He was delighted to be reunited with the Legion, and shortly after his arrival he wrote to Vogüé that he had met the wounded from El Moungar convalescing in Ain Sefra’s military hospital. (El Moungar survivors had to get accustomed to curious visitors; in September some of them were also interviewed at Ain Sefra by the traveller and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, correspondent of La Dépèche Algérienne, who in time would take her place in Saharan legend beside Père de Foucauld.)12 Whenever Lyautey visited a Legion unit, he asked if anyone there had served with him before, and he told Vogüé that a few veterans of Tonkin or Madagascar often stepped forward with a smile and a reminder; a friendly face always meant much to Lyautey, and even these leathery rankers represented a reassuring continuity in this new arena.13 Nevertheless, while the solid spine of Legion infantry was an insurance he was glad to have, they were too ponderous for his advanced operations. When he reviewed a nominally ‘light column’ at Beni Ounif, the infantry’s towering backpacks and the large baggage train prompted him to ask pointedly what a heavy column looked like.
The burden loaded on to the French infantryman was not mere thoughtlessness, but had a logical purpose: a historical inability to rely upon the commissariat to keep pace with marching troops meant that if they were to have any chance of sleeping dry, with a hot meal inside them, infantrymen had to carry on their backs everything they needed for several days and nights. In wilderness terrain, where wheeled transport was very often impractical and enough local pack-animals sometimes hard to provide, this argument had even greater force. In 1908 the British ex-colonel Reginald Rankin, covering General d’Amade’s operations for the London Times, saw the value of this independence from a supply train, despite the burden of at least 60lbs that it placed on every man’s shoulders. He was impressed by the marching-power and cheerfulness of the Legion and Algerian Skirmishers, and wrote that each soldier carried ‘a complete house, with well-furnished kitchen, larder, cellar and woodshed’. At the end of the day each squad could pitch their tents, light a fire and cook their food independently of any service troops; Rankin praised this self-sufficiency in comparison with the lot of the British Tommy, who often had a long and uncertain wait for his tents and food to arrive at the night’s halt.14
LYAUTEY’S FIRST TUG AT HIS LEAD came in November 1903, when he established a permanent French presence at Béchar (see Map 11). On 12 November, Major Pierron and the 3rd (Mounted) Company/1st RE emerged from the hills not at the kasbah itself, but on the plateau of Bahira Tagda about 1,000 yards north, which dominated the vital irrigation dam. The next day they started building rudimentary defences, and on the 14th the first convoy set off from Ben Zireg to bring them supplies for consolidation. The work of building was then taken over by the 2nd (Mounted), who would be the permanent garrison during the first year. Meanwhile 3rd (Mounted) spread out in all directions on reconnaissance patrols – mapping, locating wells and overnight camp-grounds and showing the flag; in seven months the company would march nearly 2,500 miles. To avoid alarming the Quai d’Orsay this ‘reconnaissance base’ was referred to not as Béchar but as Tagda (a name that appeared on no map), and by 29 November the governor-general was helpfully muddying the waters further by suggesting to the War Ministry that it should be christened ‘Colomb’, after a long-dead French general.
