Revolt of Abd-el-Kader’s uncle—His letter—Jews—Attack on
the Beni-Flitas and Houledscherifs—Horrible execution of a
prisoner—Vermin—Tekedemta—Letter from the Arab prisoners at
Marseilles.
On the 2nd of September the courier from Tlemsen brought several
letters which Abd-el-Kader opened, read, sealed, and sent to their
destination.
The energetic measures taken by Abd-el-Kader against the neighbouring
tribes had failed in reducing them to complete submission; they
only waited for an opportunity to shake off his authority. One of
Abd-el-Kader’s uncles, a marabout, declared himself independent of the
Sultan, and refused to pay the tribute: he was immediately joined by
the Beni-Flitas and Houledscherifs, two numerous, rich, and powerful
tribes which inhabit a part of the country watered by the Ouet Mina
and the adjoining mountains. They refused any longer to acknowledge
Abd-el-Kader as their Sultan, and submitted to the authority of his
uncle.
The Sultan again sent a party of horsemen to claim the tribute from
his uncle, who instead of paying it, sent the following answer:—
“Thou wert nothing before the coming of the French; thou wert nothing
until thou hadst made a peace with those unbelievers. I was greater
and holier than thou; and it was in the hope of usurping my authority,
O Abd-el-Kader, that thou madest a treaty with the Christians; to them
thou owest thy greatness and thy power. When thou thoughtest thyself
great enough, thou brakest the treaty with the French, and now thou
wilt that we should acknowledge thee as our Sultan. But I have ever
been greater and holier than thou, and never will I bow before thee.
Neither will I pay the tribute which thy horsemen demand in thy name.”
This letter, of which I remember only the most striking passages,
threw Abd-el-Kader into a state of melancholy and indecision which
lasted several days, and spread general consternation in the camp. The
Arabs saw with horror that they would perhaps be compelled to turn
their weapons against their brethren, and they felt that a civil war
among themselves would secure for ever the dominion of the French.
Abd-el-Kader sent courier upon courier to his uncle to persuade him to
submission, but the marabout was deaf to all his arguments, and always
returned the same answer—“I have ever been greater and holier than
thou, O Abd-el-Kader, and never will I acknowledge thee as my Sultan.
Send no more horsemen unto me for I will not pay tribute to thee.”
While these negotiations were going on, Abd-el-Kader called together
all the tribes on the banks of the Ouet Mina and the Schellif, but
they were unwilling to involve themselves in hostilities with their
neighbours. Scarce a hundred horsemen answered the summons, and these
nearly all took flight after the first day: those who remained were
watched and kept within the camp.
Desertion had already begun among the Sultan’s regular troops, and
a spirit of bitter discontent and depression reigned throughout the
camp. Several of the tribes, when threatened by Abd-el-Kader, replied
that they knew the way to Mostaganem, and that if he molested them
they would go and place themselves under the protection of the French.
Hereupon Abd-el-Kader seized the principal chiefs: four of them were
kept in the camp with their feet in irons; four others, chained
together by the neck, were thrown into prison at Mascara.
On the 8th of September a troop of horsemen brought nine Jews whom
they had seized in the environs of Mostaganem, and the heads of three
Turks whom they had killed. The Jews had been cruelly treated by the
Arabs; they were chained together by the throat, their feet were torn
and bruised, and their bodies covered with wounds. When they were
brought before the Sultan they resorted to a lie, (if indeed it be a
lie to deceive an enemy in order to save one’s life,) and said that
when the French took Mostaganem they had fled to Mascara with their
families and their possessions, that the French had forced them to
return to Mostaganem, and that they were again trying to escape to
Mascara when the horsemen seized them. The Sultan upon hearing this
bade them send for their property and their families, and return to
Mascara; adding, that if they obeyed, no harm should befall them, but
if not, that their heads should keep company with those of the three
Turks.
“Abd-el-Kader is great, powerful, and holy,” said the poor Jews; “and
we will go and dwell in Mascara with our wives, our children, and our
goods.”
