CHAPTER EIGHT
The Wheel Turns
TRÉZEL HAD SUFFERED A HUMILIATING DEFEAT: 362 dead and 308 wounded, 150 horses killed, along with the loss of his field artillery, rifles, ammunition and food supplies. The horrors of the battle along the Machta River had left the survivors with “death in their souls,” Trézel wrote afterward. “In this deadly struggle, I saw the hopes I considered reasonable evaporate. I needed victory for them to be realized. Obviously, I overestimated our own forces and underestimated those of the Arabs.”
News of tattered and terrified French soldiers staggering back to Arzew had an enormous impact on the Arabs, magnified by fanciful embellishments. Rumors circulated that the French lost 1,500 soldiers and 600 wounded; General Trézel himself had been taken prisoner and was sweeping the emir’s stables; Oran, even, had surrendered. The tribes again flocked to the emir’s banner. But “victory” was expensive. Abd el-Kader lost over a thousand men in the fighting that led up to Machta.
What had happened? Knowing the difficulty of moving the heavy transport wagons used by the French, Abd el-Kader had anticipated Trézel’s movements through the Forest of Moulay-Ishmael, where he concealed his infantry in the rocky, pine tree-covered landscape. When his troops were ambushed, Trézel prevented a near rout with his personal bravery by forming his panicked men into squares of disciplined firepower that decimated the Arabs.
The bruising encounter didn’t weaken Trézel’s obsession with forcing the emir to recognize French sovereignty. The next day, Trézel sent Abd el-Kader a message proposing to end hostilities if the emir would pay an annual tribute to the king of France and take orders from the king’s representative, the governor-general of Algiers. Abd el-Kader didn’t deign to respond.
Trézel waited a day for a reply. Then, on the 28th, he decided to take his wounded to Arzew before continuing his march on Mascara. He chose a route along the Habra River that offered easier terrain for his medical wagons than returning directly through the mountains to Oran. It was also a more risky path which required passing through the Habra Narrows where the Habra emerged renamed as the Machta River. Abd el-Kader immediately understood Trézel’s plan when he learned about the Frenchman’s new direction. He selected a thousand of his best cavalrymen and told them to gallop ahead, each carrying a foot soldier to hide in the wooded heights overlooking the marshy Machta delta.
When Trézel discovered the emir’s riflemen concealed on the hillsides, and confident of his men’s ability to run off undisciplined Arab infantry, he ordered only two companies from the Italian battalion of the newly formed Foreign Legion to clear the slopes. But the Arab infantry had not been dislodged so easily when the rest of the emir’s cavalry descended en masse at the rear of the French column, already exhausted from days of marching in the summer heat. In a panic to rush forward, wagon drivers and artillerymen cut their horses free of their harnesses and rode off, wagons were abandoned and units merged in a chaotic effort to close ranks. Caught between the Arab riflemen and the soggy delta, some tried to escape to the east, but became mired in mud bogs to be hacked or trampled by the emir’s cavalry.
Abd el-Kader arrived on the battlefield that night to find his men celebrating around a horrifying monument they were constructing. “Heads, more heads,” they chanted as Abd el-Kader passed by, silently revolted by the huge pyramid his men were building with their bloody trophies. It was a practice he would change, but this was not the time.
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Drouet d’Erlon first learned of Trézel’s insubordination only after the general had received a bloody nose in the Forest of Moulay-Ishmael en route to Mascara. The governor-general had tried to protect the fragile peace from Trézel’s aggressiveness by sending Captain Lamoricière to help him negotiate with the emir. He arrived too late.
Lamoricière had already distinguished himself by his energy and seriousness in understanding the complexities of native culture. While serving in Algiers, Lamoricière had thrown himself into the study of Arabic and the Koran. He was known for frequenting coffeehouses and markets where he could talk with Arabs to practice his Arabic, but also to learn about the customs of the Berbers, the Moors, the Arabs and their different tribes and important families. By the end of 1831, Lamoricière had become competent to negotiate in Arabic with the tribal leaders without an interpreter. His ability to speak Arabic and willingness to travel lightly armed and with small escorts won him respect. Talking directly with the caids and sheiks enabled him to help create an embryonic intelligence service, known as the Arab Bureau.
