"If the official reports in the Moniteur were not there to confirm its truth, the narrative of this expedition would risk being deemed a fable. Cavalry and infantry marched three days and three nights: in the morning they halted for one hour and a half—at night, from six o'clock till midnight. From the moment when the trail of the enemy was first struck, the drum was not once beaten. They followed the scent, like dogs pursuing their prey. Thirty Spahis, with some horsemen belonging to the Arab office at Mascara, preceded the column; they read the earth during the night. What all exciting time that was! We came to bivouacs whose fires were still burning; the enemy had left them only that morning, and in all haste we resumed our march. At last, after forty-eight hours, our Arab scouts, hovering round the flanks of the column, captured two Arabs of the tribe of Djaffra. These refused at first to speak; but a musket-muzzle, applied to their heads, untied their tongues, and we learned that the regulars were at Taouira on the previous evening. We were on the right road, therefore, and should end by overtaking them. The march was resumed, the Spahis still leading. Not a pipe was alight; profound silence was observed, broken only by the noise of a fall, when some sleepy foot-soldier stumbled over an obstacle. Day broke, and a slight smoke was seen; the fires had just expired, the regulars were gone. The hope which had hitherto sustained the soldiers' strength suddenly abandoned them; nothing was heard but cries and maledictions. Everyone grumbled at the general. The morning halt was called in a hollow, and whilst the soldiers ate, the scouts reported that the traces of the enemy were quite fresh. For a second General Tempoure hesitated; then his decision was taken, and the order for instant march given. A great clamour arose in the bivouac. 'He wants to kill us all!' cried the soldiers, who during seventy hours had had but a few moments of repose. They obeyed, however, and the march was resumed. In an hour's time, the track turned southwards. In that direction there was no certainty of water. No matter, advance we must. But the traces grew fresher and fresher: here a horse had been abandoned; a little farther, a jackass. 'We have got the rascals!' said the soldiers, and their strength revived. At last, towards eleven o'clock, whilst the column was passing through a deep ravine, a thick smoke was seen behind a hill. This time the enemy was assuredly there. Fatigue vanished as by enchantment. In an instant cloaks were rolled, priming renewed, horses girthed up; all was ready, and the troops formed for the attack. Three hundred infantry supported three columns of cavalry; the centre was commanded by Colonel Tartas of the 4th Chasseurs. The advance began; just then there was the report of a musket; it was a vedette whom our scouts had been unable to surprise. The Arab galloped up the hill, waving his burnous. At the same moment, the drums of the regulars beat to arms; there was a stir in our ranks. The cavalry broke into a trot; the infantry, forgetting forced marches, followed at a run, and from the top of the hill we saw the two battalions of regulars, who had been unable to reach the opposite summit, halt half way up. Away went the cavalry, sabre in hand, horses at a gallop, Colonel Tartas at their head. They were met by a volley of musketry; some fell, but the avalanche broke through the obstacle, and the Arabs were cut down on all sides. Their horsemen try to escape—some flying to the left, others straight forward. They are pursued by all whose horses are not yet knocked up; and the Caïd Osman rolls over with his charger, which is hit in the head. M. de Caulaincourt, admirably mounted, continues the race; he kills one of the Emir's horsemen; but, separated by a ridge of ground from his soldiers, whom he has outstripped, he is surrounded by enemies. Without losing his presence of mind, he spurred his horse and broke through the circle, sabre in hand; when, just as he was about to rejoin his men, an Arab, issuing from a glade, shot him with a pistol, close to the eye. The horse galloped on, and carried back the wounded officer to his troop. The blood streamed, the flesh hung in shreds; M. do Caulaincourt, however, was still conscious. Lifted from his horse, a soldier took him on his back and carried him to the surgeon, traversing the scene of the combat, a true field of the dead. In a narrow space lay five hundred corpses, nearly all frightfully mutilated by the sabres of our chasseurs.
