Thomas Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie

Thomas Robert Bugeaud, portrait of Charles-Philippe Larivière (1798–1876). Bugeaud's signature:

Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (born October 15, 1784 in Limoges , † June 10, 1849 in Paris ) was Marshal of France and largely responsible for the conquest of Algeria .

Life

Bugeaud de la Piconnerie came from a noble family of the Périgord. In 1804 he joined the Imperial Guard as a grenadier , became a Sous-lieutenant at Austerlitz and fought at Pułtusk in 1806 . Later he was under Suchet near Lerida , Tortosa and Tarragona in Spain . Here he distinguished himself as chief de bataillon on September 13, 1811 at Cruz de Ordal and in 1814 became colonel and commander of the 14th ^e régiment d'infanterie . In 1815 he commanded the advance guard of the Army Corps of the Alps under Marshal Suchet .

Inactive during the Restoration period , Bugeaud lived on his estate in La Durantie ( Dordogne ) and worked in his department for the improvement of agriculture and popular education. In 1830 he joined Louis-Philippe and in 1831 became maréchal de camp and deputy for Périgueux in the chamber.

In 1832 he received a brigade of the Paris garrison, and soon afterwards he became commander-in-chief of Blaye , in whose citadel the Duchess of Berry was then imprisoned. When he was insulted by Deputy Dulong for guarding the Duchess, he shot him in a duel in 1834 .
Something more serious came about when the riots were put down in Paris in April 1834, when Bugeaud acquired the nickname " L'homme de la rue Transnonain " (= the man on Transnonain Street) among the Parisians .

Honoré Daumier : Rue Transnonain, April 13, 1834

In today's “ rue Beaubourg ” one of the three deployed brigades was led by Bugeaud and broke into a house from which the soldiers had been shot. All the residents of the house - old people, men, women and children - were killed. Bugeaud's command to his men had been to kill everything and mercilessly to show no mercy (" Il faut tout tuer. Ainsi, point de quartier, soyez impitoyables. ")

In the chamber , Bugeaud declared himself against universal suffrage , the electoral reform, the Associationnen, was a staunch opponent of the free press and voted, among other things, to increase the war budget.

In May 1836 he was given command in Oran against Abd el-Kader . By relieving the troops trapped by Abd el-Kader on the Tasna, and by winning the Sika River (July 6), he acquired the position of lieutenant-general .

During the fighting, the camp of the 2nd Spahi Regiment near Nefthah, a place between Mescara and Saide, was attacked by surprise. Bugeaud fell out of his tent but forgot to take off his sleeping cap. Captain Chambry wrote about this incident the same night the song "La Casquette du père Bugeaud" to the melody of the fanfare march "Aux Champs (en marchant)" from 1812, which is still in the French folk song treasure today.

As tu vu, la casquette, la casquette, As tu vu, la casquett 'au pèr' Bugeaud? Si tu ne l'as pas vue, la voilà Elle est sur sa tete Si tu ne l'as pas vue, la voilà Il n'y en a pas deux comme ça. Elle est fait ', la casquette la casquette, Elle est fait 'avec du poil de chameau!

Have you seen Father Bugeaud's hat? If you haven't seen it, here it is! She's on his head! There are nowhere two like this one! If you haven't seen her you will see her Father Bugeaud's hat!

Bugeaud returned to France after the fighting, but was forced to return to his post in Oran as early as the spring of 1837 when the subjugated tribes were raised again. He concluded the Treaty of Tasna with Abd el-Kader on May 31, 1837 and, through appropriate administration of the province itself, silenced the opposition in France. He wrote about it, among other things: "Mémoire sur notre établissement dans la province d'Oran par suite de la paix" (Paris 1838).

In February 1838 he resumed his seat in the center of the Chamber as a deputy and in 1840 spoke out in favor of the fortification of Paris. At the end of 1840 Bugeaud was appointed governor of Algeria, where he worked very successfully as a general and organizer. After the outbreak of war with Morocco , he penetrated into enemy territory and won the decisive victory at Isly on August 14, 1844, which earned him the title of Duke of Isly, whereas a year earlier he had been appointed Maréchal de France . After completing the submission of Algeria, he returned to France in May 1847.

On the night of February 23-24, 1848, he was given command of the troops in Paris and drafted an energetic plan of operations to put down the revolution , but was forced to retreat on February 24 at 10 a.m. by written order from Louis-Philippe and soon afterwards recalled from the high command. His attempts to prevent the king from abdicating were also unsuccessful.

Elected a member of the National Assembly, he was on the extreme right; he died of cholera on June 9, 1849 in Paris . He was buried in the Invalides in Paris. One monument was erected in Algiers in August 1852 and another in Périgueux .

Bugeaud from a post-colonial perspective

See also : postcolonialism

The traditional image of Bugeaud, partly tinged with folklore as well as incorporated into military tradition or kept present in the homeland, became more differentiated, but also more controversial , with a view to the colonial legacy after the Algerian war . In a depiction of the Algerian War of 1982, Bugeaud is remembered as a " dictatorial, uncouth person who lacked any empathy and was not alien to corruption ". The most notorious statement on dealing with the Algerian tribes is recorded as the fact that he asked the soldiers to "fumigate to the extreme" of those who had sought refuge in caves while fleeing the French, a procedure that was expressly also adopted by Marshal Armand- Jacques-Achille Leroy de Saint-Arnaud was supported and Alexis de Tocqueville found nothing wrong with it. The civilian population was for Bugeaud as well as for Tocqueville to bring their lands, supplies and crops, so that they either fled or submitted unconditionally.
The martial law applicable in Europe was overridden in Algeria, so that the local population was viewed as the overall opponent and had to reckon with no sparing, and in Bugeaud Tocqueville saw the suitable soldier to successfully promote the colonization work for the accommodation of French and other European settlers :

