The enchanted city, p.11
The Enchanted City, page 11
“Thank you, Isidore. That contribution of ammunition is precious, but we ought to think of it as a reserve supply, on which we ought only to draw in case of absolute necessity, as a last resort. Let’s reason, therefore, setting aside that unexpected help. Until now, Messieurs, only having an extremely limited number of men, we acted on the principle of concealing from the enemy the totality of that insignificant number. We’ve kept out of sight, hidden; we’ve tried to act vigorously while remaining invisible. What do you think, Isidore? Is it a reasonable system?”
“Oh, I think it’s very good. Those brigands aren’t very clever; they think the city here at present is inhabited by spirits. They must be stupid.”
“Then it’s probably appropriate to continue that policy; the council will decide. On the other hand, Messieurs, we have not thus far made use of our firearms, for lack of munitions. In that situation, we ought to reckon ourselves fortunate to have been able to make use of several neuroballistic devices analogous to those employed by the ancients. The idea was Monsieur Cornelius Bernard’s. To Monsieur Duvivier reverts the honor of having rapidly realized that conception. He has been able to improvise an excellent field artillery for us. Let’s see Isidore, what do you think of our lithoboles?”
“Litho…? Don’t know.”
“We also have trebuchets, as in the Middle Ages.”
“Oh yes, the Middle Ages…the time of the great Frederick. But why make trebuchets? Doubtless to catch sparrows?”
“No, lithoboles and trebuchets are machines that serve to launch stones in the guise of cannonballs.”
“Ah! Of course, that’s excessively engineerious! Can you imagine that when they fall to earth, those big stones make a pouff! And then, men crushed, as you like, and there you are! No doubt about it; it’s very engineerious. And do you know what they say, those Cossacks in the diabolical army? They think those pebbles and other trinkets are falling on them from the sky! If that doesn’t make you split your sides…!”
“In any case, it will doubtless be a good idea to continue with that sort of bombardment. You can formulate an opinion in that regard. Finally, Messieurs, for want of a garrison, having neither troops nor men that we can make into soldiers, we’ve had recourse to auxiliary combatants. Another of Monsieur Cornelius’ ideas. Given our absolute penury of human beings, we’ve sent forth animals. For lack of bipeds, we’ve launched at the enemy columns those quadrupeds of all species that are nourished by a mysterious hand, and of which the enchanter Samanou has made such good use. What do you think, Isidore? Our buffaloes and our lions, for example—were they effective?”
“Yes, Commandant, that’s the bouquet. One can even say that it’s a rude invention. I know something about it, me! My compliments to Samanou.”
“Well, Messieurs, that being so, and Isidore having measured the value of our original methods by experience, I must ask you whether you don’t judge it useful to remain faithful to them—and whether it might not be opportune to continue our work with redoubled effort, operation on a large scale.”
“A big ladder!” muttered Isidore.34 “They’re crazy, word of honor. It would be as easy for Monsieur Duvivier to make us elevators, like the ones at the Grand Hotel!”
While the cook was grumbling in that fashion about the routine intelligence of the engineer, the council decidedly unanimously that it would not bring any kind of modification to the system of defense operated thus far; that it would on the contrary, persevere with it, making the most of its effects, and would do so until they had exhausted its last consequences.”
With that, the session was closed.
While the members of the council headed for lunch, the former ganga-ya-ita took Professor Cornelius to one side.
“So,” he said, “it was that joker Samanou who threw beasts at me?”
“Yes.
“That’s clever! So it was him who cut off their tails?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But why?”
“To render them furious. The effects of ablation of the caudal appendage are well known. Animals that no longer have a tail scream, howl and roar.”
“Ah! I understand—and I promise you that Samanou’s affair succeeded very well. Those lions put on an infernal sabbat for us!”
Chapter XIV
Forty-Seven Men against Five Hundred Thousand
The next day, Commandant Fresnel, having gathered all his traveling companions together, not for a council of war, but simply in conference, thought he ought to call upon Isidore once again.
“You can render us another service,” he told him.
“At your orders, Commandant. What do I have to do?”
