The close of major operations on the Chaouia in scenes of dignified surrender perhaps allows a digression on the nature of tribal warfare in Morocco, with its apparently puzzling shifts of fortune. Despite the obviously important part played by the French artillery, it is simply not enough to write the victory down as purely tactical and won by shrapnel shells alone. This was a confrontation between two utterly different perceptions of warfare.
TRYING TO UNDERSTAND the exercise of tribal military potential by seeking European parallels is pointless. The centrally organized Western system can be represented in terms of a fixed geometry, but the power structures of an Arab or Berber tribe were various and shifting. In the context of putting fighting men into the field, it is perhaps useful to return to the earlier analogy of the tribes as trees: the caid or sheikh had to find trees from which, at a moment of ripeness, he could pick warriors like fruit.
Tribal disunity was central to the failure to resist colonial powers effectively, and some white commentators spoke of this factor in the condescending terms used of quarrelsome children; yet such condescension is quite out of place. Disunity – the process of competition between groups – is simply the defining characteristic of tribal as opposed to national societies. (In Morocco, however, there was a counterbalance to the threat of completely self-destructive chaos, since complex patterns of alliance – the liff – seem usually to have achieved a rough-and-ready numerical equivalence at many levels, and French intelligence officers always had to take this liff factor into consideration.) Persuading local tribes to submit to the French in succession lay at the heart of what would become known as the ‘Lyautey method’; it greatly reduced the need to employ shrapnel shells, and it accorded with local realities.
The most obvious difference between tribal and European societies was that, in the former, the functioning of the group still depended upon personal relationships of kinship or sworn loyalty, while Western societies had long ago cut down their tribal ‘trees’ and shaped the timber into a series of ‘boxes’ – institutions, which continued to function regardless of individual personalities. Within the pyramids of boxes making up a European field force, individual qualities and relationships still contributed to the strength or weakness of any particular box, but its very existence did not depend upon them. That was not the case among the tribes. One simple reason why Western armies always defeated, eventually, pre-modern tribes – a reason as important as better weapons and greater resources – was the sheer continuity of the white man’s fighting force. When he needed troops, the white commander simply had to open a ‘box of soldiers’ and take out what he needed. Kill the white major and half his battalion, and (given an embarassed home government and a shrill press) they could be replaced by the next troopship. Kill the clan chief and his strongest son, and that segment of the tribe would lose its dominance and cohesion; the surviving fragments would be forced to look elsewhere for a focus of power, and would be absorbed by a neighbouring group.
When a Moroccan clan that had chosen to fight another was forced to recognize that it was outmatched, then, after fighting long enough to preserve its honour, it sought the peace settlement called aman. This was often mediated by some figure of religious prestige, and it did not demean the losing side in their own or others’ eyes – the turn of events was simply the will of God. Defeat had already cost them lives and animals; in the moment of victory the winners naturally murdered and looted – that was the point, and how else was anyone to keep score? Now, buying peace would cost them an additional more or less heavy price in goods, and sometimes in territorial rights. But after the agreed penance had been paid, the terms were understood by all concerned to be perishable; they had something like the qualified stability of a European feudal liege/vassal relationship, which might survive through several generations or only for a few years. The fundamental sense of the settlement was ‘I will keep faith with you for as long as you are the strongest in this region’.
