Lyautey was quartered at first in the Menebhi palace, the former Maghzan war minister’s mansion in the Talaa Seghira, one of the two main arteries of the medina; as his horse clattered down its narrow, cobbled slope he heard doors being slammed with a curse. From the Menebhi roof he had a clear view of Legion companies being surrounded by tribesmen on the hilltop above the Merenid tombs to the north and making an orderly withdrawal in square. Bringing them back into the city would give the guns an unencumbered field of fire, but that was Moinier’s business and Lyautey did not interfere with his immediate military decisions. Given his nature, it seems likely that Lyautey composed himself as serenely as possible for the evening’s banquet, which promised to be a testing performance in front of a difficult audience. As the westering sun turned the teeth of the Djebel Zalagh pink, flocks of swifts wheeled above the city roofscape hunting rising insects, and occasionally a lanner falcon made a fast, low run to hunt them in their turn; there was an analogy there somewhere. The glittering formal dinner at the embassy was a surreal experience, with all parties keeping up the appearance of dignified confidence to a background of intermittent shots – some of them close by – and once the crash of a 75mm gun.9
On 25 May the rebels attacked, and the garrison suffered more than 120 casualties. In the space of 48 hours, several thousand tribesmen managed to enter the eastern walls; there was some ugly street fighting before the artillery and a flanking attack by Major Mazilier from Dar Debibagh drove them out on the 26th. Meanwhile, there was also heavy pressure on the Bab el Guissa gate in the north; Lieutenant Chardonnet lost 17 killed and 25 wounded while holding its roof and neighbouring houses with two platoons of turcos, under heavy fire not only from the Merenid tombs facing him but from riflemen inside the mosque behind him to the left. When the situation became critical, Sergeant Bernier’s Legion squad were sent in; they promptly cleared the rebels out of the mosque, and installed a machine gun on its minaret to rake the cave-mouths opposite.
There was a lull outside the city for the next two days, but inside Lyautey was ceaselessly busy trying to undo the damage done by Moinier’s heavy-handed reprisals. He sought out the Islamic scholars of the ulama, the wealthy leaders of the Fassi merchants and the sharifian aristocrats, all of whom Moinier had ignored. They deeply resented the unfocused fines and harsh requisitions of labour, and until the route to the Atlantic coast could be reopened the city’s commerce was being strangled. The city fathers had become accustomed to offensively brusque French demands rather than elegant Arabic politesse, and Lyautey was in his element. He listened to grievances, negotiated, reassured, and usually ruled in their favour, beginning the patient work of turning men who were at best hostile neutrals into at least grudging allies.
These poker-games of verbal and body language over the fragrant tea-glasses were played out against a constant background mutter of gunfire, as grubbier hands than Lyautey’s held the ring. Another incursion by tribesmen in the Tamdert district was repulsed on the night of 27/28 May. The next afternoon there was a concerted attack all around the northern and eastern defences, from Kasbah Cherarda right round to Bab Ftouh. At Bab el Guissa, the légionnaires’ machine gun in the minaret piled up enemy dead in front of the gate; some Berbers penetrated deep inside Fes el Bali via the river, and reached the Moulay Idriss zaouia only a hundred yards from the Kairaouine mosque, but they were contained and killed. Altogether the attackers left about 1,000 bodies on the field that day, but for a while the issue was in such doubt that Lyautey moved his staff from the Dar Menebhi to the Auvert hospital in case a last stand around the sickrooms became necessary, and he had cans of petrol placed beside the gathered paperwork. Colonel Gouraud cleared the immediate vicinity of the city on 29 May, and on the 31st reinforcements from Meknes and Sefrou (including I/1st RE) raised the garrison to about 7,000 troops.
