French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  And in 1849, despite much whimpering among the apologists for Zaatcha, that stick was a fairly formidable one as blunt instruments go. Eight years or so of quick marching around Algeria under the direction of Bugeaud had transformed the sluggish garrison army of 1840 into an aggressive and offensive-minded force. The Armée d'Afrique was still deficient in cavalry and therefore could never really succeed in matching the Arabs in mobility. But whatever was humanly possible to accomplish on foot, they could accomplish, and sometimes more.

  That said, Zaatcha caught the Legion, especially the 2nd Regiment, which undertook the siege, at a particularly awkward moment. The 1848 revolution that ushered in the Second Republic revealed the ambivalent attitudes to the Legion both in France and in Europe. All legionnaires who counted five years’ service were invited to apply for French nationality, which many did. The 1st Regiment, which had already begun to settle in at the site of Sidi-bel-Abbès south of Oran in the east, was little affected by political events. As a gesture of the fraternal solidarity of peoples, Paris ordered that all Polish legionnaires who so wished could terminate their enlistment contracts. Only 23 chose to do so, 17 of whom returned within a month. The 2nd Regiment was harder hit. While few Poles chose to abandon its ranks, a request from the Piedmontese ambassador to free his nationals from the Legion caused a hemorrhage of Italians out of the 2nd Regiment. So, on the eve of the campaign, the regiment had been deprived of 618 men, almost a battalion's worth of strength.17

  Despite this handicap, the Legion counted upon the quality of its leadership to make up its manpower deficit. To succeed in a troop command, especially of a troop like the Legion, required the toughness of a prison guard, desperate ambition and a touch of madness. All of these qualities were present in the commander of the Batna subdivision whose task it was to sort out the Zaatcha mess—Jean-Luc Carbuccia. Carbuccia was a Corsican, “from one of the best families in Bastia” according to Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte,18 which presumably he meant as a compliment. As will be seen, opinion on Carbuccia was sharply divided. A Legion colonel who was considered one of the most dynamic officers in Algeria, Carbuccia had already earned a certain notoriety by his (unsuccessful) experiments with organizing a camel corps, and by setting his legionnaires to carry out excavations at Lambaesis. During these excavations, he had inscribed upon a tombstone of a Roman legionary, “Colonel Carbuccia [of the IInd Foreign Legion] to his colleague in the IIIrd Roman Legion.”19 French writer Camille Rousset wrote that despite his obvious energy, Carbuccia “rightly or wrongly was thought by the troops to be unlucky in war.”20

  Carbuccia was now about to achieve what many must have thought would be infamy by marching a column composed of 600 legionnaires, 400 soldiers of the penal zéphyrs, a nickname given to the bats d'Af, 250 horsemen and a few odds and ends into the Hodna plain. The Hodna was not quite the Sahara, but in July the French troops might be excused if they failed to distinguish the subtle differences between the Sahara and what a geographer would call the “pre-Sahara.” Marching around the desert in the height of summer is not everyone's idea of a holiday. It is hot—very hot— with the thermometer sometimes reaching 140 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. In that sort of weather, a man needs all his energy just to breathe. But perhaps because he was prepared to execute the unexpected, Carbuccia surprised the Ouled-Sahnoun camped at Metkouak on the Hodna plain on the morning of July 9. As razzias went, Carbuccia's was a model of its kind—a predawn attack that produced utter panic. Women, children and the old were killed in their own stampede to escape, while the soldiers collected two thousand camels and twelve thousand sheep.21

  The razzia of the Ouled-Sahnoun offered a powerful demonstration of French force, and one that produced political results. The tribes in the Hodna region, impressed by Carbuccia's athletic performance, came in to ask for the aman, or pardon, which was usually accorded after the supplicating tribe paid an appropriate fine in sheep and camels, and turned in all their muskets. The Zaatcha rebellion was now placed in quarantine. There was no immediate danger of it spreading to the north (if indeed there ever had been). Even the most paranoid of soldiers must have admitted that. Bouzian was a local phenomenon whose command of an insignificant oasis could do nothing to threaten the French grip on southern Algeria. Let the bad blood, distrust and family rivalries that were endemic in the oases, and perhaps the ultimate threat of French retaliation, do their work. Left alone, Bouzian's rebellion was bound to fade away. However, patience was not Carbuccia's strong suit. Hardly pausing to recuperate from his storming of the Hodna, he delivered his substantial booty to Biskra and turned his column toward Zaatcha.

