Chapter XXXIII: At Susa in the Sahel

The news of what at first seemed very like a French defeat under the walls of Susa, and a desire to witness the preparations for the coming Kairwán campaign, induced me to undertake a twelve hours’ journey thither by sea, a few days after the French tricolour floated over the Tunisian standard on the Tunis citadel. The white-walled town, which covers the side of a hill sloping gently towards the shores of the Mediterranean, can boast of an historical past of some importance. As the Roman Adrumetum, it was the capital of a rich and extensive province, and a great Roman road stretched from its walls across the site of Moslem Kairwán to Tebessa, in Algeria. During the past three centuries Susa certainly bore the brunt of the aggressive piracy of its Turkish masters, and was ten times bombarded by the French, Venetian, and Spanish fleets. But somehow or other it always managed to rise again from its ashes, and is still the capital, not only of the small district immediately surrounding it, but of the whole of that fruitful and cultivated zone of land which borders on the sea for nearly 200 miles between Cape Bon and Sfax, and which is usually described as the Sahel. Five weeks before the native governor had surrendered the keys of Susa to Colonel Moulin, and the town, which had so often defied the fleets of France, and Spain, and Venice, passed without a blow into the possession of the French troops. Since then the garrison has been very materially strengthened, and the time has been spent in active preparation for the coming campaign, and in very frequent reconnaissances with the warlike Arabs of the interior, who seem determined to dispute the passage of the French across the hills covered with olive groves, which for a distance of ten or twelve miles separate the coast from the sandy plain, in the middle of which stands holy Kairwán.

Susa possesses a population of about 10,000 souls within its walls, and a sufficiency of mosques, religious colleges, and schools. The fortifications are certainly in better repair than those of any other town in the Regency, but ten years ago the present Bey sold all the brass and bronze cannons they contained to be broken up as old metal in Marseilles and London. The guns still there are useless. Besides the _enceinte_, Susa is defended by a fort on the sea-shore, called the Kasr-el-Bahr, and the whole city is dominated by the Kasbah, the view from which, looking seawards, is of almost Neapolitan beauty. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Susa underwent a siege as late as 1864.

On my arrival General Étienne gave orders that I was to be permitted to visit the fortifications and the French camps, and Colonel Moulin was courteous enough to allow his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Walewski (the son of the French Ambassador at St. James’s during the Empire), to act as my guide. Here, as at Medjez, the military authorities seemed to invite criticism, and the arrangements at Susa reflected much credit on the energy and zeal of Colonel Moulin, who made all the preparations necessary for the reception of the expeditionary column during the three weeks which intervened between the occupation of the town and the arrival of General Étienne. The stores already landed were calculated to be sufficient for 10,000 men during three months. Shortly after the occupation a building in the lower part of the town was used for an hospital, and acquired a very unfortunate reputation, but before I arrived there the great rooms of the citadel were made available for the sick soldiers. All was bustle and confusion now; the little wharf was filled up with merchandise of every description, transports and steamers of the Compagnie Transatlantique arrived faster than they could be discharged, and soldiers and civilians hurrying to and fro jostled each other in the narrow streets. Susa had already its _Café de la Victoire_ and _Restaurant de la République_, and everybody was putting up French sign-boards, and advertising French wares, in spite of the orders of a zealous Italian Vice-Consul, who held any such proceeding on the part of “his” subjects to be of a decidedly penal character. Preparations were being made to mount a battery of heavy siege guns on the Kasbah, the telegraph _corps_ had already received the material necessary to lay a line as the troops advanced, and a M. De Cauville had already commenced a miniature railway, which was to get to Kairwán almost as soon as the columns, and be one of the most novel and striking features of the campaign. It was soon discovered, however, that the little engine, “le Kérouan,” could not be coaxed across the Susa hill, and when General Logerot’s tramcar went off the line seventeen times on the journey from Kairwán to Susa, he is said to have spoken unkindly of the new-fangled invention, most of the rails of which have now sunk deep into the Sidi- el-Hani marshes.

