A JOURNEY TO SOUTHERN TUNIS.
Late on the evening of the 26th November I left Goletta in the steamer
“Valette” belonging to the Compagnie Transatlantique, on a pilgrimage to
the seat of war in the south. The hurry and bustle on board were
naturally very great, as the “Valette” was chartered at the eleventh
hour to carry provisions to Gabes, but Captain Cambernon, a good-
humoured Breton, and as he often laughingly observed, “half an
Englishman,” exerted himself under difficulties to do the honours of his
ship, and maintain the proverbial good name of his employers for
attending to the comforts of their passengers. We did not get under way
till dusk, but shortly after daybreak the next morning the “Valette”
anchored in the calm blue water off Susa, where the confusion and
activity had, if possible, increased since I quitted it three weeks
before.
We were now joined by several other travellers, amongst whom were Dr.
Samuel Pozzi and his charming wife, M. De la Mothe (the Tunisian special
correspondent of the _Temps_), and several military and medical
officers, on their way either to meet the column of General Logerot or
to do garrison duty at Sfax or Jerba. The weather was delightful, the
table unexceptionable, and everybody in the best of humours. I have had
few better opportunities of becoming acquainted with almost every shade
of French thought about Tunis than during the five days I spent on board
the hospitable “Valette.” Dr. Pozzi had come to North Africa to probe
the great sanitary question in the interests of the Red Cross Society,
and could now talk perpetual ambulance with the army surgeons to his
heart’s content, while M. De la Mothe, an ardent and eloquent
Arabophile, fought over and over again the battle of the natives, with
any Arabophobe warrior who had the temerity to accept his standing
challenge.
After a short stoppage at Monastir, where we did not land, we arrived
the same afternoon at Mehdia, the once famous “Africa” of the Spaniards,
and of the annalist of the Knights of St. John. The town is built on a
narrow tongue of land widening towards the centre, stretching out boldly
for about a mile into the Mediterranean, and which may be pretty
correctly described as a low oval-shaped hill. The isthmus which
connects with the coast is barely a quarter of a mile in width, and
gives to Mehdia the essential characteristics of a peninsula. In its
palmy days the old city evidently covered the whole of Cape Africa, and
was surrounded by a thick wall intersected by towers, which protected
the isthmus, on one side, and was washed on all others by the sea.
Mehdia, according to the doctrines of barbaric warfare, must have been
almost impregnable, and so strong were its fortifications that great
masses of the _enceinte_ have to this day survived the efforts of the
Maltese Knights to entirely destroy them, when they evacuated the place
three centuries and a quarter ago. The modern Mehdia immediately adjoins
the mainland, and is entered by a gateway through a castellated building
known as the Borj Lotani, or “lower fort.”
On either side of the Borj Lotani great pieces of the original bastions
are still standing, and on the summit of the tower I saw several small
cannons made of tarred rope and hoop iron which evidently belonged to
the time of its Spanish occupation. The highest portion of the little
peninsula is occupied by a quadrangular fortress known as the Borj
Fukháni, or “upper fort,” and between these two buildings are the
squalid streets of the Arab town, and a long straggling edifice on the
sea-shore known as the Jáma Kebira, or great mosque, a portion of which
is said to have been once a Christian church. Towards the farther
extremity of the cape, there are evident traces of a large basin for
galleys or boats hollowed out in the rock, and approached by an opening
in the outer bastion. The soil is everywhere catacombed by cisterns,
nearly 300 in number, and many of which are of very considerable size.
When Commandant Juffé of the 71st Regiment came to Mehdia with a single
company of soldiers on the 26th October, he only found a score of half-
starved Tunisian artillerymen in the forts, and about the same number of
rusty guns resting on the crumbling battlements, which had survived the
gradual decay of the wooden carriages that once supported them.
A few months ago a broken stone outside the door of the mosque on the
sea-shore formed a still visible link between the Mehdia of the present
and the Africa of the past. About twenty years before, an enthusiastic
Moslem theologian had ordered the faithful in Mehdia to thrust from its
place in the Jáma Kebira the tomb of an infidel, which by some mischance
had remained undisturbed in the sanctuary of the true believers for over
three hundred years. The holy man’s advice was religiously acted upon,
and the marble slab which once covered the remains of the good knight
Giovanni Antonio Pescatore was soon half buried by the sand amongst
which it had been thrown. To chip a morsel from the Roumi’s tomb became
a pious pastime of the young Arabs of Mehdia, and the monument would
long since have disappeared, if the care of Mr. Reade had not rescued it
from its perilous position, and obtained permission from the Bey to
remove it to Tunis.