Lamoricière had shown the Arabs that a Frenchman could deal with them by means other than a “rifle butt or a bagette.” Instead of trying to outdo the Arabs at committing atrocities or seducing them with bread crumbs as if they were pigeons, Lamoricière worked on building good human relations, and through those relations, trust, and its ultimate fruit — intelligence and lasting allies. The rules he developed were rooted in experience: don’t take a village unless you can protect it indefinitely; there are no lasting allies unless you can protect and support them effectively. In the eastern provinces, the tribes were calling Lamoricière,“the agha of the Arabs.”
Trézel had already been humiliated by Abd el-Kader when Lamoricière arrived in Arzew. Realizing that his mission no longer made any sense, Lamoricière returned to Algiers. How the future might have turned out had Lamoricière and Trézel met before the ill-fated expedition to Mascara is a tantalizing question.
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Machta didn’t go to the emir’s head. He knew it was an insignificant victory against the greatest power in Europe. But it did give him renewed moral authority to continue the difficult job of building unity among the tribes and a respite to work on his priority — building up his capability to manufacture weapons. Mascara’s sole atelier could make only two rifles a day, and of doubtful quality. Without weapons and a well-trained regular army, he could not build a lasting organization capable of suppressing the tribes’ natural tendencies toward independence and insurrection.
Diplomacy was his most potent weapon against the French. This had been demonstrated by his manipulation of Drouet d’Erlon, aided by his close attention to Parisian politics reported in the press and translated by members of his “Jewish court.” Abd el-Kader was careful, after Machta, almost apologetic, in his communications to d’Erlon with whom he wanted to maintain friendly relations.
The emir wrote to the governor-general explaining that it was Trézel who had marched out of Oran with his column into his territory. For the sake of his friendship with the governor, he had overlooked this infraction of the treaty. Trézel had advanced to Figuier, then to Tlelat and finally to Sig where he began to destroy the harvest. Only then did Abd el-Kader decide to attack. “You know I am true to my word and I do nothing to trouble the peace. Make your own inquiries and you will find that I am telling you the truth,” the emir concluded.
Trézel’s offer of resignation had been accepted in Paris. Soon after, d’Erlon was also recalled, viewed by the imperialist camp as too old and conciliatory. The blood of Machta energized the French government. Adolphe Thiers, then minister of the interior, was an outspoken opponent of the policy of “restrained” occupation. During an impassioned speech before the Parliament, he expostulated: “This is not colonization, this is not small scale occupation, it is not large scale occupation, it is not peace, this is not war; this is war badly waged!”
To rid France of this troublesome bandit and restore its honor, Thiers successfully advocated the nomination of General Bertrand Clauzel for the post of governor-general. Clauzel’s strong belief in France’s civilizing mission matched that of Thiers. His pro-colonization stance made him a favorite with the Europeans in Algeria and the imperialists in Paris. He would set things right. Pompous declarations and blind optimism, however, were Clauzel’s strongest suits.
On August 10, 1835, General Clauzel was warmly received by the Europeans in Algiers. The four intervening years of French “civilization” had transformed the face of the city. The waterfront had been turned into a plaza where European-style shops displayed frumpy, outdated fashions. Mosques had disappeared or been turned into churches. Buildings had acquired number plates and streets given names: rue Annibal, rue du Chat, rue Sidney Smith, rue du Lotophages, rue Sophonisba, not to mention rue Belisaire. The city boasted a circus, four Grands Hotels — “all execrable,” according to the report of a British military observer, Major Grenville Temple, as well as eleven Grands Cafés frequented by “piquante” French ladies to amuse the troops. The veneer of civilization was thin indeed, noted Temple, who was informed weekly by Le Moniteur Algérien of the misbehavior of French soldiery. Its pages reported on the punishments regularly meted out for murder, robbery and desertion. Execution, imprisonment and forced labor were the lot of men one officer described as “robbers, pilferers and drunkards.” The Parisian revolutionary rabble did not make for good soldiers.
