IBN MUHIEDDINE Abdelkader L.A.S Au général Cavaignac, commandant de Tlemcen [en arabe].

Magnificent letter addressed to ‘General Cavaignac, Chief of the French troops, commanding Tlemcen’.

Abd-el-Kader wrote to General Cavaignac, a kind-hearted man whose reputation for fairness he emphasised, so that he would be well-informed ‘in the event that this should be discussed in the Chamber or elsewhere… If you manage to act as an intermediary between us and your nation, France’.

He recalled that after the peace of 1834 ‘it was not we who began to destroy it’. He complained about the attitude of Marshal Bugeaud de la Piconnerie, who had imprisoned a messenger from Abd-el-Kader. He goes on to explain at length how the prisoners were treated, ‘treated with care and respect, and we treated your people better than we treat our troops, by giving you a larger ration, soap, meat, coffee, sugar, etc. When we went to the east, we gave you the same treatment as our troops. When we went East, we wrote several times to the above-mentioned Visirs of your Sultan, but they did not reply to us and spread the rumour that as the French prisoners had been taken by force, they would also have taken them by force. In the end, he gave the order to kill the French prisoners, but he also freed a large number of them.

He ends the letter with this appeal: ‘Do everything that will help to establish friendly relations between us and you’.

This letter certainly dates from between 1844 (the Isly victory won by Marshal Bugeaud against Abd-el-Kader and the Moroccans) and 1847, when he surrendered to General Lamoricière.

A magnificent document, of great historical interest and in a perfect state of preservation.