A French Marshal In Morocco

Allan Ramsay

FRANCE'S colonial history has all too often been ignored or dismissed in the English-speaking world yet it has had great influence not only on Prance, but on large portions of Africa and Asia. One of the best ways to understand it is to describe the career of one of the greatest French colonial administrators, Marshal Lyautey, France's first Resident General in Morocco.

Hubert Lyautey was born in his parental home in Nancy in 1854. His family on both sides belonged to the upper middle classes. His great-grandfather had risen to the position of Inspector General of Artillery under Napoleon. His grandfather and great-uncles had also served the Emperor. The maternal side were minor landed gentry from Lorraine with a tincture of Norman blood.

Lyautey's upbringing and education were, superficially at least, conventional. At the age of a few months a fall from an upstairs window, where he had been taken to watch the parade for the baptism of the Prince Imperial, was thought to have severely damaged his spine. An operation was followed by two years in bed and years of painful convalescence. The experience does not seem to have affected his physical vitality, either in his youth or later in life. But enforced idleness and the solicitude of his maternal aunts and grandmother, both women of lively intelligence, encouraged a taste for reading. Once on his feet he became the undisputed leader of a small group of friends. He did well in his studies and passed as a cadet into St Cyr.

In France Lyautey's subsequent career is well documented. There is a limited number of studies in English of his time as Resident General in Morocco. So far as I am aware there is no full-length biography in English, certainly no recent one. Maurois' biography was translated on publication before the war. It is a partisan study, based on personal acquaintance with its subject, not always an advantage. This is altogether very little for one who was such a seminal figure in France in his time.

Of Lyautey's active life thirteen years were spent as Resident General in Morocco, a career interrupted by nine months unhappy experience as Minister of War in 1917. He was first appointed to Morocco in April 1912 and finally recalled in August 1923 a sad and disappointed man, his return to France virtually ignored until his death in 1934. Reparation was made years later when his tomb was placed beside that of Napoleon. Earlier generations of Lyauteys would have regarded it as the consummation of all their earthly hopes, second only to death in battle against the enemies of France. Later, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death a statue was erected, a tribute to all those who had lost their lives in the service of the French administration abroad. In Morocco itself his equestrian statue stands just inside the grounds of the French Consulate General in Casablanca surveying the busy main square but safe from the attentions of the crowds. There is a portrait of him in the entrance to the Ambassador's office in the French Embassy in Rabat, hanging above his campaign trunk. Looking at it, it is easy to believe that while one might have admired him one might have found it difficult to like him; the gaze that meets yours is so disconcertingly full of unshakeable self-regard.

Lyautey's reputation in Morocco remains ambivalent. He is admired for having tried to temper the autocratic tendencies of French administration, and the greed of French colons by protecting as much as possible of the country's indigenous structure and institutions and setting clearly defined limits to the scale of the mission civilisatrice. But no matter how personally sympathetic, he perhaps misunderstood the extent to which the Moroccans looked beyond the man to the government whose servant he ultimately was. What they saw they disliked; the more perhaps for his attempts to give French policy a presentational colour that appeared to respect both the spirit and the letter of the French mandate. A French priest once said of Lyautey that he was 'un f[acute{e}]odaliste envoy[acute{e}] [acute{a}] gouverner un pays f[acute{e}]odale'. But there are differences in feudal systems and Lyautey, as convinced as any Frenchman of the benefits of French administration, failed to grasp the subtlety of the Moroccan version and the delicate nature of the mutual obligations between the ruler and his subjects.

Lyautey's was a complex character. The enlightened principles he applied to the care of his soldiers as a cavalry officer, like the ideal of partnership he sought to develop later, first as a disciple of Gallieni (whom he thought was a man in the mould of Cecil Rhodes) in Indo China and Madagascar and later in Morocco were regarded as eccentric. Though widely read Lyautey was not a pensive solitary. He was an ardent and imaginative young man, though he was never one to [acute{e}]pater la bourgeoisie. He enjoyed social life and applied himself conscientiously to his profession. Even as a young man he appears to have had a well founded sense of his own capabilities. What was unusual was that the circles in which he moved and felt most at home were literary ones where it was rare indeed to meet an army officer. He went, not simply to listen but to contribute. In his own way he was something of a celebrity from quite an early age.

