Mr Borrer, a geographer and antiquary, passed seventeen months in Algeria; and during his residence there, in May 1846, a column of eight thousand French troops, commanded by the Duke of Isly in person, marched against the Kabyles, "that mysterious, bare-headed, leathern-aproned race, whose chief accomplishment was said to be that of being 'crack-shots,' their chief art that of neatly roasting their prisoners alive, and their chief virtue that of loving their homes." It may interest the reader to hear a rather more explicit account of this singular people, who dwell in the mountains that traverse Algeria from Tunis to Morocco—an irregular domain, whose limits it is difficult exactly to define in words. The Kabyles are, in fact, the highlanders of North Africa, and they hold themselves aloof from the Arabs and Europeans that surround them. Concerning them, we find some diversity in the statements of Mr Borrer, and of an anonymous Colonist, twelve years resident at Bougie, whose pamphlet is before us. Of the two, the Frenchman gives them the best character, but both agree as to their industry and intelligence, their frugality and skill in agriculture. They are not nomadic like the Arabs, but live in villages, till the land, and tend flocks. Dwelling in the mountains, they have few horses, and fight chiefly on foot. Divided into many tribes, they are constantly quarreling and fighting amongst themselves, but they forget their feuds and quickly unite to repel a foreign foe. "Predisposed by his character," says the Colonist, "to draw near to civilisation, the Kabyle attaches himself sincerely to the civilised man when circumstances establish a friendly connexion between them. He is still inclined to certain vices inherent in the savage: but of all the Africans, he is the best disposed to live in friendship and harmony with us, which he will do when he shall find himself in permanent contact with the European population." This is not the general opinion, and it differs widely from that expressed by Mr Borrer. But the Colonist had his own views, perhaps his own interests, to further. He wrote some months previous to the expedition which Mr Borrer accompanied, and which was then not likely to take place, and he strongly advocated its propriety—admitting, however, that public opinion in France was greatly opposed to a military incursion into Kabylia. Himself established at Bougie, of course in some description of commerce, the necessity of roads connecting the coast and the interior was to him quite evident. A good many of his countrymen, whose personal benefit was not so likely to be promoted by causeway-cutting in Algeria, strongly deprecated any sort of road-making that was likely to bring on war with the Kabyles. France began to think she was paying too dear for her whistle. She looked back to the early days of the Orleans dynasty, when Marshal Clausel promised to found a rich and powerful colony with only 10,000 men. She glanced at the pages of the Moniteur of 1837, and there she found words uttered by the great Bugeaud in the Chamber of Deputies. "Forty-five thousand men and one good campaign," said the white-headed warrior, as the Arabs call him, "and in six months the country is pacified, and you may reduce the army to twenty thousand men, to be paid by imposts levied on the colony, consequently costing France nothing." Words, and nothing more—mere wind; the greatest bosh that ever was uttered, even by Bugeaud, who is proverbial for dealing largely in that flatulent commodity. Nine years passed away, and the Commission of the Budget "deplored a situation which compelled France to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men upon that African territory." (Report of M. Bignon of the 15th April 1846, p. 237.) Bugeaud himself had mightily changed his tone, and declared that, to keep Algiers, as large an army would be essential as had been required to conquer it. Lamoricière, a great authority in such matters, confirmed the opinion of his senior. Monsieur Desjobert, and a variety of pamphleteers and newspaper writers, attacked, with argument, ridicule, and statistics, the party known as the Algérophiles, who made light of difficulties, scoffed at expense, and predicted the prosperity and splendour of French Africa. Algeria, according to them, was to become the brightest gem in the citizen-crown of France. These sanguine gentlemen were met with facts and figures. During 1846, said the anti-Algerines, your precious colony will have cost France 125,000,000 of francs. And they proved it in black and white. There was little chance of the expense being less in following years. Then came the loss of men. In 1840, said M. Desjobert, giving chapter and verse for his statements, 9567 men perished in the African hospitals, out of an effective army of 63,000. Add those invalids who died in French hospitals, or in their homes, from the results of African campaigning, and the total loss is moderately stated at 11,000 men, or more than one-sixth of the whole force employed. Out of these, only 227 died in action. The thing seemed hopeless and endless. What do we get for our money? was the cry. What is our compensation for the decimation of our young men? France can better employ her sons, than in sending them to perish by African fevers. What do we gain by all this expenditure of gold and blood?—The unreasonable mortals! Had they not gained a Duke of Isly and a Moorish pavilion? M. Desjobert surely forgets these inestimable acquisitions when he asks and answers the question—"What remains of all our victories? A thousand bulletins, and Horace Vernet's big pictures."