El Hajjami had pulled his tribesmen about 7 miles back to El Hadjerat el Kohila north-east of the Djebel Zalagh, and on the night of 1/2 June the garrison went on the offensive. Under cover of darkness Gouraud assembled five battalions of Skirmishers and légionnaires (I/1er and VI/2nd RE), two squadrons and twelve guns outside the Bab Sidi Bujida gate, and moved off at 5am on the 2nd. He towed his guns on to a ridge, shelled the mass of tribesmen, then sent his infantry forward. El Hajjami’s host broke up and fled, abandoning their camp, and by that night Henri Gouraud was a brigadier-general. On 3 June the notional Sharifian Army was disbanded.10
FROM THE SEMI-SECURE HUB of Fes and Meknes, Lyautey faced the task of pacifying the more accessible regions of a country that had fallen into a state of semi-anarchy, but the immediate problem was to secure the countryside around those two cities and the Fes – Rabat corridor. As soon as the siege of Fes was lifted he entrusted this task to General Gouraud, who had demonstrated a talent for both military and political action.11
Three battalions and two mounted companies of the Legion were among Gouraud’s most valuable assets in 1912 – 13, taking part in many fighting columns and estabishing route security in all directions from the capital. During the first year of the Protectorate, the I/1st RE initially fought around Sefrou, holding the gateway between the Middle Atlas and the plains. This unit was later based at Souk el Arba de Tissa (modern Tissa – see Map 18), 28 miles north-east of Fes and half way to the Rif highlands, covering the hill country between the Oued Sebou and the Oued Innaouen as part of Lieutenant-Colonel Vandenberg’s marching regiment. In early 1913 the battalion was transferred back to Algeria, serving thereafter on the Moulouya front with a marching regiment of Colonel Bavouzet’s 1st Foreign.
Captain Rollet’s 3rd (Mounted) Company/2nd RE remained in the west; over two years they would see action in seventeen combats, particularly along the Rabat corridor, and would twice be cited in army corps orders. In July 1913, a veteran who had served with the company two years previously volunteered to return to it, and would soon be cited by Rollet for the Military Medal. The tall, bony-faced Corporal Mader was a 33-year-old Württemberger who had deserted an Imperial German pioneer unit after striking back at a brutal NCO, and had joined the 2nd Foreign in December 1899. A mason by trade, he brought his skills to work on forts in the Sud-Oranais; he re-enlisted in 1904 and 1909, and served with the then-22nd (Mounted)/2nd RE on the Chaouia in 1910 – 11. (By 1918, Max Mader would become one of the most famous NCOs ever to serve in the Legion.)12 During the summer and autumn of 1912, Major Forey’s VI/2nd RE were with General Dalbiez’s 3,000-strong column that fought the Beni Mtir, Northern Ait Segrushin and other Berbers in the Fes – Meknes – Sefrou triangle and on the fringes of the Middle Atlas.
Major Giralt’s I/2nd RE were among Gouraud’s 4,000 men based around Tissa during operations against the Hayana, Cherarga, Fichtala and other northern tribes that lasted until February 1913, by which time most had come in to submit; at the end of that month a permanent post was established at Tissa.13 One skirmish in the Innaouen valley on 17 June 1912, trivial in itself, was felt to exemplify the best sort of aggressive Legion initiative. Sent out to collect water, Sergeant Leroy’s thirty-man squad from Captain Nicolas’ 2nd Company, I/2nd RE rescued a platoon of turcos from 4th RTA who were hard-pressed by tribal horsemen. This involved Leroy leading a dozen of his men in an attack across hundreds of yards of ground, and finally recovering the Tunisians’ dead; when he brought all his men back to camp unhurt (and with the water) he was congratulated by General Gouraud himself.14 The ‘Admirable Conduct of an NCO of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Foreign’ was written up in a monthly booklet, La Légion Étrangère, which had first appeared in April 1912, and the fact that such an everyday if creditable incident was reported more widely than the battalion may be significant. The corps was clearly making an effort to promote its reputation and to counter the hostile German propaganda of those years. (A small but telling detail is that in listing the names of Leroy’s men Major Giralt prefixes their names with the style ‘Légionnaire’ rather than the official term ‘Soldat’ – Private – which is found in reports
of the Zousfana campaign ten years previously.)15
There were two other significant publications in 1912 – 13. One was a 128-page paperback book entitled The Mysteries of the Foreign Legion by Georges d’Esparbes which, though undated, seems from internal evidence to have appeared in 1912. Written after a visit to Sidi bel Abbès during which the author was clearly given considerable access, it is intended to educate civilians about the history and nature of the Legion, and is written in a respectful, but by no means romantic tone. Like the monthly journal, it is illustrated both with photographs and with drawings by the well-known artist Maurice Mahut. For a wider public, the July 1913 issue of the mass-circulation French journal L’Illustration also contained a long photographic essay with many portraits and posed images of légionnaires, exteriors and interiors of the barracks at Sidi bel Abbès and Saida, and a few photos of troops in the field. The Legion was taking the propaganda war to the enemy nearly twenty years before General Rollet appointed himself the curator of its legend.
