Abd al-Kader

“ In reply to a question, he said that he had lived over twenty years in Damascus, but it was evident that his long exile had not dulled his interest in the progress of the world, and that he watched with intense feeling all movements of peoples in the direction of freedom. There is no such teacher of democracy as misfortune, but I fancy that Abd-el-Kader sincerely desires for others the liberty he covets for himself. ”

“ Over the shirt is a haick, and over the haick two white bernouses; the uppermost garment is a black bernouse. A few silk tassels are the only ornaments about his dress; he wears no arms in his girdle, his head is shaved, and covered by three or four scull-caps one within the other, over which he draws the hood of his bernouse.
Abd-el-Kader’s father, who died about two years ago, was a marabout called Mahadin, who by means of his fortune, his intelligence, and his character for sanctity, had acquired very great fame and influence among the Arabs. ”

“ Abd-el-Kader now turned toward the hills inhabited by a tribe which still, in part, adhered to him. His horsemen followed him in anxious silence, suffering and exhausted. The rain fell in torrents. Their chief was tormented by conflicting thoughts. A French camp was visible in the distance, three hours' march away, occupying a pass. He and his cavalry might yet escape by narrow defiles into the Sahara. But what of his aged mother, his wife and children, his helpless followers in the deira? All would become captives to the foe. ”

“ I have not yet got a woman-servant, but I don’t miss it at all; little Achmet is very handy, Mahommed’s slave girl washes, and Omar irons and cleans the house and does housemaid, and I have kept on the meek cook, Abd el-Kader, whom I took while the Frenchman was here. I had not the heart to send him away; he is such a meskeen. He was a smart travelling waiter, but his brother died, leaving a termagant widow with four children, and poor Abd el-Kader felt it his duty to bend his neck to the yoke, married her, and has two more children. He is a most worthy, sickly, terrified creature. ”

“ This military spectacle invariably terminates with the defeat of the French. When Abd-el-Kader thinks it time to put an end to the exercises, he plunges into the thick of the mêlée; two Arabs then seize his horse by the bridle, one on each side, and lead the Sultan away captive to his tent, amid shouts of triumph and enthusiasm. Abd-el-Kader, casting around him proud glances on his followers wrapt in admiration of his warlike grace, makes his horse prance and rear till it stands upright, while the Sultan smiles complacently, as much as to say “Am not I a horseman indeed?” ”

“ But the troubles of the French were not over. In 1845 the indomitable Abd-el-Kader, having recruited 2000 men in the Sahara, appeared in the west and raisedraised the whole province of Oran; farms were burnt, crops destroyed and bridges thrown down. Bugeaud, recalled from France, set himself to make an end. He collected a force of 100,000 men, divided into eighteen columns. A mighty hunt began. Abd-el-Kader was everywhere in turn. As ubiquitous as De Wet, he was now in the Tell, now in the high plateaux, now endeavouring to raise the mountaineers of Khabylia. ”

“ The French commander fortified his territory, but had to recruit his garrisons from among the natives. In 1833 Abd-el-Kader raised the standard of the Prophet, the Arabs rallied to his call, and for several years he carried on a stubborn war against the French, whom in 1835 he signally defeated.
In 1836 the Arab leader, now Sultan, again fought the invaders in several severe engagements on the Tafna River. In these affairs the advantage lay with the Arab. In June, 1836, General Bugeaud was sent to command the French forces, and he proved to be the strongest opponent that Abd-el-Kader had met. ”

“ ABD-EL-KADER, celebrated for his brave resistance to the advance of the French in Algeria, was born near Mascara, in the early part of the year 1807. His father was a man of great influence among his countrymen from his high rank and learning, and Abd-el-Kader himself at an early age acquired a wide reputation for wisdom and piety, as well as for skill in horsemanship and other manly exercises. In 1831 he was chosen Emir of Mascara, and leader of the combined tribes in their attempt to check the growing power of the French in Africa. ”

