman for Ethiopia's embassy in London said she understood that the request was "being considered".
"The prince was a prisoner of war," said Mulugeta Aserate, Haile Selassie's second cousin. "His return would ease the minds of lots of Ethiopians who believe his rightful resting place should be here with his father."
There have also been requests for the return of Ethiopian artefacts, including illuminated manuscripts and altar slabs, which are now held at the British Museum and in private collections at Windsor Castle.
dailymail.co.uk
