Looking for something a little out of the ordinary in a Colonial game? How about abandoning South Africa to the Boers and trying a little action far to the north with the French in the Sahara. The assault on In Rhar in the Sahara in 1900 is a typical action showing the variety of troops the French employed in the conquest of the Sahara. First, a little background is in order. The Tuat region of the Sahara is a long, narrow strip of palm trees and fortified villages west of the Tademait plateau in the Algerian Sahara. The west end is a series of oases called the Tidikelt. It is the last series of oases in the Sahara until the Niger River. In 1899, the French wanted it as a base for a trans-Saharian railway (that never happened). They sent a geologist named Flamand with an escort of goumiers led by Lt Theodore Pein in November 1899 to provoke an incident. Pein was an ardent colonialist, and the result was that the French occupied the oasis of In Salah. Claiming a need for more forage, the French then advanced in January on In Rhar, but with only a small force of goumiers. They could do nothing against the fortified buildings known as casbahs. It is against this background that the French massed forces to take In Rhar the following month. Douglas Porch, in The Conquest of the Sahara, reports the battle: The Armee d'Afrique did not do things by halves. At El Golea, Lt Col Clement d'Eu, the commander of the "relief column," massed two companies of Algerian Tirailleurs, a company of Bats d'Af-a collection of heavily tattooed French criminals serving in the desert in lieu of penal servitude-a half-squadron of spahis, a few 80-millimeter guns, a section of sappers, 1,579 camels, 200 cattle and 2,424 sheep. On February 24, 1900, he set out across the Tademait in three squares formed by the infantry, with the animals in the middle and spahis on the flanks. The march was not an easy one, and a large numbers of animals perished. On March 14, d'Eu arrived at In Salah, and by the 18th he was camped within sight of In Rhar. D'Eu knew almost nothing of his adversary. In the absence of intelligence, Pein volunteered to do an extraordinary thing-dressed in a burnous and accompanied by two of his Chaamba, he walked about In Rhar noting the defensive dispositions of the ksourians [inhabitants of the ksours, or casbahs], counting heads, lingering beside their campfires to listen to their gossip. The night, the numbers of Arabs milling about who were strangers to each other, and Pein's dark complexion made even darker by nearly a decade spent in the Sahara, served as a successful disguise. Pein returned to the French line to inform d'Eu that he faced a force of 3,000 poorly armed men. At five o'clock on the morning of March 19, 1900, only days after, unknown to the Algerians, Lamy had taken Kousseri, d'Eu formed his men into a square and marched on In Rhar, whose two towers were barely visible in the dawn light. Pein's goumiers and [Captain] Germain's spahis who screened the force fought a running skirmish for an hour before they cleared the dunes and pushed the ksourians back into the palm grove. D'Eu deployed his infantry along the crest of the dunes, while his artillery sent shells over the tops of the trees to burst on the khaki fortresses beyond. Hardly had they fired more than a few shells, however, when a violent sandstorm reduced visibility to one hundred yards. D'Eu's troops clambered off the dunes and dragged the artillery through the palm groves to within point-blank range of the walls. On the right, the artillery had a clear field of fire. However, on the left, the more southerly of the two casbahs was obscured by a mosque. Shortly after ten o'clock, d'Eu judged the break in the wall of the north casbah practicable. The Algerian Tirailleurs and the joyeux of the Bats d'Af came through the wall to find themselves confronted with a series of terraces. The sappers blew holes in the floor and the infantrymen dropped down to clear the casbah level by level, beginning at the top. The southern bastion proved far more difficult to storm. The mosque in front of had first to be cleared of defenders, who proved surprisingly tenacious. At 11:30 they finally fell back into the casbah for a last stand. D'Eu ordered his Saharian Tirailleurs through a small breach in the wall, but they were repulsed by the defenders. The sappers attempted to collapse a section of the wall by dynamiting a corner, but the solidity of the fortress defied their best efforts. An artillery piece was placed on the wall of the north casbah, and for an hour pounded the ksourian Alamo. Finally, a small man with a white beard emerged to ask for terms. It was the pasha of Timmi. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the French walked into the casbah, where they discovered bodies and pieces of bodies lying half buried in the rubble. The wounded, many of them women and children, moaned in anguish. Wives searched for their husbands, children for their mothers. Beyond, the desert stretched away empty and silent. That evening, the sun went down in a bloodred glow. The defense of In Rhar, courageous as it was, broke the resistance of the Tidikelt. D'Eu divided his men up into detachments which circulated through the oases encountering no opposition. On April 22, 1900, d'Eu marched back to El Golea, leaving a garrison of Algerians, joyeux and artillery at In Salah. In May, a second large column of 1,000 legionnaires, joyeux and Tirailleurs occupied Timimoun in the Gourara without firing a shot. In May also, General Armand Serviere, commander of the Algiers division, personally led a force of 230 spahis and Tirailleurs through the Tuat. He reported back to Paris that the Tuat, Tidikelt and Gourara were pacified. Delcasse, Pein and the colonialists had got their oases, and pretty cheaply at that. Good scenario for a wargame? Certainly! Notice the almost exclusive use of native troops raised by the French, as well as the criminals (joyeux) and foreigners (legion). Askari Miniatures makes Algerian and Senegalese Tirailleurs, Zouaves, and will soon release Foreign Legion and Joyeux as well. (http://www.askari-minis.com). With their red, white and blue uniforms, the French are, at this late date, quite a bit more colorful than the British or the Boers. Back to Dispatch March 2005 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2005 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com