“Appeal to your memories in order to give us precise information about the means that the people besieging us have at their disposal. Let me interrogate you. You inspected the lake squadron. Do you know how large it is?”
“Oh, it’s very consequent.”
“You’ve seen it at close range and visited the boats? How many are there. How big? What armaments to they have?”
“First of all, Commandant, there are a lot of little dinghies, each manned by two men; the number one holds the paddle and the number two the assegai—I remembered that because it’s funny.35 Some of those dinghies look like little canoes, and others make one think of the raft of the Medusa. I didn’t count them, of course, but there were fleets, perhaps a thousand.”
“That already makes two thousand men, then?”
“At least. Secondly—these I counted, there were eighty-two—canoes made from a single block of wood, which are long…two or three times as long as the Biafra’s lifeboat. There might have been a hundred and twenty-five or a hundred and thirty men in each one.”
“Which makes about ten thousand men in total.”
“That’s not all. There are also boats like the one in which we passed over the lake.”
“Daous?”
“Precisely. There are twenty-four; one can say that they’re the real warships; each one has its forty oars, its thirty able seamen, its hundred and twenty fighting men, archers, and riflemen, and drummers…oh, what drummers!”
“That makes, by that count, about three hundred men aboard each daou.”
“About that.”
And as the fleet comprises twenty-four of those ships, we have another seven thousand men there. Is that all?”
“Yes, commandant, that’s all; but I can tell you that it’s very consequent, without seeming like it. Those dinghies, those big canoes, even those huge daous, you won’t see them all. Not so stupid as all that, those matelots! They’re in ambush in all the little corners of the coast, behind the islets or under the rocks that stick out, or in forests of reeds.”
“In sum, Messieurs, according to Isidore’s account, we’re blockaded on the lake by naval forces whose strength can be drawn up as follows: crews of little boats, two thousand men; canoes, ten thousand; daous, seven thousand—which is, in total, about twenty thousand men. Now the land forces, what number would you put on their strength?”
“Commandant, the land armies, that’s my game, since I was in the zouaves. Well, all those men there are lousy soldiers. They’re not worth much—devilishly little. On the other hand, there are masses. There in front of you, those who are blockading us, is the Kifoukourou camp, a corps of at least seventy thousand men. Half a day from here is the Nyonngo camp; at least another seventy thousand men. Well, Commandant, I heard it from the Mata Sonapanga that he had seven like that—army corps, that is—within a few days march. That’s it.”
“What! We’re blockaded by an army of four hundred and fifty thousand men!”
“That’s what I make it. And that’s not all. There are the women in the train, the tringlotes; there are the elephants…sixty in each corps, each with four men on its back and a driver on its neck.”
“Which makes another two or three thousand men. In sum, Messieurs, if Isidore is to be believed, we’re at odds with an enemy whose land and water-borne forces add up to approximately half a million men—but to tell the truth, that seems to me to be fabulous.”
“Why?” demanded Professor Cornelius. “Such a number is well in accordance with historical data. Carli relates that he saw a certain king of the Congo marching against the Portuguese one day at the head of an army of more than nine hundred thousand men. Pigafetta thought that he ought to add that the king in question normally had more than a million under arms; that in 1584 the Portuguese had to sustain the attack of twelve hundred thousand negroes in Angola.36 Those figures aren’t exaggerated. Extreme barbarism proceeds, like extreme civilization, in vast masses.”
“So be it,” Monsieur Fresnel resumed. “Let’s admit the figure of five hundred thousand men; I ought to ask you to consider that they’re not all here, those half million combatants—that the nine army corps haven’t yet joined up.”
“Commandant,” said Isidore, firmly, “you can take it as certain that it won’t take long.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard the Mata say so on the evening when I had the sack from my feet to my ears….and even over my head. He was furious to see that I hadn’t been able to take the city. Then, before beginning to drink the pommbé with his generals and his big bassoons, he gave the order to have all of them summoned here—and he even said that, if the nine army corps weren’t sufficient, he’d call up the reserves of all classes from back in his homeland: that if it took a hundred and sixty-nine corps, he’d end up victorious. Oh, he’s stubborn, that young man. His obsession is to take Kisimbasimba.”
