Group of Warriors, Djabbir.
Coffins for Native Chiefs, Wangata, 1897 (Equateur).
It was beyond the financial power of the State to provide an adequate military organisation on such a basis. While the administrators of the Congo were devising means for the support of an efficient force at a reduced cost, the British government on the Gold Coast prohibited further recruiting of Haussas by foreign states. Barred from getting its soldiers from surrounding British territory, the Congo Government proceeded to develop its earlier plans for raising a native local force, the first purpose of which was that it should supplement the main body of regular troops.
The nucleus of what is the present Public Force were the men of the Bangala tribe, whom Captain Coquilhat employed as armed police when he founded Equateurville in 1885. A short time thereafter, Captain Van Dorpe made the same experiment among the Manyanga. Finding the men from both tribes fit for a military career, the principle of employing aboriginal races in the Public Force was followed with the rapid establishment of the numerous posts and stations erected at that time. The wisdom of employing natives for the organisation of such a national force was soon apparent. In 1888 an order was issued to form eight companies of one hundred and fifty men, with power to increase the number to two hundred and fifty. It was not, however, till 1891 that Baron Van Eetvelde and the Governor-General, M. Camille Janssen, drafted a practical scheme for the foundation of a permanent Public Force. Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger, whose volume entitled The Congo State treats at length of the subject up to 1898, describes the scheme which the Sovereign had approved:
The principal features of the scheme were, that the force should be divided into twelve companies corresponding with the administrative districts, and that one hundred and twenty European officers, chiefly Belgians, should be appointed to the command and disciplining of this force. The different grades of this army were: one commandant, eleven captains, ten lieutenants, thirty-nine sub-lieutenants, and sixty sergeants. The new system of recruiting was of two kinds. The first provided for the engagement of volunteers for a period not exceeding seven years, and the second for an enforced levy of militia by order of the Governor-General, and arranged between the commissary of the district affected and the local chiefs. The levy was to be made, wherever possible, by lot, among the men between the ages of fourteen and thirty. The term of service for the latter was to be five years, with a further period of two years in the reserve. Each man received, besides food for himself and his wife (if he had one), a daily pay of twenty-one centimes, or a sixth of that which had to be paid for the alien soldier. Moreover, the expense of sending the men back to their homes was reduced to a minimum. The reduction in the cost meant, besides a saving to the Government, the possibility of raising the strength of the force to a figure more in proportion to the requirements of the State. Of the old alien contingent, it has never been found possible to maintain more than three thousand men, and the native contribution to this was about two hundred; but in 1891 the latter was increased to sixteen hundred men, and in 1897, by which time the alien element had been eliminated, the Public Force was raised to a grand total of eight thousand militiamen and four thousand volunteers. The number of companies had been raised to twenty-two, with a nominal strength of nine thousand five hundred and forty men at the end of last year (1897), whereas in 1891 the total was only two thousand nine hundred and fifty.
A Bangala Chief, with his Harem.
