Chapter XXXIX: A Journey to Southern Tunis

Late on the evening of the 26th November I left Goletta in the steamer “Valette” belonging to the Compagnie Transatlantique, on a pilgrimage to the seat of war in the south. The hurry and bustle on board were naturally very great, as the “Valette” was chartered at the eleventh hour to carry provisions to Gabes, but Captain Cambernon, a good- humoured Breton, and as he often laughingly observed, “half an Englishman,” exerted himself under difficulties to do the honours of his ship, and maintain the proverbial good name of his employers for attending to the comforts of their passengers. We did not get under way till dusk, but shortly after daybreak the next morning the “Valette” anchored in the calm blue water off Susa, where the confusion and activity had, if possible, increased since I quitted it three weeks before.

We were now joined by several other travellers, amongst whom were Dr. Samuel Pozzi and his charming wife, M. De la Mothe (the Tunisian special correspondent of the _Temps_), and several military and medical officers, on their way either to meet the column of General Logerot or to do garrison duty at Sfax or Jerba. The weather was delightful, the table unexceptionable, and everybody in the best of humours. I have had few better opportunities of becoming acquainted with almost every shade of French thought about Tunis than during the five days I spent on board the hospitable “Valette.” Dr. Pozzi had come to North Africa to probe the great sanitary question in the interests of the Red Cross Society, and could now talk perpetual ambulance with the army surgeons to his heart’s content, while M. De la Mothe, an ardent and eloquent Arabophile, fought over and over again the battle of the natives, with any Arabophobe warrior who had the temerity to accept his standing challenge.

After a short stoppage at Monastir, where we did not land, we arrived the same afternoon at Mehdia, the once famous “Africa” of the Spaniards, and of the annalist of the Knights of St. John. The town is built on a narrow tongue of land widening towards the centre, stretching out boldly for about a mile into the Mediterranean, and which may be pretty correctly described as a low oval-shaped hill. The isthmus which connects with the coast is barely a quarter of a mile in width, and gives to Mehdia the essential characteristics of a peninsula. In its palmy days the old city evidently covered the whole of Cape Africa, and was surrounded by a thick wall intersected by towers, which protected the isthmus, on one side, and was washed on all others by the sea. Mehdia, according to the doctrines of barbaric warfare, must have been almost impregnable, and so strong were its fortifications that great masses of the _enceinte_ have to this day survived the efforts of the Maltese Knights to entirely destroy them, when they evacuated the place three centuries and a quarter ago. The modern Mehdia immediately adjoins the mainland, and is entered by a gateway through a castellated building known as the Borj Lotani, or “lower fort.”

On either side of the Borj Lotani great pieces of the original bastions are still standing, and on the summit of the tower I saw several small cannons made of tarred rope and hoop iron which evidently belonged to the time of its Spanish occupation. The highest portion of the little peninsula is occupied by a quadrangular fortress known as the Borj Fukháni, or “upper fort,” and between these two buildings are the squalid streets of the Arab town, and a long straggling edifice on the sea-shore known as the Jáma Kebira, or great mosque, a portion of which is said to have been once a Christian church. Towards the farther extremity of the cape, there are evident traces of a large basin for galleys or boats hollowed out in the rock, and approached by an opening in the outer bastion. The soil is everywhere catacombed by cisterns, nearly 300 in number, and many of which are of very considerable size. When Commandant Juffé of the 71st Regiment came to Mehdia with a single company of soldiers on the 26th October, he only found a score of half- starved Tunisian artillerymen in the forts, and about the same number of rusty guns resting on the crumbling battlements, which had survived the gradual decay of the wooden carriages that once supported them.

A few months ago a broken stone outside the door of the mosque on the sea-shore formed a still visible link between the Mehdia of the present and the Africa of the past. About twenty years before, an enthusiastic Moslem theologian had ordered the faithful in Mehdia to thrust from its place in the Jáma Kebira the tomb of an infidel, which by some mischance had remained undisturbed in the sanctuary of the true believers for over three hundred years. The holy man’s advice was religiously acted upon, and the marble slab which once covered the remains of the good knight Giovanni Antonio Pescatore was soon half buried by the sand amongst which it had been thrown. To chip a morsel from the Roumi’s tomb became a pious pastime of the young Arabs of Mehdia, and the monument would long since have disappeared, if the care of Mr. Reade had not rescued it from its perilous position, and obtained permission from the Bey to remove it to Tunis.

