Bugeaud

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 November 1857


First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. IV, 1859
Reproduced from The New American Cyclopaedia
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 18
Collection(s): New American Cyclopaedia

Having undertaken to write about some military leaders and politicians in accordance with Dana's request for articles beginning with B (see Note 49), Marx asked Engels' opinion of them, including Bugeaud (see his letters to Engels of September 17 and 21, 1857). In his letter of September 22, 1857 Engels described Bugeaud's military activities in Algeria. Marx took this into account when working on the article later, probably in November. The article was finished by the end of that month and sent off to New York on the 27th, together with Engels' "Artillery", as is seen from the entry in Marx's notebook.

Extant excerpts show that Marx used the following sources: M. Wagner, The Tricolor on the Atlas; or, Algeria and the French Conquest (London, Edinburgh and New York, 1854) and D. Stern, Histoire de la révolution de 1848 (Vol. I, Paris, 1850). Marx possibly also used the data on Bugeaud's activities in Algeria contained in Engels' first version of the article "Algeria" and left out by the Cyclopaedia editors (see Note 74).

Bugeaud de la Piconnerie, Thomas Robert, due d'Isly, marshal of France, born at Limoges, in Oct. 1784, died in Paris, June 10, 1849. He entered the French army as a private soldier in 1804, became a corporal during the campaign of 1805, served as sub-lieutenant in the campaign of Prussia and Poland (1806-'7), was present in 1811, as major, at the sieges of Lerida, Tortosa, and Tarragona, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenantcolonel after the battle of Ordal, in Catalonia.[1] After the first return of the Bourbons Col. Bugeaud celebrated the white lily[2] in some doggerel rhymes; but these poetical effusions being passed by rather contemptuously, he again embraced, during the Hundred Days,[3] the party of Napoleon, who sent him to the army of the Alps, at the head of the 14th regiment of the line. On the 2d return of the Bourbons he retired to Excideuil, to the estate of his father. At the time of the invasion of Spain by the duke of Angoulême[4] he offered his sword to the Bourbons, but the offer being declined, he turned liberal, and joined the movement which finally led to the revolution of 1830.

He was chosen as a member of the chamber of deputies in 1831, and made a major-general by Louis Philippe. Appointed governor of the citadel of Blaye in 1833, he had the duchess of Berry under his charge, but earned no honor from the manner in which he discharged his mission, and became afterward known by the name of the "ex-gaoler of Blaye." During the debates of the chamber of deputies on Jan. 25,[5] 1834, M. Larabit complaining of Souk's military dictatorship, and Bugeaud interrupting him with the words, "Obedience is the soldier's first duty," another deputy, M. Dulong, pungently asked, "What, if ordered to become a gaoler?" This incident led to a duel between Bugeaud and Dulong, in which the latter was shot.[6] The consequent exasperation of the Parisians was still heightened by his co-operation in suppressing the Paris insurrection of April 13 and 14, 1834.[7] The forces destined to suppress that insurrection were divided into 3 brigades, one of which Bugeaud commanded. In the rue Transnonain a handful of enthusiasts who still held a barricade on the morning of the 14th, when the serious part of the affair was over, were cruelly slaughtered by an overwhelming force. Although this spot lay without the circumscription made over to Bugeaud's brigade, and he, therefore, had not participated in the massacre, the hatred of the people nailed his name to the deed, and despite all declarations to the contrary, persisted in stigmatizing him as the "man of the rue Transnonain."

Sent, June 6, 1836, to Algeria, Gen. Bugeaud became invested with a commanding position in the province of Oran, almost independent of the governor-general. Ordered to fight Abd-elKader, and to subdue him by the display of an imposing army, he concluded the treaty of the Tafna,[8] allowing the opportunity for military operations to slip away, and placing his army in a critical state before it had begun to act. Bugeaud fought several battles previous to this treaty. A secret article, not reduced to writing, stipulated that 30,000 boojoos (about $12,000) should be paid to Gen. Bugeaud. Called back to France, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general and appointed grand officer of the legion of honor. When the secret clause of the treaty of the Tafna oozed out, Louis Philippe authorized Bugeaud to expend the money on certain public roads, thus to increase his popularity among his electors and secure his seat in the chamber of deputies. At the commencement of 1841 he was named governorgeneral of Algeria, and with his administration the policy of France in Algeria underwent a complete change. He was the first governor-general who had an army adequate to its task placed under his command, who exerted an absolute authority over the generals second in command, and who kept his post long enough to act up to a plan needing years for its execution. The battle of Isly (Aug. 14, 1844), in which he vanquished the army of the emperor of Morocco[9] with vastly inferior forces, owed its success to his taking the Mussulmans by surprise, without any previous declaration of war, and when negotiations were on the eve of being concluded.[10] Already raised to the dignity of a marshal of France, July 17, 1843, Bugeaud was now created duke of Isly. Abd-el-Kader having, after his return to France, again collected an army, he was sent back to Algeria, where he promptly crushed the Arabian revolt. In consequence of differences between him and Guizot, occasioned by his expedition into Kabylia, which he had undertaken against ministerial orders, he was replaced by the duke of Aumale, and, according to Guizot's expression, "enabled to come and enjoy his glory in France."[11] [12]

During the night of Feb. 23-24, 1848, he was, on the secret advice of Guizot, ordered into the presence of Louis Philippe, who conferred upon him the supreme command of the whole armed force—the line as well as the national guard. At noon of the 24th, followed by Gens. Rulhière, Bedeau, Lamoricière, De Salles, St. Arnaud, and others, he proceeded to the general staff at the Tuileries, there to be solemnly invested with the supreme command by the duke of Nemours. He reminded the officers present that he who was about to lead them against the Paris revolutionists "had never been beaten, neither on the battle-field nor in insurrections," and for this time again promised to make short work of the "rebel rabble." Meantime, the news of his nomination contributed much to give matters a decisive turn. The national guard, still more incensed by his appointment as supreme commander, broke out in the cry of "Down with Bugeaud!"