The French, too, learned to move to this rhythm; they were as harsh as was necessary until an opponent sued for peace, but by the early twentieth century the cost of returning to the fold, even after submission and a subsequent rebellion, was not set cripplingly high – the French Army in Morocco were not the colons of Algeria. Throughout the Moroccan campaigns defeated clans routinely enlisted in French service to fight under their own caids as irregular auxiliaries – so-called ‘partisans’ or ‘supplétifs’ – thus preserving their all-important looting rights. Many did so within what must seem to us to be a surprisingly short time after the often bloody events of their own defeat. But in their world, straightforward defeat in war, with its inevitable passages of horror for individuals, did not always breed collective long-term resentment. To see submitted and unsubmitted tribes in comic-strip terms of ‘treacherous collaborators’ and ‘the heroic resistance’ is wildly anachronistic; each tribe simply adapted to a new reality, as it always had done. As early as November 1908, General d’Amade was able to recruit on annual contracts six mostly mounted goums mixtes de la Chaouia each 200 strong, led by their own chiefs under French intelligence officers. These became permanent units, and were expanded; by May 1911 they would be giving such good service under the leadership of Major Henri Simon that Colonel Pein called them ‘the marvel and revelation of this campaign’.17
THE MAJOR EVENT IN THE WEST in the summer of 1908 was the final collapse of Abd el Aziz’s sultanate. Moulay Hafid had been gathering support for months, and in January the all-important ulama of Fes, the country’s religious capital, had given him their provisional endorsement. Their conditions were that he must repudiate the Act of Algeciras, drive European troops from Islamic soil, and end the privileges granted to foreigners. Neither the incumbent nor the claimant sultan had the means to pay troops or wage serious war on one another; they sparred in a desultory way during the first half of 1908, but ‘an intense desire never to come to decisive action seems to have been the common aim of both parties’. While they continued to avoid one another, in June Moulay Hafid entered Fes.
In August, the French advised and assisted Abd el Aziz to march from the coast not on Fes, but south towards Moulay Hafid’s power-base at Marrakesh. When they were almost there, a minor and fortuitous clash led to the spontaneous collapse of the royal army, which fled after pillaging its own camp. Abd el Aziz returned precipitately to Casablanca, and within days he had formally abdicated in favour of Moulay Hafid; thereafter he would retire, with genuine relief, to private life in the refuge of the international city of Tangier. Before the end of August, Moulay Abd el Hafid was formally proclaimed sultan by the ulama in Fes. There, having built his support on a promise to expel the French, he, too, would soon find himself forced to negotiate with them as the only possible source of funding for his Maghzan.18
IN AUGUST 1908, the VI/1st RE were withdrawn to Algeria, soon followed by IV/2nd RE, leaving Major Forey’s I/2nd RE the only Legion unit in Western Morocco.19 Rankin (no indulgent judge) reckoned the Legion to be the best fighting men in the Chaouia – first rate on operations, if hard to handle in peacetime. He reported that when General Drude was slow to grant them the double pay customary in colonial theatres, they had pointedly sent him a tortoise painted in tricolour with the words ‘Solde Coloniale’; General d’Amade duly granted them the colonial rate of 10 centimes daily (though this was still only one-eightieth of what Rankin paid his Moroccan cook).20 The English ex-colonel saw all three types of French infantry in action during the campaign, but passed over the Zouaves in a perhaps eloquent silence. He reported the Algerian Skirmishers to be excellent marchers, cheerful, willing and brave, though a little inclined to overexcitement and wild shooting. The légionnaires impressed him by their endurance, swagger, marksmanship and economy of ammunition, and he paid particular tribute to their coolness in battle:At the second taking of Settat I saw a legionary hit in the hand as he was in the act of firing. He asked a comrade to bind it up, and then went on shooting. Five minutes later he was
hit in the other hand, rather badly, and again begged his friend to bind him up, remarking that if the Moors fancied they’d stopped his work for the day they were [ . . . ] mistaken . . . Finer fighting troops it would be impossible to find in any army.21
Generally the légionnaires of 1908 seem to have attracted better opinions than their public reputation at this time might suggest, and among those they impressed was General Lyautey.
IN LYAUTEY’S EASTERN FIEF on the Algerian border, Legion units had been active since November 1907. After the French occupied Oujda the previous March, the Beni Snassen tribe had begun venturing out of their forested hills astride the northern frontier line to raid around coastal villages inside Algeria, but Lyautey and Governor-General Jonnart had at first argued in vain for the War Ministry to authorize a major operation. Lyautey judged that a serious outbreak would follow when the harvest was in, and had long been preparing the way with political contacts and road-building. When the Beni Snassen became bolder that winter, and a patrol clash on 7 November escalated, General Picquart let him off the leash.22
The Djebel Beni Snassen massif, rising some 4,500 feet, stretched east to west for about 50 miles behind the Mediterranean coast, from the Oued Kiss in Algeria to the Oued Moulouya in Morocco; it was flanked on the north by the Trifa plain and on the south by the Angad (see Map 11). Cloaked in oak forest and juniper scrub, this Tyrolean landscape had been a safe refuge for the Arabic-speaking Berber tribe of the same name since 1859, and taming it would involve mountain fighting – a fundamentally different prospect from brigade-sized sweeps across the Chaouia. However, Lyautey’s intelligence officers had already more or less neutralized the clans in the western half of the range; his plan was to encircle the hostile eastern tribesmen in order to cut them off from markets and supply routes, then strike into their territory from both north and south.