The Moslem town of Mehdia rose on the site of some now forgotten Roman city under the fostering care of Obeidallah “El Mehdi,” and in 1550 fell into the hands of the great corsair Dragut, who afterwards died fighting with the _Cavalieri della Religione_ on the ramparts of St. Elmo, and now sleeps at Tripoli in the West. Dragut snatched Mehdia from a small band of pirates, who bade defiance alike to Christian foes and to the Moslem rulers of Tunis and Kairwán. The success of Dragut appears to have caused equal alarm in the councils of Charles V. at Madrid, and of the Grand Master of the Order of St. John at Valetta, and a joint armament was despatched to the shores of Africa before the summer of 1550 had fairly set in. Bosio gives a detailed account of the fall of Mehdia, and Sutherland[8] states that “the knights and other officers of distinction who fell in the assault, were honoured with interment in the principal mosque, which was first purified and consecrated as a Christian temple.” He adds also “that afterwards when the place was abandoned by the imperial troops, the ashes of these warriors were transported to Sicily and deposited in the cathedral at Monreale, where a stately monument was erected, bearing an inscription commemorative of their renown.” During a hot September day I clambered up to Monreale from Palermo to search for the “stately monument.” Not a trace of it remains, and I am afraid the only existing memorials of the capture of Africa in 1550 are the scattered fragments of masonry at Mehdia, and the broken tomb of Fra Giovanni Antonio at Tunis.

Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]

The rescued slab has also an interesting tale belonging to it, which must be my excuse for an unwarrantably tedious historical digression. The troops of the Emperor and the Hospital continued to occupy Mehdia during the years 1551, 1552, and 1553. In the latter year a very strong feeling of discontent appears to have arisen amongst the soldiers, which induced the Grand Master to send first Don Pietro Mendoza, and then Leone Strozzi, Prior of Capua, to arrange matters and restore peace to the garrison. Strozzi appears to have been a man of great energy and boundless ambition, and no sooner had he arrived at Mehdia, than he conceived the project of obtaining a personal grant of it from the Emperor, and of colonising it, after making his peace with the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, through the good offices of Queen Mary of England. Before any answer arrived, he had calmed the irritation which existed amongst the Christian troops, and having captured several Moorish vessels, returned in triumph to Malta. At this juncture the Grand Master John d’Omedes died, and Strozzi became an eager candidate for the vacant post. The electing knights seemed to have entertained such a wholesome dread of his pride and tyranny, that their choice fell upon Claude de la Sengle, who had greatly distinguished himself three years before at the taking of Mehdia. De la Sengle proceeded forthwith to Rome, where he received an envoy of the Emperor, who brought with him a deed of gift, conferring the possession of Mehdia on the Order of St. John.

As soon as the Grand Master returned to Malta a council was assembled to deliberate as to the acceptance or refusal of the preferred possession. The Viceroy of Sicily appeared before it, and strongly urged the former course. These discussions resulted in a commission being appointed to proceed to Mehdia, with orders to report in the greatest possible detail on its position, fortifications, and natural advantages. The Prior of Capua (still smarting under the vexation entailed by his signal failure as a candidate for the Grand Mastership, and very possibly not a little angry at the refusal of the Emperor to sanction his plan for a colony in North Africa) was named its chief, and the commissioners, after making a minute survey of the city, were directed to advise the Order as to its ultimate decision. So much importance was attached to the investigation that every Langue or Division of the Confraternity was represented in the commission. The delegate of England was Sir Usualdo Masimbert, that of Italy Giovanni Antonio Pescatore.

Everything else has been forgotten; the name of Pescatore alone survives amongst the ruins of “Africa.” He was probably a native of Novara in Italy, and arrived in Malta during the year 1545, as the bearer of a letter from the Pope requesting the then Grand Master of the Order to appoint his nephew Carlo Sforza (Prior of Lombardy) to the command of the fleet of the Hospital. He subsequently obtained high rank at Malta, and in September 1553 became Governor of Fort St. Elmo.

