"The country flourished under the administration of the new Aga. Stone bridges were built over the Isser and the Cheliff. In the words of the Arab chronicle, victory everywhere accompanied Omar. His name was a terror to his enemies, and he was blessed by all the people, when the Bey of Oran, still detesting the brother of Mahomed, and dreading this new power, persuaded the Pacha of Algiers that Omar was planning to usurp his throne. Fortunately, an intercepted letter warned Omar, who hurried to the barracks, and assembled the troops. 'It is you who have raised me,' he said, 'and in none others do I recognise the right to cast me down. I place myself in your hands; either kill me or deliver me from my enemies.' The furious soldiery ran to the Pacha's palace, stabbed him, (1810) and would have named Omar in his stead; but Omar refused, and the khrasnadji, or treasurer, was then elected. All-powerful, Omar saw the hour of revenge at hand. The Bey of Oran having revolted, he marched against him, took his enemy prisoner, and had him flayed alive. In the province of Oran you are still told of Bey el messeloug, the flayed Bey.
"In 1816, fearing the Coulouglis,[20] the Pacha planned their massacre, and confided his project to Omar, who, far from countenancing it, had the Pacha stifled in his bath. This time he was obliged to accept the Pachalik. When sending the customary present to the Porte, he intrusted Si-Hassan and his son Mahomed with rich presents for Mehemet Ali, who was named Pacha almost at the same time. For the space of two years, Omar made head against all manner of misfortunes—against the plague, the locusts, and Lord Exmouth's bombardment; but poor Jemna had lost her peace of mind, for she knew that all Deys die a violent death. In 1818, she was in the pains of childbed when she heard discharges of artillery. Seized with alarm, she desired to see Omar, and, contrary to etiquette, she sent her faithful attendant, old Baba-Djelloull, to seek him; but the old man soon returned, and returned alone. Jemna understood, and swooned away. At the same instant, numerous blows were struck on the door of her apartments. It was the chaous of the new Dey, coming to take possession of Omar's treasures."
The treasures were enormous in amount. M. Roche, the French consul-general at Tangiers, to whom M. de Castellane declares himself indebted for this very interesting history of the Omar family, derived his account of them from a son of Jemna, apparently that one whose birth she was hourly expecting when she was shocked by the intelligence of her husband's violent death. "Omar's palace contained a hundred negroes, three hundred negresses, ten Georgians, twenty Abyssinians, forty thoroughbred horses, ten mares from the Desert. The entire furniture of one saloon was of gold and silver, adorned with precious stones; another room was full of chests of gold and silver coin, silk brocade, and cloth of gold. Jemna changed her dress every week, and attached to each costume was a complete set of diamonds, consisting of a diadem, an aigret and earrings, a collar of fifteen rows of pearls, two clasps, bracelets, twelve rings for the fingers and two for the ankles, and a tunic of cloth-of-gold, studded with precious stones." Omar's murderer and successor would fain have wedded his widow, but she spurned his offer. He then seized her treasures, and, in the moment of good-humour which their great amount occasioned him, he allowed her to retire with her children to Milianah, where her father had property. After a few months' sway, the new Pacha was assassinated in his turn, and his successor, Hadj-Mohamed, went to inhabit the Casbah palace, in defiance of a prophetic inscription announcing an invasion by Christians during the reign of a Pacha whose residence should be the Casbah.
He died of the plague; and Hassan, who succeeded him, and who had been an iman under Omar, showed his gratitude to his former master by magnificent presents to his widow, and great kindness to his sons. Jemna had almost forgotten past sorrows in present happiness, when the arrival of the French brought her fresh disasters and sufferings. Her sons allied themselves with the invaders, thereby incurring hatred and persecution from Abd-el-Kader. They were stripped of all they possessed: Omar, the youngest of them, was loaded with fetters, and placed in a dungeon; Jemna escaped the bastinado only by the mercy of an executioner, who inflicted it upon a negress in her stead. At last the intervention of some Arab chiefs procured the liberty of both mother and son, and the progress of the French enabled them to take up their residence in safety at Milianah, where Omar was appointed hakem, an office equivalent to mayor. In 1843, M. de Castellane was present at an interview between Marshal Bugeaud and Jemna, whose countenance, in spite of lapse of years and many sorrows, still retained traces of great beauty.
