sseurs d'Afrique. A night's march covered the intervening
space and the spot was reached in the gray of dawn. The Sultan was
aroused from sleep by cries of "The French! the French!" He had barely
time to mount. He might have escaped, but he preferred the risk of death
to the double stain of surprise and flight. His infantry seized their
arms and fired a volley; his cavalry rallied at his voice. Then as the
smoke slowly rolled away he dashed into the French chasseurs, dispersed
them by the sudden shock, and after a few minutes' hard fighting drew
off his whole force in perfect order.

The Beni-Amers, the men whose four thousand sabres had waved in
exultation around the young leader of the Djehad; the men whose splendid
courage had opened before him the path of glory and of empire, had gone
over to the French. Abd-el-Kader resolved to attack them. Suddenly
descending upon them he swept through their encampments, slew numbers,
and carried off a great booty. A French battalion stationed among them
vainly strove to arrest his progress. An Arab chief, one of his old
followers, boldly singled him out, rode up, and fired at him
point-blank. The ball missed, and Abd-el-Kader shot the traitor dead
with his pistol.

The Sultan knew that all was lost unless he could obtain external aid.
The smala was now reduced to his own deira, a bare thousand souls,
wandering about in miserable fashion. After another desperate engagement
with Lamoriciere during which the Arab women cheered on the warriors,
and Abd-el-Kader and his men fighting in the presence of their wives and
children performed new prodigies of valor, he succeeded in safely
establishing the noncombatants on the territory of Morocco.

Bugeaud, now become a marshal, wrote to his Government declaring that
all serious warfare was finished. In the summer of 1844, the violation
of Abderrahman's territory by French troops under Lamoriciere and Bedeau
led to some warfare, in which the Moroccan troops were twice defeated.
The people of the country were strongly in favor of Abd-el-Kader; and
when their Sultan, after a French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador,
made a treaty with France by which the Algerian hero was "placed beyond
the pale of the law throughout the Empire of Morocco, as well as in
Algeria," and was to be "pursued by main force by the Moroccans on their
own territory," the Moorish population was filled with resentment.
Letters reached Abd-el-Kader from Fez, the capita