Birru Goshu

The French traveler Arnaud d'Abbadie gives a long description of the appearance and character of Birru Goshu:[1]

He could have been twenty-five years old. He was tall, with protruding heels and long feet, badly turned and awkwardly attached to somewhat slender legs; his upper body was well nourished, without corpulence, and the muscles of his shoulders showed strength; his arms were too long and ungainly in their gestures; his hands, although a little large, were beautiful and elegant. He had an oval face, a rare black beard, a large mouth and superb teeth; a deep, aquiline nose, widely rooted, mobile nostrils, bright, large eyes, deep and lively under arches crowned by thick eyebrows, a developed forehead, slightly receding and already beginning to reced; his long and strong collar was so flexible that he could almost look at his back, which, together with the smallness of his head and the accentuated set of his features, sometimes gave him the pose of a bird of prey.

Everything about him showed intelligence, passion, cruel energy and exquisite sensitivity; he did not have what completes the superior tyrant: the impassivity of face and gaze. The muscles of his face, always ready to contract, indicated a tormented character, anxiety, suspicion and cunning; and when his normally benevolent gaze became animated, it became penetrating and difficult to bear. His manners heralded pride, haughtiness and a certain dominating impulse which indicated that his fortune was ascending. Endowed with a most happy memory, he no longer forgot the land or the man he had once seen. A skilful physiognomist, he often showed feminine insight in his discernment of character. He overcame his prejudices as well as his preferences; his friendships, always driven by passion, all died out in blood. Calculating and greedy, his wealth was ordered in a scrupulous and stingy manner; despite this disposition, he gave as a prince, and his intelligent, often ingenious liberality earned him a reputation for generosity which attracted to his party chiefs and soldiers of fortune from the most distant provinces. He was occasionally gilded in gold, and at his own discretion he was either gruff or graceful and insinuating; better than anyone else, before embracing his victim, he knew how to wrap him in his word full of artifice. Jealous and envious of all superiority; today good, sensitive, tender even, tomorrow hard, cruel, sarcasm in the mouth. His thought, which proceeded in jolts, was like a battlefield where good and evil fought for empire; it passed without transition from a virtuous action to a trait of ferocity. Sometimes words would come out of his mouth, as if by storm, by volcanic explosion: he would then reveal his most secret intentions; sometimes it was in silence that he would accumulate his resolutions, his tricks, his baseness, and that he would build up his plans. Such a character could not be strong on a continuous basis, so he was concealed and defiant to excess...

However, historian Harold G. Marcus states that in the battle of Amba Jebelli Kassa defeated five Dejazmachs, and that Birru was not killed in this battle, but escaped and was captured in May 1854, to remain in captivity for the next 14 years.[2]