The Moslem town of Mehdia rose on the site of some now forgotten Roman
city under the fostering care of Obeidallah “El Mehdi,” and in 1550 fell
into the hands of the great corsair Dragut, who afterwards died fighting
with the _Cavalieri della Religione_ on the ramparts of St. Elmo, and
now sleeps at Tripoli in the West. Dragut snatched Mehdia from a small
band of pirates, who bade defiance alike to Christian foes and to the
Moslem rulers of Tunis and Kairwán. The success of Dragut appears to
have caused equal alarm in the councils of Charles V. at Madrid, and of
the Grand Master of the Order of St. John at Valetta, and a joint
armament was despatched to the shores of Africa before the summer of
1550 had fairly set in. Bosio gives a detailed account of the fall of
Mehdia, and Sutherland[8] states that “the knights and other officers of
distinction who fell in the assault, were honoured with interment in the
principal mosque, which was first purified and consecrated as a
Christian temple.” He adds also “that afterwards when the place was
abandoned by the imperial troops, the ashes of these warriors were
transported to Sicily and deposited in the cathedral at Monreale, where
a stately monument was erected, bearing an inscription commemorative of
their renown.” During a hot September day I clambered up to Monreale
from Palermo to search for the “stately monument.” Not a trace of it
remains, and I am afraid the only existing memorials of the capture of
Africa in 1550 are the scattered fragments of masonry at Mehdia, and the
broken tomb of Fra Giovanni Antonio at Tunis.
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF JOHANNES ANTONIUS DE
PISCATORIBUS.
Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]
The rescued slab has also an interesting tale belonging to it, which
must be my excuse for an unwarrantably tedious historical digression.
The troops of the Emperor and the Hospital continued to occupy Mehdia
during the years 1551, 1552, and 1553. In the latter year a very strong
feeling of discontent appears to have arisen amongst the soldiers, which
induced the Grand Master to send first Don Pietro Mendoza, and then
Leone Strozzi, Prior of Capua, to arrange matters and restore peace to
the garrison. Strozzi appears to have been a man of great energy and
boundless ambition, and no sooner had he arrived at Mehdia, than he
conceived the project of obtaining a personal grant of it from the
Emperor, and of colonising it, after making his peace with the rulers of
the Ottoman Empire, through the good offices of Queen Mary of England.
Before any answer arrived, he had calmed the irritation which existed
amongst the Christian troops, and having captured several Moorish
vessels, returned in triumph to Malta. At this juncture the Grand Master
John d’Omedes died, and Strozzi became an eager candidate for the vacant
post. The electing knights seemed to have entertained such a wholesome
dread of his pride and tyranny, that their choice fell upon Claude de la
Sengle, who had greatly distinguished himself three years before at the
taking of Mehdia. De la Sengle proceeded forthwith to Rome, where he
received an envoy of the Emperor, who brought with him a deed of gift,
conferring the possession of Mehdia on the Order of St. John.
As soon as the Grand Master returned to Malta a council was assembled to
deliberate as to the acceptance or refusal of the preferred possession.
The Viceroy of Sicily appeared before it, and strongly urged the former
course. These discussions resulted in a commission being appointed to
proceed to Mehdia, with orders to report in the greatest possible detail
on its position, fortifications, and natural advantages. The Prior of
Capua (still smarting under the vexation entailed by his signal failure
as a candidate for the Grand Mastership, and very possibly not a little
angry at the refusal of the Emperor to sanction his plan for a colony in
North Africa) was named its chief, and the commissioners, after making a
minute survey of the city, were directed to advise the Order as to its
ultimate decision. So much importance was attached to the investigation
that every Langue or Division of the Confraternity was represented in
the commission. The delegate of England was Sir Usualdo Masimbert, that
of Italy Giovanni Antonio Pescatore.
Everything else has been forgotten; the name of Pescatore alone survives
amongst the ruins of “Africa.” He was probably a native of Novara in
Italy, and arrived in Malta during the year 1545, as the bearer of a
letter from the Pope requesting the then Grand Master of the Order to
appoint his nephew Carlo Sforza (Prior of Lombardy) to the command of
the fleet of the Hospital. He subsequently obtained high rank at Malta,
and in September 1553 became Governor of Fort St. Elmo.
