One April day in 1827 Hussein, Dey231 of Algiers, angrily struck the French consul three times with his fly-whisk. Outraged at such treatment of its official representative, the French government despatched a naval squadron to the city to demand an apology and reparations. When the Dey refused, the consul and all French residents were put on board the ships and Algiers blockaded. Then, in July 1830, a French expeditionary force landed at Sidi-Ferruch, some twenty miles to the west of Algiers, while the city itself was simultaneously subjected to a formidable naval bombardment. It fell a few weeks later. The Dey went into exile. The French occupation of Algeria had begun.
The occupiers did not, however, have it all their own way. As early as 1832 fighting broke out in the interior under a twenty-five-year-old resistance leader named Abd el-Kader and continued for the next fifteen years, but by the time Abd el-Kader surrendered in 1847 to Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, French colonists were pouring into Algeria. Already by 1841 there were over 37,000 of them, and well before the end of the century they accounted for a good 10 percent of the total population. It was, they found, an easy place in which to settle–indeed, many different peoples had already done so: Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Turks. Recently the power of the Barbary corsairs had grown to the point where they were virtually the masters of the land–though not its governors, if only because they made no attempt to govern. What is unquestionable is the fact that under the French army and Bugeaud’s bureaux arabes Algeria was more efficiently and more fairly administered than it had been for many centuries.
Along the coast and in the northern mountains, the Algerian climate is typical of the Mediterranean, with warm, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Before the arrival of the French the land had been by no means uncivilised–as early as 1834 a French general noted that illiteracy hardly existed, since every village boasted two schools–but although technically under Ottoman domination its successive governments had been chronically unstable: of the Dey’s twenty-eight predecessors, over half had met a violent death. Property rights were vague, and to the French unimportant. Addressing the National Assembly in 1840, Bugeaud made his own opinion clear: ‘Wherever there is fresh water and fertile land, there we have to put settlers [colons], without concerning ourselves as to whom these lands belong.’ On the other hand, there were about a million hectares–some 4,000 square miles–which had been the property of the Ottoman government and which the French could be said to have inherited, together with other vast tracts which had been taken over, either because they were lying uncultivated or as the result of some malfeasance on the part of the former owners.
In the early days Bugeaud’s regime was fairly dictatorial, with relatively little comprehension between rulers and ruled. Gradually, however, the French attitude became more enlightened. Soon after the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852 Napoleon III was to say that, while he hoped that an increased number of settlers would keep Algeria French, it should be remembered that France’s first duty was to its three million Arabs. Algeria was ‘not a French province but an Arab country, a European colony and a French camp’. Military rule, however, was to continue until after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870. Before that time the Governor-General of Algeria–a title first given to Bugeaud in 1845–was almost invariably a high-ranking army officer. It was only in 1870 that the colons–otherwise known as the pieds noirs–by now over 200,000 strong, insisted on more control over their own affairs, similar to that enjoyed by their compatriots across the Mediterranean. Algeria was now formally annexed, constituting an integral part of France itself, and was governed through the French Ministry of the Interior in Paris.
Because of this, Algeria’s position was essentially different from that of her neighbours to east and west, Tunisia and Morocco. Here too French influence was strong, but since there was relatively little immigration these two countries were deemed to be protectorates only and were dealt with by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay. Tunisia too had been technically an Ottoman province, although in fact entirely autonomous. When in 1830 the French occupied Algiers, the reigning Bey of Tunis had cautiously accepted French assurances of non-intervention, but then in 1835 the Ottoman Empire seized the opportunity of a disputed succession in neighbouring Libya to depose the ruling dynasty there and re-establish direct Ottoman rule. Thereafter Tunisia found herself most delicately placed, sandwiched as she was between the two great powers of France and Turkey, both of which were casting covetous eyes upon her. It says much for the Bey and his successors that she performed a successful balancing act until 1881, when the French, on the flimsy enough pretext that a bunch of Tunisian tribesmen had settled in Algerian territory, invaded the country, transferred to France the Bey’s authority in finance and foreign affairs and appointed a French Resident Minister.