“What’s Kisimbasimba?” asked Monsieur Fresnel.
“The city where we are, so I believe. Anyway, he said that he’d take it; he swore it by Ouaka. That’s the name of the chief of the spirits of his homeland.”
“Ouaka!” interjected Professor Cornelius. “You say that their god is called Ouaka?”
“Certainly, saving your respect.”
“Then we’re not dealing with Nyam-Nyams, as I thought at first, but with the Galla.”
“No, that’s not what they call themselves.”
“Orma, if you wish.”
“Orma—yes, that’s it.”
“That’s the national name, which signifies ‘strong men.’ We Europeans call them the Galla—which is to say, ‘emigrants.’ Tell me, Isidore, do you know how long it’s been since they left their homeland, how long they’ve been on the move?”
“The Mata claims that it’s been five years—the same time as an enlistment, but I can’t believe….”
“Wait! With the African year only being five months, it will merely be two years that these people have been marching. Did you hear talk of the land they inhabit? Did their conversation include the names of Mount Kenia or Kilimanjaro, the river Juba or the river Sabaki?”
“Sabaki! Yes—I remembered that name because it’s funny.”
“Well, now I’m sure of it—they’re Galla from the south. So much the worse!”
“What do you mean?” asked Monsieur Fresnel.
“That Isidore doubtless had under his command combatants that don’t constitute elite troops; that those people probably experienced some repugnance at serving under the orders of an ousoungou; either they were troubled by the idea of having to lay siege to a banza, or they were demoralized by virtue of the character of our defensive method—but I declare that it would be difficult for us to encounter more redoubtable adversaries.”
“What!”
“Yes, we have at our heels the most bellicose of all the peoples of the African continent, not excepting the Zulus.
“The Zuzus?” Isidore queried.
“I said Zulus. One ought to say: Oulus, which signifies ‘the devil’s people.’ It’s a nation of the cape, much superior to those of the Kaffirs, Hottentots, Basutos and Fingas. The English, who praise the Zulu highly, say that he’s very distinguished in all things: ‘every inch a gentleman.’ What’s certain is that the people of Zululand are truly astonishing. Indefatigable marchers, they move on the double for twenty-four hours in succession, taking the shortest route, never resting, eating or drinking. One would willingly grant them the gift of ubiquity. Armed with hardwood assegais with iron points, they launch those javelins over long distances, and with extraordinary accuracy. In a word, they’re true warriors. The English know that one day, something…well, the Galla that we have to fight are even more terrible than the people of the Cape.”
“We beg you to tell us all that you know about this enemy that you claim to be so terrible. It’s good to know what one’s dealing with.”
“All right, you’ll learn what the Galla are—but first, there are a few general considerations of which I ought to make you aware. I beg your pardon—just a little ethnography! It won’t take long. Without going into detail about the presumed truth of prehistoric migrations, I should remind you that the African continent is occupied today by populations that can be divided, as Monsieur Keane37 has done, into six distinct races. Of those six races, two are of foreign origin and four autochthonous, or indigenous.
“The foreigners are the Chamitic race and the Semitic race, today almost exclusively inhabiting the north and northeast of the continent. The autochthonous races are the Negroes properly speaking, the Fulani, the Bantus and the Hottentots. The Blacks occupy the central zone, which extends from the Atlantic to the Egyptian Sudan. The Fulani are established in the northwest of the continent; the Bantus occupy the entire south, from a few degrees below the equator to the Cape, except for a few corners of the extreme south and the extreme southwest, which together constitute the domain of the Hottentots. Such is the present distribution of the races on the surface of the African continent.
“The Chamitic race, the only one that I need to deal with, probably originated in southwest Asia, in the Savannah countries bathed by the Tigris and the Euphrates. The epoch of its arrival in Africa is lost in the night of time. It has formed three distinct families: the Egyptian, Libyan and Ethiopian families.