Five months later (February 1554) he died at Mehdia,[9] “his friends
declaring that he had been poisoned by a confidential servant
(_servitore intrinseco_) of the Prior Strozzi, Biagio Pesce by name, who
was in turn stabbed a few months afterwards by the Knight Aleramo
Parpaglia, on account of a rumour and strong suspicion that he had
caused in a similar manner the death of his brother, Knight Bernardone
Parpaglia, as well as that of the Conventual-Conservator Knight George
Vagnone, and this on account of certain opposition and contradiction
offered to his master in the matter of the magistracy. The historian of
the Order comments with pious indignation on such a scandal having
happened amongst the knights while endeavouring to plant their banner
_in partibus infidelium_. The commission at length reported adversely to
the acceptance of Mehdia, and its concomitant responsibilities, and in
the autumn of 1554 it was evacuated by the Christian troops, its walls
and fortifications having being carefully destroyed.
· · · · · · · · · ·
We left Mehdia at sunset, and next morning were already in sight of the
white walls and battered _minár_ of the great mosque of Sfax. A
background of green gardens and stately palm groves completed an almost
perfect Oriental landscape, and it was difficult to realise, in the
placid scene before us, the ordeal of fire which Sfax had undergone
during the past summer. Any illusion on this head was at once dissipated
as soon as the shore was reached. The ruined _batterie rasante_, the
half-dismantled forts, the damaged houses, the heaps of rusty cannon
balls, and a row of black crosses in the little cemetery, all
contributed to bring vividly before the mind’s eye the events of the
memorable 16th July. The streets in the European _faubourg_ had received
highly sounding French names, and were all more or less crowded with
soldiers and sailors. Repairs were going on in all directions, and ere
this Sfax has in all probability resumed its wonted appearance, but even
then (Nov. 28th) it was whispered in my ear that nobody could be sure of
a sound skin three miles outside the gates, and matters do not appear to
have greatly mended since. The one complaint at the time of my visit to
Sfax was the petty tyranny of the French Vice-Consul “Giannino,” who was
threatening everybody with “confidential reports to M. Roustan,” and
making the best use of his opportunities. M. Freycinet has since
dispensed with M. Mattei’s services, and only left him the consolation
of descanting eloquently on unrequited patriotism and the ingratitude of
the Republic.
Great consternation was expressed at the abrupt termination of the
Commission of Inquiry into the losses sustained by the Europeans during
the bombardment and after the occupation, and I was compelled to undergo
a series of ocular proofs as to the extent of damage suffered. The
cupola of the Roman Catholic church was gone, and the house occupied by
M. Leonardi, the British Consular-Agent, entirely destroyed; one Maltese
had lost all his timber, and another the contents of his shop, but there
was a deal of good-humoured patience mingled with much complaining, and
a general belief that somehow or other the _invitta Britannia_ would
bring everything right. In spite of an unfortunate element of grotesque
exaggeration, there can be no doubt that a great wrong has been
committed by somebody. By all means let that somebody be nameless, but
as France was not at war with Tunis, and was avowedly acting as her
ally, she is certainly bound to see that wrong remedied.
Outside the town I observed two large _marabouts_. The dome of one was
nearly all gone; the second was tolerably perfect. In the former, under
a roof of sail-cloth, lived the Maltese family which had been saved by
Haj Maala during the insurrection. The mother, with tears in her eyes,
described the kindness she had received from the Arabs, when she and her
children were hiding in his garden disguised in Tunisian dress. The
second tomb was inhabited by an officer, who was quietly eating his
luncheon over the grave of holy Sidi Mazún. A little old Maltese woman
was pointed out to me, whose solitary room had disappeared under a
French shell. She preferred a very detailed claim to the commissioners,
amounting altogether to something under three pounds. I was told they
were so pleased with her honesty that her loss was assessed at more than
she asked. Before evening I was a little tired of looking at calcined
walls, hearing stories of real losses and bogus demands, and listening
to the misdoings of “Giannino,” and was not sorry to return to the
“Valette,” which sailed about midnight for the Syrtis Minor.
Early on the 30th November the “Valette” anchored about a mile from a
sandy shore fringed with groves of palm-trees. Beyond a few wooden sheds
no kind of habitation was visible, an indentation in the beach alone
betokened the mouth of a river, and it was difficult to believe that
this was Gabes. A French frigate and gunboat were lying off the coast,
and two or three steamers were busily discharging their cargo into
white-sailed Arab _feluccas_. We were at once boarded by the French
Consular-Agent, M. Sicard, who told us that General Logerot had arrived
the previous day at Ras-el-Oued, a few miles from Gabes, where he had
encamped. All the available barges were at once utilised for the landing
of the officers and soldiers, and we were afraid that it would be
impossible for us to reach the land. This was a great disappointment for
all of us, and especially for Dr. Pozzi, who was naturally anxious to
see the famous river Sel, the muddy waters of which, impregnated with
magnesia, had laid so many of his brave fellow-countrymen to sleep for
ever under the palm-trees which skirt its banks; and for the newspaper
correspondents, who were thirsting for the latest news of the column. In
the midst of our lamentations, Captain Arcadius Gosselin of the S.S.