"How many times," says the same writer, "has not the subjection of the Arabs been proclaimed! In 1844, General Bugeaud gains the battle of Isly. Are the Arabs subdued?

"When the Arabs appear before the judges who dispose of life and death, they confess their faith, and proclaim their hatred of us; and when we are simple enough to tell them that some of their race are devoted to us, they reply, 'Those lie to you, through fear, or for their own interest; and as often as a scheriff shall come whom they believe able to conquer you, they will follow him, even into the streets of Algiers.' (Examination of Bou Maza's brother, 12th November 1845.) Thus spoke the chief. The common Arab had already said to the Christian, "If my head and thine were boiled in the same vessel, my broth would separate itself from thy broth."

This was discouraging to those who had dreamed of the taming of the Arab; and the more sanguinary mooted ideas of extermination. Such a project, clearly written down, and printed, and placed on Parisian breakfast tables, might be startling; in Algeria it had long been put in practice. What said General Duvivier in his Solution de la Question d'Algérie, p. 285? "For eleven years they have razed buildings, burned crops, destroyed trees, massacred men, women, and children, with a still-increasing fury." We have already shown that this work of extermination was not carried on with perfect impunity. Here is further confirmation of the fact. "Every Arab killed," says M. Leblanc de Prébois, another officer, who wrote on the Algerian war, and wrote from personal experience, "costs us the death of thirty-three men, and 150,000 francs." Supposing a vast deal of exaggeration in this statement, the balance still remains ugly against the French, for whom there is evidently very little difference between catching an Arab and catching a Tartar. Whilst upon the subject of extermination, Mr Borrer gives an opinion more decidedly unfavourable to his French friends than is expressed in any other part of his book. His estimate of Kabyle virtues differs considerably, it will be observed, from that of the Colonist, and of the two is much nearest the truth.

"The abominable vices and debaucheries of the Kabyle race, the inhuman barbarities they are continually guilty of towards such as may be cast by tempest, or other misfortune, upon their rugged shores; the atrocious cruelties and refined tortures they, in common with the Arab, delight in exercising upon any such enemies as may be so unhappy as to fall alive into their hands, must render the hearts of those acquainted with this people perfectly callous as to what misfortunes may befall them or their country; and many may think that, as far as the advancement of civilisation is concerned, the wiping off of the Kabyle and Arab races of Northern Africa from the face of the earth, would be the greatest boon to humanity. Though, however, they may be fraught with all the vices of the Canaanitish tribes of old, yet the command, 'Go ye after him through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women,' is not justifiably issued at the pleasure of man; and we can but lament to see a great and gallant nation engaged in a warfare exasperating both parties to indulge in sanguinary atrocities,—atrocities to be attributed on one side to the barbarous and savage state of those having recourse to them; but on the other, proceeding only from a thirst for retaliation and bloody revenge, unworthy of those enjoying a high position as a civilised people. War is, as we all know, ever productive of horrors: but such horrors may be greatly restrained and diminished by the exertions and example of those in command."