On 24 November 1907, following a resisted French attack on a village, a Skirmisher company and a cavalry squadron were attacked by about 2,000 warriors on the west bank of the Oued Kiss and were forced to make a fighting retreat across the river. When this was trumpeted through the hills as a great victory it brought more tribesmen out, and on the 27th a larger harka crossed into Algeria and inflicted some losses on troops holding the village of Ba el Assa. By now overconfident, the Beni Snassen divided into two large war parties. On 29 November, one hit the little Mediterranean coastal village of Port Say at the mouth of the Kiss, which was held by Zouaves under the comforting guns of a destroyer anchored off shore, and the tribesmen made little progress. The other force, about 4,000 strong, attacked a post at Menasseb further upriver, held by troops including the 11th (Mounted)/1st RE. The company took casualties, but the Berbers were brought under shellfire as they advanced along a gulley, and left some 300 dead on the field after pushing on with blind courage. This was the high point of Beni Snassen aggression, and the sight of tribesmen going along their line methodically picking up empty brass confirmed the effectiveness of the cordon that was denying them ammunition from Oujda market. The next day a strong French force crossed to the west bank of the Kiss, and the warriors fell back into the hills.23
Now Lyautey turned to the offensive; in the first week of December he sent a column about 2,500 strong under Colonel Branlière (including III/1st RE) from Martimprey into the northern Trifa plain. The following week a second of similar strength under Colonel Felineau (including I/ and half of V/1st RE, with the regiment’s mounted company) advanced along the Angad plain south of the mountains; they had their only real fight when advancing up the southern slopes to Ain Sfa on 13 December.24 Having achieved his flanking marches, Lyautey broke his two brigades into smaller columns and sent them up into the mountains, Felineau providing the assault units and Branlière the stop-line. By the time the two met at the head of the Taforalt pass on Christmas Day, cutting the Djebel Beni Snassen in two, the caids had already been coming in to Oujda and Martimprey to seek the aman since 17 December. (Their fines were set in goats, sheep and guns; the French always tried to confiscate the more modern rifles, but the tribes habitually kept numbers of their oldest muskets for just this purpose.) Lyautey’s rapid victory over a tribe of some 30,000 Berbers made a sharp public contrast with General Drude’s inactivity on the Chaouia at that time, and did the former’s reputation no harm. It had also brought him to his long-time objective in the north-east – the east bank of the Oued Moulouya .25
Lyautey expressed his triumph in a long letter to his friend Vogüé on 1 January 1908; some niggling details may have been adjusted for narrative drama, but the essentials stand up. He called the campaign ‘a mathematician’s joy . . . this time I have been left royally in peace, and from the very beginning I have not been bothered by anyone or anything’:Yesterday [my troops] carried out for me the finest raking manoeuvre you could imagine. Four columns coming up from the south drove simultaneously into these hitherto inviolate gorges and cliffs, while Branlière’s column, from the north, blocked all the exits. This surprise movement was carried out by night, under conditions calling for incredible boldness . . .
