Abd el-Kader as military leader (1832-1847). The Emir Abd El-Kader (1808-1883), who in 1832 displaced Ottoman dominance and took power in western Algeria, proved to be the most formidable of those who took up arms to resist the French conquest of Algeria. The Emir’s project of establishing a Muslim state of Arab nationality clashed irreconcilably with the policy of the colonisers. After several years of confrontations, interspersed by two fruitless efforts to reach a compromise, an uncompromising conflict erupted in 1839 that lasted until 1847. The Emir was, first and foremost, a remarkable trainer of troops. Not discouraged, and yet lacking any external assistance, he managed to wage a war that became more and more hopeless. A master of partisan operations, he was able to formulate remarkable plans that possessed the hallmark of a true strategist. Remaining faithful to a generous and thoughtful reading of the Quran, the Emir was a dominant figure both on account of his humanity and his courage.
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The beginnings
2The Emir, who spent his youth in an environment hostile to Turkish rule, is contemporary with the period when, in response to European pressure, some Muslim leaders, including the Pasha of Egypt Mohammed Ali, try to reform their state. The collapse of the Ottoman authority and the beginning of what the Algerians called Doulet el Mehamla (anarchy), give him the opportunity to try an identical business. As early as November 1832, the tribes of the Mascara region proclaimed him Sultan, a position to which his father Mahieddine gave up in his favor.
"We have assumed this heavy burden," he proclaimed, hoping that we could be the means to unite the great community of Muslims, to extinguish their internal quarrels, to provide general security to all the inhabitants. from this country, to put an end to all the illegal acts perpetrated by the troublemakers against honest people, to repress and defeat the enemy who invades our homeland in the hope of passing us under his yoke. "
3The power of Abd el-Kader is not, initially, that of a swordman. He is at first a rather obscure marabout of the region of Mascara. The French hardly know him any more than his father Mahieddine. From the beginning he appears to have been tempted at least as much by study and mysticism as by politics and war. He nonetheless demonstrates qualities that allow him to fight victoriously against his Algerian rivals. On July 12, 1834, at the battle of Meharaz, near Tlemcen, his army crushes that of agha Douair, Mustapha ben Ismael, known as the most powerful in the region. The Douair were indeed, in Turkish times, a makhzen tribethat is to say, a permanent military force in the service of the Bey of Oran. The confrontation with the French, settled in Oran (1831), then in Mostaganem (1833), is now on the agenda.
4Early on, his eminent position was recognized by his opponents. The treaty Desmichels (February 1834), under the aegis of the general of the same name, then, after a period of rupture, the treaty of Tafna (May 1837), negotiated by Bugeaud, return to an official recognition of his power, in making it the interlocutor of the French. These provide him, by secret clauses, weapons and powder, which he knows how to take advantage to extend his power to all the provinces of the west and center. We understand that these treaties were often criticized, on the French side, as being too good for the Emir. Some will go so far as to write, quite excessively, that he has been " borne on the bulwark by the long series of our faults ".
5In reality, the French government, which does not think at the time of total conquest, seeks to spare Abd el-Kader, which he does not underestimate the strength. Not only this one is able to prohibit the communications of the French squares with the interior, and to cut them of any supply, but it is an adversary not to neglect on the field of battle. In June 1835, in particular, he inflicted on General Trézel's column a devastating defeat at Macta, about thirty kilometers west of Mostaganem; at the end of 1835 and the beginning of 1836, the expedition commanded by the governor, Marshal Clauzel, could not draw any success from the temporary occupation of Mascara and Tlemcen.
6We must, however, insist on the suspicious transactions that accompanied the negotiations. The complacency of Bugeaud is motivated by the attraction of advantages that have nothing to do with Algeria, since, in exchange for the concessions granted, he hopes to obtain from Abd el-Kader funds intended to promote his re-election. deputy of the Dordogne. One must also note the ambiguity of juxtaposing, for each treaty, a French version and an Arabic version, the content of which is not identical, and none of which is authoritative. In the Arabic version of the Tafna treaty, for example, Abd el-Kader does not recognize the sovereignty of France, contrary to what is inscribed in the French version; moreover, this same Arabic version gives it a much larger territory than does the French version.