"Down with the man of the rue TransnonainV and positively declared that they would not obey his orders. Frightened by this demonstration, Louis Philippe withdrew his orders, and spent the 24th in vain negotiations. On Feb. 24, alone of Louis Philippe's council, Bugeaud still urged war to the knife; but the king already considered the sacrifice of the marshal as a means to make his own peace with the national guard. The command was consequently placed in other hands, and Bugeaud dismissed. Two days later he placed, but in vain, his sword at the command of the provisional government.[13]

When Louis Napoleon became president he conferred the command-in-chief of the army of the Alps upon Bugeaud, who was also elected by the department of Charente-Inférieure as representative in the national assembly. He published several literary productions, which treat chiefly of Algeria.[14] In Aug. 1852, a monument was erected to him in Algiers, and also one in his native town.

  1. ↑ The sieges and battle of Ordal took place during the Peninsular war of 1808-14 (see Note 12).
  2. ↑ Heraldic emblem of the Bourbon dynasty.— Ed
  3. ↑ The Hundred Days—the period of the short-lived restoration of Napoleon's empire, which lasted from the moment of his arrival in Paris from Elba on March 20, 1815 to his second deposition on June 22 following his defeat at Waterloo.
  4. ↑ The French invasion of Spain was undertaken by decision of the Verona Congress of the Holy Alliance (an alliance of European monarchs founded in 1815 by Russia, Austria and Prussia) for the purpose of suppressing the second bourgeois revolution in Spain, 1820-23. French troops under the Duke of Angoulême entered Spain in 1823 and restored the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII. They remained in the country until 1828.
  5. ↑ The New American Cyclopaedia has "Jan. 16".—£d.
  6. ↑ In the official report of the debates in the Chamber of Deputies on January 25, 1834, published in Le Moniteur universel (No. 26, January 26, 1834), the editors omitted Dulong's remark on Bugeaud's statement. But on January 30 (Issue No. 30) they had to explain references made by other newspapers to the incident between the two generals and reports on the duel between them.
  7. ↑ The Paris republican uprising against the July monarchy on April 13-14, 1834, like the revolutionary actions in some other French towns, was in response to the powerful proletarian uprising that had begun in Lyons. As in Lyons, the uprising in Paris was directed by the secret republican-democratic Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. For two days the Paris workers, the main participants in the uprising, carried on bitter barricade fighting against government troops.
  8. ↑ The treaty of Tafna between Bugeaud and Abd-el-Kader was signed on May 30, 1837, after the French resumed military operations against Abd-el-Kader in 1835, in violation of the peace treaty concluded a year earlier. The French were forced to conclude the new peace (the treaty of Tafna) since they had failed to achieve substantial results and required military forces to subdue the insurgent regions of Eastern Algeria. Under the treaty of Tafna France again recognised the independence of Abd-el-Kader's state in Western Algeria, except for Algiers, Oran, Arzew and other coastal towns. In 1839 the peace was again violated by the French, and the Algerian liberation struggle under Abd-el-Kader (see Note 80) was resumed.
  9. ↑ Abd-ur-Rahman II.— Ed.
  10. ↑ By 1844 Bugeaud and other French generals had subdued Western Algeria by bribing the local feudal lords and terrorising the Algerian tribes. Taking advantage of the Sultan of Morocco's refusal to extradite Abd-el-Kader who had crossed into Morocco, Bugeaud invaded that country. On August 14, 1844 he defeated the Moroccans in the battle of the Isly. Under the Tangiers treaty of September 10, 1844, Bugeaud made the Sultan drive Abd-el-Kader out of Morocco and disband the frontier detachments. But the threat of interference by Britain, worried by the prospect of French expansion in North Africa, prompted Bugeaud to withdraw his troops from Morocco.
  11. ↑ Quoted from D. Stern's Histoire de la révolution de 1848 (p. 55). The quotations in the next paragraph are also from this book (pp. 147, 150).— Ed.
  12. ↑ The differences between Bugeaud and Guizot were caused by the former's intention to use the suppression of the Algerian revolt of 1845-47 for further conquests in North Africa (his expedition of May 1847 to Kabylia also served this purpose), and for a new invasion of Morocco. Though a supporter of an active colonial policy in general, on this occasion Guizot feared that Bugeaud's actions would aggravate the already sharp Anglo-French contradictions.
  13. ↑ The posts in the Provisional Government of the French Republic set up on February 24, 1848 were held mainly by moderate republicans (Lamartine, Dupont de l'Eure and others). There were also three representatives of the Réforme social-democratic party—Ledru-Rollin, Flocon and Louis Blanc, and a worker, Albert (real name Martin).
  14. ↑ Th. R. Bugeaud, L'Algérie. Des moyens de conserver et d'utiliser cette conquête; De la colonisation de l'Algérie, and others.— Ed.