The Sultanate of Morocco–the only North African country with coastal exposure to both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic–was in a different position again. Because of its lack of natural harbours, its rugged mountainous interior and the immense distance separating it from imperial centres in the east, it was still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, very largely isolated. It was this isolation–encouraged by successive rulers–which had enabled it firstly to preserve, to a far greater degree than was possible elsewhere, its ancient Islamic, Berber and African traditions, and secondly to resist exterior pressures, notably that of the Spanish Reconquista in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Morocco thus remains the only Arab country never to have become part of the Ottoman Empire, which for so long controlled virtually all the rest of the Arab world.
The arrival of the French in neighbouring Algeria could not, however, be ignored. Relations deteriorated sharply in 1844, after the rebel Abd el-Kader took refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan despatched an army to the border. The French responded by bombarding Tangier in early August, and Mogador ten days later; on the 14th they virtually destroyed Sultan Moulay Abd el-Rahman’s army at Isly, near Oujda. The Sultan was obliged, inter alia, to promise that he would intern or expel the rebel should he ever again enter Moroccan territory. He proved as good as his word: in 1847, when Abd el-Kader sought refuge for the second time, he was arrested by Moroccan troops and forced to surrender. It comes as a relief to report that the French were merciful towards him: he was to spend the rest of his life in honourable exile in Damascus.
On the Sultan’s death in 1859, the spotlight briefly switches to Spain, with which a bitter dispute took place over the boundaries of the Spanish enclave at Ceuta.232 This ended in a declaration of war by Madrid and, in the following year, the Spanish capture of Tetouan, the Sultan being obliged to agree to a large indemnity and a considerable increase in the size of the Ceuta enclave. Meanwhile, the British and the Italians were also hoping somehow to win their slice of the Moroccan cake, but both were bought off by France: Britain agreed to give the French a free hand there in return for a French undertaking not to interfere with her own plans in Egypt, while Italy did much the same in relation to Libya. In 1880 the British, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians and Americans had concluded a convention at Madrid which–in theory at least–virtually guaranteed Moroccan independence, but this did not prevent France from concluding in 1904–with full British connivance–a secret treaty with Spain agreeing on respective ‘spheres of influence’ within the country. This was the situation when at the end of March 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm II arrived at Tangier on the liner Hamburg–and, as so often, put the cat among the pigeons. In his reply to the speech of welcome he declared first for the complete sovereignty and independence of the Sultan, second for the integrity of his realm, and third for ‘a Morocco open to the peaceful competition of all nations, without annexation or monopoly’.
It all sounded innocuous enough, but to the European powers it was clearly a deliberate attempt to put a spoke into the French–and to a lesser extent the Spanish–wheel. The previous year the Kaiser had proposed that Germany should lease Port Mahon in Minorca f
rom Spain–an idea that had met a frigid reception from both France and Britain, the island being situated where it could command the approaches to Toulon and on a direct line between the two vital British bases of Malta and Gibraltar. The last thing either nation wanted was to have Wilhelm meddling once again in the affairs of the western Mediterranean. The whole issue was finally hammered out and–it seemed–satisfactorily resolved in 1906, when a conference of the signatories to the 1880 convention was called at Algeciras to discuss the whole Moroccan question. This reaffirmed the integrity of the country and the economic equality of the powers, but sanctioned French and Spanish policing of Moroccan ports and the collection of customs dues.
Even now the story was not quite over. In 1907 France–always eager to increase her influence in North Africa–occupied Casablanca; then Abd el-Hafid, the brother of the Sultan Abd el-Aziz, led a rebellion against him, claiming that he had betrayed Muslim traditions. Abd el-Aziz took refuge in Tangier, while in Fez Abd el-Hafid was proclaimed Sultan. He was duly recognised in the following year by the European powers, but never managed to impose order throughout the country and eventually, with disorder steadily increasing, was obliged to ask the French to rescue him. The result was the Treaty of Fez of 1912, by the terms of which Morocco became a French protectorate. Tangier, long the seat of the European diplomatic missions, was put under separate administration.
