The Sword and the Cross: Two Men and an Empire of Sand - Hardcover

Fleming, Fergus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080211752X ISBN 13: 9780802117526

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2003

Synopsis

An account of the exploration of the Sahara focuses on the exploits of two men--Charles de Foucauld, who abandoned his decadent life for a religious vocation, and Henri Laperrine, the founder of a legendary camel corps.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Adventure writer and historian Fleming (Barrow's Boys, etc.) turns to French colonial Africa for his latest chronicle of historical (mis)adventure. His meticulous research and fascination with the physical hardships faced by men bent on discovery and conquest are on impressive display. Following the sometimes parallel, sometimes intertwining biographies of Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine, Fleming reconstructs the French colonial crusade in northern Africa that began with France's conquest of Algeria in 1830. Following a series of disgraces in the imperialist race, France needed the Sahara to resurrect its honor on the world's stage. Fleming concludes, "France was conquering Africa just for the sake of it." Foucauld and Laperrine met as soldiers during the Bou-Amama war in Algeria in 1881, and while Laperrine became a career soldier and Foucauld matured from a hedonistic womanizer into an evangelical ascetic, they remained friends until Foucauld's assassination by Muslim fundamentalists in 1916. Until their deaths (Laperrine died of thirst amid the dunes after a plane crash), the two men dedicated themselves to France's cause with zeal. As Fleming writes, "Evangelization was the mortar that imperialists hoped would turn the desert from conquered territory to complaisant colony," and while Foucauld became "a pawn in the colonial game," Fleming recognizes that most likely "he used the military as much as they used him." What emerges most notably from this dense, detailed history is Fleming's description of the colonialists flirting time and time again with a desert seemingly inimical to human life. As Fleming concludes, "The tragedy of their existences lay not so much in time as in landscape... the Sahara was the same after their deaths as before." 3 maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Fleming's chronicle of France's fight to cross the Sahara to colonize North Africa focuses on two men, Charles de Foucauld and Henri Laperrine. De Foucauld is described as an aristocratic playboy turned hermit and monk. Laperrine, a shadowy figure, was the creator of the Camel Corps and was seen as a pragmatic man, violent and scheming. This story of "two extraordinary men who lived inan extraordinary place at an extraordinary time" follows Laperrine's travels across the desert between 1904 and 1909 with de Foucauld as his guide and interpreter. Drawing on many of de Foucauld's letters and other writings, Fleming describes building a cabin of palm branches, then constructing one with stones and mud; de Foucauld bitten by a horned viper (taking a month to walk again); the shortage of food and water presenting a serious problem; and a lack of hygiene causing concern. When the camels lagged, Laperrine told his men to eat them. "It was a question of sacrificing men or animals. I did not hesitate." This adventure story reads like the finest fiction. George Cohen
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About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 080211752X
• ISBN 13: 9780802117526
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400