The hoary-headed hero of Isly is not the man to make the exertion, or set the example. At the beginning of 1847, rumours of a projected inroad amongst the Kabyles caused uneasiness and dissatisfaction in Algeria, when such a movement was highly unpopular, as likely to lead to a long and expensive war. The "Commission of Credits," a board appointed by the French Chamber for the particular investigation and regulation of Algerine affairs, applied to the minister of war to know if the rumours were well founded. The minister confessed they were; adding, however, that the expedition would be quite peaceable; but at the same time laying before the commission letters from Bugeaud, "expressing regret that force of arms was not to be resorted to more than was absolutely necessary, the submission of the aborigines being never certain until powder had spoken." The marshal evidently "felt like fighting." The Commission protested; the minister rebuked them, bidding them mind their credits, and not meddle with the royal prerogative. Thus unjustly snubbed—for they certainly were minding their credits, by opposing increase of expenditure—the Commission were mute, one of the members merely observing, by way of a last shot, that it was easier to refuse to listen than to reply satisfactorily. In France, public opinion, the Chamber of Deputies, and Marshal Soult, had, on various occasions, declared against attacking the Kabyles. "Nevertheless, a proclamation was issued by Marshal Bugeaud to the inhabitants of the Kabylie, to warn them that the French army was upon the point of entering their territory, 'to cleanse it of those adventurers who there preached the war against France.' The proclamation then went on to state, that the marshal had no desire to fight with them, or to devastate their property; but that, if there were amongst them any who wished for war, they would find him ready to accept it." If a hard-favoured stranger, armed with a horsewhip, walked uninvited into M. Bugeaud's private residence, loudly proclaiming he would thrash nobody unless provoked, the marshal would be likely to resist the intrusion. The Kabyles, doubtless, thought his advance into their territory an equally unjustifiable proceeding. As to the pretext of "the adventurers who preached war," it was unfounded and ridiculous. Such propagandists have never been listened to in Kabylia. "The voice of the Emir Abd-el-Kader himself," says the Colonist, "would not obtain a hearing. Did he not go in person, in 1839, when preparing to break his treaty of peace with us, and preach the holy war? Did he not traverse the valley of the Souman, from one end to the other, to recruit combatants? And what did he obtain from the Kabyles? Hospitality for a few days, coupled with the formal invitation to evacuate the country as soon as possible. Did he succeed better when he lately again tried to raise Kabylia against us?" Mr Borrer confirms this. Marshal Bugeaud himself had said in the Chamber of Deputies, "The Kabyles are neither aggressive nor hostile; they defend themselves vigorously when intruded upon, but they do not attack." The marshal, whose whole public life has been full of contradictions, was the first to intrude upon them, although but a very few years had elapsed since he said in a pamphlet, "The Kabyles are numerous and very warlike; they have villages, and their agriculture is sedentary; already there is too little land to supply their wants; there is no room, therefore, for Europeans in the mountains of Kabylia, and they would cut a very poor figure there." This last prophetic sentence was realised by M. Bugeaud himself, who certainly made no very brilliant appearance when, forgetting his former theory, he hazarded himself in May 1847, at the head of eight thousand men, and with Mr Borrer in his train, amongst the hardy mountaineers of Kabylia.

Hereabouts Mr Borrer quotes, in French, the statement of a member of the Commission already referred to. It is worth extracting, as fully confirming our conviction that the conduct of France in Algeria has been throughout characterised by an utter want of judgment and justice. "The native towns have been invaded, ruined, sacked, by our administration, more even than by our arms. In time of peace, a great number of private estates have been ravaged and destroyed. A multitude of title-deeds delivered to us for verification have never been restored. Even in the environs of Algiers, fertile lands have been taken from the Arabs and given to Europeans, who, unable or unwilling to cultivate their new possessions, have farmed them out to their former owners, who have thus become the mere stewards of the inheritance of their fathers. Elsewhere, tribes, or fractions of tribes, not hostile to us, but who, on the contrary, had fought for us, have been driven from their territory. Conditions have been accepted from them, and not kept—indemnities promised, and never paid—until we have compromised our honour even more than their interests." Such a statement, proceeding from a Frenchman—from one, too, delegated by his government, to examine the state of the colony—is quite conclusive as to administrative proceedings in Algeria. It would be superfluous and impertinent to add another line of evidence. A comment may be appropriate. "Is it not Montesquieu," says Mr Borrer, "in his Esprit des Lois, who observes—'The right of conquest, though a necessary and legitimate right, is an unhappy one, bequeathing to the conqueror a heavy debt to humanity, only to be acquitted by repairing, as far as possible, those evils of which he has been the cause'?—and Montesquieu was a wise man, and a Frenchman!"