"A steep bank of rock had checked the progress of those horsemen who had fled to the left. Several alighted, and, jerking their horses with the bridle, surmounted the obstacle. Only one of them rode at a walk along the foot of this rocky wall. The whiteness of his garments and beauty of his equipments marked him as a chief. Siquot, a corporal of chasseurs, and Captain Cassaignoles, rode after him. The ground was very bad, full of impediments. The corporal was the first to reach him; just as his horse's nose touched the crupper of the Arab's charger, the horseman, turned round with the utmost coolness, took aim, and laid him dead on the spot. At the same moment Siquot came up and wounded the Arab, but received a pistol-ball through his left arm, the same shot killing the horse of Captain Cassaignoles, who was a little lower down the slope. The tall cavalier then rose in his stirrups, and struck Siquot on the head with his heavy pistol-butt, when Corporal Gerard of the Chasseurs, riding up on the top of the bank, shot him through the breast. The horse was caught; it was a splendid animal, which a wound in the shoulder had alone prevented from saving its master's life. 'See if that Arab is blind of an eye,' cried Captain Cassaignoles. They looked; an eye was wanting. 'It is Sidi-Embarek; let his head be cut off.' And Gerard, with a knife, separated the head from the body, that the Arabs might not have a doubt of his death. Then all obeyed the recall, which was sounding. The chase was over; the regulars were broken and destroyed; cruel fatigue had been rewarded by complete success. General Tempoure returned to Mascara, and a month later each man received, according to the Arab expression, the testimony of blood, the cross so glorious to the soldier.
"The chances of war then separated us from the Caïd: I also learned the return of Siquot to France, where, by an odd coincidence, he received from his Paris friends the same surname as from his African comrades. As to the German lansquenet, he marked every corner of the province of Oran by some daring feat, and always fortunate, invariably escaped unhurt. Within three years of service, he was five times named in orders, and passed through the noncommissioned grades to the rank of cornet. When I next met with him in 1846, Tom, the horse, the Chica, formed, as before, his whole family. Poor Chica, who in all her life had never had but one ambition, that of wearing a silk dress! In garrison, Tom was purveyor; he and his master started at daybreak and returned at night, weary but content, and with a well-filled game-bag. The Chica, who had passed the day singing, laid the table, and the three friends supped together.
"Some months later, after an absence of three weeks, one of our squadrons returned to Mascara from the outposts. We were moving down the street that leads to the cavalry barracks, when we saw the officers of the garrison assembled before the Caïd's little house. They advanced to greet and shake hands with us, and they told us that the Chica, the Caïd's companion, the friend of all, was dead.
"The poor little thing had suffered for some time; the evening before, however, she had got up. There was a bright warm sun, and the air was full of perfume. 'Chico,' said she to the Caïd, 'give me your arm, I should like to see the sun once more.' She took a few steps, wept as she gazed on the budding foliage and the beauty of the day: then, as she returned to her arm-chair, 'Ah! Chico,' she exclaimed, 'I am dying!' And in sitting down she expired, without agony or convulsion, still smiling and looking at the Caïd.
"At this moment the Chica's coffin was borne out of the house; all present uncovered their heads, and we joined the officers who followed her to her grave.
"The cemetery of Mascara, planted with olive and forest trees, is situated in the midst of gardens: everything there breathes peace, calm, and repose. The Chica's grave had been dug under a fig-tree. The Spahis who carried her stopped, all present formed a circle; two soldiers of the Engineers took the light bier, and lowered the poor Chica into her final dwelling-place. The Caïd was at the foot of the grave. One of the soldiers presented him with the spadeful of earth: the Spahi's hard hand trembled as he took it; and when the earth, falling on the coffin, made that dull noise so melancholy to hear, a big tear, but half suppressed, glistened in his eyes.
"Thenceforward Tom, whom the Chica loved, was the Caïd's only friend."
