On 17 December 1960 Emperor Haile Selassie, who was on a state visit to Brazil, returned hastily to Ethiopia after an attempted coup to oust him from power had failed. Paris Match, a French weekly pictorial magazine, sent its reporter, Jacques Le Bailly, and staff photographer, Gérard Gery to cover the uprising a few days after it broke out. Eight pages of reporting entitled “La vengeance du Negus” (Revenge of the Negus) relating the coup attempt as it played out and the tension in the aftermath appeared in the magazine on 31 December. The following is the English translation appearing here for the first time.

An extravagant and bloody chapter has just been added to the extraordinary existence of Haile Selassie. In four days, the King of Kings lost and regained his Ethiopian empire. It was the commander of the Imperial Guard himself who took advantage of the emperor’s absence to foment the rebellion. However, Emperor Haile Selassie has his own loyal and solid supporters. Three days later, the uprising was crushed.

On his return, the King of Kings received a triumphal welcome. 200,000 people lined the streets to cheer him. Yet shootings still erupted here and there. He did not have the courage to go to the imperial palace still stained with the blood of the terrible killing. At the Jubilee Palace, he received homage from those faithful to him.

Tuesday, 13 December

Brigadier General Mengistu Neway, commander of the Imperial Guard, leaned one last time over the cradle of his only son Jacob, his pride and joy. Mengistu was an Ethiopian Alcibiades, a Persian miniature, a favourite army commander of the Emperor, a modern Don Juan with countless affairs until his marriage to a beautiful Ethiopian, twenty years younger than he was and who six months ago bore him this son who became all his life.

On the steps of the beautiful, enormous mansion, located near the French embassy, his brother Germame was impatient. He was short and portly, while Mengistu who was nine years older than him, was rather tall and thin. Conspiracy against Haile Selassie, a sacrilegious one since the Emperor had the status of the Chosen One of God.

The King of Kings was on the other side of the world. The two men left the large, peaceful house to put themselves at the head of the imperial guard that invaded the city.

Tuesday, 13 December Midnight

Brigadier General Mengistu Deneke, Deputy Minister for Imperial Palace, was awakened by a phone call in the dark stillness of the night. He heard the phrase, saying “The Empress is dying, the Empress is dead.” He jumped into his car and arrived in front of the gate of the palace which was closed. Strangely, the sentries refused to let him pass. But here was the command of the guard who arrived smiling. The two knew each other well.

“The Empress is dead?”

“No,” responded Mengistu. “It is feudal and backward Ethiopia that has just died. We deposed the emperor. There are three thousand years of injustice to be repaired. You are with us, aren’t you?”

“Never.”

A nonchalant gesture from his childhood friend and the Deputy Minister was suddenly framed by guards, bayonet to the cannon, who pushed him towards the building of the general staff 300 meters from there. In the luxurious salon of the commander-in-chief, General Mengistu found most of the leading figures of the government and finally, the Crown Prince himself, Asfa Wassen, who was drawn to the ambush. The emperor’s chaplain was the first victim. He fell riddled with bullets. His head was cut with a knife.

Wednesday, 14 December

A corporal in Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard, world champion marathon runner, Abebe Bikila, reached the posting by trotting where he would take his duty. He wasn’t the only one who noticed something unusual on the street. The streets were animated and squads of soldiers were everywhere. Maybe there was some maneuver going on but didn’t give it much thought. He had other priorities to ponder about, Rio or Saint-Sylvestre where he would run in two weeks. His sergeant looked at him. “Corporal Abebe, there is no training today. Take your casket and gun, today you aren’t going to do athletics, but rather a soldier.” Abebe obeyed the order, being well disciplined. His squad headed for the Imperial Palace. Suddenly he understood. He loved his emperor, he had sworn to be faithful to him to the last. He would not betray him.

He threw away his gun and ran away much faster than he had ever run before. There was a deserter. No question of returning to his house. With all the speed his legs could generate, he crossed the northern part of the city and reached, in the suburbs, the tukul, a round structure with a thatched hut and plain mud where he lived before his triumph at Rome. He put on civilian clothes, cast aside his uniform, and decided “to wait for the return of his master.”

Wednesday, December 14

Crown Prince and heir to the throne, Asfa Wossen, 44 years, big, strong, bearing little resemblance to his father, was sweating and scared to death. A guard pointed a machine gun at his belly. He recorded on a Magneto phone while stuttering, an announcement written by the rebel brothers. Docile, the prince denounced “three thousand years of injustice.” Hence the heir became the emperor, he who so many times would have wanted to shake off the yoke of paternal authority. Later, people listened in silence to this proclamation, broadcast by radio and by trucks equipped with loudspeakers. They said, “A son should not do that to his father.”