Thus, without a shot being fired, a post was created in what had been the border base of the Ouled Jarir. After the bombardment of Figuig, the most belligerent half of that tribe, the renowned Asasa camel-thieves, had moved westwards towards the Tafilalt; most of the Mufalha segment, whose date-groves at Béchar were now hostage to Lyautey, came in over the next few months to make terms. At the end of October 1904 the mule company were replaced with the foot-sloggers of Captain Clerc’s 6th Company, II/2nd RE, who took over the building work and the static garrison. Since this fort (like several others) was not officially sanctioned by Oran Division, no materials or funding were provided, and Legion NCOs took pride in scrounging or creatively ‘diverting’ what was needed. Captains turned themselves into architects, the famously heterogeneous ranks of the légionnaires provided the skilled craftsmen and foremen, and defaulters did the heavy lifting.15 (Still under the command of Major Pierron, the fort would finally be completed in October 1905, with a handsome dressed-stone gateway carved with the name ‘Colomb Béchar’ and the Legion’s seven-flamed grenade.)16
In January 1904, the first mule-company patrol from Colomb Béchar reached the Abadla floodplain on the lower Oued Guir; that month the leaders of 1,250 Dawi Mani tents came in to the new fort, following the example of 300 who had already submitted at Taghit. The rains of 1904 promised the first good harvest in four years and, the Dawi Mani had to protect their grainfields. Only about 450 tents of their Ouled abu Anan ‘fifth’ now remained aloof around the Tafilalt, and even their leader sent a secret envoy to discuss peace in a circular way, while ostensibly maintaining his alliance with the dangerous Ait Khabbash. On 14 February, the 21st (Mounted) Company/2nd RE planted a post in a strategic pass at Forthassa Gharbia in the Djebel Doug, some 60 miles west of Ain Sefra, to control the gateway from the Chott Tigri.17 Lyautey’s shamelessly opportunistic attitude is clear from a letter he wrote to Jonnart on 13 January:I believe that one must see in the Franco-Moroccan accord, and in the fiction of a mixed police force, something very flexible and very broad that will permit us to cover ourselves every time we need to; to take action in places that would [otherwise] be inaccessible to us; to make use of agents who, without it, would escape us. It is in this spirit that I ask to be authorized to apply it.18
THE KEY TO UNLOCK the diplomatic impasse with Britain was found in April 1904, when Foreign Minister Delcassé achieved the first triumph of his entente policy: a confidential Anglo-French agreement that, in simple terms, gave Britain unfettered freedom of action in Egypt in return for similar French rights in Morocco. From this date Britain, recognizing that Abd el Aziz’s government was a hopeless partner, cashed in its Moroccan interests in pursuit of wider geopolitical prizes. It was agreed that Théophile Delcassé would be left to negotiate a parallel agreement with Spain that took account of the latter’s historic coastal claims, and this would duly be signed in October 1904.19
The confidence born of his getting away with his advance to Béchar encouraged Lyautey to take a riskier gamble in the summer of 1904. His next objective was Ras el Ain, a strategic oasis on the high plains, nearly 150 miles north-west of Ain Sefra. This stepping stone towards the Moulouya, situated at the southern limit of the Tell, had specifically been named as Moroccan in the 1902 accords. As a centre and granary for the Beni Gil, this was an obvious place to initiate a new ‘oil stain’ by planting a post and marketplace.20 Whether or not he actually believed in a serious threat from that shadowy Sitting Bull of the frontier, Lyautey raised the spectre of allegedly hostile movements by old Bou Amama when seeking approval for free-ranging operations that summer. He did not get it; the Foreign Ministry’s man in Tangier, Georges Saint-René Taillandier, was closing a financial agreement with Fes that would give France virtual control over the Maghzan treasury, and he wanted no provocative sensations on the border. In June, Lyautey went ahead anyway, sending his chief-of-staff Major Paul Henrys to occupy Ras el Ain (or ‘Berguent’); this was accomplished peacefully, and soon 600 tents of the Beni Gil were attracted there.21 It soon appeared, however, that Ras el Ain might be an oasis too far.
Lyautey had few friends at Oran Division (now commanded by General Herson), and hostile stories planted in the Paris press coincided with protests from the Maghzan. At a cabinet meeting on 28 July a furious Delcassé declared that only a withdrawal from Ras el Ain could salvage his intricate negotiations with the sultan, and Prime Minister Combes sided with the Quai d’Orsay against the Rue Dominique. General André cabled Lyautey a direct order, to which he sent a fearless reply claiming that he had cleared the move with the Maghzan governor at Oujda (blithely ignoring that official’s distinctly semi-detached relationship with Fes).
With passionate conviction, he argued his experience that what newly occupied native communities demanded above all else was that once the French arrived, they should stay, so that the locals could adjust with confidence to the new situation. He claimed that to abandon ‘Berguent’ would expose it to savage reprisals, undo months of patient political work, and destroy not only his own prestige among the caids but the credibility of any future French promises. When Paris repeated the order, he asked to be relieved of his command rather than be forced to break his personal word to the Arab chiefs.