  Had the legionnaires of Carbuccia's column been normal tourists, the oasis they spied at five o'clock on the morning of July 16 would certainly have appeared inviting. The deep blue-green of the date palms spread somberly over a khaki countryside temporarily softened by the rose-colored light of dawn. To these experienced soldiers, it could hardly have seemed to offer a military obstacle of great consequence, much less be the focus of an insurrection which threatened French control of Algeria itself. Indeed, they must have wondered what all the fuss was about. Zaatcha was merely the principal settlement in a tiny oasis complex that consisted of two blobs of greenery that sat like paint splattering on a sandy canvas. The larger of the two green patches was shaped like a human heart. It clustered along a wadi that ran for about a mile and a half north to south and measured about a mile across. The northern quadrant contained Zaatcha, a small village whose wall and moat gave it the appearance of a medieval fortress in miniature. A single gate led out of the town through the palms to the west. Three hundred yards to the south of Zaatcha in the midst of gardens and palm trees lay Lichana, an entirely separate, unfortified collection of square houses constructed from sun-dried brick. To the west, separated from the principal oasis by a narrow channel of sand, was the smaller oasis of Farfar, which measured about a mile in length and barely three-quarters of a mile across.

  There is no evidence, however, that Carbuccia had a clear notion of the geography of the place. Indeed, the war minister later criticized him for having failed to carry out a proper reconnaissance.22 From his position to the northeast of the oasis, all he could see was a forest of date palms that hid even the minaret of the mosque of Zaatcha, barely three hundred yards from the edge of the vegetation. What was plainly visible was the zaouia, or monastery, which sat on the northeastern limit of the oasis. Nor is it clear that he had a plan of attack. Herbillon claimed that Carbuccia believed that the mere appearance of the French force fresh from thrashing the formidable Ouled-Sahnoun, combined with a little selective felling of the date palms upon which the economy of the oasis depended, a traditional tactic in the northern Sahara, would suffice to force a submission.23

  In short, Carbuccia was overconfident. But then why should he not be? He was a man at the height of his powers and energy. He commanded a force that had just scored a brilliant victory over one of the most feared tribes in southern Algeria, and in the process had demonstrated remarkable resilience and prowess in a season when sane men slept during daylight hours. Furthermore, oasis dwellers were held in low esteem as fighters by French and nomad alike, no more than a collection of pusillanimous gardeners whose primary concern was to protect their date palms. In this respect, the French were to fall victim to their own prejudices and stereotypes.

  Yet there were at least two factors that should have caused Carbuccia to act with less haste. The first has to do with that tattered cliché that those ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it. This was never more true than on July 16, 1849. Zaatcha had achieved a great deal of regional celebrity in 1831 (or 1833—the sources disagree), when it successfully resisted a siege laid against it by the Bey of Constantine.24 Therefore, the memory, and precedent, of a successful resistance might serve to make many Zaatchans confident that they could repeat the glories of the past.

  The second cause for pause lay in the fact that Carbuccia's force was not designed for s
tatic siege operations. Indeed, the Legion, like the entire Armée d'Afrique, had been transmogrified under Bugeaud into a stripped-down force whose strength lay in its mobility. The expertise gained in launching devastating razzias against nomads or attacking mountain villages could not easily be transferred to the Sahara, at least as long as the oasis dwellers insisted on remaining behind their walls. The war minister was quite clear about this: “The attack of an oasis cannot be treated in the same way as the attack on a mountain position,” General Rullière reminded Carbuccia, a trifle too late, in August.25