Lyautey's family background, though by no means singular for those times, explains a great deal: on the one side industrious, methodical, of unbending probity and moral seriousness; withal, one suspects, a little dull; on the other, though as morally strict, the tone is lighter, more feminine and artistic with a liking for fine things. What both families had in common, social background apart, were their royalist traditions and border inheritance, Franche Comte on the paternal, Lorraine on the maternal side. These ancient domains of the old Burgundian empire seem to throw up a type of Frenchman more passionate in his devotion to a certain idea of France than any other. Nancy was then the most beautiful small capital city in Europe and whether in his family's town house or on their country estate at Crevic, Lyautey, as a sensitive child, could not have failed to be influenced by an atmosphere of a rather recherch[acute{e}] kind which preferred its prayer books finely bound and its priests well born.

To be a royalist in France in those days could mean one of three things: Legitimist -- the Bourbons whose heir the Comte de Chambord lived in exile in Austria; Orleanist -- led by the Comte de Paris; or Napoleonist. Lyautey's family embraced all three. Legitimist himself, he found in neither the Comte de Chambord nor the Comte de Paris the leader his idealism craved. On Chambord's death Lyautey's royalist sympathies seem to have atrophied. He never appears to have found the slightest difficulty in serving a republican government. At about the same time, while serving as a young officer in a remote Saharan outpost in Algeria, he lost his faith. He remained thereafter respectful but distant.

Lyautey's conception of colonial administration was his own, though it drew extensively on the ideals put into effect by General Joseph Gallieni in Indo China and Madagascar, and what he had read and seen for himself of British administration in Egypt and Africa. By working through the established elites General Joseph Gallieni hoped to make colonial rule more acceptable locally and to disarm opposition to it. Pacification was still necessary however and Lyautey soon discovered that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between rebels and insurgents and genuine opposition.

In practice it was necessary to subdue both and fine distinctions had to be discarded. After Madagascar he was forced to admit that colonial rule was unlikely ever to be acceptable to an indigenous population. The methods used by General Gallieni and Lyautey, who quickly rose to become his Chief of Staff in Indo China, were similar to those used with such success by Sir Gerald Templer during the Malay emergency in the 1950s, though there are important differences in the two situations. Their longevity is perhaps their best advocate.

Lyautey was drawing on other influences as well as furthering his ideas. As a young man he had come under the influence of Alfred de Mun, a serving officer who propagated a form of Christian Socialism similar to that of Charles Peguy. There seems nothing very radical about their ideas today but they were unpopular then, in military circles especially. The views they articulated sought to give shape to the burgeoning social consciousness in France and apply it to the army. The conscript was not to be seen as a separate and inferior species but rather as possessed of a soul and member of the society from which he was drawn. The army, its officers in particular, therefore had a social role to discharge as well as a military one. The proponents of this line of thought could see, even if others could not, that economic advances were to change the nature of war, like that of society itself. Morale became an even greater preoccupation following the Franco-Prussian war. For those who care about these things Lyautey had high praise for all that he saw in Europe and the East Indies of the administration of the men of the British Army which he considered humane and enlightened.

Lyautey was invited to publish his views in La R[acute{e}]vue des Deux Mondes, the leading intellectual periodical of its time. His article gained him a reputation in progressive circles outside the army, among journalists and writers as well as influential members of the haute bourgeoisie. He was to use the magazine again some years later to set out his ideas about colonial reform, to a similarly wide and appreciative audience, including members of the national assembly. The principles underlying his approach to both military and colonial reform were essentially the same: consent and participation were the keys to success even if both had to be sacrificed on occasions when the national interest demanded. Lyautey was to make use of this escape clause in Morocco. And though he could be notably dismissive about the wider preoccupations of government and felt uncomfortable with politicians as a class he was to make full use of the following he had acquired on those occasions when there was conflict between his aims and those of Paris.

