Chapter XIII: Before the Storm

In July 1879, the Bey took a bold step in direct opposition to M. Roustan’s views. In spite of the various difficulties he had to encounter, he established a Council of State, and announced that from henceforth he should submit all matters of importance for its consideration. As nearly all the members of the council have taken a more or less prominent part in the events which preceded the Kasr-es- Said Treaty, I think it best to mention their names. Muhamed es Sadek’s last Cabinet was composed as follows, viz.: President—Sy Mustapha Ben Ismael. Ordinary members—Sy Muhamed Khaznadar, ex-Prime Minister; General Sy Hussein, Minister of the Interior; General Sy Selim, Minister of War; General Sy Ahmed Zerouck, Minister of Marine; Sy El Aziz, the Bey’s Secretary; General Sy Muhamed Baccouch, Director of the Foreign Office; Sy Mustapha Raduan, Secretary of the Financial Commission; Sheikh Bokhris, Under-Secretary to the Bey; General Sy Mourabet, Governor of Kairwán; General Sy Arbi Zerouck, President of the Municipal Council; and Sheikh Muhamed Beïram, Administrator of the Oukf or Charitable Trusts. The necessity of discussing all proposals made in the council afforded the Bey an excellent excuse when either M. Roustan or Signor Maccio urged him to take some imprudent step; but in August the Prime Minister was induced to obtain a concession for a state _Monte de Pieté_, which put into the hands of a French subject the virtual monopoly of pawnbroking operations in the Regency. The Italian Consul- General protested, and the scheme, although since confirmed, has never yet been carried into effect.

In September Mr. Thomas Fellowes Reade arrived in Tunis, after thirty years’ distinguished service in the consular department, to succeed Sir Richard Wood as the British political agent. Born in the Abdellia Palace at the Tunisian watering-place of the Marsa fifty years before, Mr. Reade’s appointment was naturally popular with all classes of the Arabs, and especially so with the Bey. His dream in life had always been to return to Tunis, and there gain the same power and good name as his father possessed before him; inheriting the political creed and strong sympathies of Sir Thomas Reade, he hoped to maintain and increase the English influence already fostered by Sir Richard Wood. Mr. Reade, however, only came to see the end alike of Tunisian independence and British prestige, but while keenly sharing the sorrow of the Tunisians themselves, he has faithfully obeyed the orders of his superiors.

A few days later a Greek Consul came to Tunis for the first time, and proposed to the Bey an exchange of orders. Muhamed es Sadek only wished he could so easily satisfy M. Roustan and Signor Maccio. A Tunisian general was at once sent in the company of M. Valensi, the Bey’s second interpreter, with a case of Nichans to Athens. After the ceremony of investiture, M. Valensi addressed the king in a speech beginning with the following sentence:—“I am charged by my august Sovereign, the Bey of Tunis, to inform your Majesty that since the arrival of the Greek Consul, _almost all the assassins and brigands in his dominions have entirely disappeared._” . . . The king, however, took the reflection on his country thus accidentally conveyed in excellent part, and the Tunisian mission is not yet forgotten in Greece.

Early in 1880 M. Géry arrived at Tunis to obtain a concession for a port at the Goletta, but the Bey declined for the present entertaining the proposal. Not to be outdone by M. Roustan, Signor Maccio asked for permission to lay a telegraphic cable from Cape Bon to Sicily, but he was now encroaching on one of the most valuable and serviceable of the pretended French monopolies, and the Bey dared not grant his request. Muhamed es Sadek was doubly wrong; in the first place, the French monopoly is a myth, and secondly, it proved to be the exclusive possession of the telegraph, which more than anything else facilitated the aggression of April 1881.

