Punch (7.1844)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

103

A DISH OF GLORY.

The Oran correspondent of the Times relates a fact touchingly
illustrative of the moral condition of the French array of Africa.

In November last, one Embarack, the Khalif of Abd-el-Kader,
with between seven and eight hundred infantry, was set upon by
General Tempour, with four squadrons of cavalry. Nearly four
hundred of the Moors were slaughtered, and among them Embarack,
after he had wounded six Frenchmen. The Khalif dead—then came
in the sweets of revenge ! The Times says :—

" The Spahis, or native cavalry, immediately after Embarack fell, cut off his head.
The head cf Embarack was then covered with honey by the Spahis, and sent to Oran ;
arrived at Oran, the head of Embarack was then salted, and thence despatched to
Algiers. At Algiers, the head of Embarack was ' served up ' at a soiree of Marshal
Bugeadd, something in the style of the serving up on a charger of the head of John
the Baptist mentioned in the New Testament. When all eyes bad been sufficiently
regaled with the sight of the head of the brave chief of the desert—the unconquerable
enemy of the French (conquered only by accident)—the Marshal, yielding to his instincts
as a soldier, gave the head a funeral with the ceremony awarded to the rank of a
lieutenant; and the head of Embarack was at last buried, either at Medeah or Miliana,
with all due military honours."

"We think the Marshal acted without due consideration. He ought
to have carried out the principle manifested in the " serving up " of
a human head at the table of a Christian hero, and not have buried
it. What an idle ceremony was this serving up, if a funeral with
military honours was to follow ? What a waste of honey and salt—
what a piece of useless show, the charger ! In the straitened condi-
tion in which the French army too often finds itself in Africa, we

ningly, so adroitly touched the pulse of human prejudice to feel its
present cannibal condition. Be it our duty to (jssist Marshal
Bugeaud, by every argument at our command, in his praise-
worthy purpose.

The Commissariat difficulties with which the French have to con-
tend in Africa are well known : they are constantly, though in the
face of the enemy, on short commons. Now, let the Marshal's hint
be ripened into practice, and so long as an enemy is to be found, so
long will the soldier be supplied with a sufficiency of rations, lie
may satisfy his glory and his appetite at the same time. It becomes
as much a war of the knife and fork as of the sword ; glory, as we
have said, going hand in hand with full eating. Thus, the French-
man kills his enemy, and he devours him—as we eat a custard—
flavoured with bay-leaves.

The refinement of the French army may, possibly, revolt at the
dish ; but we beg to assure our lively and chivalrous neighbours that,
to use one of their own adages, the appetite will come with eating.
The acute Doctor Muffett, an Elizabethan philosopher, writes
of a certain king of Lydia, who " having eaten of his own wife, said
he was sorry to have been ignorant so long of so good a dish." To
be sure, the Lydian king may have spoken more as a husband than
as a gourmet—but we have the assurances of New Zealanders, and
others, that the human animal is very excellent feeding. Hence, as
Marshal Bugeaud has gone so far as to familiarise his army to the
sight of human heads—honeyed and salted—in chargers, we trust
that his next lesson will be to make them draw to and eat. The
saving to France will be enormous. No Arab so tough that he may
not be edible ; for the aforesaid Doctor Muffett observes,—"a

think—we hazard the opinion with all modesty—that a much better j non being showed to a strong bull three or four hours before he be
use might be made of slaughtered enemies. j killed, causeth his flesh to be as tender as that of a steer : fear dis-

Man is the victim of many foolish prejudices, until philosophy with j soiving hjs hardest parts, and making his very heart to become
her sweet voice—" musical as is Apollo's lute"—converts him from i pulpy." Upon this theory, we can judge of the effect of the French
his darkness, and makes him all her own. Now, philosophy has j iions l)pori even the oldest and hardest"Bedouins.

evidently done much with Marshal Bugeaud and men of his plastic,
yet heroic substance : nevertheless, the Marshal has his best lesson
to learn, otherwise he would never have buried the barbarian's
head ; no, he would have consummated the tasteful, the humane