Dismissing this branch of the subject, let us see how the Duke of Isly made "the powder speak" in Kabylia, and try our hand at a rough sketch, taking the loan of Mr Borrer's colours. A strong body of French troops—the 8000 have been increased, since departure, by several battalions and some spahis—are encamped in a rich valley, cutting down the unripe wheat for the use of their horses, whilst, from the surrounding heights, the Kabyles gloomily watch the unscrupulous foragers. "Now 'soft-winged evening,'" as Mr Dawson Borrer poetically expresses himself, "hovers o'er the scene, chasing from woodlands and sand-rock heights the gilded tints of the setting sun." In other words, it gets dark—and shots are heard. The natives, vexed at the liberties taken with their crops, harass the outposts. Their bad powder and overloaded guns have no chance against French muskets. "In the name of the Prophet, HEADS!" Bugeaud the Merciful pays for them ten francs a-piece. Four are presented to him before breakfast. The premium is to make the soldiers alert against horse-stealers. Ten francs being a little fortune to a French soldier, whose pay in hard cash is two or three farthings a-day, Mr Borrer suspects the heads are sometimes taken from shoulders where they have a right to remain. An Arab is always an Arab, whether a horse-stealer or a mere idler. But no matter—a few more or less. Day returns; the column marches; the Kabyles show little of the intrepidity, in defence of their hearths and altars, attributed to them by M. Bugeaud and others. Their horsemen fly before a platoon of French cavalry; the infantry limit their offensive operations to cowardly long shots at the rear-guard. Four venerable elders bring two yoked oxen in token of submission. In general, the inhabitants have disappeared. Their deserted towns appear, in the distance, by no means inferior to many French and Italian villages. The marshal will not permit exploring parties for fear of ambuscade. Night arrives, and passes without incident of note. At three in the morning, the camp is aroused by hideous yells. A sentinel has fired at a horse-thief and broken his leg, and now, mindful of the ten francs, tries to cut off the head of the wounded man, who objects and screams. A bayonet-thrust stops his mouth, and the bill on Bugeaud is duly severed. The next day is passed in skirmishing with the Beni-Abbez, the most numerous tribe of the valley of the Souman, but not a very warlike one—so says the Colonist; and, indeed, they offer but slight resistance, although they, or some other tribes, make a firm and determined attack upon the French outposts in the course of that night. There is more smoke than bloodshed; but the Kabyles show considerable pluck, burn a prodigious number of cartridges, and make no doubt they have nearly "rubbed out" the Christians; in which particular they are rather mistaken—the French, not choosing to leave their camp, having quietly lain down, and allowed the Berber lead to fly over them. At last the assailants' ammunition runs low, and they retire, leaving a sprinkling of dead. Mr Borrer quotes the Koran. "'Those of our brothers who fall in defence of the true faith, are not dead, but live invisible, receiving their nourriture from the hand of the Most High,' says the Prophet." Nourriture is not quite English, at least with that orthography; but no matter for Mr Borrer's Gallicisms, which are many. We rush with him into the Kabyle fire. Here he sits, halted amongst the olive-trees, philosophically lighting his pipe, the bullets whistling about his ears, whilst he admires the sang froid of a pretty vivandière, seated astride upon her horse, and jesting at the danger. The column advances—the Kabyles retreat, fighting, pursued by the French shells, which they hold in particular horror, and call the howitzer the twice-firing cannon. The object of the advance is to destroy the towns and villages of the Beni-Abbez, the night-attack upon his bivouac affording the marshal a pretext. The villages are surrounded with stiff walls of stones and mud, crowned with strong thorny fences, and having hedges of prickly pear growing at their base; and the gaunt burnoosed warriors make good fight through loop-holes and from the terraces of their houses. But resistance is soon overcome, and the narrow streets are crowded with Frenchmen, ravishing, massacring, plundering; no regard to sex or age; outrage for every woman—the edge of the sword for all.