The three Turks’ heads and that of the French soldier which the
Garraba had brought, were exhibited in front of the Sultan’s tent for
two days; on the third the children had them to play with, after which
they were thrown outside the camp to the birds of prey.
On the morning of the 10th of September Abd-el-Kader started, with
all his forces and the solitary cannon, to attack the Flitas and
Houledscherifs, leaving one man to each tent to guard the camp. The
insurgent tribes, who were prepared for an attack, had already sent
their women, children, and cattle up into the mountains, and the
Sultan found them drawn up in order of battle on the high mountain
which skirts the plain of Milianah, at the marabout nearest to the
Ouet Mina and the Schellif. The fight lasted the whole day, and the
cannon was fired seven or eight times, loaded with stones in default
of balls. In the evening Abd-el-Kader returned to the camp, bringing
back twelve dead and eight wounded. I never could obtain any precise
account of the result of the battle, but the dejection of the Sultan
and his troops plainly showed that they had not been victorious. The
horsemen brought back five heads and drove before them a troop of
women and children who had not been able to reach the mountains: the
unfortunate creatures were all thrown into the prisons of Mascara. One
man had been taken alive: he was brought before the Sultan as soon as
the latter had dismounted.
“Thou wert taken among the rebels?”
“I was.”
“What hast thou to say in thy defence?”
“I was compelled to fight against thee.”
“Thou shouldest then have fled to my camp.”
“But”—
“Enough.”
Abd-el-Kader raised his hand, and the unhappy man was dragged away by
the chaous. One of the chaous had lost his son in the battle, and had
seen his head hanging to the saddle-bow of a Beni-Flita: with tears
and lamentations he now implored the other chaous to grant him the
favour of putting the prisoner to death with his own unaided hand. He
at last obtained it, and immediately rushed upon the Beni-Flita, and
cut off his hands and feet with his yataghan. The children shouted
for joy at this horrid sight, and the revengeful father watched with
delight the hideous contortions of the victim who rolled in the dust
at his feet, shrieking with rage and pain, and imploring his tormenter
to cut off his head. When the Beni-Flita at length fainted from loss
of blood, the chaous passed a rope round his middle, and dragged him
by it outside the enclosure of the camp; the children brought together
a quantity of brushwood and dry branches, and set fire to them, and on
this pile the chaous threw the still living Beni-Flita.
It was night, and the flames threw a lurid glare upon the dark tents:
the piercing shrieks of the Beni-Flita long sounded through the camp.
I covered my head with my haick, and groaned when I thought that only
a few leagues from this savage camp were the outposts of a noble and
generous nation.
Within a few days of my arrival at Abd-el-Kader’s camp I was covered
with the lice with which the Arabs are infested. The Sultan himself
in the midst of the most serious discussion picks them off his haick,
rolls them gravely between his finger and thumb, and throws them upon
the carpet. These vermin are of a monstrous size, white with a black
stripe along the back, which swells with the blood they suck from
their unhappy victims. Fortunately for us, they did not much frequent
our hair and beards, but they laid their eggs in the seams of our
clothes, and were hatched upon us in myriads. The Arabs are so used
to them that they treated us with the greatest scorn when they saw
our efforts to rid ourselves of these tormenters. One day we asked
Abd-el-Kader to allow us to bathe in the Ouet Mina, in order to wash
off the vermin and the dust with which our bodies were covered. The
Sultan granted our request, and sent one of his negroes to protect us
against the Arabs. I cannot describe the pleasure of stretching our
weary and heated limbs in the clear cool water; but in two days the
dust and the lice were as bad as ever. We slept on the bare ground,
and as the nights were intensely cold we crept close to each other,
but as soon as the blood began to circulate at all in our benumbed
bodies the lice resumed their attacks, and we again sought the cold to
escape from their intolerable pricking.