Instead of burying the killed, as is sometimes done with the usual
military honours, they might be eaten, after a grace composed quite
in the spirit of the same Christianity that compasses their destruction.
If such a dish becomes common in the French camp (and after the

yearnings that set the head before him, by supping off it. He would ! exhibition of the head in the charger we have great hopes,) we would
have paid Embarack the most delicate compliment by incorporating j advise Parisian cooks to study some new condiment to add, if pos-
him with himself: he would thus—in the sweet slang of the French j sible, to the delicacy of its flavour. Let us, for instance, suggest a

army—have fraternized with the fallen Bedouin

That soldiers do not eat soldiers, has always appeared to us a gross
prejudice, altogether unworthy of tradesmen in war : a squeamish-
ness inconsistent with the atmosphere of fire, and blood, and blas-
phemy, in which the laurel is usually cultivated. It is, however,
something to find that Marshal Bugeaud and his African heroes
are getting a little in advance of the rest of Europe, and vindicating
French claims to superior civilisation in the art of war, as in the art
of cookery and mantua-making. It is a step gained, that a hero will
have a hero's head served before him in a charger ; the next move-
ment will, of course be, for the hero to say grace and fall to. "We
can discern the hankering, the liquorishness of appetite, that has the
human joint put upon the table,—and then the latent weakness, the
deference to popular prejudice, that, with a sigh, bids the untasted
dish be taken off. And after all, what folly, what waste, to give to
worms that which might have done so much good to Marshal
Bugeaud!

The human lawfulness and wisdom of war once granted, we confess
we look upon any indisposition to make the most of our enemies,
by eating them, as a mere sickliness of sentiment—an affectation
unworthy of the natural majesty of man, made more majestic by
musket and seventy rounds of ball-cartridge. Let us consider a
razzia by the French—one of those interludes which, to the employ-
ment, if not the delight of the recording angel, they are every day
enacting in Africa. These Christian men come swoop upon an un-
armed village. They cut the throats of the men—bayonet their wives
and children, if at all troublesome—set fire to the growing crops—
and drive off every head of cattle. Consider the scene—the heroes,
with another sprig of laurel, marched away—and say, if it be not a
place for devils to revel in ? Consider the blackened earth, the
smouldering ruin, the human form divine gashed and stabbed, and,
worse than all, outraged beyond the decency of words to tell; and
what is there in the spectacle that Beelzebub himself might not
feel a diabolic pleasure to claim as his own especial handiwork—
his own doing ?—albeit committed by men, whose creed it is to
" love one another !"

As then, apparently to us, it really requires a greater amount of
moral courage to kill a man, than to eat him when killed, we must
again express our satisfaction that Marshal Bugeaud has so cun-

muce piquante a la bdionnette.

PUNCH IN THE PROVINCES.-CLIFTON.

liking the cockneyism of a " Sum-
mer's Jny at Windsor," or a
"Spring Van to Hampton Court,"
we determined on an "August
afternoon at Clifton." Having
executed a sort of steeple-chase in
a cab from the Punch office, ive
arrived at the Great Western Rail-
way Terminus in time to snatch a
handful of tickets from the startled
clerk, and to have them snatched
back again by the policeman, to
whom we stated our intention to go
to Bristol, and our wish to be re-
gularly put in the train for getting
there.

The Great Western Railway is a
wonderful triumph of cash and
pick-axes over obstacles of a fiscal
as well as of an earthy nature. The
tunnel at Box-Hill, proves that man may get through almost any thing.
A railroad suggests, however, any train rather than a train of sentiment,
and there is no such thing as the poetry of loco-motion. Reality, is to
the fancy, what the stoker is to the fire on the engine,—with, however,
this exception—that while the stoker pokes the fire to keep it in, reality
pokes the fancy completely out.

We have arrived at Bristol, that city famous for its Bristol board and
lodging. The Mayor and Corporation afford fine specimens of the Bristol
Board, for they are what may be called very great cards in their own
opinion.

The great feature of Bristol at the present moment is the. Great Britain
steamer, and it is likely to be a permanent feature too, for she occupies
much the same position in the dock as George the Third's apple did in
the dumpling : any one might wonder how it got in, for getting it out is
quite out of the question, unless everything that surrounds it is utterly
demolished. It has the power of 1,000 horses, but the stupidity of a few