If Algiers had changed during Clauzel’s four-year absence, the general had not. As before, he arrived overconfident and unsobered by his mistakes in 1830, when he had optimistically expected the interior to collapse as quickly as had Algiers. In his first public declaration, Clauzel grandly announced his ambitions.

Inhabitants of the Regency, my appointment to govern the French possessions in North Africa reflects the serious intentions of the king of France. However complicated the problems are at this moment, I will overcome them with the assistance of the administration and support of the inhabitants to reestablish peace after punishing the rebels wherever they may be and to promote all commercial and agricultural activities throughout the extent of the county… We will create through perseverance, a new people who will grow more rapidly than the one that began on the other side of the Atlantic over a century ago.

The general, however, was out of phase with the war ministry that was giving instructions to maintain a “restrained” occupation, to not provoke confrontation. Clauzel was speaking as an unrepentant imperialist in favor of total occupation — a goal that required massive emigration of European colonists to work the land in a climate of security. Unfortunately, neither colonists nor security, existed.
His arrival in Algiers coincided with another unwelcome visitor — cholera. For two months the disease ravaged the city, delaying the execution of his mission “to wash away the humiliation of Machta.” Of the twenty-five thousand soldiers who were in Algeria at that time, four thousand were in hospitals and as many as sixteen hundred died.
Clauzel distributed a new map of the Regency to raise the spirits of the colonists, still demoralized by Machta. It was divided, in Turkish fashion, into new beyliks. Each was shown to be governed by a newly appointed pro-French bey. However, each of the beys was either hounded from office, had his life threatened or refused to even take up his duties. Clauzel’s reality existed only on paper.
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“The wheel turns,” Abd el-Kader had written Desmichels back in 1833, “crushing its victims; now one, now the other.” The wheel was about to turn again.
The cholera epidemic had subsided, but had left the ranks of France’s army weak and demoralized. The ministry of war was still cautious about resuming hostilities with the emir, but an outraged public was clamoring to avenge France’s honor. The government bowed to this new political force — public opinion — and ordered a punitive response to the debacle at Machta. Clauzel received reinforcements and was told to demolish Mascara. The Duke of Orleans, King Louis-Philippe’s oldest son, was sent to witness France’s retribution. Paris assumed that the destruction of the emir’s capital would rid France once and for all of the upstart Arab.
On November 21, 1835, five months after Machta, Clauzel set sail for Oran to lead an army of 11,000 men. The poetically-minded Duke of Orleans noted in his diary that the marching column of soldiers resembled “a long, glittering serpent surrounded by a halo of dust lit by the setting sun.” The crown prince would soon be writing of horrors he had never imagined.
Abd el-Kader again discovered the limits of his newly trained regular army. His artillerymen alerted the advancing French by firing prematurely and were quickly silenced by more accurate return fire. His infantry lacked the discipline of the French to hold ground and concentrate their fire. French artillery fire sowed confusion and chaos among the emir’s troops. His cavalry fled back to their tribes and his infantry vanished into the woods as disorganized bands of fugitives. It was Machta in reverse.
The tribes neighboring Mascara descended on the town and pillaged it in the name of removing everything of value for the French occupiers. When news of the looting reached the French army, its own native irregulars — Douairs and Smelas — broke away, carrying bags and baskets to join in the fun. Powerless to stop the sacking of his capital, Abd el-Kader withdrew to his family estates at Cacherou among the Hachem, six miles from Masacra on the Plain of Ghriss.
There, too, he found an unpleasant surprise. The emir learned that he and his family had been turned upon. Kheira’s earrings had been snatched off her ears and the magnificent tent he had received as a peace gift from General Desmichels cut to shreds. His golden parasol had been stolen and behind his back some called him “Sultan of the bushes” and “Sultan of straw.”
Dejected, the emir revealed to his family and remaining followers doubts about his divine mission. How could he unify a people who would not unite and who disappeared at the first rumor of defeat? How could there be a future with such unreliable material? That same day, Abd el-Kader received curious news: the French had abandoned Mascara after only three days’ occupation.