The chief of the Sidi-Embarek, a family which, although of Arab race, had enjoyed great respect and influence in the country for some centuries before Turkish rule was terminated by French usurpation, had actively stimulated the persecution of the family of Omar, whose personal enemy he was. M. de Castellane gives the following account of the founder of the Sidi-Embarek:—"In 1580, a man of the Hachems of the west, named Si-Embarek, left his tribe, with two servants, and went to Milianah. There, on account of his poverty, he discharged his servants, who settled upon the banks of the Cheliff, and gave birth to the tribe of Hachems still existing there. Sidi-Embarek then went to Coleah, and engaged himself as rhamès (a sort of subordinate farmer) to a certain Ismael; but, instead of working, he slept; and meanwhile, marvellous to relate, the yoke of oxen intrusted to him ploughed by themselves, and, at the close of day, he had done more work than anybody else. This prodigy was reported to Ismael, who, desirous of witnessing it with his own eyes, hid himself one day, and saw Embarek sleeping under a tree whilst the oxen ploughed. Thereupon Ismael knelt before him, and exclaimed—'You are the elect of God; 'tis I who am your servant, and you are my master;' and, taking him home, he treated him with profound respect. Embarek's reputation for holiness spread far and wide; multitudes thronged to solicit his prayers and make him offerings, and he speedily acquired great riches." The grandson, many times removed, of this miraculous ploughman, was a Marabout or saint by right of descent; but he was also a very considerable fighting man, and a most efficient lieutenant of Abd-el-Kader. We make his acquaintance under very striking circumstances, in the course of M. de Castellane's curious account of the Spahis of Mascara. The corps of Spahis had its origin in the necessities of African service. Excellent and most efficient as are the regiments of light dragoons known as Chasseurs d'Afrique, they were not all that was wanted in the way of cavalry. It was found expedient to make Arab fight Arab. Knowledge of the country, and of the habits of the foe, was as essential as good soldiership. The prospect of gain brought abundant recruits; the discipline exacted was less rigid than in French regiments; the sole uniform was a red burnous, stripped off in an instant, when desirable to conceal the military character of the wearer. Europeans not being excluded from the corps, many roving and desultory blades, tempted by the adventurous nature of the service, and to whom the routine and strict discipline of a more regular one would have been irksome, have, at different periods, served in the ranks of the Spahis, and sometimes sabred their way to a commission—"strange adventurers," says M. de Castellane, "whose lives resembled some tale of former days cut out of an old book." And he gives an account of two such persons whom he met with in the Mascara squadron, with which his own was for some time brigaded. One was a French maréchal-de-logis or sergeant, named Alfred Siquot, a man of good family and eccentric character,—a great humourist, whose gloomy air and silent laugh had procured him from his comrades the surname of Jovial. There does not appear, however, to have been mystery in his previous life, which was open to all, nor any particular romance or adventures in its incidents previously to his service in Africa. The case was very different with his comrade, Mohamed-Ould-Caïd-Osman, who had the rank of native officer. "The Arab name concealed a Prussian one, and an agitated life, full of duels and adventures—of condemnations to death, and executions in effigy. Clever and well-informed, there was a great charm in his bluntness of manner, and his bravery, justly celebrated, procured him the respect of all. He was the very type of the officer of fortune—of the lansquenet of former days. His double-barrelled gun, as much dreaded by the Arabs as by the partridges—his dog Tom—his sorrel charger, a beast of famous bottom—were his sole friends in the field. In garrison, a fourth affection found a place in his heart—a little Spanish girl, who never opened her mouth, and was as devoted to him as his dog. Tom, the Chica, the Caïd, made but one. Their life, with its joys and sorrows, was in common. Now and then Siquot went and smoked his pipe in the midst of the three friends.