DURING 1913 – 14, the numerical importance of Legion units in western Morocco would become proportionately much less, as both the Africa Army and la Coloniale emptied themselves into this new war.16 Lyautey’s total forces in Morocco at the end of 1912 numbered about 57,000: of these, 45,000, including 26 infantry battalions, were on the western front (which also had the bulk of the cavalry, artillery and goumiers), and 12,000, including 11 battalions, in the east. The total would rise to about 62,000 by mid-1913 and nearly 70,000 a year later, but less than half of these troops were Europeans. Of these, two battalions in the west and three in the east were Legion units (plus two mounted companies in each zone).17
The other white infantry rotated through Morocco during these campaigns were all five of the Bats d’Af; nine Zouave battalions; and six battalions of the Coloniale blanche drawn from the 3rd, 13th and 26th RIC. However, following the 1905 reduction of French Metropolitan military service to two years, the period 1911 – 14 saw a major expansion of France’s Arab and African forces, both to meet the demands of Morocco and in anticipation of a war with Germany. In 1912 an element of conscription for the Algerian Skirmishers was introduced for the first time, and in 1913 each of the four RTAs maintained a three-battalion marching regiment in Morocco. By early 1914 there were also sixteen independent companies of Moroccan Skirmishers totalling some 3,000 men, and sixteen company-sized goums of irregulars contributed nearly the same number. Most strikingly, a rapid expansion of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais – by conscription from 1912 – would see some 10,000 West Africans in thirteen battalions deployed to Morocco by mid-1914.18
TO RETURN FROM THE LEGION to a wider view of events from summer 1912: politically, Lyautey now had to embrace the ‘Maghzan policy’ that he had derided when he was a relatively free agent at Ain Sefra and Oran. Clearly, if the French Protectorate was to be convincing it had to have a sultan to protect, and since that sultan could not be the hated and discredited Moulay Abd el Hafid, his abdication and replacement had to be negotiated swiftly. In Rabat – where Lyautey soon moved his headquarters – Moulay Hafid dragged out the tortuous bargaining over the terms of his gilded exile, extracting a truly princely settlement by the time he finally embarked on 12 August 1912. Lyautey stage-managed his replacement by yet another brother, the 31-year-old Moulay Abd el Youssef, who had proved quietly helpful to the French as Khalifa of Fes that June.19 This succession was not unchallenged, however; while Lyautey had been orchestrating affairs in Fes and Rabat, a genuine strategic threat had emerged from the passes of the High Atlas in the south, following the Islamic banners of Moulay Ahmad el Hiba, a stern blue-veiled chieftain from the desert.
