Ln September 5, 1853, one hundred and seventy years ago, with the support of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte who, after overthrowing the Second Republic, proclaimed the Empire, the authorities of Périgueux inaugurated, in the presence of 30,000 people gathered on this occasion, the statue of Marshal Bugeaud. As can still be read on the pedestal, he is honored as “great man of war” who particularly distinguished himself during the “pacification” and some “colonization” from Algeria.
Deliberately apologetic and abstract, these terms cover terrible realities constituting a total war, conceived and applied by the man who, since 1840, has been governor general of this colony. Based on the disappearance of two major distinctions specific to so-called conventional conflicts, that between battlefields and sanctuaries, intended to limit the spread of violence as much as possible, and that between combatants and civilians, established to protect the latter, this war has been particularly destructive and deadly.
In addition to the oases, villages and various towns wiped out in whole or in part, there are already massacres, torture, mass deportations of indigenous populations also subjected to “enfumades”, during which entire tribes were sometimes exterminated. That of the Ouled Riah, for example, whose unarmed members, men, women and children, had taken refuge in the Dahra caves, near Mostaganem. Results: seven hundred dead, at least, following the operation carried out on June 18, 1845, by Colonel Pélissier, who scrupulously applied Bugeaud’s orders.
A formidable enemy of the Republic
So many practices considered essential to the success of colonization, which can only prosper if the security of the French and Europeans, and their property, is durably ensured. Bugeaud was not only the executioner of ” native “ Algerians whom he subjected to methods that we know, have long been known and are now perfectly documented. Becoming Marshal of France in 1843, he was also a formidable enemy of the Republic which he hated.
Appointed by Louis-Philippe, commander of the line troops and the national guard in the early hours of the revolution of February 1848, he boldly declared: “If I had fifty thousand women and children in front of me, I would machine-gun. There will be great things between now and tomorrow morning. » Luminous words spoken by the one who affirmed shortly before that he had “never been beaten” and what if we let him “fire the cannon”order would be restored and the “factious” defeated.
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