There is a type of personality that cannot resist over-dramatizing the expression of beliefs that are sincerely held, whether for calculated effect or simply for the love of drama. While Lyautey’s arguments were essentially truthful, the purity of his motives was overstated: in letters to his sister and to Eugène Étienne, he had written that he was managing the Ras el Ain situation with ‘the prudence of a snake’, and that his advance there provided ‘a perfect base of operations for the day when we finally decide to do something’.22 His request for dismissal before dishonour was pure brinkmanship; in private, he was now trying frantically to contact Jonnart, who was travelling in France. Eventually he succeeded; Jonnart told the cabinet that he had specifically authorized the move, and claimed that as governor-general he had the right to be consulted over all such decisions. Jonnart was a powerful political player, and despite Delcassé’s misgivings his suggested compromise formula was accepted: a parallel Maghzan garrison would be co-located at Ras el Ain, thus preserving the fiction of condominium.
Jonnart was quite unflustered by having to ride to the rescue in this way, and his letters to Lyautey continued to be calm and encouraging: ‘One must be very patient . . . We are in partnership, and acting for the best in our country’s interests.’ Lyautey was relieved and grateful; in a letter home that September he wrote: ‘This discreet penetration of Morocco, which I began surreptitiously and which is hardly under way yet, is so intensely interesting that to leave now would really be cruelly heartbreaking.’23 Retrospective permission for the new post was given in October 1904, and alongside the 800 French troops a small and pointless Maghzan garrison from Oujda was installed – the usual boys and greybeards, whose pay never arrived. To save Moroccan face, the name Berguent became official.
SOON AFTER TAKING UP HIS COMMAND Lyautey had begun to sharpen the tools on his workbench and to place them where he needed them. Once Colomb Béchar was occupied, the organization on the frontier was reshaped to move its centre of gravity westwards. Taghit was downgraded to a simple post, and Colomb Béchar became the headquarters of a new ‘circle’ and the hub of operations. Extending Lyautey’s grip on the borderland involved different types of unit, each with its own capabilities; dispersed to match their strengths to local terrain and conditions, these could be braided together as needed into mixed Mobile Groups, which swung out to criss-cross the frontier marches like the coordinated beams of searchlights. (On a literal level, the mobile groups included signalling/lamp squads for mutual communication; the southern outposts not yet linked by telegraph wires also communicated by this reliable old system, via relays of lonely little stone towers manned by a few signallers – an echo of the old Roman frontiers. Lyautey repeated what he had learned on the Tonkin frontier ten years previously: ‘When they see the lights replying to one another in the night, [the tribesmen] feel tangibly our power, and the liaison between our posts by mysterious and invulnerable means.’)24
For security patrols and for screening advances, the fingertips were the irregular goumiers, followed by the fingers – troops of Spahis, lightened for desert operations and accompanied by pack-horses. In the Far South the fists were Major Lapperine’s new Saharan Companies of horsemen and méharistes, but on the high plains and in the djebel these fighting patrols were provided by the Legion mounted companies based at Berguent, Forthassa Gharbia and Colomb Béchar. Moving light and fast with their saddle-and pack-mules and carrying up to fifteen days’ rations, the companies and half-companies made reconnaissances de police, pursued raiders and meted out retaliation. At any one time four of the eight Legion battalions now in Algeria were serving in the Sud-Oranais on year-long tours, and early in 1904 Lyautey formed a fourth Legion mule-company. He also raised another from Algerian Skirmishers, a horsed Saharan Company at Colomb Béchar and another at Beni Abbès on the Oued Saoura.25
Arabic-speaking intelligence officers in the static posts established markets and clinics, and acquired agents among the tent-groups that these attracted (the title was now changed from Bureau des Affaires Indigènes to the more candid Service de Renseignements, ‘Intelligence Service’). The number of these posts – garrisoned by companies of Algerian Skirmishers, Legion infantry and Bats d’Af – was reduced, but individual posts were enlarged and stockpiled with supplies, so that the mobile units circulating between them could draw upon them for provisions and thus extend their range of action. The forts normally had a couple of guns, not simply for defence but so that temporary mobile groups could be given some muscle without calling on divisional artillery assets from the north. In Legion posts these were manned by légionnaires (there were always one or two with previous artillery experience).
Lyautey also believed that the natural light-infantry qualities of the turcos were being stifled by treating them increasingly like European infantry in terms of logistics and missions. He drew on Algerian Skirmisher units to form groupes francs (‘free platoons’) of more lightly equipped tirailleurs allégés, restoring their mobility by reducing their burden to weapons, ammunition, a burnous, water and haversack rations. Re-supply trains from the posts went out to rendezvous with both the mounted companies and light infantry, so that the latter never had to carry more than four days’ rations with them.26
Word came from the Tafilalt that in September 1904 a second attempt by Moulay Mustafa el Hanafi to raise a harka had failed, and 1904 was reportedly the first year during which no Arab or European was killed by cross-border raiders.