Finally, a word about Libya. Anyone who has ever visited the country will have been struck by its extraordinary geography. To the west–with its capital at Tripoli–is Tripolitania where, in sites like Leptis Magna or Sabratha, we can still feel the impact of ancient Rome; to the east is Cyrenaica–based on Benghazi–which, at Apollonia, Cyrene and elsewhere, immediately takes us back to the world of classical Greece. Between the two, however, are some six or seven hundred miles of virtually nothing, except the nondescript little town of Sirte at what is roughly the half-way mark. The country has probably been kept together by two things only: the Sanussi order that preached a puritanical form of Islam–though even this was largely concentrated in Cyrenaica–and, later, Italian colonialism.233 Like its neighbours, it had been more or less autonomous, although under nominal Turkish rule, until in 1835 the Ottoman Empire took advantage of one of the endless disputes over the succession to reimpose a direct government. For the next seventy-seven years the country was administered by civil servants from Istanbul, until in 1911 Italy took over, gave it its present name and governed it until after the Second World War.
CHAPTER XXVII
The Quarantotto
When, on Wednesday, 12 January 1848–the thirty-eighth birthday of King Ferdinand II234 –the people of Palermo rose up against their Bourbon masters, they could have had no idea of what they were starting. Risings in the kingdom were nothing new: there had been unsuccessful ones in Naples in 1820 and in Piedmont in 1821; in Sicily itself there had been another as recently as 1837, sparked off by an epidemic of cholera–the first appearance of the disease in western Europe. But the consequent angry manifestations had been relatively easily dealt with. What happened in 1848–the quarantotto, as Italy remembers it–was something else. It was a revolution, and by the end of the year it had been followed by other revolutions: in Paris, Vienna, Naples, Rome, Venice, Florence, Lucca, Parma, Modena, Berlin, Milan, Parma, Cracow, Warsaw and Budapest.
Already, as the year opened, student riots had prompted the authorities to close the university; several eminent citizens known for their liberal views had been arrested, and an unsigned manifesto circulated calling upon the people to rise up on the King’s birthday. A large proportion of the insurgents were mountain brigands–the forerunners of the mafiosi of today–or simple peasants, few of whom probably had much idea of what they were fighting for, apart from a generally better life; but they fought no less fiercely for that. Many of the smaller villages and towns were devastated, as was much of the countryside.
The Bourbons had some 7,000 troops in the Palermo garrison, but they proved almost useless. Communications were bad, the roads execrable, and they could not be everywhere at once. In despair they decided to bombard the city–a decision which they soon had cause to regret.235 The infuriated mob fell on the royal palace, sacked it–sparing, thank heaven, the Palatine Chapel–and set fire to the state records and archives. The garrison retreated, and soon returned to Naples. In the following days a committee of government was formed under the presidency of the seventy-year-old Sicilian patriot (and former Neapolitan Minister of Marine) Ruggero Settimo; meanwhile, the revolt spread to all the main cities–except Messina, which held back through jealousy of Palermo–and well over a hundred villages, where the support of the peasantry had by now been assured by lavish promises of land. It encountered no opposition worthy of the name.
By the end of the month the island was virtually free of royal troops, and on 5 February Settimo announced that ‘the evils of war had ceased, and that thenceforth an era of happiness had begun for Sicily’. He failed to mention that the citadel of Messina was still in Neapolitan hands; nonetheless, it was clear to King Ferdinand that he had his back to the wall. Owing to almost continuous demonstrations in Naples on the Sicilian model, on 29 January he offered a liberal constitution to both parts of his kingdom, providing for a bicameral legislature and a modest degree of franchise. ‘The game is up,’ wrote the horrified Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, to his chief, Metternich, ‘the King and his ministers have completely lost their heads.’ Metternich simply scribbled in the margin, ‘I defy the ministers to lose what they have never possessed.’