The next day, December 4th, a lone rider on a black horse appeared before the Bab Ali gate wearing a tattered black burnoose, indifferent to the cold drizzle. He gazed at the remnants of the town he had hoped to make a center of Arab unity. As people recognized the rider, word spread through town. Gradually, skulking and shamefaced former supporters and allies approached him. One was the agha of the Hachem who had taken the golden parasol. He wanted to give it back to the emir. “Keep it, you may be sultan one day.”
Other chiefs sheepishly came to him. Maybe they had misjudged the French, who had now abandoned the capital. Perhaps they had deserted their emir too hastily. They asked him what orders he had to give.
“Orders? Ah, yes, my orders are that you relieve me of this burden you have placed on my shoulders and which only the dictates of my religion have enabled me to bear. I order that the tribes choose a successor. I am leaving with my family for Morocco.”
The chiefs gathered around the emir suddenly threw themselves at his feet. They kissed his burnoose. They kissed his hands and his feet. They begged for forgiveness and promised renewed fidelity. He was their father. He was their sultan appointed by God to direct the jihad. If he abandoned them, they would be forced to live under the infidels.
As if yanked by a leash, these last words reminded the emir of his divine duty and of his promise to his father. Abd el-Kader relented. “May God’s will be done, but mark well, I swear I will never return to Mascara except to enter the mosque, until the day when you have avenged your shameful defeat.”
Overnight, the fighting spirit of the emir’s followers was rekindled. Once again, their leader had shown his mettle. He was devoted to doing God’s will. He could persevere in the darkest of hours. He could pardon and he could punish. Abd el-Kader understood as few leaders when to be soft, when to be hard and when to be both.
Abd el-Kader kept three secretaries busy that night dictating orders for the tribes to assemble in the Plain of Ghriss to renew the struggle. The next day, by the dedara tree where he first had been proclaimed emir, a reinvigorated Abd el-Kader met the first few hundred followers to respond to his call. Their ranks swelled as the word spread that the emir was again in his saddle and the golden parasol was over his head. Like rivulets feeding a stream after a rainstorm, the horsemen came.
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Why did the French abandon Mascara after only three days? The sudden departure had damaged their credibility in the eyes of tribes who switched sides according to the vagaries of the battlefield. Clauzel himself admitted later to the parliament that it had been a mistake not to have left a garrison. Clauzel had justified leaving Mascara by saying it had no strategic significance — the expedition had been purely punitive. He may, however, have been protecting the reputation of the crown. The twenty-five-year-old crown prince quite possibly had become ill, as well as shaken by his baptism of fire.
The Duke of Orleans recalled with sickening clarity the Smela tribesman who had galloped through a hail of bullets to proudly show off his prize. “A few paces before he reached me, he drew his horse up and produced from under his burnoose a head dripping with blood. He held it by the mouth, its clenched teeth biting his fingers… the head of a rather handsome man, but the expression of the face defied description…Abdallah stared at me with wild eyes and threw the head at my feet. It bounced several times before it came to rest. I offered him a few pieces of gold, but he refused: ‘I am a soldier. I don’t fight for money.’”
Inside the walls of Mascara, the crown prince was shaken by the grim desolation and destruction. “In the square, which must once have been beautiful, pools of rose oil lay smothered with heaps of tobacco, which someone had tried to burn and which looters had mixed with all kinds of filth to make unusable…Hundreds of snarling dogs were nosing about in the refuse…A thousand Jews, all who were left from the population of ten thousand souls, threw themselves at our feet sobbing and kissed our stirrups.” Some of the Jews were given the job of cleaning the emir’s palace to turn it into the headquarters for the general staff.