"As to the Caïd's African life, it was well known, and its accidents had more than once beguiled the leisure of the bivouac. He had been twice seen at Algiers, but in very different circumstances. The first time, in all his splendour, he was travelling with Prince Puckler-Muskau, who speaks of him in his Letters, designating him by his initials. The second time, in 1840, he had assumed the knapsack of the infantry soldier, and was marching to the defile of Mouzaia, in the ranks of the foreign legion."
The ruined gentleman, however, could not accustom himself to walking, and after a severe campaign, in which three-fourths of his company perished, he procured a substitute and left the legion. Once more a free agent, his roving propensities were checked for a while by the fascinations of a fair Moor. "Halfway up the hill leading to Mustapha, stood a cheerful white house, embowered in foliage and commanding a splendid view of the Bay of Algiers. The Armida of that enchanting spot was named Aïcha, and never did Eastern poet dream of a more charming creature. What wonder, then, if beneath these shades six months of peace, calm, and repose elapsed. Each morning the smiling beauty seated herself at Osman's feet, whilst he wrote, upon a little Arab table, in the midst of perfumes and flowers, the life of a Protestant missionary whom he had met in one of his rambles."[21] The Rinaldo of the foreign legion might, one would think, have been well content to linger long in such a retreat and such society. Aïcha was fond and constant, and was rapidly acquiring German. But after six months of this Capuan existence, the vagabond again got the upper-hand in the restless soul of the Caïd. Like the celebrated Lord Lovel, he loved and he rode away; the horse, in this case, being represented by a steamer, which carried him off westwards one fine morning, his gun on his shoulder, and in his pocket a letter of recommendation, now two years old, for General Lamoricière, whom he had formerly known in command of a battalion of Zouaves. What became of Aïcha—whether she cried her eyes out, or took arsenic, or another lover—the little dog, as Mr Commissary Capsicum would say, forgot to mention.
"The province of Oran, in 1841, was far from tranquil; a stout heart and a strong arm had then abundant opportunities of distinction. Mohamed-Ould-Caïd-Osman, inscribed under this Arab name on the muster-roll of the Spahis, and Siquot, who enlisted at the same period, did not miss such opportunities. Soon afterwards, Siquot was wounded, the Caïd had his horse killed under him, and their names appeared in the orders of the army. Heroes, whether illustrious or unknown, always find enviers; take as an example Sergeant Froidefond, a grumbling old trooper, who thought proper to tell the Caïd he was good for nothing but cleaning his nails. On their return to Mascara, they fought at twelve paces: Froidefond fired first, and the Caïd fell, shot through the buttock. The seconds ran forward to pick him up. 'Stop!' he cried, 'it is my turn to fire;' and raising himself on his elbow, he shot Froidefond dead. He himself was then carried to the hospital, where he found Siquot, who was getting cured of a wound. On hearing what had happened, the Chica—who had then been about a year mixed up in his existence, without very well knowing why, like the dogs who attach themselves to a squadron—hastened to the hospital to nurse him, and in three months he was on his legs again."
The Caïd had returned to his duty when, in 1813, M. de Castellane's regiment entered Mascara with trumpets sounding, escorting Marshal Bugeaud. Abd-el-Kader was at no great distance, and Generals Lamoricière and Tempoure had been operating against him until the cavalry of the province had great need of repose to recruit and remount. One night a Spanish deserter came over from the Emir, and gave Marshal Bugeaud important information, fully confirming the reports of the spies. An hour later, orders were given for an expedition in pursuit of Abd-el-Kader's battalions of regulars, of whom Sidi-Embarek had just taken the command. General Tempoure had charge of the column, which consisted of two battalions of infantry, four hundred and fifty French dragoons, fifty Spahis, including Siquot and the Caïd Osman, and a few irregular horse.