The news that reached him towards the end of February must have distressed him still more. In Paris, the ‘Citizen King’ Louis-Philippe had been toppled on 24 February and a republic proclaimed. Now the landslide began. Ferdinand, who had enjoyed a brief popularity after his grant of a constitution, was more than ever execrated; liberal constitutions were no longer enough. The Sicilians, meanwhile, had refused the offer. ‘Sicily,’ they coldly informed him, ‘does not demand new institutions, but the restoration of rights which have been hers for centuries.’ In Palermo he was declared deposed, the Bourbon flag being replaced by the revolutionary tricolour and that strange device of a sort of rimless wheel with three legs as its spokes.236
Sicily was now truly independent, for the first time since the fourteenth century. The difficulty was that it lacked any machinery for its effective administration. Armed bands sprang up throughout the island; kidnappings and protection rackets were rife. But all this was symptomatic of a greater malaise. Trade plummeted, unemployment soared, the legal system virtually collapsed. To most Sicilians, the year 1848 was no longer the year of revolution; it was the year of destruction and chaos.
Towards the end of August, Ferdinand sent a combined military and naval force under Field Marshal Carlo Filangieri to restore order on the island. The rebels fought back, and the age-old hatred between Neapolitans and Sicilians gave rise to atrocities on both sides–to the point where the British and French admirals in Sicilian waters, shocked by the bloodshed and brutality, persuaded Ferdinand to grant a six-month armistice. Here, one might have thought, was an opportunity to end the stalemate, but every offer of settlement was refused out of hand. As a result, Filangieri captured Taormina on 2 April 1849 and Catania on the 7th; on 15 May he entered Palermo. By their inefficiency, their lack of unity and their refusal to compromise, the Sicilians had perfectly demonstrated how a revolution should not be run. Their neighbours the Greeks had shown similar defects, but they had the active support of the western powers. The Sicilians had not–and they paid the price.
The revolution in Venice, though it too was ultimately unsuccessful, was handled with far more assurance and skill. Already in June 1844 three young Venetian naval officers–the brothers Attilio and Emilio Bandiera and their friend Domenico Moro–had sailed from Corfu to Calabria, where they planned to join a minor insurrection that had broken out against Bourbon Naples. Their expedition was ridiculously quixotic
: they had made virtually no preparations, had taken no precautions and were almost immediately arrested. A month later they were executed in the valley of Rovito, near Cosenza.237 The news of their deaths had an immense impact on Italian public opinion. If three Venetians–to say nothing of several fellow martyrs from Perugia, Rimini and other cities–were prepared to die for Naples, then Italian unity must after all be something more than an empty dream. It seemed unthinkable that such heroes should have perished in vain. In Venice it was now generally agreed that the moment had come when the whole population of the city must speak out with a single voice–and the voice with which it spoke was that of Daniele Manin.
He was born in Venice on 13 May 1804. His Jewish father had converted to Christianity in his youth, and had adopted the name of his godfather, Pietro Manin–brother of the last Doge, Ludovico. Determined to be a lawyer like his father, Daniele had published his first work, a legal treatise on wills, when he was twelve. By the time he was awarded his doctorate at Padua University at the age of twenty-one, he had a good working knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German, as well as Italian and his native Venetian. Brought up by his father to share his own republican and liberal ideas, he had already been politically active for some sixteen years when in 1847, with nationalist feeling growing throughout Italy, he launched what he called his lotta legale, or legal struggle, against Austrian despotism. He was not at this stage demanding full Venetian independence, merely home rule under the Habsburg Empire. Only when this had been refused–as he knew full well that it would be–would he call his fellow citizens to arms.
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