Colonel Péchot and Tunisia - the long view

Foreigners arrive on the beaches of Tunisia, promising jobs and the comfort of civilisation to local people. They settle in, especially round the coast, though some wander inland . This does not please all the Tunisians. Based on the holy city of Kairouan, an attack is launched on the foreigners. Many are killed.
This tragedy occurred at the Bardo Museum early in 2015 and on a beach at Sousse on Friday June 26th, but a surprisingly similar story happened in 1881. Some of the lessons learned 130 years ago informed the history of the Péchot system; perhaps taking a long view can help us come to terms with events.

The north African coast, early 20th century. At the west of the map is the border between Algeria and Tunisia, in a rough mountainous region which could provide guerillas with shelter. Sousse (Susa) is on the eastern coast of Tunisia; Kairwan (Kairouan) is to its west. Sfax isto the south. Tunisia is quite close to Sicily; in a bay off the northern coast is Tunis. Courtesy Times Illustrations.

 For centuries, the French had been suspicious of the North Africans, then attached to the Turkish Empire. Until the early 19th century, pirates had been kidnapping Europeans to sell on as slaves - indeed, a rescue mission organised by Britain in 1816 found 3000 European captives in the city of Algiers. This was a reason cited for attacks on the three provinces which made up Algeria. In fact, the French occupation of the area began in 1830 over a quarrel about cash; and the long association of France with Algeria began.
Later in the 19th century, France invaded Tunisia. They were feeling insecure because Italy had recently unified and become a significant power in its own right. From 1870 onwards, this new nation looked across the straits separating Sicily from Tunisia. There was, it was felt, a threat to French interests - Italy would then control the Mediterranean. Once the Emperor Napoleon 111 was gone and the French had recovered from the Franco-Prussian War, Jules Ferry, prominent in the French Cabinet, urged his country not to let the 'key to our house' fall into foreign hands. The French had already quarrelled with the Tunisians. Guerilla fighters resisting French rule in Algeria could and did slip easily across the Tunisian frontier. Feelings ran high.
In April 1881, a fleet left Toulon to settle scores. The names in the campaign are eerily familiar. On May 12th 1881, at the Bardo, Tunis, then a palace, now a museum, the Turkish Emperor's Viceroy signed a treaty with France. Basically, he exchanged his Turkish master for a French one. 'Job complete!' the French concluded and withdrew most of their troops. 
There was then an uprising, based on the historic holy city of Kairouan, celebrated then as now for its 370 mosques. The French sent the Navy to Sfax and started the job of retaking the country. They spread up the coast; when they reached Sousse, they struck inland to take the rebels' centre of Kairouan. The terrain was not easy and so they took advantage of the latest technology which promised much....

The ingenious portable railways introduced by Paul Decauville were quite sophisticated and greatly increased the amount one person or horse could move. Here a man moves a loaded tipper wagon over a device that enables him to change track. Photo courtesy James Hawkesworth.

 The Decauville company had started as prosperous farmers with profitable sidelines in distilling and quarrying. There was always the problem of the first 100 metres - transporting product, whether stone or produce from the field or quarry to road, railway or, in Decauville's case the barges waiting on the river Seine. In 1875-6, five years before the war inTunisia, Paul Decauville devised a solution to his own problem which had diverse applications. He devised a temporary railway. Using ladder-like lengths of track, specially adapted wheel-barrows could carry surprising loads over unpromising stretches of mud. The prefabricated rail sections were quickly and easily taken up for use elsewhere. Soon Paul had passed his farming interests over to other members of the family and was widely promoting this new 'porteur Decauville'. His customers included the French army; Prosper Péchot was familiar with Decauville track.
The Army used Decauville's new 'porteur militaire' to link operations round Kairouan with the port at Sousse. Results were mixed. On the one hand, supplies were getting through - the supply line was no less than thirty miles long. They took three days in fine weather, a reasonable speed given that everything was horse-drawn.  On the other hand, the ride was none of the finest. For the wounded being evacuated, jolted at every turn, those three days were hell. Decauville was subjected to attack by indignant journalists.

The horse-drawn Decauville railway, as used in Tunisia. The passage of horses' hooves on the tow path rapidly eroded earth under the track. The little bogies were unsprung and had no brakes; it took days to move from Kairouan to Sousse. Courtesy Raymond PECHOT

As a patriot, who had volunteered to protect Paris from the Prussians (winter of 1870), Decauville felt these sharp words keenly. As Prosper Péchot was a regular visitor to his headquarters, he gave him much support to develop a better sort of portable track. What emerged owed much to Péchot's genius, but also to the practical skills offered by Decauville. New materials and techniques could be used. In contrast to the ladder shape, the prefabricated track developed by Péchot looks more like conventional track. The sleeper, 1094mm in length, projected nearly 20mm beyond each end of the rail. It was shaped like the lid of a box, the better to grip the soil or ballast. It had ingenious drainage holes. Rather than five per 5 metre track panel, there were now eight. The rail itself was much heavier than the original Decauville, at 9.5kg/metre. The new design could support an axle weight of 3.5 tonnes yet the track panels were still light enough to be carried by a team of four. Combined with well-designed bogies, the ultimate Péchot system could carry loads of up to 40 tonnes with little risk of spills or jolting - useful when the load was high explosive! His ideas were so good that, soon after his own army had adopted it, the Germans copied and then improved upon it. In 1914, they had no less that 1000 kilometres of portable track ready to support their Schlieffen Plan. Other Central Powers and then the British and AEF also copied the system, helping to industrialise and prolong the First World War.
And what of Tunisia? Then, as now, there was opposition to the army of Europeans. The French of the time justified their interventions by showing that the Tunisian economy quintupled between 1881 and 1906, with a massive expansion of roads, railways and ports. Many Tunisians gained from the development. All the same, the French were forced to withdraw from the whole region. Since those days, there has been another revolution and the eyes of many Tunisians have been fixed on Europe. In coastal cities such as Sousse, western tourists are their guests and fit into a long tradition of hospitality. On the other hand, there is cultural conservatism, often in inland places such as Kairouan.

The Algerian Schindler? The socially conservative Abdul Khadir (Abd-El-Kader) led a fierce resistance against the French in the Algeria - Oran area - 1839 to 1947. He then agreed terms with the French and retired to Damascus. In 1860, he rescued as many as 12,000 Christians who were victims of intercommunal violence.

Then there are terrorists. Then as now, surely, they belong neither to the socially conservative nor to the groups espousing Western values.