“ Abd-el-Kader with all the pomp of his official train, and the grand cordon of the Legion of Honor on his breast. They exchanged a single look. After which, the prisoner of 1847 is found sufficiently avenged on the prisoner of the 2d of December; pursuing his course with loud din, caressed, feasted, toasted by courtiers, functionaries, and freemasons, presented to the universitarian youth as the type of modern civilization and the religion of large souls, Abd-el-Kader quitted triumphantly the soil of France, to return with his wives, who accompanied him, to his palace in the East ”

“ Defeat destroyed all his influence; the Arabs forsook their108 Sultan and denied his authority; several of the tribes declared that they would no longer fight under his orders, but would undertake their own defence. They fled in all directions and destroyed everything that lay in their way; they did not even respect Abd-el-Kader’s camp, where they cut off and carried away half his tent and pillaged the provisions. It is a great pity that we had no light cavalry at that time, for it would have enabled us to seize Abd-el-Kader’s camp. ”

“ This want of resolution in our enemies was extraordinary, for Abd-el-Kader must have known our position, and even if he had not a single spy, he could perceive it with his own eyes. We saw him several times within musket-shot, galloping about with his attendants, to give orders. I believe that this inaction was owing to no want of courage or capacity in him, but to the character of the Bedouins, and to their peculiar mode of warfare, which nothing can induce them to alter. They never attack en masse, except when they can overwhelm the enemy with their numbers. ”

“ Others have asserted, that if the Arab chief is still a free denizen of the desert, it must be attributed to his own skill, courage, and conduct;335 to the bravery of his troops, and the fidelity of his adherents; and not to any merciful or prudential scruples of his opponents. We reject this notion as absurd and groundless. We are persuaded that French forbearance is the sole reason that the head of Abd-el-Kader, duly embalmed by the procédé Gannal, does not at this moment grace the sideboard of the victorious Duke of Isly, or frown grimly from the apex of the Luxor obelisk. ”

“ I had heard so much of the striking, venerable, and even magnificent appearance of this formidable desert hero, that I experienced a little disappointment in the reality, and learned anew that the hero should be seen in action, or through the lenses of imaginative description which can clothe the body with all the attributes of the soul. The demigods so seldom come up to their reputation! Abd-el-Kader may have appeared a gigantic man when on horseback in the smoke and whirl of an Algerine combat; but he is a man of medium size and scarcely medium height ”

“ The enemies of the Sultan were paying a heavy price for success. At the end of 1841 Bugeaud, out of sixty thousand men in the field, had only four thousand fit for duty. The rest had perished or were invalided for the time, from the toil of marches, incessant fighting, and the heat of the climate. The French Government's proposals of peace, on certain terms, only confirmed Abd-el-Kader in his resolve to try the extremities of war. ”

“ He was with his men too fully occupied to be able to assist her, and spite of her screams and struggles she was borne off to Abd-el-Kader. When he saw her, he thought of his ally, the Emperor of Morocco, who is a great admirer of fat women, and Abd-el-Kader exclaimed, “C’est mon affaire,” and commanded that the captive should be with due care and attention 189 conveyed to his imperial Majesty, and offered him as a present. The cantinière was placed on a camel, and transported to the Emperor of Morocco. ”

“ By a feigned movement, Abd-el-Kader induced his enemy to enter the mountains by the gorges of the Monzaia, which he had spent months in fortifying. Every eminence useful for the purpose was cut into intrenchments. A redoubt with heavy batteries crowned the highest peak. Near this were placed his regular infantry, officered by French deserters. Arabs and Kabyles swarmed in all directions, and, crouching in nooks, were ready to open fire on the French army as it wound its way with steady march along the narrow causeway which hung midway on the mountain slopes. ”