"Upon the floor of one of the chambers lay a little girl of twelve or fourteen years of age, weltering in gore, and in the agonies of death: an accursed ruffian thrust his bayonet into her. God will requite him.... When the soldiers had ransacked the dwellings, and smashed to atoms all they could not carry off, or did not think worth seizing as spoil, they heaped the remnants and the mattings together and fired them. As I was hastily traversing the streets to regain the outside of the village, disgusted with the horrors I witnessed, flames burst forth on all sides, and torrents of fire came swiftly gliding down the thoroughfares, for the flames had gained the oil. An instant I turned—the fearful doom of the poor concealed child and the decrepid mother flashing on my mind. It was too late.... The unfortunate Kabyle child was doubtless consumed with her aged parent. How many others may have shared her fate!"

At noon, the atmosphere is laden with smoke arising from the numerous burning villages. From one spot nine may be counted, wrapped in flames. There is merry-making in the French camp. Innumerable goatskins, full of milk, butter, figs, and flour, are produced and opened. Some are consumed; more are squandered and strewn upon the ground. Let the Kabyle dogs starve! Have they not audaciously levelled their long guns at the white-headed warrior and his followers, who asked nothing but submission, free passage through the country, corn-fields for their horses, and the fat of the land for themselves? But stay—there is still a town to take, the last, the strongest, the refuge of the women and of the aged. Its defence is resolute, but at last it falls. "Ravished, murdered, burnt, hardly a child escaped to tell the tale. A few of the women fled to the ravines around the village; but troops swept the brushwood; and the stripped and mangled bodies of females might there be seen.... One vast sheet of flame crowned the height, which an hour or two before was ornamented with an extensive and opulent village, crowded with inhabitants. It seemed to have been the very emporium of commerce of the Beni-Abbez; fabrics of gunpowder, of arms, of haïks, burnooses, and different stuffs, were there. The streets boasted of numerous shops of workers in silver, workers in cord, venders of silk, &c." All this the soldiers pillaged, or the fire devoured; then the insatiable flames gained the corn and olive trees, and converted a smiling and prosperous district into a black and barren waste. Bugeaud looked on and pronounced it good, and his men declared the country "well cleaned out," and vaunted their deeds of rapine and violence. "I heard two ruffians relating, with great gusto, how many young girls had been burned in one house, after being abused by their brutal comrades and themselves." Out of consideration for his readers, Mr Borrer says, he writes down but the least shocking of the crimes and atrocities he that day witnessed. We have no inclination to transcribe a tithe of the horrors he records, and at sight of which, he assures us, the blood of many a gallant French officer boiled in his veins. He mentions no attempt on the part of these compassionate officers to curb the ferocity of their men, who had not the excuse of previous severe sufferings, of a long and obstinate resistance, and of the loss of many of their comrades, to allege in extenuation of their savage violence. History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, as, for instance, after protracted sieges, great exposure, and a long and bloody fight, soldiers of all nations are liable to forget discipline, and, maddened by fury, by suffering and excitement, to despise the admonitions and reprimands of the chiefs—nay, even to turn their weapons against those whom for years they have been accustomed to respect and implicitly obey. But there is no such excuse in the instance before us. A pleasant military promenade through a rich country, fine weather, abundant rations, and just enough skirmishing to give zest to the whole affair, whose fighting part was exceeding brief, as might be expected, when French bayonets and artillery were opposed to the clumsy guns and irregular tactics of the Beni-Abbez—we find nothing in this picture to extenuate the horrible cruelties enacted by the conquerors after their easily achieved victory. Their whole loss, according to their marshal's bulletin, amounted to fifty-seven killed and wounded. This included the loss in the night-attack on the camp. In fact, it was