“He is the first to know how to wage the kind of war everywhere and at the same time, which, in mine and in his eyes, is the only kind of war possible in Africa; he practiced this system of war with an incomparable energy and strength. "

Back from Algeria, Bugeaud played a role in the revolutionary events of 1848 in Paris, initially in February as a participant and in June as a witness. The difficulties in suppressing the urban uprising prompted him to write a momentous study in 1849: " La guerre des rues et des maisons " (= The street and house war ). The study incorporated his experiences from the fight in Algiers , where he had destroyed the old town to create space for unhindered military intervention. Eyal Weizmann, an architect who teaches at the “ Center for Research Architecture ” at Goldsmiths College in London, sees the document, which is distributed in 300 copies , as the first military manual for war in the cities. The first effects of Bugeaud's writing became apparent in the urban planning of Georges-Eugène Haussmann both in Paris and in Buenos Aires , in the Avenida de Mayo . For Weizman, the importance of Bugeaud is that he invented the modern city and the counterinsurgency . In order to win over the “ Bedouins of the metropolis ”, namely the enemy within, everything is allowed for Bugeaud: “ It is about declaring war to the extreme. He must be taken to the extreme. "

Broadcast to Argentina

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was introduced to the strategy of the colonial war by Bugeaud on a trip to Algeria in 1847. Sarmiento counted on suggestions for dealing with the Argentine Indians, which he saw as a hindrance to the European development of Argentina (see desert campaign and barbarism and civilization ). In his travel report he put down the parallels he saw between the Algerians, led by Abd el-Kader , and the Indians.

Marie-Monique Robin sees Bugeaud in her book about the death squads involved in the birth of the French doctrine , which was reflected in Operation Condor during the Argentine military dictatorship through the mediation of the French military .

Works

• Mémoire sur notre établissement dans la province d'Oran par suite de la paix . Paris 1838.
• De l'organization unitaire de l'armée avec l'infanterie partie detachee et partie cantonnee . Paris 1835.
• Œuvres militaires du maréchal Bugeaud . Librairie Militaire de L. Baudoin et Ce., Paris 1883 (online)
• La guerre des rues et des maisons . Jean-Paul Rocher, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-911361-05-9 .

literature

• Henri Amédée Le Lorgne, comte d'Ideville: Le marechal Bugeaud d'après sa correspondence intime et des documents inédites, 1784-1848 . 3 vols. Librarie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, Paris 1882.
• André Lichtenberger: Bugeaud . Librarie Plon, Paris 1931.
• Jean Lucas-Dubreton: Bugeaud, le soldat-le député-le colonisateur. Portraits et documents inédits . Albin Michel, Paris 1931.
• Paul Azan: 1848. Le Maréchal Bugeaud. In: Revue Historique de l'Armée , Vol. 4 (1948), Issue 1, ISSN  0035-3299 .
• MG Bourgin: Bugeaud social en Afrique. In: Revue Historique de l'Armée , Vol. 4 (1948), Issue 2, ISSN  0035-3299 .
• Georges Birr: Un gentilhomme terrien: Thomas-Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie, maréchal de France, duc d'Isly . La Cour d'Appel, Limoges 1970.
• Antony Thrall Sullivan: Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, France and Algeria 1784-1849. Politics, Power and the Good Society . Archon Books, Hamden, Conn. 1983, ISBN 0-208-01969-3 .
• Jean-Pierre Bois: Bugeaud . Fayard, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-213-59816-9 .

Web links

• Karl Marx's essay "Bugeaud" in "The New American Cyclopædia", Volume IV, written November 27, 1857

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted in the foreword by Claude Lefort to Alexis de Tocqueville: Souvenirs. Gallimard, Paris 1999, p. XXXIV.
2. ↑ Cf. In the footsteps of Marshal Bugeaud ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French) 
3. ^ Bernard Droz, Evelyne Lever: Histoire de la guerre d'Algérie. Seuil, Paris 1982, p. 15.
4. ↑ Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison : Coloniser. Exterminers. Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial. Fayard, Paris 2005, p. 139 f. - The fact that Tocqueville's attitude towards Bugeaud could be ambivalent and turn into opposition, depending on the situation, is shown by Jean-Louis Benoît: Tocqueville's criticism of Bugeaud . For J.-L. Benoît realized that Tocqueville was a colonialist.
5. ↑ Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (2005), pp. 101-104.
6. ↑ Quoted in Domenico Losurdo : Freedom as a privilege. A counter-history to liberalism. PapyRossa, Cologne 2010, p. 299. - On the importance of Bugeaud, see also Marc Ferro (Ed.): Le livre noir du colonialisme. XVIe - XXIe siècle: de l'extermination à la repentance. Hachette / Pluriel, Paris 2003, pp. 656–659.
7. ↑ See Chapter 7 in Eyal Weizman: Restricted Zones. Israel's architecture of the occupation. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89401-605-0 . - See also Colonial Architecture in the Metropolis ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ See Weizman about Bugeaud  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (2005), p. 275.
10. ↑ Quoted in Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (2005), p. 321.
11. ↑ Algerians and Argentine Indians (PDF; 7.2 MB), p. 149 (Spanish).
12. ^ Marie-Monique Robin: Escadrons de la mort, l'école française. Éditions La Découverte, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7071-5349-4 , p. 62 (Bugeaud), p. 365-393 (Operation Condor).