A Muslim political project
7In their opposition to the conquest of their country, the populations rely on the old ideology of Jihad , a term which designates what must be par excellence the " effort " (literal meaning of Jihad ) of the believer, which is to fight to defend the Muslim territory ( Dar el-Islam). The enemy is defined primarily as a Christian. This name does not only concern denominational membership. It stigmatizes a radically foreign culture, to which it seems impossible to submit without risk to beliefs, traditions, local institutions. Thus, religious legitimacy is fundamental for all those who seek to unite the inhabitants of the regency under a regime capable of ensuring their independence. It is therefore with reference to the duty of holy war that Abd el-Kader organizes his state on the ruins of the Turkish organization in western and central Algeria. He has two fetwa (consultations) distributed to Oulema (doctors) of Fez in 1837, then in 1840, who insist on the duty of solidarity of the Muslims.
8It is even a religious revival that Abd el-Kader, deeply religious and even mystical, bases its entire attempt. The Algerians were not mistaken. At the end of the XIX th century, the period of the government of the emir, between 1834 and 1843, was designated by them as the period of " government Chorfa " (literally descendants of the Prophet), which had ended that they called, as we have seen, " the time of anarchy ." It is in the name of religion that the emir demands obedience and taxation, committing himself to rule " the law in the hand ". He renders a quick and expeditious justice, often very harsh. His action is marked by a certain puritanism. He outlaws luxury for men (advising them to consume the surplus of their resources to buy arms and horses for the holy war), prohibits gambling and wine, and even the use of tobacco. He admits that the Muslim religion does not totally forbid the latter, but believes that this habit is too expensive for the poor, going so far as to deprive them of the necessary.
9Rigorism goes hand in hand with the adoption, at least in terms of technology, of a number of modern innovations, particularly in the military field. The emir has indeed witnessed real qualities of organizer and head of state, creating from scratch an administration, justice, finances. One can dream of the impulse that, like Mohammed Ali in Egypt (whose work he was able to appreciate during a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1826-1829), he could have given a pacified Algeria . The isolation of Algeria, the short time that left him the war, does not however allow him to carry out a work of reforms comparable to those of the pashas of Egypt, the Ottoman sultans, even beys of Tunis. Clothed with the title of Sultan, who designates in the Arab world the holder of the temporal power, he personally commands his army in combat at the same time as he directs the administration of his nascent state, divided into eight khalifaliks, placed under the command of khalifas or lieutenants. Two of them, Ben Allal Ould Sidi Embarek, khalifa of Miliana, and Mustapha Ben Thami, khalifa of Mascara, will testify real military talents.
10After the collapse of the Turks, the resistance to the French was led mainly by tribal warriors, formidable fighters, but rarely capable of a joint and sustained effort against the invader. Abd el-Kader, in order to support the war in better conditions than to strengthen his authority, seeks to acquire regular forces. His paid troops, framed by a corps of officers and NCOs, eventually reach the strength of 8,000 infantry, organized into battalions, 2,000 horsemen and 240 gunners. They receive a modern instruction, given by instructors from the regular armies of Tunisia, Tripolitania, or deserters of the French army, " native or foreign "Will later say the emir prisoner, to avoid probably to offend his interlocutors insinuating that the French could have deserted, which seems to have been the case. These soldiers are equipped with European equipment, bought in France, especially on the occasion of the truce which occurred between 1837 and 1839, or in Morocco, and in this case of origin especially English. The powder is made on site. The emir even has a gun factory and another one of rifles, which, it is true, do not last long. But these very devoted troops, effective in imposing their power on the warriors of recalcitrant tribes, are neither numerous nor experienced enough to confront the French, whose numbers are ten times higher.
The war
11The 1839 clash appears to have been accepted by both parties as the only way to resolve an insoluble conflict. In fact, the Emir refuses, in the name of his religion, to accept subjection to a Christian state, while for his part, the government claims sovereignty over the whole of Algeria. But it was Abd el-Kader who, in November 1839, took the initiative of hostilities. The crossing by a French detachment of the parade of the Iron Gates, near Bordj Bou Arréridj, in an area which he considers, not without reason, to have been attributed to him by the Treaty of Tafna, appears to him as a provocation. He also believes that a longer wait would strengthen the French camp more than his own. He will tell General Daumas later: "It would have taken me, not three or four years, but a hundred years, to be at the height of the French army . "
12It should be added that the diplomatic circumstances seem favorable. Abd el-Kader can not ignore the deterioration of Franco-British relations in the Levant: the British fight Mohammed Ali's ambitions against the Ottoman Empire, while the French sympathize with the Pasha of Egypt. In 1840, a real crisis opposes London and Paris, and threatens to trigger a European war, which would probably require France to withdraw its troops from Africa. This hope is however disappointed. The entente cordiale established by the Prime Minister of King Louis-Philippe, François Guizot, from 1841, allows the French to maintain in Africa a numerous expeditionary force, thanks to the neutrality of the English fleet and the European peace. In February of the same year, Bugeaud replaces Valée in the general government,
13Initially, the overall strategy used by Abd el-Kader is to have installed most of its resources on the most remote line of the Tell, in Sebdou, Saïda, Tagdempt, Taza, Boghar and Biskra, bordering High Plains. He would have even thought of destroying the cities of the central line, Medea, Miliana, Mascara, and Tlemcen, to prevent the French from maintaining themselves there. He hopes to force them to refuel from the coast, at the cost of excessive effort. But the cities fall one after the other: Medea May 17, 1840, Miliana June 9, Boghar May 23, 1841, Taza and Tagdempt May 25. Moreover, the emir is very quickly forced to renounce to prohibit his territory to the enemy columns, his last attempt in this direction having been to seek to prohibit, on May 12, 1840, the neck of Mouzaïa, point of passage then forced between Blida and Medea, at the column of Marshal Valea. The failure of this day, in which all the positions occupied and fortified by his own were successively conquered by the French, persuades him of the uselessness of such combats.