NOW AND IN THE YEARS TO FOLLOW, Lyautey revealed his talent for establishing good relationships with the Arab caids with whom he negotiated the gradual expansion of his ‘oil stains’. In their world, the authority conferred by mere words on paper was empty, and all prestige depended upon personal qualities. They responded naturally and as equals to Lyautey’s aristocratic air, and his taste for military splendour was perfectly in harmony with their own traditions – the fluttering burnous that he wore over his uniform, the splendidly harnessed horses that he rode with dash and grace, and (perhaps above all, in a culture that revered warrior lineage) the old sabre slung at his saddle – the Napoleonic blade once carried to Moscow by his grandfather. For his part, Lyautey’s return to North Africa after twenty years had rekindled a love affair that was as much aesthetic as careerist. In one letter home he wrote:It is ten o’clock at night. My lamp is lit on my camp table, in the great tent that the Bach-Agha Si Eddin of the Ouled Sidi Sheikh sent me from Géryville . . . The flap is wide open, and outside my flag shivers in the breeze; a tall, red-uniformed Spahi is mounting guard; my officers are finishing their pipes around a red fire. A horse whinnies and tugs at its halter; the servants carry away the remains of the meal under the eye of the caid of a neighbouring tribe . . . The moonlight quickens the night, so cool after the heat of the day.
And again, of an evening at Ain Sefra (where he held court in Byronesque rooms adorned with Arab furnishings, and was sometimes serenaded with Leider by an impromptu choir of German légionnaires):The silver reflections off the palm trees, the violet shadows of the red-earth houses, the milky [dome of the] kouba, the sheep roasting over a fire surrounded by bearded faces; two white-clad Arabs at prayer, and purple-cloaked Spahis passing by; in the distance, the muffled sound of flutes and tambourines; [and beyond it all] the deep, soft shadows of the great screen of mountains – this is one vast fairyland!27
Not all his senior officers were comfortable with Lyautey’s approach to frontier soldieri
ng, but if those who were slaves to routine and respectability were irritated by his flamboyance and restless whims, many subalterns were soon eating out of his hand. A young Legion officer, Lieutenant Jaeglé, circulated a light-hearted lampoon of the general, one of a series he wrote about senior officers identified by pseudonyms – Lyautey’s was ‘Lieuvin de Hautevue’:. . . dry and quick to spark as a flint, lively and bubbling as Moselle wine from his own country . . . Lovable by nature, he wishes to be liked, and is liked – with deplorable facility . . . Loved by his officers, by the soldiers, by courtiers, scribes and functionaries, he himself loves women, pretty faces, flattery, workers because they serve him . . . [He is] active because it is necessary to him . . . A trifle deaf in one ear, tall and of youthful appearance, he listens to one speaking without seeming to, and looks at things and men with a keen, clear eye, judging them quickly and often justly. He has no time to be modest.28
The general took this jeu d’ésprit with a smile, as a fair enough assessment. Lyautey’s vanity and unconcealed need for assurance of loyal, even affectionate support were weaknesses of character of which he himself was well aware; he asked that men take him for all in all, and, given his obvious talents and devotion to his profession, spirited young officers seem to have found his flaws attractively human. The rough légionnaires he led also responded happily to the slightly theatrical style that he carried off so instinctively; this general who praised and encouraged face to face, as if he meant it, made a refreshing change from the dull, distant callousness of most men with stars on their sleeves. Vanity and ostentation were woven into French military culture, and while they may repel Anglo-Saxon puritans, they are in themselves no evidence of incompetence (even George S. Patton had a weakness for ivory- handled six-shooters). Lyautey was certainly nervy, volatile and an impatient, emotionally demanding perfectionist. But he was also highly intelligent, gifted, courageous and imaginative; to those who worked for him he was loyal, generous and charming, and instinctively empathetic to mood and character, striking perfect pitch when dealing face-to-face with men of every race and rank, from an illiterate légionnaire to a Moroccan prince.
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 48