  In Carbuccia's defense, two things may be said. First, the oases had not proved particularly difficult to control in the past. According to one author, the mere appearance of French troops before an oasis “larger than Zaatcha” in 1847, combined with selective pruning of the date crop, had worked to bring the inhabitants to their senses with a minimum of bloodshed.26 Second, Carbuccia gives a slightly different version of events of July 16 than does Herbillon, his superior who was not present. The colonel claimed that he did not plunge headlong into the oasis immediately upon arrival looking for a fight. On the contrary, he was attacked by the inhabitants of Zaatcha, who surged out of the trees led by “the sherif” (presumably Bouzian), but who were easily dispersed by a few bursts of artillery. This had a salutary effect, and the “djemmas” or councils, of several oases came forward to request the aman. Carbuccia then marched his troops past the northern edge of the Zaatcha oasis to Farfar, which also requested the aman. As it was stunningly hot, with a wind out of the south that was like the breath of a blast furnace, Carbuccia ordered his men to wait out the heat of the day in the shade of Farfar. But just as they were settling down, firing broke out. “Full of ardor, our soldiers, forgetting that they should rest, ran at the enemy,” Carbuccia reported. “We chased them out of the gardens. Soon the entire column was engaged, but the commander of the column, mounting on horseback, brought back the soldiers whom the engagement had made very animated.” Some did not turn back before they reached the walls of Zaatcha, which they announced had been heavily fortified. The French had five killed and twelve wounded in this opening skirmish.27

  What to do now? For Carbuccia, the choice was obvious. “In this critical moment,” Herbillon wrote, “this senior officer [Carbuccia], counting upon the prestige of our arms, upon the enthusiasm which animated his troops, and the quality of the officers, believed that the best course of action was an all out attack, a retreat being too risky.”28 In many respects, this made sense. Audacity, especially in North Africa, often carried the day against an enemy whose morale and discipline might splinter under pressure, but who also became emboldened at the slightest sign of weakness or hesitation in their enemy. On the other hand, there were other factors that argued against a coup de main. In the first place, there were the disturbing reports that Zaatcha was heavily fortified. Second, the troops must have been worn out after their night march, a fatigue rendered almost insupportable by the suffocating heat. Carbuccia gave his men time to eat, and at two o'clock in the afternoon marched them out of Farfar to retrace their steps across the griddle of sand and stone around the northern edge of the Zaatcha oasis, while a feigned attack by his goumiers distracted the rebels to the west.

  The colonel stopped his troops on the northeast side of Zaatcha astride the track that led to Biskra. His artillery began a slow bombardment while he organized his legionnaires and zephyrs into two columns of 450 men each. At four o'clock, after a brief speech “to each column about the glory of their predecessors,” Carbuccia launched them at the oasis. The legionnaires under Saint-Germain moved through a small breach in a garden wall made by the artillery. The scenery changed instantly from one of an uninterrupted view of nothing much clear to the horizon to a tangle of foliage and mud walls. The legionnaires wandered about in confusion for some time, following a tortuous path that eventually brought them to the north face of Zaatcha. That was about as far as they got. The fire coming out of the village was murderous. Especially annoying was that belching from the triangular holes that pierced the wall close to ground level, originally constructed as ventilation shafts but which now did double duty as gunslits. At this point, it should have become obvious that Zaatcha would require the attention of something that packed more punch than a group of lightly armed infantrymen. Nevertheless, the legionnaires rushed the walls, only to be stopped dead in their tracks by the moat of stagnant water.

  AFTER LOSING FOUR OFFICERS and quite a few soldiers, Saint-Germain ordered the troops back to a less exposed sector while the artillery was ordered up to create a breach. Here the French learned another important lesson. At the best of times, their light field guns would have had their work cut out for them breaching a wall of dried mud. Now they discovered that the Zaatcha defenses rested upon a solid foundation of large stones, which they surmised must have been part of earlier Roman fortifications. As night was falling, Saint-Germain asked for permission to retreat, as did the second column of zephyrs, whose experiences at another part of the wall had been virtually identical. As Carbuccia regrouped his forces on the plain, he realized that he had had a bad day—31 of his men were dead, including 14 legionnaires, and fully 117 were wounded, 71 of them from the Legion. Carbuccia sat for three days contemplating Zaatcha before decamping on the night of July 19 for the march back to Biskra.29 The Arabs saw him off with joyful singing.