14He now prefers to look exhausted the opponent in a guerrilla endless.
"We will fight when we deem it fit, you know that we are not cowards," he wrote to Bugeaud in June 1841. And he adds: "To oppose all the forces you walk behind you, it would be madness. but we will tire them, we will harass them, we will destroy them in detail; the climate will do the rest. (...) Do you see the wave rise when the bird touches it with its wing? It is the image of your passage in Africa. "
15These words aroused the admiration of the faithful Bugeaud, the future Marshal Saint-Arnaud, who notes in his correspondence: " What reason, what just and noble sentiments! ". This is the moment when Abd el-Kader, renouncing any permanent establishment, considered too vulnerable, gives himself a traveling capital. This is the famous smala, which includes tens of thousands of people.
16Two years then go into undecided fights, marches and counter-marches trying for the fighters. If they repeatedly defeat the quotas that are opposed to them, it is only from the spring of 1843 that the French can boast great success. A column commanded by the Duke of Aumale succeeds, almost by chance, in seizing the emir's smala (May 1843), in the absence of it. This is not the only setback suffered by his family. On November 11, 1843, Miliana's khalifa, Ben Allal, was killed in action. There is not much left of regular infantry battalions. More seriously still, Morocco, where Abd el-Kader found refuge with his most devoted followers, must, after the defeat of Isly and the bombardment of Tangier and Mogador (August 1844),
17These heavy setback, however, did not bring the man to give up. His forces, reduced to a thousand horsemen, remain sufficient to enable him to conduct new raids against the territories occupied by the French. It also allows him to impose himself to the people. It would be nothing, indeed, without the support of the tribes, who provide him with reinforcements, food, and shelter in case of withdrawal. " We do not know what to resist him, and besides, with his fifteen hundred horsemen, he is stronger than several tribes united Says Bugeaud. The Moroccan government is reluctant to act against a man who appears to be an advocate for Muslims. The situation in Algeria, where in 1845, the insurrection in which Shérif Bou Maza stood out, persuaded Abd el-Kader that the French positions are far from assured. His campaign late 1845-early 1846, while the French estimated to have turned back definitively in Morocco, will, according to a French officer, Captain Cler, " the admiration of all soldiers who have some idea of the war " .
18This campaign began to emir a success won on the head of the garrison of Nemours, Lieutenant-Colonel Montagnac. The latter, who imprudently advanced with his small column, hoping to capture Abd el-Kader, perished with 300 of his men, the last fighters being killed near the marabout of Sidi Brahim (September 25). Then, operating on a ring road west-east, south of the Tell, Moroccan borders south of Boghar, he manages to bring trouble, by daring points, in the enemy device, going as far as to mine a moment to go to Algiers. His dazzling marches force his opponents to set in motion, to try to overcome, a set of eighteen columns. It is only at the beginning of the summer that he returns to Morocco. We must also ask ourselves if this decline is not the consequence of the arrival of the harvest season, which leads people to devote themselves to the work of the fields, rather than continuing to fight the French troops. Exhausted themselves, they never managed to seriously hook their opponent.
19The causes of the final defeat are well known. Abd el-Kader had thought that his fierce opposition could provoke the discouragement of the French, exhausted by a war that was always renewed. He probably underestimated the determination of the government of Louis-Philippe to make a conquest whose interest in France appeared little more at the time than it seems to the historian of today. This government, in order to carry out its ambition, did not hesitate to maintain, for seven years, a numerous expeditionary force (increased to more than 100,000 men in 1846) and to leave all freedom of action to its generals. They do not care about losses. The only campaign of 1845-1846 saw the deaths of nearly 8,000 men, most of them victims of diseases aggravated by fatigue. In the long run, the methods of war employed by Bugeaud, and in particular the systematic practice of raids, have defeated the combativeness of the Algerian populations, deprived of a large part of their resources by the destruction of their crops and the removal of their herds. The government of the Sultan of Morocco, worried about the growing influence of Abd el-Kader on his subjects in the eastern province, made the final blow in deciding to annihilate his small army, which determines his surrender (December 23, 1847) .