The troops were shocked to learn they were abandoning the city. Before leaving, the small-arms atelier, the stores of sulfur, the law courts, the mint and the emir’s palace were torched. The Douairs and Smelas who owned property in Mascara burned down their houses rather than let them fall into the emir’s hands. At the head of the army as it trudged back to Oran in the cold rain were Mustafa Ben Ismail’s men. Hungry for the wages of war, they had humbled themselves to walk like mere foot soldiers to allow their horses to carry the booty they had gleaned. Behind the Smelas and Douairs were those Jews who had not abandoned Mascara before the arrival of the French. Their pathetic condition had moved Clauzel to allow them to flee the city with his army. During their incomprehensible retreat, the duke proudly noted the chivalry of the French soldiers, many of whom were suffering from dysentery and exhaustion:
“These wretched Mascara Jews, feet bare, clothes tattered and covered with mud, staggered under the weight of the children they carried wrapped in their shawls. I saw women in almost biblical costume, and still good looking, collapse in the mud, who would have perished if our soldiers hadn’t dragged them out…I saw a blind man hanging on to the tail of a donkey singing a psalm to keep up his courage…I saw camels crash down and remain stuck in the clay, a shapeless, colorless mass… sobbing mothers pick out the weakest of their children, near death, and leave them along the way, in order to save the others…During those awful days most of the cavalrymen carried a child under their cloaks. One I saw had two children so young he could feed them only by chewing pieces of biscuit which he gave them to swallow.”
Overnight, the hundreds of Arab cavalry that had gathered in the Plain of Ghriss became thousands of reenergized Muslim warriors anxious to remove the stain of their cowardice and desertion. Pursuing the French was easy. The Arabs had only to follow their wagon tracks and the carcasses of their animals lying in the mud, dead or dying from exhaustion. By the time they caught up with the struggling convoys, the emir had six thousand men biting and nibbling at the cold, exhausted stragglers. The French victory at Mascara had acquired the look of a Napoleonic retreat from Moscow.
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Clauzel’s next objective was Tlemcen. The isolated Kougouli garrison had remained in the citadel since the city had submitted to Abd el-Kader, but it was now under the command of France’s ally, Mustafa Ben Ismail. Knowing the cumbersome preparations required of the French army and the slow pace imposed by their heavy convoy wagons, the emir decided to strike first. Abd el-Kader resorted to a ruse to draw out the Turks from their citadel, as he lacked both equipment and time to mount a siege.
A letter pretending to be from the traitorous Beni Angad tribe, allied with the French, was delivered to the Kougoulis. It proposed a rendezvous outside the city to deliver food for the garrison. Abd el-Kader pretended to withdraw toward Oran, but actually prepared an ambush at the agreed location. When 300 Turkish troops came out to get the provisions, they were slaughtered.
Abd el-Kader had barely a chance to enjoy this small victory when Clauzel’s column approached. The emir made a tactical withdrawal across the Moroccan frontier, but took with him most of the Arab population of Tlemcen. This provided Clauzel with the opportunity to make another serious error.
The general entered Tlemcen on January 13, 1836. He was greeted enthusiastically by the city’s remnant — Kougoulis and Jews professing their sincerest gratitude and devotion to France. Clauzel was not moved by words. He needed proof of their sincerity. A collective contribution to the French cause of 100,000 francs would show genuine devotion to their new masters.
The sum was impossible. They were not rich merchants. Clauzel turned a deaf ear to their outcries and applied more brutal methods of persuasion to get the earnest money. Threats, beatings and torture were used to extract money, diamonds and precious stones from the pathetic households that had put themselves at his mercy.
The emir did not lose time to spread the news, whose tag line was always the same: “If this is how France treats its friends, imagine what awaits its enemies.” It was bruited about that the French used the Jews to choke money out of the Muslim Kougoulis. True or not, the news enraged the surrounding Arabs. The Beni Angad, France’s newest allies, wanted to renegotiate their relationship with the emir after witnessing Clauzel’s stupidity and brutality. The Kougoulis, in turn, sent secret messages to the emir saying they wanted to turn over to him the citadel as soon as the French departed. This time, Clauzel left behind a small garrison in the hope of establishing a line of communication between Tlemcen and the coast, at a point near the mouth of the Tafna River that could serve as a resupply post.
The self-assured Clauzel returned to Algiers after two more months of campaigning to cheerfully declare: “The war is over! Abd el-Kader has fled to the Sahara to lick his wounds.”