Five months later (February 1554) he died at Mehdia,[9] “his friends declaring that he had been poisoned by a confidential servant (_servitore intrinseco_) of the Prior Strozzi, Biagio Pesce by name, who was in turn stabbed a few months afterwards by the Knight Aleramo Parpaglia, on account of a rumour and strong suspicion that he had caused in a similar manner the death of his brother, Knight Bernardone Parpaglia, as well as that of the Conventual-Conservator Knight George Vagnone, and this on account of certain opposition and contradiction offered to his master in the matter of the magistracy. The historian of the Order comments with pious indignation on such a scandal having happened amongst the knights while endeavouring to plant their banner _in partibus infidelium_. The commission at length reported adversely to the acceptance of Mehdia, and its concomitant responsibilities, and in the autumn of 1554 it was evacuated by the Christian troops, its walls and fortifications having being carefully destroyed.

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We left Mehdia at sunset, and next morning were already in sight of the white walls and battered _minár_ of the great mosque of Sfax. A background of green gardens and stately palm groves completed an almost perfect Oriental landscape, and it was difficult to realise, in the placid scene before us, the ordeal of fire which Sfax had undergone during the past summer. Any illusion on this head was at once dissipated as soon as the shore was reached. The ruined _batterie rasante_, the half-dismantled forts, the damaged houses, the heaps of rusty cannon balls, and a row of black crosses in the little cemetery, all contributed to bring vividly before the mind’s eye the events of the memorable 16th July. The streets in the European _faubourg_ had received highly sounding French names, and were all more or less crowded with soldiers and sailors. Repairs were going on in all directions, and ere this Sfax has in all probability resumed its wonted appearance, but even then (Nov. 28th) it was whispered in my ear that nobody could be sure of a sound skin three miles outside the gates, and matters do not appear to have greatly mended since. The one complaint at the time of my visit to Sfax was the petty tyranny of the French Vice-Consul “Giannino,” who was threatening everybody with “confidential reports to M. Roustan,” and making the best use of his opportunities. M. Freycinet has since dispensed with M. Mattei’s services, and only left him the consolation of descanting eloquently on unrequited patriotism and the ingratitude of the Republic.

Great consternation was expressed at the abrupt termination of the Commission of Inquiry into the losses sustained by the Europeans during the bombardment and after the occupation, and I was compelled to undergo a series of ocular proofs as to the extent of damage suffered. The cupola of the Roman Catholic church was gone, and the house occupied by M. Leonardi, the British Consular-Agent, entirely destroyed; one Maltese had lost all his timber, and another the contents of his shop, but there was a deal of good-humoured patience mingled with much complaining, and a general belief that somehow or other the _invitta Britannia_ would bring everything right. In spite of an unfortunate element of grotesque exaggeration, there can be no doubt that a great wrong has been committed by somebody. By all means let that somebody be nameless, but as France was not at war with Tunis, and was avowedly acting as her ally, she is certainly bound to see that wrong remedied.

Outside the town I observed two large _marabouts_. The dome of one was nearly all gone; the second was tolerably perfect. In the former, under a roof of sail-cloth, lived the Maltese family which had been saved by Haj Maala during the insurrection. The mother, with tears in her eyes, described the kindness she had received from the Arabs, when she and her children were hiding in his garden disguised in Tunisian dress. The second tomb was inhabited by an officer, who was quietly eating his luncheon over the grave of holy Sidi Mazún. A little old Maltese woman was pointed out to me, whose solitary room had disappeared under a French shell. She preferred a very detailed claim to the commissioners, amounting altogether to something under three pounds. I was told they were so pleased with her honesty that her loss was assessed at more than she asked. Before evening I was a little tired of looking at calcined walls, hearing stories of real losses and bogus demands, and listening to the misdoings of “Giannino,” and was not sorry to return to the “Valette,” which sailed about midnight for the Syrtis Minor.

Early on the 30th November the “Valette” anchored about a mile from a sandy shore fringed with groves of palm-trees. Beyond a few wooden sheds no kind of habitation was visible, an indentation in the beach alone betokened the mouth of a river, and it was difficult to believe that this was Gabes. A French frigate and gunboat were lying off the coast, and two or three steamers were busily discharging their cargo into white-sailed Arab _feluccas_. We were at once boarded by the French Consular-Agent, M. Sicard, who told us that General Logerot had arrived the previous day at Ras-el-Oued, a few miles from Gabes, where he had encamped. All the available barges were at once utilised for the landing of the officers and soldiers, and we were afraid that it would be impossible for us to reach the land. This was a great disappointment for all of us, and especially for Dr. Pozzi, who was naturally anxious to see the famous river Sel, the muddy waters of which, impregnated with magnesia, had laid so many of his brave fellow-countrymen to sleep for ever under the palm-trees which skirt its banks; and for the newspaper correspondents, who were thirsting for the latest news of the column. In the midst of our lamentations, Captain Arcadius Gosselin of the S.S. “Ville de Tanger” came to the rescue, and obligingly conveyed us on shore in his own boat, and I am sorry to say at some personal inconvenience.