  When the war minister, General Rullière, received news of Carbuccia's failure, he was livid, and utterly rejected the colonel's contention that his attack, though unsuccessful, had terrified the Arabs: “I believe that [the Arabs] are too intelligent not to see in this event a partial defeat, and that their ardor and confidence in the oases will grow very substantially,” he wrote to the governor-general on August 10. “The victory songs which the inhabitants were singing testify that the Colonel has undergone, unnecessarily, a serious setback for our troops. It is up to you, General, to moderate the ardor of this colonel whose judgement and intelligence have sometimes been sacrificed to an excessive ambition.”30 However, Rulliere agreed that the mistake could not be left unrepaired, especially as news of the French setback was common gossip as far away as the Kabylia. He also agreed that revenge must await cooler weather. His only caution—just do not botch the operation this time!31

  That, however, was an order not easily carried out. Herbillon complained that the apparent inactivity of the French in the late summer caused other tribes, most notably those in the Aurès Mountains to the northeast of Biskra, to take heart. There, “a mob of disorderly, worthless vagabonds and fanatics” bullied a most placid holy man named Abd el-Hafid into leading them “to exterminate the Christians.” The unhappy Hafid, caught between his religious duty to lead a holy war and his basic cowardice, tipped off Saint-Germain, who had 350 legionnaires rushed in from Batna. At noon on September 17, Saint-Germain received word that the attackers were camped on the Wadi Seriana. Where this camp is located is not entirely clear. Contemporary French maps list Seriana well to the southeast of Biskra, in the lowlands near the Chott Melrhir. But this location could not fit the description of the fight that took place there. According to the battle report, the Arabs were encamped further north, at a point about sixteen miles east of Biskra where the river flows out of the Aurès Mountains onto the Saharan plain.32 There they sat for the moment, probably gathering support in the Biskra oases before launching an attack, perhaps upon Biskra itself. Saint-Germain decided to preempt them—he gathered up his legionnaires, a sprinkling of spahis and about two hundred goumiers and marched in broad daylight to the Seriana, where he arrived about four-thirty in the afternoon.

  The native force, estimated at between four thousand and five thousand men, was camped upon the site of an oasis whose palm trees had been felled in an earlier tribal conflict. Of course, the tribal coalitions that collected under the leadership of a holy man, and that when they were substantial enough were called harkas, were not formal military organizations. They usually included women and c
hildren, as well as flocks of goats and camels, which often grazed at a substantial distance from the main camp. It seems improbable that the French could have approached Seriana undetected—at the very least the dust thrown up by the approaching column would have given them away. More likely the rebels placed their faith in the force of their numbers. “We were faced with a solidly established enemy,” wrote Captain Collineau of the sight that confronted the Saint-Germain column at Seriana. “The positions occupied by the sherif caused us a disagreeable surprise. But, it was too late to retreat... ,”33 Saint-Germain followed the classic razzia tactic of marching his infantry in line straight at the camp while he led the goumiers around the left flank to cut off the camp from its line of retreat into the mountains. The result was a rout. The Legion drove the defenders into the wadi, and then climbed the east embankment to attack the small hill where Hafid and six hundred of his supporters had rallied for a final stand. The Legion gave them a volley, and they bolted for the hills, running as best they could the gauntlet of Saint-Germain's horsemen. About two hundred failed to make it, while many of the rest, including Hafid, escaped only by leaving everything behind, including most of their clothing—the field was littered with bur-nooses jettisoned by men desperate to shave critical seconds off the Saharan sprint record. The victors collected large numbers of horses and mules, two hundred muskets, and enough clothing to start a mail-order business. Unbelievably, given the enemy carnage, the Legion had not suffered a scratch—almost. Among the three dead on the attacking side lay Saint-Germain, two bullet holes in his head. It was only fair. The whole sad business had been largely his fault anyway. But his death was much regretted in the French army. The Legion marched back to Biskra, leaving the goumiers to pillage the camp.34