“Having said that, what is the origin of the Galla? According to their own traditions, they came from Arabia. Some ethnographic fantasists find affinities with the Kaffirs, others with the Galla negroes that inhabit Guinea between Cap Mesurado and the Pepper coast. Speke took them for hybrids of Negroes and Abyssinians. Personally, I’m content to say that the Galla are Chamites of the Ethiopian family.
“There’s no need to sketch the type of our adversaries; Isidore has done that. He has depicted the Galla who, physically, occupy a good rank in the scale of races. His description is in conformity with those given by Rudolf, Bruce, Salt, Owen, Lefevre Hoefer, Desvergers and, very recently, Keith Johnson, a member of the Royal Geographical Society of London.38 I will add that they’re very intelligent, and no more proof of that is needed than the fact that a few Galla tribes can read and write; they make use of old Ethiopian characters, and we possess a curious specimen of that writing brought back by Arnaud d’Abbadie.39 It’s a letter from the Galla King of Enaria addressed to an Abyssinian prince.
“Always following their national traditions, the Galla might once have possessed all of Central Africa. At any rate, Barth is right to attribute to them as a base of operations and a primary fatherland the region where Kilimanjaro rises. It’s certain that they’ve occupied since remote antiquity the eastern coast that extends south of Abyssinia. It’s even thought that their name has been recognized in the famous inscription of Adulis among the names of the people whose submission was obtained by the Ptolemies.
“As for the territory that they possess today, we know its limits almost exactly, thanks to Rebmann, Wakefield, von der Decken, Krapf, Charles New and Keith Johnson. That territory is limited to the north by Abyssinia; to the east by the land of the Somalis, following a straight line leading from the bay of Tajurra on the gulf of Aden to the mouth of the Juba in the Indian Ocean; to the south by the course of the Sabaki and the plateau of the Ouanika; to the southwest by the Ouakambani, who live between the Kenia and Kilimanjaro; to the west by the Oumasai and the Ouakouavi, brigand peoples who perpetually ravage the plains that extend from Abyssinia to the great lakes. The immense patrimony of the Galla thus designs, between the tenth degree of north latitude and the fourth degree of south latitude, a zone fifteen hundred kilometers in extent. That long strip of territory is scarcely populated as it might be; Dr. Krapf40 only estimates the total population at six or eight million inhabitants.
“As regards their political organization, the Galla follow a kind of patriarchal regime; divided into a considerable number of tribes and clans, they recognize the authority, albeit rather limited, of a helitch or sultan. This Mata Sonapanga about whom Isidore has talked to us is only a generalissimo invested with a military dignity equivalent to that of a French maréchal. He has been elected under the tree of war. The sovereign resides in a capital called Bizamo or Killambanza, situated between the Nile and the Bahr-el-Abiad, which no European has yet visited. The Galla of the north, those bordering on Abyssinia, have some trace of civilization; some of them are Muslims, others Christians. Those of the south are pagans; they worship Ouaka, a supreme being whose attributes are in reasonable harmony with the ideas that civilized peoples have of the divinity.”
“All that’s very interesting, my dear professor—but let’s talk about the military institutions of the people we have to fight.”
“The Galla are to Africa what the Goths and Vandals once were to Western Europe. They scarcely make use of agriculture, but they tend a few herds. Their cattle are remarkable because of their immensely long horns. Above all, they are, like the Fans or Pahouins, pirates of the land, savage warriors, devastators. Their great-armed expeditions are nearly periodic, like the inundations of the Nile, but instead of bringing fecundity, they spread death and desolation wherever they go.
“For four hundred years they’ve been ravaging the regions of the equatorial lakes. In the sixteenth century, in 1537, they invaded Abyssinia, a few years later, Angola and the Congo. Today they’re dominant in Kittara, Ourinza, Kragoue, Ouganda and Ounioro; yesterday, they were on the borders of Victoria-Nyanza; now, they’re here in the Tanganyika. The city that we’re occupying commands the roads that lead in a westerly direction; it’s the key to the passages that they have to effect, in accordance with the law of ethnological currents that is drawing them toward the western coast.”