Conclusion
20Marshal Bugeaud, considered the best French soldier of his time, did not hesitate to speak of the " genius From Abd el-Kader. Even if we share the interest of the victor in praising the vanquished (to be defeated without danger ...), we must recognize the price of this tribute of the old soldier of the Empire to his young opponent (Bugeaud is 57 years old in 1841, Abd el-Kader is only 33 years old). The emir was first revealed as a remarkable coach of men, able to lead for fifteen years, without being discouraged, in the absence of any support, a war more and more desperate. He managed to prolong the final phase of his conflict with the French for eight years (1839-1847), when it was enough for them to take Constantine (October 13, 1837) to defeat the power of Bey Ahmed. " Master user of North African space As Jacques Berque has written, he has shown himself capable of imagining remarkable plans that make him a real strategist and not a mere " leader of partisans " (this term " partisan " would be translated today. by " guerrilla "). He also impressed his opponents with his personal qualities, and first of all with his courage. An excellent horseman, in the great Arab tradition, he did not hesitate to pay often for himself, occasionally personally loading all the banners deployed, thus signaling himself to the enemy's blows, to support his failing soldiers.
21He has also imposed himself by his humanity. Faithful to a generous and intelligent reading of the Koranic message, he tried, in a war marked by reciprocal atrocities, to limit or forbid useless cruelties. He did not hesitate, it is true, to behead Captain Dutrerte, who, as a prisoner, refused to encourage the last defenders of the Sidi Brahim marabout. But this violence in the midst of fighting hardly seems to have shocked the French leaders, many of whom resorted to the same practice. On the other hand, he offered rewards to whom would bring him alive prisoners. Those he owned were well treated. In August 1841, 80 of them were released during a general exchange. Others were unrequited in 1842, the emir judging himself unable to feed them. It is wrong, finally, that the French have imputed to him the massacre of 300 prisoners held in his camp (April 1846), perpetrated in his absence by one of his lieutenants, as established by the former interpreter Bellemare in particular. a whole chapter of the biography of Abd el-Kader published by him in 1863.
22While it is true that Abd el-Kader was far in his fight to be unanimous; he could not rely on the tribes of the East, nor on the Kabyles; he came into conflict with the ancient allies of the Turks, and with the brotherhood Tijanya of Ain Mahdi. His surrender, finally, gives many Algerians the feeling of abandonment, and it is only from the 1920s that his figure ends to impose on all the nationalists like that of the founding father of the modern Algerian Nation. All these elements do not prevent that, thanks to his personal qualities, supported by the spirit of resistance to the conquest of a large part of the tribes, he was able to represent the only valid opposition to the French after the fall of Bey Ahmed.
23The French also do not make a mistake. If they deemed it necessary to annihilate the power of the emir, they have never denied its representative character. A book by the Arab Affairs Directorate, the central body of the Arab Bureaux, states that " Arab nationality did not exist when the French came to overthrow the Turkish government . ", But recognizes in the work of Abd el-Kader an authentic project of" reconstitution "of this same" Arab nationality". Bugeaud, in a letter addressed to Guizot in 1846, goes even further. Abd el-Kader is for him a legitimate claimant to power " by all the services he has rendered to Arab nationality and religion ". His popularity is such, says the Marshal very clearly, that through him, " we are dealing with the entire Arab nation ."
24Defeat itself only increases the man who, after having made his surrender, remains a prisoner for several years in France, then is authorized by Napoleon III to withdraw into the Ottoman Empire, Brousse and Damascus. He imposes on his former adversaries the image of what the Arab-Muslim culture has of greatest. Pious without ostentation, attached to mystical meditation and poetry, he will only take up arms to defend the Christians of Damascus during the massacres of 1860. The pension that the French government pays him and his descendants, the title of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor awarded for his humanitarian action in Damascus appear as symbols of this esteem and as a form of reparation. Although having excellent relations with the imperial government, he refuses to play a political role in the East, despite the solicitations he receives. He refuses to even encourage the rebels of 1871. After having repeatedly faced death in combat, he now intends to use a single sword: that of the revealing word, which slice, beyond history, according to the divine truth.
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