“Ville de Tanger” came to the rescue, and obligingly conveyed us on
shore in his own boat, and I am sorry to say at some personal
inconvenience.
We could now for the first time perceive some villages amongst the palm
groves on either side of the half-dried water-course, called by courtesy
the river Sel or the river Gabes. The name Gabes seems rather to
denominate the whole neighbourhood than any particular locality. The
little district of Gabes is as it were the connecting link between the
Great Sahara and the Mediterranean, and is really only separated from
the desert by a range of low sandy hills, and a series of chotts or
marsh-lakes, more than a hundred miles in length, and generally known as
the Sebkas Fejej, El Djerid, and Gharsa. Gabes itself is nothing more
than an oasis or cluster of oases, through which the stream Sel or Gabes
finds its way sluggishly across the plain to the sea beyond. As the
Tacape (hence Cabes or Gabes) of the Phœnicians, and afterwards of the
Romans, this place was the emporium of one of the richest provinces of
Northern Africa. The sands of the Oued Sel have long since buried Tacape
out of sight, and the modern Gabes was entirely unknown to fame, when in
1874, M. Roudaire gave it an unexpected celebrity as the Port Said of
the projected inland sea, which was to be formed by the junction of the
Tunisian marsh-lakes with the waters of the Mediterranean. A year later,
an Italian expedition under the Marquis O. Antinori pronounced against
the feasibility of M. Roudaire’s scheme, and the scientific world seems
to have accepted this verdict. Gabes was again almost forgotten, when,
as I have described in a former chapter, it became one of the centres of
the Arab rising in July 1881, and was finally occupied, after the merest
show of resistance, by the French troops. A French garrison has remained
there ever since, under the shelter of the warehouses of an English
firm, and intrenched behind a bulwark of iron-bound bales of esparto
fibre. After the capture of Kairwán a march on Gabes was resolved on,
with a view, if possible, of surrounding the Arabs, or of at any rate
showing them enough pomp of war to convince them, that any further
resistance to the French Protectorate was a useless kicking against the
pricks. It was to this end that General Logerot set out from Kairwán on
the 12th November, in company with Generals Sabatier and Saint-Jean, at
the head of a force 6200 strong and with a large convoy of provisions.
From the shore the most conspicuous objects in the landscape are the
great dome of Sidi Bulbeba’s _kouba_ far away on the sand-hills, and the
ruins of the _kisla_ which still cover the bodies of those who perished
in the explosion. The palm groves only permit the spectator to see a
faint outline of the two rival villages, Jára and Menzel. As we arrived
at the small French camp, a battalion of the 107th and another of the
137th Regiment were preparing to march out to Ras-el-Oued to join the
column. A walk of half a mile inland brought us to the village of Jára,
which stands on the outskirts of the first oasis and on the banks of the
Oued Sel. Its houses, mosques, and numerous _marabouts_ are built of
large and well-fashioned blocks of stone, which evidently had done
service twenty centuries ago in Tacape. My readers will remember that
the people of Jára made their peace with the French as soon as they
arrived, and while the Arabs of Menzel were still fighting amidst the
embers of their homes. The dwellers in Jára belong to the _Soff_ or
faction of the Shadid, while those in Menzel and in the adjoining
village of Shinni are followers of Sidi Yusef, a saint, and not of the
new French Caid. Ali Ben Hlifa, the leader of the national movement in
Tunis, lived in Shinni, but party-feeling in Jára was stronger than
their patriotism, and the destruction of the hated Menzel was an ample
compensation for the triumph of the infidels. Although the French had
been at Gabes five months when I visited it, the Arabs of Menzel and
Shinni would never ask or accept _aman_. Two days before my arrival it
had been decided to complete the destruction of both these places by
gunpowder and dynamite. The Jáma Kabira, the Caid’s house, and all the
public buildings of Menzel were soon reduced to shapeless heaps of
ruins. Next morning Shinni and more particularly the great dwelling-
house of the Hlifas shared the same fate. It was difficult to believe
that the calcined rafters and blackened walls I visited, were now all
that remained of a town, which half a year before contained 4000
inhabitants, and was one of the most thriving and prosperous marts of
the rich province of the Djerid. The story of Menzel and Jára
illustrates the extraordinary violence of local party-feeling amongst
the Arabs of North Africa, and the powerful influence of the institution
of the _Soff_. The force of faction had stood the French in good stead
in Algeria, and it now seems likely to help them in Tunis. They are
quite aware of the weak spot in the Arab armour, and while at Gabes I
plainly saw that no pains were being spared to take every advantage of
it. In matters of this kind the Caid Sidi Yusef is said to be an adept,
and the Beni Zid clan was almost persuaded by him to bar Ali Ben Hlifa’s
retreat to the Tripolitan frontier.
