(Bibliographie du Maghreb antique et mediéval)

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Michael Greenhalgh

The Re-Use and Destruction

of the Antique Monuments of Algeria

during the French Invasion (1830ff)

Michael Greenhalgh

Department of Art History

Australian National University

Canberra ACT0200 AUSTRALIA

The French could not have survived their invasion of Algeria without systematic recourse to the Roman infrastructure. The only alternative would have been a radically greater investment from France in money, troops and materiel, and this would probably have been politically impossible and financially difficult. Again, their attitude to the country was highly coloured by their knowledge of Roman history; and their plans for the country, especially models of colonisation, and stance vis-a-vis the natives, were much influenced by what the Romans had done[1].

Beginning with a sketch of the “mentalities” involved, this paper concentrates on the strategic use the French made of three types of antiquities - roads, fortresses, and cisterns and their feeding aqueducts - during the early stages of the occupation of the littoral and expansion into the hinterland, describing in detail what they did to the antiquities to make them serviceable for modern war. It then discusses consolidation and colonisation, when great damage was done to the monuments because the French needed to improve their fortresses, apparently yearly, against perceived European threats. After demonstrating the intensity of destruction by examining the case of Tebessa, and outlining how French attempts at colonisation also depended heavily on Roman models, the paper concludes by setting the reuse of antiquities by the French against the broader context of mediaeval and Renaissance reuse and destruction in Italy, and on the mainland of France.

Since the fact so impressed the French, it is appropriate to emphasise here the profusion and near-pristine state of Roman and Byzantine monuments in Algeria upon their arrival. Even after 60 years of occupation Diehl, reviewing the archaeology of Algeria in 1892, marvelled that in the South se rencontraient à chaque pas des villes mortes, abandonnées, mais non détruites, demeurées telles que les avait laissées, il y a douze siècles, la catastrophe qui mit fin à la domination byzantine, avec leurs hautes murailles presque intactes, leurs rues et leurs places nettement dessinées, avec la masse imposante de leurs temples, de leur théâtres, de leurs arcs de triomphe. L’Arabe, qui ne bâtit guère, n’avait trouvé nul profit à démolir ces édifices, et dédaigneusement il avait épargné ces cadavres de cités[2]. The South of Algeria was relatively untouched by the French, the distance from Algiers to the southern border being greater than that in the other direction to Paris. Even today, Algeria is rich in monuments, but characteristically less so in the North, which saw the preponderance of French building and colonising activity and hence of destruction.

We may also anticipate the conclusion to this paper - namely, the disastrous effect the French occupation had on the monuments - by underlining the immense infrastructure they had to build or repair in order to survive the early decades in a largely hostile land. Roman monuments were used where possible, as we shall see; but modern warfare and the demands of 19th-century settlement dictated a need for additional infrastructure which required immense quantities of building materials, often at the expense of the easily-available antiquities. This could happen because the army was but little subject to political control from Paris: apart from brief periods (1848-51, and 1858-60), Algeria was under military rule between 1834 and 1870, with an army and administrators subscribing to the view that no permanent peace was possible with an undefeated Islamic state[3]. Thus by only 25 years after the initial conquest, it was estimated that the French had put into Algeria 5350 km of roads “faites ou projetées”; aqueducts totalling 132,941 metres, offering 24,108,310 litres of water daily; and by 1850, 869 bâtiments d’utilité publique tels que fontaines, lavis, abreuvoirs, halles marchés, abattoirs, pépinières, hospitaux, églises, mosquées, écoles, lycées, salles d’asile etc; in addition were built 20 lighthouses; barracks for 40,000 men, and military hospitals for 5,000[4]. It is such large-scale building, provoked in large part by an expanded military presence for further conquest, and in support of colonisation, which put intolerable pressure on the ancient monuments. Much of the material destroyed was stone building blocks, a great loss because they represented the “skeleton” of ancient settlement. Also destroyed in large quantities were the plentiful inscriptions funerary and civic, by which the Romans had proclaimed the permanence of their civilisation, and which the Byzantines had frequently reused in decorative display by incorporating them in the walls of the fortresses they built.