Since late May 1912, El Hiba had been attracting a large following among the tribes of the Sous region, south-west of the Atlas, by a message of uncompromising Islamic renewal. Moulay Hafid’s degradation of Madani el Glaoui had set the tribal billiard balls rolling and cannoning all over the south. With El Glaoui’s grip weakened, the competing ‘lords of the Atlas’ were no longer reliable guardians of the high mountain passes, and Madani’s old rival Abd el Malek el Mtouggi gambled on allowing El Hiba’s host to cross northwards by his Tizi n’Test route. On 15 August El Hiba entered the southern capital of Marrakesh, and two days later he was proclaimed sultan. This claimant was not simply a harem-born puppet or a tribal warlord motivated by personal greed; El Hiba potentially commanded enough support for a country-wide Islamic revolution and a change of dynasty. The pressure on Lyautey to react was aggravated by the fact that, on 23 August, El Hiba forced Hajj Tahami el Glaoui to hand over to him half a dozen French hostages whom he had been sheltering in his house in Marrakesh.20
Lyautey entrusted 5,000 men (none from the Legion) to a barrel-chested, pike-jawed colonel of Colonial Infantry named Charles Mangin, a merciless veteran of Senegal and the Fashoda expedition who was already well known as the leading enthusiast for West African Skirmishers.21 Mangin achieved results quickly; on 6 September he smashed El Hiba’s 10,000-strong host at Sidi Bou Othman some 20 miles north of Marrakesh, and the sheikh had to flee into the southern desert. When Major Henri Simon reached the city, Tahami el Glaoui stole the credit for saving the hostages; and on 1 October, when Lyautey arrived in person (by motorcar) for discussions with the Glaoua, El Mtouggi and El Goundafi, these were smoothly orchestrated by Madani el Glaoui ‘the Literate’. His brother Tahami was reappointed Pasha of Marrakesh, but for the time being Lyautey needed all three of the grands caids as allies to secure his southern flank, so he did not obviously favour one family over the others. As soon as he departed the Glaoua set about the congenial task of revenging themselves on those who had replaced them during their eighteen months of weakness.22
WHILE WESTERN MOROCCO was the natural focus of French attention in the first half of 1912, General Alix had been laying some foundations for future operations in the east. Troops based on the upper Oued Guir around Boudenib had been reconnoitring and improving tracks towards the upper Oued Moulouya, and making contact with tribes around Kasbah el Maghzan (modern Missour) on a route down the eastern edge of the Middle Atlas that had been explored by Père de Foucauld (see Map 11).
Further north, the Beni Ouarain, who had been quiet since General Toutée’s operations in 1911, now contested French freedom of movement between Debdou and Merada, a ford on the middle Oued Moulouya. To contain them, General Alix sent 2,300 troops radiating out in columns; there were serious clashes in March and April; and when news of the ‘second siege’ of Fes reached the tribes of the Moulouya a large war party was reported to be gathering at Msoun, half way between Taza and Alix’s advance post at Merada. Alix concentrated nearly 9,000 men under the former Legion officer General Girardot at Fritissa, just south of Guercif, and after several provocative Beni Ouarain probes and a series of skirmishes around Merada on 14 May, Alix was authorized to put troops across the Moulouya. Girardot led the crossing on 24 May, established a camp at Guercif and pushed westwards another 12 miles to Safsafte (see Map 18). On the 26th he beat a Moroccan force at Teniet el Hajj, and local chiefs came in to submit. Most of Alix’s troops were back at Merada by 5 July, leaving a new post at Guercif and mobile elements divided between there and Taourirt. From Guercif patrols would reach as far west as Msoun, only 25 miles short of Taza itself. During this campaign a mounted company of 1st Foreign were praised for their endurance; of 225 men only 29 dropped out sick, compared to 129 from the 548 men of a 1st RE foot battalion.23
Apart from minor incidents, a relative peace then descended on the eastern front, which lasted for some months. In October 1912, Major Prudhomme led a force including half of 24th (Mounted)/1st RE for a couple of weeks’ work on the Boudenib – Beni Ounif track; as a first distant warning to the mule-company légionnaires of things to come, their task was to make the route accessible to motor vehicles. The following month Generals Alix and Girardot made a tour by motorcar from Oujda via Ain Chair to Boudenib – a journey of some 300 miles.24
AN EVEN MORE ADVANCED piec
e of equipment demonstrated its worth on the Atlantic coast in December 1912. In October, Lyautey had left Colonel Charles Mangin in command at Marrakesh – essentially an island of French influence in a Berber sea – but with instructions not to commit French troops nearly that far south, and to concentrate on pacifying the tribes north and west of the Oum er Rebia river. The mountains to the south were to be left to the three ‘lords of the Atlas’; although vying for advantage, all were ostensibly allied to the Maghzan, and Lyautey had neither the men nor the inclination to involve French troops.25 However, in December he did have to intervene on the Atlantic coast due west of Marrakesh. Inland from Mogador (modern Essaouria) a Major Massoutier was besieged in the fort of Dar el Kadi, where his situation was reconnoitred by a Vietnamese-born Legion officer named Lieutenant Do Huu Vi, making a daring flight in a Bleriot XI monoplane.26
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 57