We could now for the first time perceive some villages amongst the palm groves on either side of the half-dried water-course, called by courtesy the river Sel or the river Gabes. The name Gabes seems rather to denominate the whole neighbourhood than any particular locality. The little district of Gabes is as it were the connecting link between the Great Sahara and the Mediterranean, and is really only separated from the desert by a range of low sandy hills, and a series of chotts or marsh-lakes, more than a hundred miles in length, and generally known as the Sebkas Fejej, El Djerid, and Gharsa. Gabes itself is nothing more than an oasis or cluster of oases, through which the stream Sel or Gabes finds its way sluggishly across the plain to the sea beyond. As the Tacape (hence Cabes or Gabes) of the Phœnicians, and afterwards of the Romans, this place was the emporium of one of the richest provinces of Northern Africa. The sands of the Oued Sel have long since buried Tacape out of sight, and the modern Gabes was entirely unknown to fame, when in 1874, M. Roudaire gave it an unexpected celebrity as the Port Said of the projected inland sea, which was to be formed by the junction of the Tunisian marsh-lakes with the waters of the Mediterranean. A year later, an Italian expedition under the Marquis O. Antinori pronounced against the feasibility of M. Roudaire’s scheme, and the scientific world seems to have accepted this verdict. Gabes was again almost forgotten, when, as I have described in a former chapter, it became one of the centres of the Arab rising in July 1881, and was finally occupied, after the merest show of resistance, by the French troops. A French garrison has remained there ever since, under the shelter of the warehouses of an English firm, and intrenched behind a bulwark of iron-bound bales of esparto fibre. After the capture of Kairwán a march on Gabes was resolved on, with a view, if possible, of surrounding the Arabs, or of at any rate showing them enough pomp of war to convince them, that any further resistance to the French Protectorate was a useless kicking against the pricks. It was to this end that General Logerot set out from Kairwán on the 12th November, in company with Generals Sabatier and Saint-Jean, at the head of a force 6200 strong and with a large convoy of provisions.

From the shore the most conspicuous objects in the landscape are the great dome of Sidi Bulbeba’s _kouba_ far away on the sand-hills, and the ruins of the _kisla_ which still cover the bodies of those who perished in the explosion. The palm groves only permit the spectator to see a faint outline of the two rival villages, Jára and Menzel. As we arrived at the small French camp, a battalion of the 107th and another of the 137th Regiment were preparing to march out to Ras-el-Oued to join the column. A walk of half a mile inland brought us to the village of Jára, which stands on the outskirts of the first oasis and on the banks of the Oued Sel. Its houses, mosques, and numerous _marabouts_ are built of large and well-fashioned blocks of stone, which evidently had done service twenty centuries ago in Tacape. My readers will remember that the people of Jára made their peace with the French as soon as they arrived, and while the Arabs of Menzel were still fighting amidst the embers of their homes. The dwellers in Jára belong to the _Soff_ or faction of the Shadid, while those in Menzel and in the adjoining village of Shinni are followers of Sidi Yusef, a saint, and not of the new French Caid. Ali Ben Hlifa, the leader of the national movement in Tunis, lived in Shinni, but party-feeling in Jára was stronger than their patriotism, and the destruction of the hated Menzel was an ample compensation for the triumph of the infidels. Although the French had been at Gabes five months when I visited it, the Arabs of Menzel and Shinni would never ask or accept _aman_. Two days before my arrival it had been decided to complete the destruction of both these places by gunpowder and dynamite. The Jáma Kabira, the Caid’s house, and all the public buildings of Menzel were soon reduced to shapeless heaps of ruins. Next morning Shinni and more particularly the great dwelling- house of the Hlifas shared the same fate. It was difficult to believe that the calcined rafters and blackened walls I visited, were now all that remained of a town, which half a year before contained 4000 inhabitants, and was one of the most thriving and prosperous marts of the rich province of the Djerid. The story of Menzel and Jára illustrates the extraordinary violence of local party-feeling amongst the Arabs of North Africa, and the powerful influence of the institution of the _Soff_. The force of faction had stood the French in good stead in Algeria, and it now seems likely to help them in Tunis. They are quite aware of the weak spot in the Arab armour, and while at Gabes I plainly saw that no pains were being spared to take every advantage of it. In matters of this kind the Caid Sidi Yusef is said to be an adept, and the Beni Zid clan was almost persuaded by him to bar Ali Ben Hlifa’s retreat to the Tripolitan frontier.