The Lyautey who arrived in Algeria for his third tour of duty towards the end of 1903 to take command of the South Aranais district was a man in a hurry. He was in his early fifties and unless the present appointment could be turned to advantage the prospect ahead of him was of further tours of duty in metropolitan France, followed by retirement to Nancy, a career indistinguishable from those of the vast majority of his contemporaries. In the South Oran French settlement was spreading, bringing with it the usual range of commercial and political interests. Lyautey's job was to ensure that the process was not imperilled by the incursions of hostile tribes operating from sanctuaries across the border inside Morocco. He exploited the opportunities thus presented to the full, instituting a policy of hot pursuit that soon brought him into conflict with the Quai d'Orsay. In fact he went further and occupied tactically important places inside Morocco from which he could take preemptive action if necessary, a sort o f force de dissuasion, seeking at the same time a modus vivendi with the tribes through personal contact. They proved uncooperative, moving their bases of operation further into Morocco. Inevitably he was drawn after them, towards Fez itself, the religious capital of Morocco and the site of its founder's tomb. His incursions also took him south, to the oasis of Tafilalet, the home of the Sherifian dynasty and an important trading centre, thus compounding insult and injury. The phenomenon he encountered in these early days -- the elusiveness of the local tribes, their capacity to inflict damage, the reluctance of their leaders to subscribe to his policy of partnership -- became a constant of his subsequent residency: always, in the offing, there was something to threaten all that he had accomplished.

Throughout the period of his command of a politically sensitive area, Lyautey, for reasons of his own, appears to have ignored the international constraints under which his government were operating under the terms of the Paris and Algeciras treaties of 1904 and 1906. French policy was seeking to strengthen France's position through building up and gradually consolidating the authority of the Sultan, Abd el Aziz, leaving Moroccan institutions intact. By seeking to establish what was, in effect, a buffer zone under French military control on the Eastern border Lyautey appeared to subordinate France's Moroccan interests to her Algerian ones. In terms of his Government's priorities this was as it should have been, but his methods did more than anything else to expose the illusions on which French policy rested, to discredit the Sultan, and finally to bring that policy and Abd el Aziz's rule to an end. To the Moroccans it seems to have been clear that the French were, for all practical purposes, usurpers and the ir resistance rested as much on religious as other motivations, exactly what Lyautey himself was so often quoted as fearing most. In a series of uprisings which followed, notably at Casablanca and at Fez, a number of Europeans were killed. They were forcibly suppressed and the French military presence in central Morocco increased in consequence. In April Lyautey was appointed Resident General, a position for which his firm hand and forward policy on the border had, in the eyes of many, made him the best qualified candidate.

As Resident General Lyautey found himself in the position of poacher turned gamekeeper. It was one thing, as a soldier in command of troops in a delicate and sometimes critical situation to present ministers, more often than not ignorant about Moroccan geography, with a series of faits accomplis; but a Resident General had to be more circumspect. Adherence to the terms of the Treaty of Fez and the need to rebuild the authority of the Sultan, while securing the compliance if not always co-operation of the tribal leaders beyond the pale of the Makhzen, became his modus operandi. It was his turn to restrain the military, not all of whom proved amenable to a discipline he himself had so often successfully flouted in the past. Nor was it easy to secure the co-operation, let alone the confidence of the Sultan. The abdication of Abd el Aziz in 1908 was followed by that of Abdel Hafiz in 1912 on terms dictated by Lyautey who appointed Moulay Yussef to succeed him. There is no record that Lyautey was ever conscious o f the irony of these actions. But the Moroccan reaction was to proclaim el Hiba Sultan in Marrakech. It needed strong military intervention under the charismatic General Mangan to nip this embarrassing riposte in the bud.

Lyautey was always insistent that military and political action should go hand in hand. But such a policy was difficult to sell in a country like Morocco with a long tradition of independence and local autonomy where the authority of local leaders, like that of the Sultan himself, rested in the quality known as 'baraka' or divine attribution which, while it might be inherited, also had to be earned. Those who sought to argue, as many did, that France would have been better off with a straightforward conquest of Morocco since a combination of military strength and the benefits of good administration would have succeeded in bringing the Moroccans round in time, tended to pooh pooh the awkward persistence well into the twentieth century of a vigorous and ineradicable belief in the necessity for a religious sanction to government.

Although many of the officials who were responsible for implementing Lyautey 's policy felt that it amounted to little more than one of half-measures it is difficult to think of a viable alternative that might have offered itself in the particular circumstances of the time. Withdrawal would have involved national humiliation, despite the fact that public opinion was lukewarm. Outright annexation was out of the question, for the reasons explained above and because it would have created problems internationally. The balance for Lyautey was always difficult to maintain, if only because the French and Moroccan perceptions differed so profoundly. It is possible to ask oneself whether, the underlying ethos of French colonialism being what it was, success in terms as perceived by Lyautey, or indeed on any other, would ever have been possible.