On the day after the battle, the 11th of September, the camp was
raised at daybreak, and from sunrise till three o’clock, p.m., we
marched towards the south-east along horrible roads, over mountains
covered with gum trees, beeches, junipers, and ilexes.
Ben Faka pitched the camp on a fine _plateau_, from whence we could
see the traces of the habitations of the Beni-Flitas, who had joined
Abd-el-Kader’s uncle. As soon as the usual salute had been fired, the
horsemen, without even giving their horses time to breathe, started
in all directions, to plunder the silos of the Beni-Flitas. They soon
returned laden with wheat, barley, and straw, but no roast mutton or
kuskussu was brought that evening.
When Abd-el-Kader found that all the inhabitants of the district had
left it and joined the refractory marabout in the mountains, and that
he was in danger of wanting provisions, he determined to move the camp
again, and accordingly we marched for some days through a perfectly
deserted country.
At length, on the 17th of September, after a southward march of eight
hours, we came to an inhabited district. A few tribes brought some
horses and a little money to the Sultan, but these supplies were few
and scanty. An Arab came from Mascara with the news that General
Létang had left Oran, and that the Garrabas had taken a great number
of cattle and sheep from the Douairs. The loss sustained by the
Douairs caused great rejoicing in our camp, and the horsemen galloped
about firing their rifles in honour of the victorious Garrabas.
On the 19th of September the tents were again struck, and after five
hours’ march Ben Faka halted on the slope of a mountain just below a
marabout which was flanked by a tower at each corner. The surrounding
country was well peopled, and the fields covered with wheat and
barley. From the heights above us, one could see the tents of the
tribes dotted about the plain and the slope of the mountain.
At about six hours’ march from this place are the ruins of the ancient
city of Tekedemta, which Abd-el-Kader had long wished to rebuild; and,
with the view of obtaining from the neighbouring tribes provisions and
assistance of all kinds towards this undertaking, he now remitted to
them the payment of tribute, at the same time telling the Kaits that
he should expect to receive at Tekedemta all that they would otherwise
have brought to him now.
Next day, the 20th of September, we left the marabout with the four
towers and marched to the neighbourhood of Tekedemta. While the troops
were employed in preparing the tents, Abd-el-Kader mounted a fresh
horse, and went to visit the ruins, accompanied by a few marabouts.
We were now in the midst of high mountains covered with gum trees,
beeches, ilexes, and junipers, which by their size and number clearly
proved that it was very long since the Arabs inhabited this country;
for they soon destroy all the trees within their reach, partly by the
quantity of wood which they use both for cooking and for the bonfires
which they burn all night to keep off the wild beasts and to warm the
sentinels, and partly by their custom of clearing a path through the
forest by setting fire to the trees as they stand.
Several Moors from Mascara arrived on the same day as ourselves, with
fifty asses carrying baskets, pickaxes, shovels, and all kinds of
implements for building, and as soon as the Sultan returned to the
camp, he dispatched all the muleteers and some of his negroes to clear
the ground on which the ancient Casabah of Tekedemta had stood. On the
following day he sent a number of soldiers to go on with the clearing
and to build a redoubt.
All these workmen were unpaid, and ill-will and discontent soon
appeared among them, they went grumbling to their work, and the Sultan
was forced to superintend them in person, or nothing was done.
On the 26th an Arab courier brought Abd-el-Kader a letter from the
prisoners who had been taken at Trara-Sickak by General Bugeaud and
conveyed to France. The contents of the letter produced a great
sensation, and joy was painted on every face. The Sultan sent for me,
and said, “I have received a letter from my Arabs at Marseilles; the
Christians treat them kindly.”
“How then,” said I, “can a Sultan so great and holy as thou suffer us
to be treated so ill? The nights are cold among these mountains, and
whilst thy Arabs at Marseilles sleep on good mattresses, wrapped in
warm blankets, we have not even a rug to lie upon at night.”
Abd-el-Kader smiled graciously, and sent for Ben Faka, whom he
commanded to give us whatever we asked for, and first of all a rug to
sleep on at night.