At Gabes I was able to ascertain the particulars of General Logerot’s
march from Kairwán. It was a fitting sequel to General Saussier’s
advance from Tunis, both as regards its details and its consequences.
The Arabs (with a single exception) eluded the pursuit of the advancing
column, and hardly an enemy was ever visible. Shots were at times
exchanged during the night, some of the irregular cavalry were killed,
but nothing deserving the name of an engagement took place. After
leaving Kairwán on the 12th November, the camp was pitched successively
at Enchir-el-Ouiba and Oued Mesour. This movement occupied three days.
Halts were afterwards made at Bír Bu Habessa, Hoglet Ben Zallouck, and
Hoglet El Ajela. On the 17th November the column reached Ali Ben Abda,
where great inconvenience was experienced from want of water. The
extraordinary inaccuracy of the topographical department was one of the
worst features of the campaign in a military point of view. While I was
at Kairwán, a reconnaissance under Colonel Moulin returned to the city
by forced marches and in a pitiable condition, owing to having received
totally erroneous official information about the water supply on his
route. The _ouiden_ or rivers of the chart turned out to be streaks of
sand, and the _biár_ or wells were in reality muddy pools of brine. If
an Arab attack had taken place during the retreat, nothing could have
saved the weary and thirsty troops from a disaster. The patience of the
soldiers under these trying circumstances was admirable, and they
enlivened their forced march by composing a song in honour of _riz au
lait_ as cooked with the water of a Tunisian _bir_. I heard it
afterwards sung at Kairwán, and it was as witty as it was good-humoured.
The same misfortune was severely felt at the next halting-places (Taoul
Sheikh and Oued Gran), but at El Founi several wells were found, and the
column remained there for four days.
The presence in the vicinity of a large encampment of the Oued Khalifa
(one of the many subdivisions of the great Zlass tribe) having been
ascertained, a strong force left El Founi to attack it. It was, however,
found to be tenanted almost entirely by women, children, and decrepit
old men, for the combatants had already gone southwards, leaving their
tents pitched in the Douarna mountains, well out of the line of march as
they imagined. This bloodless victory resulted, however, in the
confiscation of 7000 sheep, 368 young camels, and 1400 oxen. After
quitting El Founi for Sidi Muhamed, heavy rains considerably impeded the
march, but after halts at Sidi El Medoub, Oued El Akarit and Metouia,
the troops, early on the 29th November, came in sight of the palm-
covered oasis of Gabes and encamped at Ras-el-Oued. During the last
seven days of the march not a single living soul was met with. Contrary
to General Logerot’s anticipations, the health of the troops was not
appreciably affected during their advance over the almost unknown
deserts of Central Tunis, and only six deaths occurred _en route_. Some
weeks later an English merchant had an interview at Tripoli with Muhamed
Ben Hlifa, the nephew of the Arab leader. Sidi Muhamed made merry over
General Logerot’s laborious expedition. He said that whenever the French
marched in compact masses, the Arabs could easily avoid them, and that
often only a few miles separated the two camps. The insurgents were able
to move in a day as far as the French could march in a week. This
reminds me of one of the wittiest of the _Epoca’s_ Tunisian caricatures,
which depicts France contemplating an army of tortoises and snails on a
plain, defied by a number of Arabs on the mountains.
Just before leaving Gabes I learned that an extension of the expedition
in the direction of the Tripolitan frontier had been resolved upon. The
wind had meanwhile shifted to another quarter, and we were carried to
our boat in rather an undignified manner on the backs of some of the
worldly wise Arabs of Jára, as the landing-place was no longer
practicable. After sunset we anchored off the island abode of the
“lotus-eaters,” but nothing could be seen of Jerba but a low coast-line,
some palm-trees and a long white fort. Before we had awoke next morning
we had already passed the frontier, and were skirting the barren hills
of the most westerly province of the Ottoman Empire—Trabulus Gharb.