The Susa column was constituted as follows:—One battalion of the 48th Regiment, one of the 66th, and one of the 116th, forming the 13th Régiment de Marche, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Moulin; one battalion of the 19th Regiment, one of the 62d, and one of the 138th, forming the 14th Regiment de Marche under Lieutenant-Colonel Lannes; the 23d Chasseurs à Pied; the 6th Regiment of Hussars, three batteries of mountain guns, the 17th Squadron of the Military Train, one company of Engineers, one railway company, one telegraph company, one complete _service d’ambulance_, and a military chaplain. These form the 7th Brigade, commanded by General Étienne. Among the various commissariat arrangements, I was particularly struck with a number of very large cast-iron ovens for baking bread. They are carried in pieces, can be easily put together, and will turn out 1000 rations _per diem_. During the march every officer and private was to forage and cook for himself.

The military occupation of Susa was complete, and the authority of the Tunisian Governor-General Bacouch had become quite as shadow-like as that of the Bey, and all he asked was to be allowed to go away in peace. The keys of the town gates were brought every day at sunset to Colonel Moulin, who returned them at dawn.

When I was at Susa the sole topic of conversation seemed to be the fighting with the Arabs outside the town, and the prospects of the coming campaign. The order to march on Kairwán was expected from day to day with feverish anxiety. While still in the midst of the turmoil of this once tranquil and sleepy Tunisian coast town, I wrote the following note on the position of affairs, which was afterwards almost entirely verified:—

Kairwán is between forty and fifty miles as the crow flies from Susa, and the French calculate that it will be five days’ march, making due allowance for attacks by the Arabs _en route_. After leaving Susa the road to Kairwán for ten or twelve miles passes over hills covered with dense olive forests; after that succeeds a wide expanse of undulating, open country up to the very walls of the Tunisian Mecca. Water supply there is none; the few wells at Sidi-el-Hani have been damaged by the Arabs, and even at Susa the water obtainable is insufficient. In the Kasbah there is an enormous well 240 ft. deep, but its contents are unfit for drinking purposes. A large number of camels will accompany the column, each carrying two casks containing twenty-four gallons of water. During the march through the olive woods the French fully expect to be severely harassed by the Arabs after the manner of their recent reconnaissances, and, as they invariably elude pursuit, it is apprehended that they will take advantage of the French advance into the Kairwán plain to intercept if possible communication with the coast, or, at any rate, to pillage the whole of the province of the Sahel between Susa and Sfax. The district of Susa proper alone contains fifty-three populous villages, including Kala Grande and Mesaken, the latter being larger than Susa itself, and the Sheikhs of these villages have informed the nominal governor of that place that as soon as the French column has passed westwards the insurgents will devastate their farms and carry off the remnant of their cattle. It must also be remembered that in a strategic point of view the seaports of Monastir and Mehdia are quite as important as Susa, and that neither of them has been occupied. This is quite as great a blunder as the undefended French railway turned out to be in Northern Tunis, and which, but for the massacre of Oued Zerga, would have been supplemented by the equally capital error of leaving the unoccupied city of Tunis in the rear of the columns advancing southwards on Kairwán. The expeditionary force from Tebessa will be utterly powerless to prevent the attack of the Arabs on the Sahel, and if this takes place (as it certainly will) and extends even to Sfax and Gabes, the garrisons at those places can effect nothing beyond their own walls, as they are masters of just the land they stand on, and nothing more.

The French will meet with no resistance at Kairwán itself. The townspeople have long since arranged this with their more courageous fellow-countrymen, who have agreed to attack the French simultaneously at distant points, and who are now fighting at Kef and Ghardimaou and in the valleys and defiles of Zaghouán, and who, after an obstinate resistance in the olive groves between Susa and Mesaken, will retreat only to carry the fire and sword along the Sahel from Susa to Gabes, and very probably to appear before Monastir and Mehdia.

Whatever may be the fate of Kairwán, the end will be as far off as ever. Several of the Susa Arabs remarked to me that they once thought only their coasts and fertile lands were wanted, but they are now convinced that their faith is to be assailed by the invaders. Up to the present time, no sort of disorder has occurred in Kairwán itself. The Arabs who had resolved to undertake the holy but hopeless task of its defence, are believed to have retired to other parts of the country, and a white flag will be hoisted on the Great Mosque as a sign of unconditional submission as soon as the French columns appear before it. What will then happen it is difficult to foresee, but the French soldiers in Tunis have already made up their minds as to the practical inutility of the concentration of so much pomp of war on the taking of an undefended city, the fortifications of which belong to the Middle Ages, and which is only too anxious to surrender; and a very unfortunate comparison is generally made between the Treaty of Kasr-es-Said as preceding the opening of the French Chambers on the 14th of May, and the probable capture of Kairwán as happening just before the 28th of October.