A little after eleven o’clock the French, having shelled the positions occupied by the Hova artillery and silenced their guns, began to appear here and there on the range of hills occupied by the Hovas, who very soon, therefore, retreated from their positions. Near the Roman Catholic Observatory, situated on one of the hills, several houses were in flames, whilst a Hova battery, placed near the palace, opened fire on the French who had gained the summit. The fighting now had almost ceased, and there was a period of quiet. In the meantime, however, the French were bringing their field-pieces into position. Soon the bombardment of the town commenced, but it was evident that the French were anxious to avoid committing any unnecessary damage. Their fire was only kept up at intervals, and was concentrated on the Hova batteries and the palace. One of the melinite shells, falling in the palace-yard, where many thousands of people, chiefly soldiers, were assembled, destroyed many lives. This brought matters to a crisis. At about three o’clock the Malagasy flag was hauled down from the top of the palace, after which not another shot was fired. Half an hour afterwards some native officers were seen carrying out a white flag to the French lines, submission was rendered, and the war was at an end.
‘The expedition, which had been conducted throughout by General Duchesne in the most humane and merciful manner, had cost the French nation £2,600,000, and, what was more, the lives, almost entirely from disease, of 5,756 officers and men.
‘Within an hour after the submission, many of the French troops, weary and footsore, entered Antanànarìvo, glad doubtless to get to the end of their long and exhausting march. At the gate of the hospital immediately to the east of the town a sad spectacle was witnessed— a long line of mules bringing in the sick and wounded, some of whom were moaning in agony from the pain of their diseases or their wounds. Next morning at eight o’clock General Duchesne and his staff, with the remainder of the troops, entered the town. A treaty of peace, in which Madagascar was distinctly and definitely placed under the protection of France, was signed at three o’clock in the afternoon, and on the same day was ratified by the queen. After this ratification, the general told the queen that she might again raise the Malagasy flag above the royal palace. Six days after the signing of the treaty General Duchesne received a copy of another agreement from his government of a still more rigorous character, the presentation for signature of which, however, he left to his successor, M. Laroche.’
I had to go to the coast in 1894 to meet my wife and daughter, who joined me that year. A short time after their arrival, M. Le Myre de Vilers brought the French ultimatum, which it was impossible for the Malagasy to accept. This was just what was wanted by some, and the French flag was hauled down and friendly relations broken off.
Most of the European ladies left the island, and I took my wife and daughter to the east coast for fourteen weeks, during the march of the expedition on the capital. The queen had been shamefully deceived, the people betrayed, and the fatherland sold by a party of traitors in the palace, who had been seduced from their allegiance by a protégé of the Jesuits, who had been in the pay of the French for years. The traitors posed as ultra-patriots, and thus thoroughly deceived the queen. They persuaded her to discharge all the European officers in the service of the government, while the services of others, who were willing to help the Malagasy to defend their fatherland were declined. She acted like a mad woman—refusing to follow the advice of the prime minister, and following the advice of these traitors, as also that of her incapable relatives, and her nurse! The traitors told her they were not to depend on foreigners for the defence of their fatherland. They were quite able to drive the French back to the sea. The queen did not get her eyes opened, nor find out how grossly she had been deceived, until the French army marched over the hills on Antanànarìvo—and then it was too late.
It was thought in England, and elsewhere, that the Malagasy made a most disgraceful appearance in the defence of their fatherland; but it was not known that the right sort of people were kept from rising to defend their country by these traitors. Nor was it known that neither officers nor soldiers of the native army received any pay, and the officers lived by blackmailing their men. Of 20,000 sent out to meet the French, some 14,000 bought themselves off or deserted. The chief traitor had control of the Madagascar Times, in which the French were vilified, and represented every week as defeated and all but annihilated.
All this was a blind. This patriot volunteered at the last to lead 6,000 men to meet the French; but took the precaution of going along a route by which he knew they would not come. If the French officers had had their way, these traitors as a body, and the chief one in particular, would have had short shrift; and if they had been so dealt with, the lives of many honest and innocent men would have been saved, and many mistakes avoided. It was reported that copies of the prime minister’s dispatches—as commander-in-chief of the Malagasy army—were sent to the French general, and thus he knew every move that was to be taken, and was prepared for it.
After the French reached the capital, and the people saw how basely they had been betrayed, they rose 100,000 strong, and if they had had arms and ammunition, or could have obtained them, the French would have been defeated before reinforcements could have arrived. This rising may have been sheer madness on the part of the natives, after things had gone so far; but they did not know this, and they were greatly exasperated over their betrayal. As the old heathen and semi-heathen element greatly preponderated in the rising, and all who would not join it were shot or had their throats cut, thousands who saw the madness of the rising were compelled to join it, or at least to pretend to join. They suffered severely for their unhappy effort to redeem the situation, as also did their relatives—many being shot as suspects.
The French expedition landed at Mojangà, on the north-west coast, in April; but it was October 1 before it entered the capital. It had been detained—so a French officer afterwards informed me—for six weeks near Mèvatanàna by a cablegram from Paris, instructing the General that he was not to enter Antanànarìvo before October 1, in order that the news of its fall might reach Paris by October 10, and so cause a sensation at the opening of the Chambers. The detention of the expedition among the swamps and fever fens of that part of the island cost the lives of hundreds of the poor French soldiers; but, as the above-mentioned French officer said, what did Paris politicians care for the lives of the poor French soldiers! The poor fellows had been set to the mad task of making a road from Mojangà to Antanànarìvo—some 400 miles—for the famous, or infamous, Lefebvre carts. To set these young fellows, fresh from the fair fields of France, to make a road through such a malarial country as North-West Madagascar, under a tropical sun, was nothing short of murder. The General had to attempt to carry out his instructions, and bravely tried to do so, until it proved impossible. The lives of some 6,000 French soldiers were sacrificed to the mad attempt, after which, of course, the brave General who had done his best had the blame thrown on him for their murder instead of on the man who had issued the order for the making of the road.
A rush was made on Antanànarìvo with a flying column, and the capital was captured on the afternoon of September 30. This event caused great excitement in France—the people went into ecstasies over it. In reality nothing could have been easier. The General knew there would be no serious opposition; the traitors had arranged matters beforehand. The Malagasy troops, who ought to have been there to defend the capital, had been carefully removed, and taken away to meet the French along a route by which it was well known they would not come. There was slight skirmishing all day, but no serious fighting, and by two o’clock the French were in possession of the heights round Antanànarìvo, and the city was at the mercy of their guns. It had been decided, it seems, that if the Malagasy flag on the great palace was not lowered by half-past three fire was to be opened on it, with melinite shells. This would have laid the capital and neighbourhood in ruins, and might have sacrificed thousands of lives, as there were 10,000 barrels of gunpowder stored in the great palace!