“ Physical qualities are highly valued by the Arabs; Abd-el-Kader had more—the qualities which make men conquerors: intelligence, sagacity, strength of will, genius to command. In eloquence he was the equal of the greatest orators, and could bend crowds to his will. He spoke in serious and measured tones, and was sparing of gesture, but his pale face was full of animation, and under their long dark lashes his blue eyes darted fire.” It may be 135remarked that the blue eyes point to a Berber, rather than an Arab origin. Such was the man who for years to come was to bid defiance to the French. ”

“ We do not know whether we shall be ransomed or exchanged, and we suffer continual misery and ill-usage, notwithstanding which my wounds are quite healed, and we all three hope that, with the assistance of the Blessed Virgin and the French Governor, we shall in the end recover our freedom and return home.
“Abd-el-Kader sent the little boy to his wife, who is just as kind to him as the Arabs are cruel to us men. The Arab women will soon coax the poor child into forgetting the Blessed Virgin, his own country, and his mother, and they will teach him their prayers and make a Mahomedan of him. ”

“ Abd-el-Kader made a last stand in person at the great redoubt, while his regulars and masses of Kabyles gathered round him. The converging columns of the French came creeping on amid the roll of drums and the blare of trumpets. The Arabs, bewildered by foes attacking them both in front and rear, wavered, broke, and fled. Lamoricière and his Zouaves, Changarnier and the Second Light Infantry, burst over the intrenchments, and the tricolor waved on the summit of the Atlas. ”

“ He has had one daughter by her; and though it was asserted that she was delivered of a boy on the very day on which the French entered Mascara, I do not believe it; for if Abd-el-Kader really had a son I am sure the Arabs would have told me so. During the night the thirty negroes keep watch round the tent that nothing may disturb the repose of Abd-el-Kader and his wife; and during their absence from the camp, a guard of foot soldiers supplies their place around the Sultan’s tent. ”

“ In 1846, rendering an account of his operations against Abd-el-Kader, he says to the authorities of Algiers, 'The power of Abd-el-Kader consists in the resources of the tribes; hence, to ruin his power, we must first ruin the Arabs; therefore have we burned much, destroyed much.' (From the Akhbar newspaper of February 1846.) " These are significant passages in the mouth of a general-in-chief. Presently, when we come to details, we shall show they were not thrown away upon his subordinates. The extermination of the Arabs was always the real aim of Marshal Bugeaud ”

“ The people of the country were strongly in favor of Abd-el-Kader; and when their Sultan, after a French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador, made a treaty with France by which the Algerian hero was "placed beyond the pale of the law throughout the Empire of Morocco, as well as in Algeria," and was to be "pursued by main force by the Moroccans on their own territory," the Moorish population was filled with resentment. ”

“ When you have done your work of irritation you disappear, and it is we who bear the brunt of the blows.” After a fruitless effort to obtain fresh aid from Morocco, he was captured on the frontier by 144Lamoricière and sent to France. He was subsequently allowed to retire to Syria, where he lived on a pension paid by the French Government till his death in 1883. He left a name venerated by his countrymen and respected by his conquerors. The French have had to face serious insurrections since, but no native leader has arisen to repeat the exploits or rival the fame of Abd-el-Kader. ”

“ The news reached Abd-el-Kader at Tekedemt. He sprang on his horse, and in forty-eight hours, riding night and day, was at Medea, whence he despatched a reproachful and defiant letter to the French Governor. He called the tribesmen to arms, formally declared war, swept down on the plains, destroyed the French cantonments, agricultural establishments, and outposts; slew many colonists, burned the villages and drove panic-stricken fugitives headlong into the city of Algiers. ”

“ When Abd-el-Kader assumed the royal title of Sultan and the command of a numerous army, the French, with republican charity and fraternal sympathy, sought to infringe the Taafna treaty, and embroil the Arab hero, in order to ruin his rising empire, and found their own on its ashes. The Emir had been recognised by the whole country, from the gates of Ouchda to the river Mijerda. ... The war was resumed, and many French razzias took place. They once marched a large force from Algiers on Milianah to surprise the sultan's camp. ”