The Passing of Morocco

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

‘There were several casualties on the French side.... The enemy’s losses were very heavy. The fight has produced a great impression among the tribes.’

The Arab losses under the fire of the French 75-millimètre guns and the fusillade of the Foreign Legion and the Algerians, many of them sharpshooters, are usually heavy where the Arabs attempt a serious resistance. I should say it would average a loss on the part of the Moors of fifty dead to one French soldier wounded. Moreover, when a Moor is badly wounded he dies, for the Moors know nothing of medicine, and the only remedies of which they will avail themselves are bits of paper with prayers upon them, written by shereefs; these they swallow or tie about a wound while praying at the shrine of some departed saint. It has seemed to me a wanton slaughter of these ignorant creatures, but if the French did not mow them down, the fools would say they could not, and would thank some saint for their salvation.

The arms of the Arabs are often of the most ineffective sort, many of them, indeed, made by hand in Morocco. While I was with the French army on one occasion we found on a dead Moor (and it is no wonder he was dead) a modern rifle, of which the barrel had been cut off, evidently with a cold chisel, to the length of a carbine. The muzzle, being bent out of shape and twisted, naturally threw the first charge back into the face of the Moor who fired it. I have seen bayonets tied on sticks, and other equally absurd weapons.

There are in Morocco many Winchester and other modern rifles, apart from those with which the Sultan’s army is equipped. Gun-running has long been a profitable occupation amongst unscrupulous Europeans of the coast towns, the very people for whose protection the French invasion is inspired. A man of my own nationality told me that for years he got for Winchesters that cost him 3l. as much as 6l. and 8l. The authorities, suspecting him on one occasion, put a Jew to ascertain how he got the rifles in. Suspecting the Jew, the American informed him confidentially, ‘as a friend,’ that he brought in the guns in barrels of oil. In a few weeks five barrels of oil and sixteen boxes of provisions arrived at —— in one steamer. The American went down to the custom-house, grinned graciously, and asked for his oil, which the Moors proceeded to examine.

‘No, no,’ said the American.

The Moors insisted.

The American asked them to wait till the afternoon, which they consented to do; and after a superficial examination of one of the provision boxes, a load of forty rifles, the butts and barrels in separate boxes, covered with cans of sardines, tea, sugar, etc., went up to the store of the American.

It was more profitable to run in guns that would bring 8l., perhaps more, than to run in 8l. worth of cartridges, and after the Moors had secured modern rifles they found great difficulty in obtaining ammunition, which for its scarcity became very dear. For that reason many of them have given up the European gun and have gone back to the old flintlock, made in Morocco, cheaper and more easily provided with powder and ball.

Ammunition is too expensive for the poverty-stricken Moor to waste much of it on target practice, and when he does indulge in this vain amusement it is always before spectators, servants and men too poor to possess guns; and in order to make an impression on the underlings—for a Moor is vain—he places the target close enough to hit. The Moor seldom shoots at a target more than twenty yards off.

Even the Sultan is economical with ammunition. It is never supplied to the Imperial Army—for the reason that soldiers would sell it—except just prior to a fight. It is told in Morocco that when Kaid Maclean began to organise the army of Abdul Aziz he was informed that he might dress the soldiers as he pleased—up to his time they were a rabble crew without uniforms—but that he need not teach them to shoot. Nor have they since been taught to shoot.