At Gabes I was able to ascertain the particulars of General Logerot’s march from Kairwán. It was a fitting sequel to General Saussier’s advance from Tunis, both as regards its details and its consequences. The Arabs (with a single exception) eluded the pursuit of the advancing column, and hardly an enemy was ever visible. Shots were at times exchanged during the night, some of the irregular cavalry were killed, but nothing deserving the name of an engagement took place. After leaving Kairwán on the 12th November, the camp was pitched successively at Enchir-el-Ouiba and Oued Mesour. This movement occupied three days. Halts were afterwards made at Bír Bu Habessa, Hoglet Ben Zallouck, and Hoglet El Ajela. On the 17th November the column reached Ali Ben Abda, where great inconvenience was experienced from want of water. The extraordinary inaccuracy of the topographical department was one of the worst features of the campaign in a military point of view. While I was at Kairwán, a reconnaissance under Colonel Moulin returned to the city by forced marches and in a pitiable condition, owing to having received totally erroneous official information about the water supply on his route. The _ouiden_ or rivers of the chart turned out to be streaks of sand, and the _biár_ or wells were in reality muddy pools of brine. If an Arab attack had taken place during the retreat, nothing could have saved the weary and thirsty troops from a disaster. The patience of the soldiers under these trying circumstances was admirable, and they enlivened their forced march by composing a song in honour of _riz au lait_ as cooked with the water of a Tunisian _bir_. I heard it afterwards sung at Kairwán, and it was as witty as it was good-humoured. The same misfortune was severely felt at the next halting-places (Taoul Sheikh and Oued Gran), but at El Founi several wells were found, and the column remained there for four days.

The presence in the vicinity of a large encampment of the Oued Khalifa (one of the many subdivisions of the great Zlass tribe) having been ascertained, a strong force left El Founi to attack it. It was, however, found to be tenanted almost entirely by women, children, and decrepit old men, for the combatants had already gone southwards, leaving their tents pitched in the Douarna mountains, well out of the line of march as they imagined. This bloodless victory resulted, however, in the confiscation of 7000 sheep, 368 young camels, and 1400 oxen. After quitting El Founi for Sidi Muhamed, heavy rains considerably impeded the march, but after halts at Sidi El Medoub, Oued El Akarit and Metouia, the troops, early on the 29th November, came in sight of the palm- covered oasis of Gabes and encamped at Ras-el-Oued. During the last seven days of the march not a single living soul was met with. Contrary to General Logerot’s anticipations, the health of the troops was not appreciably affected during their advance over the almost unknown deserts of Central Tunis, and only six deaths occurred _en route_. Some weeks later an English merchant had an interview at Tripoli with Muhamed Ben Hlifa, the nephew of the Arab leader. Sidi Muhamed made merry over General Logerot’s laborious expedition. He said that whenever the French marched in compact masses, the Arabs could easily avoid them, and that often only a few miles separated the two camps. The insurgents were able to move in a day as far as the French could march in a week. This reminds me of one of the wittiest of the _Epoca’s_ Tunisian caricatures, which depicts France contemplating an army of tortoises and snails on a plain, defied by a number of Arabs on the mountains.

Just before leaving Gabes I learned that an extension of the expedition in the direction of the Tripolitan frontier had been resolved upon. The wind had meanwhile shifted to another quarter, and we were carried to our boat in rather an undignified manner on the backs of some of the worldly wise Arabs of Jára, as the landing-place was no longer practicable. After sunset we anchored off the island abode of the “lotus-eaters,” but nothing could be seen of Jerba but a low coast-line, some palm-trees and a long white fort. Before we had awoke next morning we had already passed the frontier, and were skirting the barren hills of the most westerly province of the Ottoman Empire—Trabulus Gharb.