Ouidah. Robin Law
After the fall of Savi on 9 March 1727, the victorious Dahomian army, pursuing the retreating Hueda, pressed on south to Ouidah, where it attacked and captured the Portuguese fort and laid siege to the French and English forts; the Portuguese fort was ‘demolished to the ground’ and its cannon carried off into the interior.11 The Dahomians did not, however, press their attack on the other forts; the siege was lifted after a few days, and Agaja sent to assure the Europeans of his good intentions towards them and issued a proclamation threatening death to ‘anyone who came near the [French] fort or harmed the whites’.12 The main body of the Dahomian army was then withdrawn from the Hueda kingdom, leaving only a garrison at Savi.13 Ouidah itself was neither garrisoned nor subjected to any form of Dahomian administration, being by implication left under the authority of the European forts.
Local tradition in Ouidah, it may be noted, claims that Agaja visited the town in person. A story is told that he paused under a tree, either in the pursuit of the defeated Hufon or after the conquest, in order to take his first drink of imported European gin, although this story is attached in different versions to two different trees, one immediately south of the town (called the ‘Captains’ Tree’) and one in the village of Zoungbodji, halfway to the beach.14 The contemporary evidence, however, makes clear that Agaja did not personally accompany the army that invaded Hueda in 1727;15 and there is no suggestion in the contemporary record that he did so on any subsequent occasion either.
The Dahomian conquest of 1727 was not definitive, since the displaced Hueda now established to the west continued to dispute possession of the country and enlisted the assistance of the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, in the interior to the northeast, whose forces launched a series of invasions of Dahomey during 1728–30. In January 1728 Agaja was in negotiation with Hufon at ‘Topoy’, offering to allow him to re-establish himself in his capital Savi and to give him a share of the ‘customs’ levied from European ships; but Hufon, believing that the support of Oyo would secure his restoration in complete independence, rejected the overture.16 In February, a force commanded by Assou, the former ‘French Captain’ in the Hueda kingdom, encamped on the beach south of Ouidah;17 effective control was established, to the extent of intercepting the customs paid by European ships, and Dahomian messengers who came to Ouidah were assaulted.18 Subsequently, while Dahomey was distracted by an Oyo invasion, which presumably caused the withdrawal of the garrison from Savi, the Hueda even began to rebuild their capital. At the end of April, however, a Dahomian army reappeared in the area, destroyed the buildings which the Hueda had erected at Savi, and encamped north of Ouidah; at its approach the Hueda there fled, most of them back to Grand-Popo, but Assou and others taking refuge in the French fort. A detachment of the Dahomian army therefore proceeded, on 1 May, to attack the French fort, but it was repulsed after four hours’ fighting, with some assistance from the artillery of the neighbouring English fort.19 The Dahomians now withdrew from Ouidah, leaving the town for the moment in the control of Assou and the Hueda forces, and moved westwards to attack Hufon’s base at ‘Topoy’. However, they returned to Ouidah on 14 May and evidently reasserted their control there. Despite the earlier involvement of the French and English forts in the fighting against them, the Dahomian commanders again offered assurances to the Europeans that they had no hostile intentions against them but only against the Hueda; and also undertook ‘to spare the people belonging to the crooms [i.e. villages] near the forts [i.e. the three quarters of Ahouandjigo, Sogbadji and Docomè], for cargadoers [i.e. porters] and servants to the whites’. At the same time, they gave out that they did not intend any further action against the Hueda, but this turned out to be merely a ruse to catch the latter off guard, since a few days later they again attacked ‘Topoy’, which they destroyed on 16 May, although Hufon himself escaped. The Dahomians then, however, once again withdrew their forces from Ouidah, leaving only a detachment encamped at Savi, ‘to protect the King of Dahomy’s trade’.20