Some may suspect M. de Castellane of giving a romantic tint to his African experiences. We do not partake the suspicion. Even in the nineteenth century, generally esteemed prosaic and matter-of-fact, there is far more romance in real life than in books; and the Prussian-Arab Osman is but one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of military adventurers who have fought in various services during the last twenty years, and the events of whose career, truly noted, would in many cases be set down by the supporters of circulating libraries as overstrained and improbable fiction. In that chapter of M. de Castellane's work which consists of the journal of an officer of Zouaves, we find an account of another singular wanderer, who in the year 1840 deserted from the Arabs, (having previously served with the French,) and came into the town of Medeah, where the Zouaves were in garrison. He was a very young man, a Bavarian, of the name of Glockner, son of a former commissary in the service of France, and nephew of a Bavarian officer of the highest rank. "A cadet at the military school at Munich, he was sent, in consequence of some pranks he played, to serve in a regiment of light dragoons; but his ardent imagination and love of adventure led him to fresh follies; he deserted into France. Coldly received, as all deserters are, he was enrolled in the foreign legion. He had hardly reached Africa when he became disgusted with the service, and, yielding to the craving after novelty which constantly tormented him, he deserted to the Arabs. He remained with them three years. Kidnapped at first by the Kabyles, he was taken to a market in the interior, and sold to a chief of the tribe of the Beni-Moussa. After being his servant for a year, he managed to escape from his master's tent, and, with legs bare, a burnous on his shoulders, a camel rope round his waist, and a pilgrim's staff in his hands, he marched at random in a southerly direction. In this manner he reached the Desert, passing his nights with the different tribes he encountered, amongst whom he announced himself by the Mussulman's habitual salutation, 'Eh! the master of the Douar! A guest of God!' Thereupon he was well received; food and shelter were given him, and he departed the next morning unquestioned as to his destination. It concerned no one, and no Arab ever asked the question. He followed his destiny. Thus did Glockner cross a part of the Sahara, and reach the town of Tedjini, Aïn Mhadi; thence he went to Boghar, Taza, Tekedempt, Mascara, Medeali, and Milianah; then, enrolled by force amongst the regulars of El Berkani, he made the campaigns of 1839 and 1840 in their ranks. Decorated by Abd-el-Kader in consequence of a wound received the 31st December 1839—a wound inflicted, as he believes, by a captain of the 2d Light Infantry—he again returned to us, after other adventures, like the prodigal child, lamenting his follies, weeping at thoughts of his family, especially of his father, and entreating as a favour to be received as a French soldier. They talked of sending him back to the foreign legion, but he begged to be admitted into the Zouaves, and was accordingly enlisted as an Arab, under the name of Joussef. He was then but one-and-twenty years old, was fresh as a child, timid as a young girl, and marvellously simple in his bearing and language." The end of this young fellow's history, as far as M. de Castellane became acquainted with it, is on a par with its commencement. "In the Zouaves his conduct was admirable. In every engagement in which he shared, his name deserved mention. Made a corporal, then a sergeant, he was sent to Tlemcen on the formation of a third battalion of Zouaves. Recommended by Colonel Cavaignac to General Bedeau, he rendered great services by his intelligence and knowledge of the Arab tongue. His father, to whom they had written in Bavaria, had confirmed the truth of his story. He was happy, and treated with consideration, when, one fine morning, he took himself off with a political prisoner who had just been set at liberty, and deserted into Morocco. He remained there a long time; then he went to Tangiers, and, denounced by the French consul as a deserter, he was going to be tried by a court-martial, when, in consideration of his former services, they continued to treat him as an Arab. His mania for rambling is really extraordinary; and he declares that he cannot approach a strange country without being seized with a desire to explore it."
It is surprising that the African campaigns have not been more prolific of military sketches and memoirs from the pens of French officers. Although tolerably familiar for many years past with French literature, we can remember but few such works. La Captivité d'Escoffier, noticed, in conjunction with an English volume upon an analogous subject, in a former Number,[22] is the only French book of the kind we have met with for a long time; and that was of inferior class, and of less authentic appearance, than M. de Castellane's agreeable Souvenirs. We should have thought the war in Africa, the adventurous and often severe marches of the troops, the exploits of the hunting-field, the humours of garrison life, and the tales of the bivouac, would have found innumerable chroniclers amongst the better educated portion of French officers. The French soldier is a good study for painter or humourist; whether as the stolid recruit with the ploughman's slouch and the smell of the furrow still hanging about him, or the smart and wide-awake trooper of four or five years' service, or the weather-beaten old sergeant, all bronze and wrinkles, with his grizzled moustache, his scrap of red ribbon, his tough yarns and his mixture of simplicity and shrewdness, his lingering prejudices against English and Germans, and his religious veneration of Napoleon the Great. We believe M. de Castellane would be successful in portraiture of French military character and eccentricities, and we regret he has been so sparing of it. Here and there we find a characteristic bit of camp-life, or a pleasant sketch by the watch-fire.