The Romans and the French as Civilizing Forces

The French conquest began with a hesitant and uncertain occupation of the coastal cities of Algiers, Bone and Oran, with Bougie added in 1833. Indeed, the French had invaded Algeria without any clear plan, and found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the guerilla warfare offered by Abd el Kader. For 15 years, this heroic figure blocked French expansion in the province of Oran – that is, all the West of Algeria. This fact was tacitly confirmed in Bugeaud’s treaty with him in 1837. The war (it was no less – Algeria cost the lives of 150,000 soldiers in the first 40 years) affected the Roman monuments through the changing strategies of the different French commands. Marshal Valée had constructed heavily fortified defences, often on Roman citadels (e.g. Cherchel, Medea, Miliana), and waited for the enemy. But when Bugeaud replaced him in 1840, he opted for attack, with lightly-armed mobile troops: this highlighted the importance of those Roman forts in the province of Oran (Abd el Kader’s stronghold) which could be used against a guerilla campaign. 1847 marks the end of this strategy, and also the recall of Bugeaud, whose enthusiastic plans for the foundation of military colonies on the Roman model had fallen on deaf ears in Paris, and failed on the ground in Algeria.

The French army, harrassed as much by public opinion back home as by the Arabs and Berbers on the ground, needed the example of the Romans as some justification for the feasibility of what they were attempting in Algeria. But not everyone was convinced. Even the generals were not all happy, Desmichels asking in 1839 pourquoi voudrions nous nous engager dans une guerre infructueuse, seulement pour acquérir un peu de gloire et pour annoncer par des bulletins pompeux que nos troupes sont toujours dignes de l’admiration du monde? [5]

A large difference between the natives and the French was measured in their attitudes to the Roman remains, the latter believing the very fact that the natives had left the Roman monuments alone was an indicator of their fecklessness and lack of interest in civilisation itself. The usual technique when discussing the matter was to contrast current living conditions of the indigenous populations with the grandeur of the past, as in Dr. Bonnafont’s Réflexions sur l’Algérie, particulièrement sur la Province de Constantine, sur l’origine de cette ville, ... etc, published in Paris in 1846. On the ruins of Tiffech, for example, in the valley of Mersouk-Khaal, he observed that Nous comparions ces constructions grandioses et immobiles des temps anciens avec ces habitations flottantes et fragiles des temps actuels! … quand cet Arabe a passé sans émotion pendant plus de mille ans devant ces créations imposantes de l’homme; quand il a pu rester indifférent à tout ce que les Romains ont fait et exécuté devant lui; lorsque le temple de Sigus, la citadelle de Tiffech, le pont de Constantine, l’enceinte de Miliah, les citernes et le cirque de Russicata, et par dessus tout le théâtre et le superbe arc de triomphe de Jmilah n’ont réveillé dans l’âme engourdie de ce peuple stationnaire et indifférent aucun genre de progrès en faveur de ce que nous appelons civilisation; lorsque, disons-nous, ces monumens n’ont pu rien obtenir sur l’esprit de la population nomade de l’Afrique ... ne doit-on pas désespérer de l’amélioration de cette race qui sacrifie tout a l’habitude de son égoisme et à la manie de son indépendence individuelle? (pp. 8-9, 16-17). Pious sentiments indeed, but also shot through with irony, because the French were to destroy immense quantities of Roman remains in their occupation of Algeria, and neglect others (such as the Roman bridge at Constantine, which collapsed in 1857, and was not rebuilt). They began early, with an attempt in 1831 to acquire antique columns and marbles, already in reuse, from a demolished mosque in Algiers: the Minister of War himself had requested them, and Lieut-General Berthegene replied that they were already spoken for the new mosque and, in any case, were of meagre beauty[6].

