I received yesterday Y.E.’s kind letter of 27th ult.
Your Excellency will no doubt have learnt, both from H.M.’s Government and the newspapers, accounts of passing events in this country, so I only relate the more recent that I have witnessed.
The day before yesterday the French squadron arrived, consisting of two line-of-battle ships and five steamers, having on board the Prince de Joinville, Mons. de Nion, the French Chargé d’Affaires, and the Duc de Glücksberg (Decazes), an adjunct Plenipotentiary sent for the purpose of meeting the Moorish Plenipotentiary, Sid Buselham Ben Ali, to arrange the conditions for peace. I received, the same morning, a letter from Mr. Bulwer acquainting me with the nature of the French demands, which proved to be identic with those already granted to my father by the Sultan of Morocco during his late mission.
The Moorish Plenipotentiary, Sid Buselham, has received orders from the Sultan to be guided by our counsels in replying to the various demands of the French. I accordingly went to see the Sid and made known to him the nature of the French demands, telling him they were just and such as could be granted without lowering the dignity of the Sultan. I pointed out the proper answers to be made, and urged him to settle the matter the very day that the demands were presented; and thus it happened that three hours did not elapse from the time they were made, until the French flag was hoisted and flying at the Residence of their Chargé d’Affaires and was saluted by the batteries.
The substance of the demands was as follows:—
‘That Abd-el-Kader be considered as a common enemy and, if taken by either party, be confined in a State prison at some distant port. The frontier to be marked out as in the time of the Turks. The withdrawal of the French troops from Ujda, except 3,000 men. A new treaty to be made embracing the above conditions, and, when ratified, Ujda and the Island of Mogador are to be given up by the French and all prisoners exchanged and set free.
The question that may now be asked is—What has been the object of the French in all this? For their demands remain the same and the concessions are the same as before the war: and although they say the Sultan is faithless, they never gave time to test whether he would be so or not, after having pledged himself to a British agent to act with good faith—but this, it strikes me, is the sore point.
French supremacy is aimed at, throughout Eastern and Western Barbary, and an arrangement effected through the good offices of a British agent militates against that supremacy.
The foolish language of a British officer high in rank, on the other side of the water, declaring that England would never allow a gun to be fired at a Moorish port, roused the worst feelings towards us throughout the French squadron, participated in by the Prince; so, five hours before my father’s arrival from the Moorish Court (although hourly expected, and feeling that to bombard Tangier after hearing vivâ voce that the Sultan had granted their demands, would be un peu trop fort), having bombarded Tangier in the presence of two British ships of war and, I may say, of our garrison at Gibraltar, off they go to Mogador—the mouth, as the Moors call it, of British commerce with Central Africa, where we have a considerable trade. They destroy the forts, and the destruction of the town is completed by the wild tribes, who burn, pillage, and murder, committing barbarities on a par with the wanton and uncalled-for proceedings of the French. After striking this blow at British trade, the French embark and return here to make peace!!
Well it is, that peace is made; for the country is in a state of revolution; the Sultan totters on his throne, and in a few weeks such a state of anarchy would have ensued that no Europeans could have remained in the country. There would have been no Government to treat with, and of the five millions of people, only robbers and pirates would have come to the front.