CONQUEST OF ALGERIA / REPRESSION IN FRANCE: TWO SIDES OF ONE STORY
The king seizes Algiers, hoping that victory will crush domestic opposition: "The white banners were the monarchy, sailing from the port as did Saint Louis..."
-- René Chateaubriand
The Landing at Sidi-Ferruch, July 14 1830 by Pierre-Julien Gimbert / zoom
The monarchy falls nevertheless, and the new regime inherits
a war that goes badly and serves mainly to let officers advance in rank:
The Fight at Habrah (in 1837), 1840, detail, by Horace Vernet / zoom |
On the white horse, a son of Louis-Philippe. "Don't send any more princes!" the commander begs.
An attack is so poorly prepared that starving French soldiers fall back, abandoning civilians, sick and wounded (in 1835). They are decapitated.
-- Morny, the Vice-Emperor by Michel Carmona, 2005 (in French)
The insurrection of 1848 makes Algeria suddenly useful, as a place to deport rebels and that the turbulent can colonize:
Internet, no source named
"Pushing back an attack of pillaging Arabs"
"We'll be farmers and fighters," says Martial, a repented offspring of criminals, to a former criminal. The latter is killed, but Martial and his mistress, the ferocious Louve ("she wolf") start a new life in Algeria.
-- The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugène Sue, 1843
The population drops by at least 20% between 1830 and 1875.
-- The Twilight of Revolutions, 1848-1871 ("Le Crépuscule des revolutions") by Quentin Deluermoz, 2012
Other estimates are 30%.
Other estimates are 30%.
"I will burn your villages and your harvests," says the notorious General Bugeaud, who led the Parisian repression of 1834 and is the bogey-man "Bujo" a century later:
-- Struggles and Dreams ("Les Luttes et les rêves") by Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, 2016
by Charles-Philippe Larivière, between 1843 and 1845 / zoom
Other version with smoke from burning village in background; in 2023, gone from the web. "The goal... is to keep Arabs from sowing, harvesting, pasturing... burn their harvests every year... or exterminate every last one of them."
-- General Bugeaud, February 22, 1841, Wikipédia (in French)
The army learns savagery:
- "He remembered his two years in Africa, and how he had ransomed Arabs in the little outposts of the South..."
"and a gay and cruel smile passed over his lips at the recollection of an escapade that had cost the lives of three men from the Ouled-Alane tribe and given them, his companions and himself, twenty chickens, two sheep, gold, and a subject to laugh about for six months."
They tore off the earrings of women, the ears too, and cut off their fingers for the rings."
-- Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant, 1885,
who in 1881 had been a journalist in Algeria.
who in 1881 had been a journalist in Algeria.
- "It was not rare to see soldiers throw children to their comrades, who received them at the tip of their bayonets... .
-- Victor Hugo citing a general who visits him in 1871, Things seen (his diary), 1871
- "To be rid of ideas that sometimes assail me I cut heads, not heads of artichokes but heads of men."
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| Zoom |
The colonists' version, like Hollywood's of "the conquest of the West:"
By the Sword and the Plow, Algeria in the time of General Bugeaud, 1994
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Badly fed, clothed and equipped, obliged to commit atrocities and living in fear of unpredictable Arab reprisals, they suffered from wind and heat during the day and cold at night, and from malaria, dysentery, scurvy, typhus, cholera and depression.
One-third of the army was hospitalized (in 1846). Two-thirds of the sick had no beds, three-fourths no mattress, some lay outside, and there was not enough water, food, or medicine.
There were seven times more deaths in the army than among civilians, whose life expectancy was already short.
-- Struggles and Dreams
The interminable Algerian war affected the army
- The racism and cruelty learned there intensified the savagery of repressions at home.
- The Arabs fought in traditional ways and victories over them give a sense of omnipotence, with no experience of modern warfare.
End of this section
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