Suddenly the war took another turn, in some ways downright bizarre. For the first time in several years, Abd el-Kader was challenged as leader of the Algerians’ resistance.
Early in 1845, in a mountain village near the coast, a young man announced that God had appointed him to drive out the infidels. This man soon became known as Bou Maza (which could be translated “the man with the goat”) because his pet goat, he claimed, conveyed God’s messages to him. The rural people, oppressed and disheartened, yet inspired by traditional beliefs in “saints,” eagerly followed the charismatic new leader.
Described as unusually handsome, Bou Maza had the appearance of a mystic but was nevertheless a ruthless fighter. Starting by butchering some Muslim officials appointed by the French, for several months he led a widespread insurrection in the countryside. His success inspired a whole wave of “Goat men” who took the same name and tactics, and soon insurgencies were cropping up everywhere and keeping the central part of the country in turmoil.
Abd el-Kader faced an awkward situation. His own campaign, insofar as possible, had been organized and disciplined. In contrast, Bou Maza was a violent bandit. Should Abd el-Kader oppose this rival, or find some way to work with him? The French, on the defensive, were afraid that if Abd el-Kader should join forces with these insurgencies, recently pacified tribes might try to switch back to the Emir. Meanwhile, the revived resistance gave Abd el-Kader the chance to strengthen his camp—still in Morocco—and build up his army again.
For a brief time Bou Maza joined Abd el-Kader’s camp, but it was not a friendly alliance and he soon left. He surrendered to the French in April 1847 and was taken to Paris—where, thanks to his charisma, he became a society idol! Eventually he went to fight in the Crimean War (1853-56), and there his story appears to have ended. The other “Goat men” faded away.
While putting down the Bou Maza insurrection, however, the French army committed atrocities that gave an indelibly horrific stain to their actions in Algeria. In Dahra, a mountainous region full of caves, a large number of tribespeople took refuge in an extensive, many-chambered cavern. When the French officer in charge, Pélissier, could not persuade them to surrender, he had the entrances to the cave system blocked with wood and brush, and set on fire. Possibly as many as a thousand men, women, and children died of suffocation, along with their animals.
Pélissier’s report produced outrage in France. Thereafter, although at least three similar atrocities were carried out, killing many hundreds of people, the French officers tried to keep quiet about it. Governor-General Bugeaud did not explicitly order his army to carry out such acts, but he openly approved them. So hardened had many officers and soldiers become by then, that shocking displays of cruelty seem to have been brushed off. But public opinion in France and elsewhere in Europe was horrified.
The Bou Maza insurrections and the French brutalities helped spur Abd el-Kader into action again. In the fall of 1845 he returned to Algeria from Morocco with six thousand cavalry and renewed support from many tribes. For several months he moved swiftly across the country, sometimes riding fifty miles in a night. His goal was to reach the Kabyle Mountains in the eastern part of the country and help his Berber khalifa galvanize the local tribes into jihad.
Throughout the bitterly harsh winter of 1845-46 the cat-and-mouse game went on. The French lost three generals to cold and exhaustion, plus men counted in the hundreds, and horses in the thousands. Abd el-Kader was here, there, and at times it seemed everywhere. Catching Abd el-Kader was once more the foremost objective of the French army, and every French general wanted that honor.
In Great Britain, never very sympathetic regarding French imperial ambitions, the press fired up. What? The “Butcher of the Bedouins”—their name for Bugeaud—couldn’t catch one man? Maybe that man didn’t even exist! The satirical British journal Punch described Bugeaud’s efforts in a rollicking long poem entitled “Catching Abd-el-Kader.” Here’s a sample.
He made the most perfect arrangements
For catching him ’ere he started,
But whenever he got
To a suitable spot,
Abd-el-Kader had just departed.There was great expectation in Paris,
But to the war minister’s sorrow,
The telegraph’s tale
Ran thus, without fail,
“The capture’s put off till to-morrow.”France won victories by dozens—
And each day, as the marshal [Bugeaud] strode on,
We were sure to hear
That they’d missed the Emir,
But killed the horse he rode on.1
Americans, too, were fascinated by the courageous leader of a doomed fight for freedom. In the Midwest, a man who had been eagerly following the British press reports decided to name a new town in honor of the Emir. That town is Elkader, Iowa, which has always taken great pride in its historical connection with Abd el-Kader.
Constantly pursued, the Emir was saved from capture several times by tribal people who provided intelligence about French moves. But it was getting harder and harder for him to keep the tribes’ active support. They were exhausted and discouraged, and they feared punishment by the French army. With an army of one hundred and six thousand, the generals sent their flying columns after the Emir so persistently that by the summer of 1846 he was again forced to seek refuge in Morocco.
Since Abd el-Kader’s warfare was based on guerilla tactics, very few encounters stand out in the historical record. One incident, however, during the renewed campaign that started in the fall of 1845, was memorable. Characterized by foolhardy thinking, bravery, and suffering on the French side, it had drastic after-effects for the Emir.