The stance that the Arabs were children, to be nurtured and helped, had a long life. Gustave Boissiere, rejecting the notion that extermination was the aim of the conquest, preferred to believe that si c’est plutôt civiliser la terre et civiliser l’homme, si c’est remplir envers les enfants attardés de la famille humaine les devoirs de protectrice affection où sont tenus les frères ainés, si c’est faire la conquête des âmes après avoir fait celle du sol, nulle nation n’est plus que la France capable de cette noble et généreuse mission. France’s mission was to make of Africa non point une autre France, non point une France nouvelle, mais une partie intégrale de son être même, un des nobles et essentiels organes de l’existence de la patrie. Had he only stopped to think, he could have proved from his own observation how foolish was his sweeping statement, for he noted how the walls of the casbah at Constantine, once the Byzantine fortress, portent, encastrées dans leur pierres, comme des titres de noblesse, les inscriptions qui décoraient les temples et les monuments de l’Acropole. Thus the Arabs were indeed passively, if not actively, interested in retaining the display of ancient inscriptions – the same principle as buying someone else’s ancestral portraits and hanging them in the hall.[7] And inspection of mosques in Algeria would have underlined the long-established local taste for reusing classical antiquities, especially marble columns.

There is plenty of evidence that the highest officers encouraged a commitment to the Roman past, doubtless because it was in this context that the French, nurtured on the vitality of Antiquity and the important lessons it could still yield, saw themselves. For example, in 1857 General Durrieu bad his officers to accompany him on a visit to Roman remains in the province of Mascara, 24km from their camp. The account remarks on how Roman occupation est écrite en nombreux caracteres. They searched for inscriptions (i.e. they would have been able to read them), but without success, pour percer le silence de ces tombes colossales. Civilisation, they remarked, est comme le soleil, elle a ses nuits et ses jours, ses plénitudes et ses éclipses. On peut dire des romains qu’ont habité l’Afrique ce qu’on dit des martyrs:Leur cendre fut une sémence[8].

In a further example, when Chef du Génie Captain Antonin wrote a Mémoire militaire sur la Place de Sétif on 28 Feb 1857, this historical account was considered by a committee which recommended on 4 January 1861 that it be put in the archives of the Génie où il sera utilement consulté. The copy-document is signed by Charon, General de Division; Genet, secretary and Lieut-Col de Génie; Charrier, Chef de Bataillon, Chef d’Etat Major du Génie en Algérie; and Randon, Secretary of State for War[9].

The French and Roman belief in their civilising influence survives into the 20th century, echoed by the Italians in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, the Governor of Libya, Italo Balbo himself, proclaimed in print that attraverso le vicende storiche, dall’origine di Roma al Medioevo fino all’ero moderno, balzera una verita storica irrefragabile: l’influenza civilizzatrice dell’Italia sulla tripolitania attraverso i secoli, costante e ininterrotta - and a commentator pointed out,in his study of relations between Venice and the Regence of Algiers that Venice seppe tenere alto il prestigio dell’Italia e portrare un nuovo soffio di vita civile. Fino agli ultimi anni essa seppe far rispettare i trattati e mantanere fra quei popoli alto il concetto della superiorita delle gente latine[10]. Without such sentiments, and the reassurance provided by the evidence of what they construed as the Roman success in colonising Algeria, the French would surely never have stayed the course.

Reconnaissance and Materiel: Roman Roads

The Army survived and sometimes prospered on the quality of its documentation and reconnaissances, which was usually high, and frequently set in a well-researched historical context. Officers schooled in the classics were often conscious of following in Roman footsteps, and noting down the antique remains that could be of use to a modern army – roads, bridges, aqueducts, cisterns, forts and signalling posts – as well as those signs of antique colonisation which encouraged at least some of their number to believe that a French occupation would be fruitful. A good example of the genre is G. Tatareau’s 72-page Mémoire sur la Province d’Oran, of 25 February 1833. This has a Description Physique (pp. 1-16), Statistique (pp.17-39), listing all towns, agriculture, commerce - and also Roman ruins, p. 18. Communications (pp. 40-57), Considérations Militaires (pp. 58-68) and Précis Chronologique (pp. 69-72). Two years later, he was to produce a book-length account of the same province[11].