Wednesday, 15 December

The imperial representative to Eritrea, General Abiy Abebe couldn’t believe his ears when he heard the declaration of the Crown Prince. The 40 years old general, tall and solid, had distinguished himself with exemplary courage and loyalty. General Abiy Abebe sent twelve telegrams to governors telling them that he had contacted the Emperor to let him know about the coup and asked them to pledge loyalty to the Emperor. In less than four hours, he received four favourable responses and all the others the following day.

Wednesday, 14 December at Sao Paulo, 11 hours (local hours)

The plane of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Douglas DC – 6 – B landed at Sao Paulo airport departing from Brasilia. Air France pilots were on strike and the Emperor was unable to rent a Boeing 707 that would have transported him from Dakar to Rio for the sum of 80,000 Ethiopian dollars, or 16 million francs. Ethiopian Airways had to hastily provide, for the crossing of the Atlantic, one of their three DC 6 B. of the Frankfurt-Addis Ababa route.

The governor and the chief of protocol greeted him at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly, an American journalist came running along and trotted straight to the emperor, screaming “Your Majesty, do you know that you have been deposed?”

The Emperor’s expression remained impassive and he harshly dismissed the journalist as a madman. But the news had come like a thunderclap. The Emperor just received a telegram from Asmara. He simply ordered the captain, Green to fill fuel. He addressed the chief of protocol saying, “I am afraid that I will have to interrupt my trip to your country, and please present my apologies to your President.”

Then the Emperor responded to the faithful governor. But the radio was not getting through. “The radio transmitter was sabotaged”. So there was a traitor on board. Without a doubt, given a task to kill the king but did not do, or dared to.

Thursday, 15 December

General Mekonnen, the deputy minister of the palace, other fifteen leading figures of the government, senators, members of the Imperial family, and the Crown Prince were brought from the office of the guard to the Royal Palace. Some of them were led to the dining room of the first floor where they were locked and the others were detained in the Green Room. Mengistu came to them, trying to lure them to support his cause, by begging, threatening. Germame showed up next, uttering insults. But none of them were willing to betray the Emperor. Hence Germame told them that if the coup failed, they would not survive.

Thursday, 15 December, 14 hours (local time)

During the entire crossing, the Emperor uttered only one line: “The fact that they had to take the Crown Prince as a hostage proves that nothing could be done without the royal family”. But with no means of communication, the Emperor had no way to keep abreast of events from his loyalist, the governor of Eritrea. At the stopover in Monrovia, Liberia, the King of Kings’s future was at play, once again. He leaned towards his Prime Minister who pointed to him a man who was on the track of a Super-Constellation of the Pentagon. That was the brother of President John F. Kennedy, Edward Kennedy. They knew each other, they met in Lome, Togo, a few days ago. A half-hour later, because of Edwad’s help, the Emperor managed to make radio contact with his son-in-law General Abiye Abebe, the governor of Eritrea. His decision was then made. On Saturday, he would be in the capital.

Friday 16 December, 14h 35

Friday 16 December, 14h35

The shooting continued all night. One loyalist army division took over the Minister of National Defence. Tanks reached the city center. The Ethiopian air force pilots, starting from Bishoftu, bombarded the rebel barracks. Some of the rebel guards fled under the roaring attacks of F-86 Sabre jets. But the overthrow of the coup didn’t materialize yet, when Mr. Lafont, a teacher at the French lycée, headed to the window. He saw a line of regular army soldiers advancing behind a jeep towards the American Information Office occupied by the guard. He suddenly saw a familiar face. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The emperor was walking about amidst his soldiers, dressed as a marshal, a machine gun in his fist. The screams redoubled. “The Emperor is with us”. Without firing a shot, the guards surrendered, trembling and prostrating themselves. The next day, Mr. Lafont learned that the emperor was flying from Khartoum to Asmara at that same hour. What he had seen with his own eyes was the Emperor’s look-alike that had been taken out for the occasion, and who sometimes personified him, like a replica of Field-Marshal Montgomery flown to North Africa shortly before the Normandy Landings.

Friday, 16 December, 16 hours

The hostages of the imperial palace regained hope: the US ambassador, Arthur Richards, had been allowed to see them. Suddenly non-commissioned officers of the guard stormed the Green Salon of the Royal Palace and shouted: “You are free”. The high officials rushed out, but the liberators turned into executioners. The shooting erupted fiercely.

The U.S. Ambassador had the time to escape through a shattered back window. The killers aimed their victims in the stomach. Makonen, who dominated them from his tall height, was hit in the thighs and collapsed: this was what would save him. He would soon be covered with corpses. Streams of blood stained the carpets. Thirty-three hostages were shot. However, the rebel fighters were hopelessly outnumbered, and General Mengistu fled with some of his group through the back door of his palace to the surrounding hills. The emperor’s loyalists stormed the palace compound with tanks. At the same time, the King of Kings touched the Ethiopian soil. When the Emperor was chased from his throne for the first time, on May 5, 1936, he said, “I would come back in five years’ time on a white horse.” On 5 May 1941, he re-entered his capital leading the parade on a white horse.