Adapting to Win. Noriyuki Katagiri
blunderbusses, and other weapons like crossbows, arrows, spears, and machetes. At least one German soldier was constantly in Dahomey to train Dahomeans in the use of the new weapons, siege tactics, and physical fitness. Indeed, the Dahomean army had been known for its military potency. Archibald Dalzel, British governor of Benin in the 1760s, wrote that Dahomey maintained a considerable standing army where the king could gather his forces quickly, with officers armed like regular troops.9 Dahomey was “the strongest indigenous military power on the west coast of Africa.”10 Béhanzin organized his forces according to the principle of “levee en masse” to recruit all combat-ready adults. He put a commander called Gau in charge of planning military strategy, logistics, deployment, and command and control.11 Béhanzin’s campaigns thus became standardized. Between one and three campaigns normally took place in the dry season. Mobilization calls would come by drum, forcing all villages to respond or face collective punishment. Force sizes ranged between twenty and two hundred men; all the rest were reserves who were nevertheless well trained and armed with their own weapons.12
Conventional war generally leads to insurgent failure after a few battles, and Dahomey was no exception. When the war started, it quickly revealed five major flaws with the Dahomean army, starting with the shortage of resources. The first campaign broke out during the planting season in Dahomey, interfering with the normal production of crops because the military commandeered the needed laborers. The series of French attacks not only destroyed the soil but also prevented farmers from cultivating it. The war also instigated a revolt among the neighboring Yoruba slaves, making it difficult for the Dahomeans to collect food near their areas. Therefore Dahomey’s wartime harvest declined below the average and forced soldiers to prepare their own food and raid neighbors for slaves and capital. Soldiers seized provisions while leaving little behind for the farmers.13 The slave trade, while bringing in cash, took away laborers available for mobilization and undermined sources of recruitment for war. Furthermore, because previous wars had been shorter in duration, preparations for this war were more pervasive. Food importation from neighbors became difficult due to the wars, the slave trade, and Béhanzin’s hostility toward them. To bring more land into cultivation in the hope of increasing productivity necessitated more labor. Finally, harsh taxation and mobilization calls proved to be such heavy burdens that villagers gradually resisted calls to contribute to the kingdom. As a result, Dahomey had to turn to women soldiers and the slave trade that gave preference to and therefore reduced the number of ablebodied men.
The second problem was that French firepower effectively offset Dahomey’s numerical superiority. French weapons, such as the Maxim gun, which fired much faster and at longer range than Dahomey’s blunderbusses and muzzle-loading flintlocks, decimated repeated Dahomean charges before the warriors could get within musket range. The French mixed this technological advantage with their maneuvers to generate maximum combined effects, overcome the burden of carrying heavy weapons, and move quickly against Dahomean efforts to cut them off. There were reports of some successful Dahomean ground combat,14 but these instances were strategically isolated. In the Battle of Poguessa, French bayonets proved to be highly effective. French rifles with fixed bayonets outreached Dahomeans’ machetes.15 These technological advances allowed a smaller number of soldiers to transport a high volume of combat power during expeditions. All this enabled a small number of French troops to defeat a quantitatively larger army.16
The third problem with Dahomeans fighting conventionally rested with the fact that they viewed war generally as a social, rather than military, enterprise. In peacetime, they devoted themselves more to court ceremony than to military training. While Dahomey’s military organization kept the guise of a modern army, the division of labor served more ceremonial purposes. The army was divided into the right and left wings because on ceremonial occasions it formed two symmetrical sections placed to the right and left of the king. Such formation was justified to reflect one of the important dualities of the kingship. Since war had a major social value in itself, the army was made congruent with the organization of the kingdom. Thus while the French army was disciplined to fight, the Dahomean army was used for social purposes. This widespread social ideology had conceptualized war rather as a form of literal manhunt aimed more at capturing individuals than killing them and occupying territory. It also encouraged the Dahomeans to use prisoners of war for the slave trade and to buy guns to ensure a supply of human sacrifices. Not surprisingly, the Dahomean practice of surprise and night raids included surrounding a town in the darkness and forcing entry, not necessarily to kill but to capture as many people as possible. As a result, if their attacks did not succeed, or if they themselves were taken by surprise, the Dahomean army fell into confusion quickly.17
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