At 4am I was at the mouth of a pass to greet the heads of the columns, driving all their captures [flocks] ahead of them . . . A company of the Legion were passing: ‘Bonjour, mes légionnaires’, I called; ‘Bonjour, mon général – tout va bien!’ came back from 200 throats with a single voice . . . With an instrument like that in my hand, I could go anywhere.26
ON THE SOUTH-EASTERN FRONTIER, the provisional proclamation of Moulay Hafid in January 1908 put heart into the resistance. Some Ziz valley tribesmen went north-west to fight on the Chaouia, and since most leaders in the Tafilalt were still hedging their bets in those days of three simultaneous ‘sultans’ (Abd el Aziz, Moulay Hafid and El Rogi) the focus of anti-French rhetoric also moved further north, to the edge of the High Atlas. There, a sharifian holy man had been preaching jihad since 1907, and was now in direct correspondence with Moulay Hafid. Moulay Ahmad Lahsin el Saba headed a zaouia at the remote oasis of Dairs Saba just east of the mountains (see Map 11). In February 1908, clans of Ait Izdig, Southern Ait Segrushin and Ait Aysha Berbers began gathering there to plan an attack on Colomb Béchar, and early in April between 3,000 and 4,000 warriors set out eastwards.27
The largest part of Lyautey’s division – about 4,000 men – were still tied down around Oujda, but in the south General Vigny of Ain Sefra Subdivision sent out three modest columns to search for this rumoured harka. These troops included four separate foot companies of the 2nd RE (the dispersal of their battalions arguing Vigny’s shortage of units), and two mounted companies of the 1st Foreign.28 On the evening of 15 April, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierron was camped at a small oasis named Menabha with a half-squadron of 2nd Spahis, a mountain gun section, a company each from Major Velly’s 2nd Algerian Skirmishers and the 2nd RE, and half of 24th (Mounted)/1st RE under Captain Maury.29 The Spahis and the 24th
(Mounted) had arrived first, and the légionnaires had built their usual knee-high walls before the rest of the column slogged in at about 5pm, delayed by the 800 baggage camels. The camp north of the palm-grove and waterhole was shaped in the usual square, perhaps 200 yards on a side, and the mule half-company were holding part of the east face. Two hills rose a couple of hundred yards outside the perimeter opposite the south-west and south-east corners; the latter, crowned with some old ruins, was the higher.
BY ABOUT 4.30AM ON 16 APRIL, Moulay Ahmad Lahsin’s Berbers, apparently without being spotted, had crept up on three sides of the camp in the darkness. They opened up a heavy fire; some slipped straight over the wall before the startled soldiers could react, and got among the tents to start slitting throats. At the same time the little four-man outposts on the two southern hills were overrun, and Berber riflemen began shooting down into the camp from these heights. Sergeant Lefèvre of the 24th (Mounted), by then lying half-dressed behind the east murette with his légionnaires, recalls a scene of disturbing confusion in the pre-dawn murk: bullets zipping through the white te
nts, mules braying and falling, and shots from the hilltop striking men of his squad. He also describes the extreme tension of obeying orders to keep looking to their own front while hearing behind them the unnerving sounds of a Berber charge hitting and pushing back the units holding another face of the camp. Then shadows came rushing at the east wall, and Lefèvre was too busy to think. Behind him a Berber rush got right inside the tent lines; desperate bayonet-fighting broke out, wounded were killed as they lay in the aid tent, and the 24th (Mounted) soon had to fall back to hold a makeshift redoubt of feed-sacks.
This was not going to be Morocco’s little Isandlwana, however, and there seem to have been two fundamental reasons why not: the camp was much more compact than that of the unlucky 24th Foot, and the Berbers were not Zulus – they wanted to loot as much as they wanted to kill. The camp, perhaps 200 yards across, was large enough to give the roughly 600 men pushed back from the perimeter enough depth behind them to fall back steadily and regroup, yet small enough that they could do so in close order without their attackers getting between the platoons and separating them into isolated knots. Once the defenders had retreated from part of the camp, the Berbers simply stopped attacking them and concentrated on pillaging – in quarrelsome competition – the part they had already captured; and this did not contain the two 80mm mountain guns.
Two little battles now developed simultaneously. The deadly south-eastern hill had to be retaken; Pierron ordered Captain Maury, with the 75 men of his 24th (Mounted) who were still fit, to break out from the east face – not then under heavy attack – and hook south to assault it. Halfway up they were stopped by the Berbers’ fire, and Private Profilet was left lying in the open. Captain Maury called for a volunteer, and he and Private Guy ran out and grabbed Profilet’s ankles, but both of them were then hit – the captain in the wrist and Guy full in the chest. Leaving the dead Profilet, Maury hauled Guy on to his back and carried him into cover (he died the next day). Then one of the mountain guns crashed into action and dropped a few shells on the summit, and Maury pushed his legionnaires upwards again; they drove the last tribesmen from the hilltop at about 5.30am in the first rays of sunrise, at the price of one-third of their number – Lieutenant Lacoste and 9 men killed, and another 17 wounded.
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 52