mere child's play for the disciplined French soldiery; and Mr Borrer virtually admits this, by applying to the affair General Castellane's expression of a man-hunt. He then, with no good grace, endeavours to find an excuse for his campaigning comrades. "The ranks of the French army in Africa are composed, in great measure, of the very scum of France." They have condemned regiments in Africa, certainly; the Foreign Legion are reckless and reprobate enough; we dare say the Zouaves, a mixed corps of wild Frenchmen and tamed Arabs, are neither tender nor scrupulous; but these form a very small portion of the hundred thousand French troops in Africa, and there is little picking and choosing amongst the line regiments, who take their turn of service pretty regularly, neither is there reason for considering the men who go to Algeria to be greater scamps than those who remain in France. So this will not do, Mr Borrer: try another tack. "The only sort of excuse for the horrors committed by the soldiery in Algeria, is their untamed passions, and the fire added to their natural ferocity by the atrocious cruelties so often committed by the Arabs upon their comrades in arms, who have been so unhappy as to fall into their power." This is more plausible, although it is a query who began the system of murderous reprisals. Arab treatment of prisoners is not mild. On the evening of the 1st June, some men straggled from the French bivouac, and were captured. "It was said that from one of the outposts the Kabyles were seen busily engaged, in roasting their victims before a large fire upon a neighbouring slope; but whether this was a fact or not, I never learned." It was possibly true. Escoffier tells us how one of his fellow-prisoners, a Jew named Wolf, who fell into the hands of Moorish shepherds, was thrown upon a blazing pile of faggots; and although we suspect the brave trumpeter, or his historian, of occasional exaggeration, there are grounds for crediting the authenticity of this statement. As to Mr Borrer, he guarantees nothing but what he sees with his own eyes, the camp being, he says, full of blagueurs, or tellers of white lies. The inventions of these mendacious gentry are not always as innocent as he appears to think them. Imaginary cruelties, attributed to an enemy, are very apt to impose upon credulous soldiers, and to stimulate them to unnecessary bloodshed, and to acts of lawless revenge. Many a village has been burned, and many an inoffensive peasant sabred, on the strength of such lying fabrications. In Africa especially, where the lex talionis seems fully recognised, and its enforcement confided to the first straggler who chooses to fire a house or stick an Arab, the blagueurs should be handed over, in our opinion, to summary punishment. On the advance of the French column, a soldier or two, straying from the bivouac to bathe or fish, had here and there been shot by the lurking Kabyles. On its return, "I was somewhat surprised," Mr Borrer remarks, "to observe, in the wake of the column, flames bursting forth from the gourbies (villages) left in our rear. It was well known that the tribe upon whose territory we were riding had submitted, and that their sheikh was even riding at the head of the column." None could explain the firing of the villages. The sheikh, indignant at the treachery of the French, set spurs to his mare, and was off like the wind. The conflagration was traced to soldiers of the rear-guard, desirous to revenge their comrades, picked off on the previous march. We are not told that the crime was brought home to the perpetrators, or visited upon them. If it was, Mr Borrer makes no mention of the fact, but passes on, as if the burning of a few villages were a trifle scarce worth notice. How were the Kabyles to distinguish between the acts of the private soldier and of the epauleted chief? Their submission had just been accepted, and friendly words spoken to them: their sheikh rode beside the gray-haired leader of the Christians, and marked the apparent subordination of the white-faced soldiery. Suddenly a gross violation occurred of the amicable understanding so recently come to. How persuade them that the submissive and disciplined soldiers they saw around them would venture such breach of faith without the sanction or connivance of their commander? The offence is that of an insignificant sentinel, but the dirt falls upon the beard of Bugeaud; and confidence in the promises of the lying European is thoroughly and for ever destroyed.