The three telegraph concessions made by the Tunisian Government to France are now before me. The first is dated the 24th of October 1859; the second, the 19th of April 1861; the third merely provides for a telegraph station at Bizerta, and contains the same provisions as the preceding ones. The first concession consists of only ten articles. In the first article the French are allowed to construct a line from Tunis to the Algerian frontier, and it is provided that, on its completion, the Tunisian Government may obtain possession of it, by reimbursing the French Government for its outlay. Of so temporary a nature was this first grant considered, that it is expressly stipulated, in the fourth and fifth articles of the convention, that, as soon as the Tunisian Government obtained the line, the buildings employed for the service should revert to it, and the French officials should resume their functions as French telegraphic _employés_. From the first word to the last not even the faintest shadow of a monopoly is created by the concession of 1859. We now come to the second convention of 1861. It contains only eleven articles, and admits of only one interpretation. Article I. runs as follows:—“Le Gouvernement Tunisien rachète les lignes du télégraphe électrique créés en Tunisie par les soins du Gouvernement Français depuis la Goulette, Tunis et Bardo jusqu’à la frontière Algérienne moyennant une somme de 91,997 francs et centimes, montant des dépenses faites pour leur installation. . . . Le Gouvernement Tunisien _laisse toutefois provisoirement_ au Gouvernement Français, le soin d’exploiter les dites lignes _jusqu’au moment où il jugera convenable d’en charger lui-même_.” The following articles grant permission to erect stations in other parts of the Regency of Tunis on precisely similar conditions. Article IX. provides that “le Gouvernement Français aura le droit de faire attacher en un point quelconque de la Régence un ou plusieurs cables sous-marin, reliant les lignes de la Régence à un point quelconque d’Europe ou d’Afrique. _Le Gouvernement Tunisien conserve toutefois le droit d’accorder la même autorisation à tout autre Gouvernement_.” If the Government of Tunis had ever contemplated the creation of a monopoly in favour of France it would not have reserved the right to acquire itself the lines at any moment. The grant is merely permissive in its terms, and creates no exclusive privilege whatever, nor can any such privilege be inferred from the most strained construction of the contract.

Signor Maccio had every right to resent the decision of the Bey, but he was unwise in losing his temper and indulging in a bitter quarrel with the Prime Minister, the effect of which was only to improve the position of his opponent.

The French had lost the harbour and the Italians the telegraph, and both now turned towards some new field of contest. Nothing could suit this purpose better than the little English railway between Tunis and the sea. If the French secured it they would possess an outlet for their extensive lines of the interior, and complete the circle of communication between the sea-coasts of Tunis and Algeria; if it were purchased by the Italians, the system of French railways in the country would be like Muhammad’s coffin suspended between earth and heaven, and Italy would hold in her hands the approach to the Tunisian capital. Both parties were anxious to buy, and the English proprietors equally willing to sell—_at a price_. The Commendatore Rubattino sent over Mr. Santillana to England to commence negotiations. A preliminary agreement was signed, and Mr. Hodges, the Secretary of the Tunisian Railways Company (Limited), went to Rome to arrange the details. Meanwhile M. Géry got wind of the march stolen on them by their competitors, invited by telegraph another agent of the vendors to come over to Paris, and then and there concluded a purchase of the railway for £105,000. A telegram suddenly called Mr. Hodges back from Italy, and the Italian party felt they had been in turn outwitted. Just as Mr. Hodges was leaving Rome a paper was thrust into his hand. It was a formal authorisation from the Minister of the Interior to deliver to Signor Rubattino “copies of all telegrams sent or received by the Englishman Hodges since his arrival at Rome.” It was stipulated in the contract entered into with M. Géry that the transaction must receive the approbation of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice. The battle-field between France and Italy over the spoils of the Bey of Tunis was consequently transferred for a time from the shores of Africa to the sober precincts of Lincoln’s Inn. Both Signor Rubattino and M. Géry soon plunged into the thick of the fray, and Italy found an unexpected ally in the person of Sir Richard Malins. Mr. Santillana came to England to do battle for the Italians, and he left no stone unturned to requite the cruel treatment he had received from M. Roustan at the time of the De Sancy _ultimatum_ a year before. The caustic sarcasms of the judge attracted as much attention to the case at home as the murdering of French, Italian, and Tunisian names by the English lawyers excited amusement abroad. At last Vice-Chancellor Malins annulled the contract with M. Géry, and it was ordered that the line be resold by public auction for the manifest, and, as it turned out, substantial benefit of the shareholders who had originally purchased it for £40,000. This sale was fixed for the 6th July. The French and Italian Cabinets exchanged messages on the subject, and at the suggestion of Italy it was agreed to leave M. Géry and Signor Rubattino to fight the battle out amongst themselves. As the fatal day approached, M. Roustan felt there was something wrong, and took the bold step of forbidding the Bey in writing to transfer the line to the Italians, “whatever may be the result of the auction in London.” The excitement caused by this manifesto had hardly subsided, when a telegram reached Tunis stating that the English railway had been purchased by Signor Rubattino for £165,000. It afterwards transpired that when M. Géry presented himself before the person charged by the Court to effect the sale, he found there as his competitor Baron Heath, the Italian Consul-General. He had no time to communicate with the French Government, and when he reached the limit fixed by the Company he represented, he was forced to yield to his rival, who had at his back a very satisfactory guarantee from the Government of Signor Cairoli. The French were sure never to forget or forgive an advantage snatched by such means as this, yet the friends of Signor Maccio were weak enough to celebrate this triumph of Punic faith as a great national victory. From the 7th July 1880 diplomatic war to the knife was declared between M. Ferry and Signor Cairoli and M. Roustan and Signor Maccio. The object of the contest was predominance in Tunis.