The French were familiar with Roman roads and their construction, because both French and Italians had even conducted excavations on stretches of such roads in France and Italy in the 18th century to try and learn how they were made, so that they could perhaps build likewise. In fact, Roman techniques were too costly in labour to be employed for anything more than the repair of existing roads. In Algeria, Roman roads abounded, frequently in good or repairable condition. The French badly needed such roads, just like the Romans, for moving their troops, baggage and especially artillery; whilst the local inhabitants used only horses, and generally kept to tracks. Any earlier intelligence was useful, and it is characteristic of French needs that it was the Tabula Peutingeriana, a mediaeval copy of a map of the Roman world, that came to their aid; so that they were using some sources perhaps 1500 years old in origin. This can be exemplified in Pellissier’s Mémoire sur la Géographie ancienne de l’Algérie[12], where he bemoaned the lack of modern maps of Algeria. Remarking on the great number of ruins on the road from Constantine to Sétif, he noted (p. 97) that first making a large-scale map, un simple rapprochement entre cette carte et la table de Peutinger suffira pour leur donner, avec exactitude, les noms qui leur conviennent. Note that here there semes to be a trusting willingness to have the Tabula annotate the modern map, and not vice versa, which we might surely have expected, given the superiority of 19th-century mapmaking over the schematic Michelin-guide-like approach of the Tabula Peutingeriana.

In such good repair were some Roman roads that distances could be measured in Roman miles, on the maps produced by the Service Topographique of the Army. At Oran in 1837, for example, Capitaine d’Etat Major de Martimprey provides a map of the Province, marking ancient cities and roads, and using this measure, with scales in kilometres and leagues alongside it[13]. Roman milestones survived in large quantities to confirm such scales.

The crucial questions the French had to ask about Roman roads in Algeria were twofold, namely, Could such roads be repaired, and at what cost? and Would they take artillery? The answer to the first question was almost invariably affirmative: repairing Roman roads was cheaper than building new ones. Indeed, the French recognition of the travaux gigantesques frequently needed to build roads may help explain their interest in the Roman achievement[14]. Thus in 1832, Lieut-General Pelet already knew that the Roman road between the bay of Stora (the port) and Constantine (a little over 50 miles) could be repaired: les dégradations que les pluies y ont occasionnées pendant une longue durée de siècles, l’ont ruinée comme toutes les autres voies du même genre en Barbarie. Mais à l’aide de quelques travaux, on parviendra facilement à en rattacher les parties interrompues et à la rendre praticable à l’artillerie. Il ne faut pas perdre de vue que notre artillerie a acquis aujourd’hui une notabilité qui ne connait presque plus d’obstacles[15]. This was later confirmed, when General Berthezune remarked in a letter of 8 November 1839 that the trip between Stora and Constantine took 4 days, but that le chemin est assez bon et paraît permettre d’y mener de l’artillerie[16]. Captain Niel gives the context: déjà dutemps des Romains, une belle voie était ouverte dans cette direction, et elle avait été construite avec tant de soin que partout on en suit les traces et que sur plusieurs points elle est si bien conservée qu’on a peine à croire qu’elle ait quinze siècles d’existence. Onanother stretch at the Oued Baba, Niel notes (with an eye to French commerce) that il est hors de doute que sur plusieurs points de cette traverse on aperçoit la trace des travaux qu’avaient été exécutés des Romains pour l’améliorer - the suggested reason being the coming of prosperity to Russicada (hence to the Stora region as far as Constantine), and the need to transport wheat[17].