When the trouble with Morocco began, the Spanish Government made the common mistake of underestimating the strength of the enemy. They had to deal with scattered tribes, some of them barbarians of the most savage description, others gentle, comparatively civilised, and quite ready to take advantage of the commercial and educational facilities afforded by contact with European nations.
Although they have no connection with the Pilarica and the Jota of Aragón, it may be of interest to tell two little stories which illustrate the wide difference between these two classes of Moors, for the facts speak for themselves.
In the summer of 1913 a Spanish gun-boat, the General Concha, went ashore in a fog on the Moorish coast, and a hostile tribe attacked the wreck. They shot down some of the sailors who tried to swim ashore, and after a plucky defence led by a junior officer, the captain and the senior lieutenant having been killed by the first volley, they got on board, looted the vessel, and took the survivors prisoners. To make matters worse, they had begun by pretending that they belonged to a friendly tribe, and thus had managed to get within close range of the boat without opposition, opened fire from the cliffs above, and shot down the two officers and several men before the crew could get the guns to work.
Naturally the gravest fears were entertained for the fate of the prisoners, but two or three weeks later it became known that through the influence of a friendly chief they had been taken to the house of one of his friends, where they were well treated and eventually aided to escape to a small boat hidden on the beach a few miles from their prison. The friendly Moors, besides guiding them to the boat, helped to row them out to a Spanish man-of-war which had been sent to bombard the coast villages. Not only had they been provided with the necessaries of life as long as they remained with the friendly Moors, but the women had done their best to cure the wounded, and thanks to them, only one—a case for amputation—failed to recover. And the Moors carried those who were unable to walk some twelve miles across the enemy’s country to the boat, although they well knew that there would be short shrift for them and for the prisoners were the flight discovered.
So much for the “civilised” Moors. Now for the reverse of the medal.
A Spanish officer told me that he had himself seen the following incident, which was only one out of many that occurred during the eight years that he was quartered at Ceuta, whence in times of peace his work took him to various parts of the country.
The father of the present Sultan, who was opposed to any sort of change in his methods of government, used to make an annual “royal progress” from Fez to Morocco, and picked troops went before him to remove any possible source of danger to the monarch. He paid these men a dollar for a live prisoner and two for a dead one, so, said my friend, “you may imagine that more were brought in dead than alive.” Any one who could be even remotely suspected of disaffection was promptly beheaded and his property confiscated. In a word, the “royal progress” was in fact a murderous raid, the loot of which paid for the upkeep of the troops and saved some collecting of extra taxes.
On one occasion my friend, in his official capacity, met the Sultan at a place where two hundred prisoners were marshalled in a row, each with a wooden collar round his neck, tied with a rope to that of the next man. As the Sultan rode up a poor woman flung herself on the ground before him, and clasped his horse’s knees with such force that it could not move, crying that her son who was among the prisoners was innocent, and imploring that the collar be taken off his neck. The Sultan turned to the two negro executioners who accompanied him everywhere.
“Take off her son’s collar,” he said, “and his head with it, and give them to the woman.”
And this was done on the spot.