Dahomian control of Ouidah was now threatened from another quarter, when in July an army from Little Popo arrived on the beach to the south; this was engaged in independent banditry, rather than supporting the Hueda against the Dahomians, intending ‘to help neither but to rob both’. It was understood to intend to march on Ouidah itself, where the French fort put itself in a state of defence against the anticipated attack. However, the attack on Ouidah never materialized, and the raiders withdrew after only three weeks, on the approach of a Dahomian army.21 Following the departure of this Popo force in mid-August, the Director of the French fort, Houdoyer Dupetitval, in view of the recent demonstration of Dahomian military dominance, resolved on a policy of conciliation with Dahomey, sending one of his subordinate officers on a mission to Agaja in his capital Abomey, to offer him assurances of friendship and to dissociate the French from the Hueda–Oyo alliance.22 Agaja for his part thought again of consolidating his conquest through the resettlement of at least part of the Hueda people. In August he was reported to have concluded an agreement with a son of Hufon, then at Jakin to the east, to install him as king of Hueda; and at the beginning of October he issued a proclamation encouraging the Hueda to reoccupy their former homes.23
This attempt at a peaceful settlement once again broke down, however. Although Assou again led a party of the exiled Hueda to reoccupy Ouidah, he refused a demand from Agaja for his formal submission, and in consequence, in December 1728, a Dahomian army was dispatched against him. On its approach Assou and his troops again withdrew to the French fort, where the director Dupetitval, despite his earlier undertakings of support for the Dahomians, granted them refuge. The Dahomians therefore again assaulted the fort, and this time were assisted by the circumstance that the roofs of buildings within the fort took fire, threatening to ignite gunpowder stored in the magazine. The European personnel thereupon abandoned the fort, taking refuge in the English fort; but over 1,000 of the Hueda were killed in the subsequent explosion of the magazine, although Assou himself was also able to escape to the English fort. The Dahomians were repelled from the English fort by cannon fire, but were left in occupation of the French fort. Once again, however, the Dahomian army then withdrew, allowing the French to recover possession of their fort.24
Although the campaigns of 1728 appeared to have decisively confirmed Dahomian military control over Ouidah, still no move was yet made towards setting up any permanent Dahomian presence in the town. In September 1728 Agaja took the first step towards establishing an administrative structure for Ouidah when he appointed three ‘captains’, one each for the three European forts, in imitation of the system that had operated in the Hueda kingdom earlier.25 These officials levied customs, each from the European nation assigned to him, and also conducted the king’s own trade. However, they do not seem to have resided permanently in Ouidah but only went there when there was specific business to transact.26 For most practical purposes, both of defence and of day-to-day administration, the town remained for the moment under the control of the directors of the European forts. The campaigns of 1728 had a decisive but contradictory impact on the attitudes of the Europeans in Ouidah. The English, on the one hand, concluded that the continuation of Dahomian control of Ouidah would be ruinous to trade; Charles Testefole, who became governor of the English fort in July 1729, actively encouraged the exiled Hueda to continue their attempts to recover their country.27 In contrast, the French director Dupetitval, having suffered the weight of Dahomian military power in two attacks on his fort, resolved to align the French with what now appeared to be the winning side. When Hufon from exile sought European assistance for a further attempt to repossess his kingdom, whereas the English and Portuguese forts promised support, Dupetitval refused.28
In 1729, under cover of another Oyo invasion of Dahomey and encouraged by Testefole, the Hueda made a further and more serious attempt to reoccupy Ouidah. They were reinforced by allies from Grand-Popo and led this time by Hufon in person, although with Assou again as a subordinate commander. The Dahomian garrison at Savi had been withdrawn to reinforce the national army facing the Oyo, and the Hueda-Popo force seems to have encountered no initial opposition, entering Ouidah on 4 May, and remaining in occupation of the town for over two months. But, once the Dahomians had seen off the Oyo, they dispatched an army to Ouidah, where it arrived on 16 July. Although Assou and the Popos made a stand, the bulk of the Hueda forces again fled without offering to fight; Hufon himself took refuge in the English fort and was later smuggled