Part of the problem for Lyautey and France alike, in addition to the normal human and geographical ones confronting similar administrations, was that of 'marocanit[acute{e}]' or 'moroccanness'. There were a number of important differences between Morocco and the other countries within French experience, including Algeria (and perhaps especially Algeria). It had been an independent sultanate for over 1000 years. The power structure, in particular the balance of power between the centre and the periphery was in constant need of repair. The Sultan held undisputed sway over the Makhzen itself. Elsewhere it depended in large measure on his personal prestige and energy and, it hardly needs adding, on the state of the Treasury. The personality of the Sultan was thus of the first importance.

Backward and primitive though it must have seemed to Western observers at the beginning of the century, Morocco's history included the conquest and long occupation of Spain which raised Andalusia and its cities and other regions to a level of civilisation which was the envy of Europe. Morocco thus had a colonial experience of its own, and a highly successful one, which had included the defeat of European armies. More recently, and largely as a result of English tutelage, it had acquired some reputation as a maritime power. It also had a long history as a trading entrepot. Fez, the ancient capital, was a centre of pilgrimage in importance second only to Mecca and more accessible than the latter for the vast community of African Muslims. Finally, Moroccans were tough and resourceful soldiers, as their impressive record in two World Wars shows.

To such a people no amount of window dressing could make any foreign administration acceptable. Those Moroccans who were able to contribute towards developing Lyautey's ideas of partnership often did so with reservations. The rise of the Istiqlal party with its links to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt offered increasingly a focus for opposition. In the end it was the Rif rebellion under Abdel Krim which brought Lyautey's policy down in ruins. Although it started as a campaign to throw Spain out of Northern Morocco among people who until that point had made no contribution towards the mainstream opposition to foreign administration, it was a genuinely national movement. Adbel Krim's military successes against the Spanish army and subsequently against the French brought him within striking distance of Fez and prompted large-scale defections among tribes living within the French protectorate.

Lyautey was a good man and an honourable one. His affection for Morocco was deep and he sought to do his best for the country. His belief in partnership was sincerely held. He left Morocco in a better state than the one in which he had found it, not least because he had the good sense to leave much alone; old towns were not destroyed to make way for new ones; mosques and sanctuaries and the ancient rituals of Moroccan life were respected. Destruction came long after Lyautey, with tourism. Morocco was provided with a modem economic infrastructure and communications network; the armed forces were properly organised, a start was made to the establishment of a comprehensive education system and an entr[acute{e}]e to the modern world of which Morocco has been quick to avail itself. All this against innumerable obstacles in a country which continued to offer armed resistance to French domination up to the moment of independence.

Indeed perhaps the greatest of Lyautey's achievements, and the one for which all Moroccans have reason to be grateful to him, was to revivify the long dormant sense of national pride among Moroccans and to end the self-imposed isolation of the past. Lyautey's policies did not survive his departure when colonial administration of a more traditional type was quickly imposed by Joffre and others. But it is tempting to think that enough remained, below the surface as it were, to have made possible the relatively peaceful recovery of independence a little over 30 years later and in inculcating the Moroccans with a justified confidence in their own capabilities, to have contributed to the success with which the country had resisted the infections which have plagued the Arab world since the end of the Second World War. Perhaps the best tribute to Lyautey is to say that he would never have contemplated doing what the French did in 1957 in a last ditch attempt to stave off independence in setting up el Glaoui as a ru ler against Sultan Mohammed V. With the benefit of hindsight it is as well, for French and Moroccans alike, that independence took place when it did since it is unthinkable that Morocco, as a protectorate, could have remained untroubled by events that were soon to reach a climax in Algeria.

Lyautey retired, not to his family home at Crevic since it had been destroyed in the fighting during the First World War, but to one he built for himself nearby. He was recalled to public life to take charge of the organisation of the Paris exhibition but was otherwise left in peace, contenting himself with carrying out the duties that traditionally fell to him as a local magnate. However the picture of Lyautey that stays in the mind is not in Morocco but in Paris when as Minister of War he found himself powerless to prevent the War Committee adopting the proposal for a massive offensive on the Western front in 1917 under General Nivelle. The consequences for the French Army are too well known to need repeating here. All Lyautey's most humane instincts counted for little against the overwhelming need for military success. To return for another eight years to the comparatively more straightforward task of governing Morocco must have seemed like balm to a bruised spirit.

Sir Allan Ramsay was a career diplomat.

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