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Updated: May 11, 2025
The Prince pledged himself that Lamoricière's promise and stipulation should be strictly observed. He knew little that his father's throne was about to fall, and that the decision as to Abd-el-Kader's fate would, within a few weeks, rest in far different hands. The ex-Sultan then withdrew to his deira, which had now joined the French encampment.
His own brothers had abandoned him. Ben Salem, the faithful, long-tried, devoted friend and follower, was a voluntary prisoner in the French camp. Abd-el-Kader's whole force was fewer than two thousand men, but among these were twelve hundred horsemen, the flower of the Algerian cavalry.
The defile was one which a few hundred men could have held against any force, but the Kabyle sheiks were shown passports bearing Abd-el-Kader's seal and authorizing the passage of French troops. The seal of the Sultan had been forged.
On December 25th the Algerian hero embarked with his family and followers in a French frigate for Toulon. He had seen the last of his native land. Lamoricière accompanied him on board and supplemented his poor resources with a present of four thousand francs, receiving Abd-el-Kader's sword in return.
This noble life, which impinges a moment on our course through Kabylia, is surely the most epical of our century, which can never be reproached for the lack of a hero while Abd-el-Kader's name is remembered.
This force had time to prepare for defence, and the assailants withdrew before a steady fire of infantry and artillery to an adjacent hill. At midday five thousand Moorish cavalry moved out against Abd-el-Kader's little army. At charging distance he led on his men, swept through the foe, and by a skilful combination of assault and retreat regained his deira by the river Melouia, before sunset.
Arnaud, under Marshal Bugeaud, conducted that expedition of eternal infamy during which seven hundred of Abd-el-Kader's Arabs were suffocated in a cave-sanctuary of the Dahra. This sickening measure was put in force at a cul-de-sac, where a few hours' blockade would have commanded a peaceful surrender.
In a skirmish near Mascara, one of Abd-el-Kader's negro soldiers killed two Frenchmen with his own hand. The Emir, who was an eye-witness of his bravery, rewarded him on the field of battle by presenting him with his own sword and the Cross of the Crescent, the only military order in the service, and which is never awarded except fur a very distinguished action.
Abd-el-Kader's final defeat in 1848 was due less to the prowess of Lamoricière and Bugeaud than to the cunning of his traitorous ally, the sultan of Morocco, who, after having induced many of the princely saint's adherents to desert, finally drove him by force of numbers over the French frontier.
The duke of Orleans, we are told, had Abd-el-Kader's seal counterfeited by a Jewish coiner at Oran, and with passports thus stamped sent scouting-parties toward the sultan's dominions, protected by the sultan's forged safe-conduct. Open conflict followed, and a succession of French razzias. In 1845, Colonels Pelissier and St.
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