Near the border between Algeria and Morocco, the French had a garrison at a small port called Djemaa Ghazaouet—“the pirates’ base.” The officer in charge was Lieutenant Colonel Montagnac, courageous, ambitious, and tough—to a fault. In September of 1845, he learned that Abd el-Kader and his men were nearby in the steep hills close to the coast. Fed up with a waiting game that asked so little of him, Montagnac decided—against orders—to set off with four hundred and twenty-five men to seek action. In a narrow ravine they ran into a deadly ambush, which killed Montagnac and many of his men. About eighty of the remaining soldiers scrambled along the sides of the ravine to take shelter in a small religious shrine known as Sidi Brahim.
So confident of success had Montagnac been when he set out, that he and his men had not brought food or even water with them. They were besieged in the shrine for two days, all the while defying Abd el-Kader’s appeals for surrender. Finally, desperate from thirst, the French soldiers tried to dash back the twelve miles to their fort by the sea. Only seventeen of the original four hundred and twenty-five managed to reach safety. Ninety-seven were captured, and the rest all killed.
The prisoners were taken to Abd el-Kader’s camp, the remains of the “floating capital,” in Morocco. Soon, about two hundred more French soldiers, captured from an ambushed supply column, joined them. Conditions were extremely difficult in the camp. With nowhere near enough food or shelter, everyone suffered, Algerians and prisoners alike. Bugeaud refused repeated offers of a prisoner exchange, saying it would be exploited as a sign of French weakening.
Abd el-Kader was away and constantly on the move in Algeria. He had left his brother-in-law, Ben Thami, in charge of the camp, along with the trusted khalifa Bou Hamidi. The winter months dragged on, provisions grew even scarcer, and the two men argued about how to handle the problem. Bou Hamidi wanted to release the prisoners, as he believed Abd el-Kader would have done. Ben Thami disagreed. On an April night in 1846, Ben Thami made his decision. He had the French officers taken to a place of safety, leaving the ordinary soldiers in their tents. Then all the soldiers, possibly as many as two hundred men, were killed.
When he learned of the massacre, Abd el-Kader was utterly dismayed. This was not his way—killing defenseless prisoners-of-war in cold blood! It was a terrible blow to his rules of war, his standards of humane behavior, his very reputation. Yet as the Commander, he had to take responsibility for the whole matter. In France, the outcry was now against the supposed treachery and cruelty of the Emir. Popular support swung back to Bugeaud and his war of complete conquest. The ugly accusation against Abd el-Kader would haunt him for years.
Abd el-Kader now had to deal with a third adversary besides the French army and the shifting tribal alliances: the Sultan of Morocco, Abd ar-Rahman. With the passing years, the sultan had come to regard Abd el-Kader as a threat because so many Moroccans admired him and wanted to join in the Algerians’ jihad. The French demanded that the sultan not support Abd el-Kader; and the British, who wanted to prevent any excuse for the French to invade Morocco, also put pressure on him. Therefore, while the sultan reluctantly allowed Abd el-Kader to seek safety for himself, his army, and his camp on Moroccan soil, there was no friendship involved.
In the spring of 1844, the Emir’s popularity with the Moroccan people forced the sultan to send troops to help the Algerians. As a result, a confrontation arose between Morocco and France. Bugeaud invaded Morocco in August and defeated a much larger Moroccan army, led by a boastful but inexperienced son of the sultan. The humiliating defeat turned Sultan Abd ar-Rahman completely against the Algerians, and he signed a treaty with the French declaring Abd el-Kader an outlaw.
In 1846, as his campaign in Algeria was dwindling to a standstill, Abd el-Kader had to retreat to Morocco once more. But Moroccan soil was hardly a refuge, and now his army and camp became the sultan’s target. Moroccan soldiers destroyed two of the largest Algerian tribes still loyal to Abd el-Kader, which severely undermined his support in both Morocco and Algeria.
In hopes of avoiding an all-out war with the sultan, in November of 1847 Abd el-Kader sent his trusted khalifa Bou Hamidi to the sultan’s capital for negotiations. By this time, most of the khalifas had been killed or captured, and Abd el-Kader’s hopes rested heavily on Bou Hamidi. But instead of being treated as a respected official, Bou Hamidi was thrown in jail and forced to drink a lethal dose of poison. Abd el-Kader knew that he would have to get his people out of Morocco as quickly as possible.
In mid-December of 1847, he managed to evade the Moroccan army and move his whole camp across the river that marked the boundary between Moroccan and Algerian territory. They were now safer, but their situation was no less dire. The army’s ranks were depleted, the tribes were fast drifting away, the families in the camp were hungry and weak. And the French positions in western Algeria were by now so strong that the Emir could see no chance for further action against them.
Abd el-Kader was virtually trapped. His two choices became stark indeed. He might leave his camp behind, escape into the interior, rally what forces he could, and go on with the struggle. That was what most of his advisers were urging him to do. Or he might stay with his people, and give in to the French. For a leader of jihad, which would be the more honorable course to take? And how, in this dilemma, should honor be defined?