M. Roustan’s primary endeavour was to efface the consequences of the recent defeat. The French railway for the residue of a term of ninety- nine years could not go to Goletta, but what was to prevent its being carried a couple of miles eastwards, to Rades, a village, which, like the town of Goletta, is built on the shores of the Mediterranean? A concession was demanded for a French line from Tunis to Rades. As a proof of being in earnest, the Bey was only allowed twenty-four hours to reply. The proposal was so contrary to the spirit of the original concession to the English company, that the Bey summoned up courage to reject it, and M. Roustan was obliged to withdraw his objection to the transfer to Signor Rubattino, because it was found out that after all the Bey’s consent was not a _sine quâ non_. The pressure now brought to bear on the Bey by M. Roustan and his satellites was almost unbearable. Before the end of August they obtained concessions for a harbour in the Tunis lake (which was to cost an enormous sum, and presented no other advantages than a probability of causing epidemic fever during its construction, and a tolerable certainty of killing Goletta and the Rubattino railway when completed), as well as for railways to Bizerta and Susa. It is generally believed that M. Roustan also received a formal promise that all concessions for public works in the Regency should henceforth be first offered to French capitalists.[35] Affairs remained in this unsatisfactory state till December, when we heard rumours of troops being massed on the frontiers. M. Roustan reassured the Bey with an official denial, but his words were apparently belied by the appearance of a French squadron at Goletta.

At this very moment M. Léon Renaud, Deputy to the French parliament, arrived in Tunis. It was at once rumoured that he was intrusted with a special mission to the Bey, that he was an emissary of M. Gambetta, and that he was come to bring matters to a crisis with the Italians. These reports emanated chiefly from the Musallis and M. Roustan’s personal friends, and when M. Renaud took up his abode at the French Residency, the uninitiated made up their minds that Tunis was on the eve of great events. M. Roustan at once presented M. Renaud to the Prime Minister, and it soon became everybody’s secret that the cut-and-dried draft of a concession had been presented to the Bey for signature. The Bey became very much perturbed, and at once communicated with the representatives of Italy and England. There was certainly some ground for this alarm, as the projected Credit Foncier of M. Renaud combined in itself the _imperium in imperio_ of the Italian Agricultural Company, and the ambiguity of the De Sancy cessions. In a word, M. Renaud asked for an exclusive permission to issue bank-notes to the value of all sums advanced by him as loans in the country, and required the Government to give a guarantee “in order that the bank should lose nothing by the loans it contracted.” I have the draft _in extenso_ before me, but everything is summed up in these words. M. Géry had already got a promise of all the railways, and M. Renaud wanted a promise of every financial operation present and to come. The Bey himself suggested the means of escape. From the dusty archives of the Bardo were hunted up the protests which M. De Botmiliau had induced all the _corps consulaire_ to make against the far less innocuous English bank seven years before. On the 23d May 1873, the French Chargé d’Affaires had declared that a permission granted to Messrs. Ranking of London to issue bank-notes was illegal, “comme exposant le pays à des sinistres consequences trop faciles à prévoir,” and on the 23d of December 1880, the same functionary asked the same Government not only to allow M. Renaud to issue bank-notes to a practically unlimited amount, but to guarantee him against all ultimate loss! When M. Renaud went next day to receive an answer, the Bey put the protests into his hands and said he would act according to the advice contained in them, and refused to sign the draft M. Renaud had been good enough to prepare for him. The Bey asked his secretary to return the original scheme to M. Renaud. “Keep it, Highness,” answered the Deputy of Corbeil (I quote the _Gaulois_), “I will leave you my project. Think over it, and although you refuse it now, you will some day, after useless struggle, accept it. You will have once more to acknowledge the preponderating influence of France, but you will have lost all claims to her gratitude!” The parting interview with Mustapha was even more stormy, but, to be just to M. Renaud, it is not historically true that he threatened the minister with hanging as soon as the French troops got into Tunis, if he did not induce the Bey to sign the Credit Foncier Concession. M. Renaud’s attempt to centralise Tunisian finance ignominiously failed, and he went away in a rage.[36]