The Fort-Crampel Affair or Gaud-Toqué Affair is a legal scandal that erupted in France in 1905, after two colonial officials were accused of summarily executing several natives, including one with a cartridge of dynamite at Fort-Crampel, in what is now the Central African Republic: for this last crime, they were each sentenced to five years in prison.
Context
Officials implicated
Georges Toqué was a civil servant trained by the Colonial School and 24 years old at the time of the events. In September 1901, he was assigned to Haut-Chari as a 3rd class colonial administrator and he was in charge of the post.
Fernand Gaud, born in 1874, was a former pharmacy student from Carpentras. He was sent to the French Congo as part of his military service in September 1900, he held various positions in Bangui, Brazzaville, then Fort-Crampel, where he was clerk for indigenous affairs 1st class. Gaud is reputed to be authoritarian and violent, especially with the natives, who call him niamagounda (“bush beast”); according to Gaud, this sobriquet is barbarism in Yakoma, which he invented to treat his native subordinates as a "dirty beast".
The summary execution of July 14, 1903
On July 14, 1903, three natives were held prisoners at the post of Fort-Crampel, in a grain silo which serves temporarily as a cell. One of them, Pakpa, had been arrested two days earlier: he had worked as a guide for Georges Toqué, but following an ambush, the administrator suspected him of treason and ordered Fernand Gaud to capture and shoot him. After the arrest, Toqué renounces the execution but has Pakpa locked up in the silo.
Gaud asks his superior Toqué if he should release the prisoners on the occasion of the French National Day. The latter was bedridden with a fever, he orders the first two to be released and concerning Pakpa, he simply says: "Do what you want with it". Gaud decides to have the native executed, thinking he has Toqué's approval. Rather than form a firing squad, he takes a cartridge of dynamite intended for blast fishing from his box. With the help of a regional guard, he straps the explosive around the prisoner's neck, then detonates it.
Gaud then reports the execution to Toqué, who disapproves of the method of execution, but pronounces no sanction against his subordinate.
At the trial, the defendants recall that they declared before this appalling action: “It looks silly; but it will stun the natives. If after that they don't keep quiet! The fire from Heaven fell on the black who had not wanted to befriend the white." Fernand Gaud would then have say at his trial that he wanted those around him to see the strangeness of this death: who had not wanted to make friends with the whites.
Trial
The Ministry of Colonies decided that the trial of Gaud and Toqué should be held in Brazzaville, in order to minimize its media coverage; the only journalist present was Félicien Challaye, correspondent for Le Temps, who accompanied Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in his investigation of the crimes in the Congo. The hearing opened on August 21, 1905.
During the trial, Gaud was apathetic and said he was ill, while Toqué defended himself energetically and openly denounced the conditions of colonization. He admits having subjected natives to forced labor for porterage or tax collection, and having their families sequestered to ensure their obedience, such mistreatment leading many natives to die of starvation or disease. As there was no judicial institution in Fort-Crampel, Toqué considered himself authorized to dispense expeditious justice with the approval of his superiors.
The charges are numerous. The court only seriously considers the facts for which Gaud and Toqué mutually accused each other during the investigation. Toqué blames all the responsibility for the execution of Pakpa on Gaud. Gaud accused Toqué of having ordered the murder of the porter Ndagara, precipitated in the falls of the Nana (tributary of the Gribingui); Toqué defends himself by pointing out the contradictions in the accusation and by asserting that Ndagara was allegedly assassinated by a regional guard acting on his own. Toqué is confounded by correspondence exchanged with Gaud, where he evokes the death of Ndagara in a joking tone.
On August 26, 1905, the two defendants were sentenced to five years in prison, benefiting from extenuating circumstances. Fernand Gaud is found guilty of the unpremeditated murder of Pakpa, as well as beating several natives; Georges Toqué is recognized as an accomplice in the murder of Ndagara. These penalties are perceived as very heavy by the settlers of Brazzaville, who are surprised that so much value is given to the natives.
Brazza's investigation
The noise of the horror of the facts spreads to Paris. The rooms are seized, the interpellations follow one another, the discussions liven up. The press seizes on this scandal. The Journal des Débats launched the idea of an administrative inquiry. The Commission is appointed; it is chaired by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. Alongside him are Charles Hoarau-Desruisseaux, Inspector General of the Colonies, Félicien Challaye, a young agrégé in philosophy who represents the Minister of Public Instruction, a member of the Colonial Cabinet and a delegate of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The chambers vote an extraordinary credit of 268,000 francs. On April 5, 1905, Brazza leaves Marseilles. On April 29, he is in Libreville and the investigation begins.
Brazza then discovers the horror in the Congo and especially in Oubangui-Chari. The only written testimony available is that of Félicien Challaye, accompanying Brazza [ 8 ]. Women and children are abducted and parked in hostage camps until the husband or father has collected enough rubber. In Bangui, the hostages are locked up in the factory and employed to clear the post. The men bring the rubber: the quantity seems insufficient; the hostages are not released and taken to Bangui. It is the women who paddle alone in the canoes. When they stop, the Ndris auxiliaries and the regional guards beat them harshly.
In Bangui, in a hut six meters long, with no other opening than the door, the sixty-six hostages are piled up; the door closes on them. This prison is like a cellar without light, plagued by respiration and dejecta. The first twelve days, there are twenty-five deaths, the corpses are thrown into the river. A newly arrived young doctor hears screams and moans; he had the box opened, protested against this regime and demanded the release of the unfortunates. Only twenty-one hostages remain. The survivors are sent back to their villages; several are so weak, so ill, that they die soon after their release. A woman returns to her family, breastfeeding another's child.
Walking towards Fort Crampel, by the side of the path, lies an abandoned skeleton. Brazza orders that this man be buried according to custom. In Fort Crampel, Brazza discovers a concentration camp in which the hostages are crammed. Brazza collapsed. The moral pain is added to the illness because he is seized with terrible diarrhoea.
Moreover, under the fallacious pretext of the absence of available travel and accommodation credits, Charles Hoarau-Desruisseaux was not authorized to confer with his head of mission. He is asked to wait for him in Libreville.
What Brazza will translate in his report no. 148, from 21st of August, in a pithy summary: “I have already expressed serious reservations. I confirm them. They were not motivated by the observation of an isolated fact. During my trip, I acquired the very clear feeling that the Department was not kept informed of the real situation in which the native populations find themselves and of the procedures employed in their regard. Everything was done during my visit to this region to prevent me from learning about it."
The young academic Félicien Challaye is even more severe. He feeds the newspaper Le Temps with colorful and pitiless chronicles. The administration, embarrassed, pretends to ignore Brazza. Emile Gentil only thinks of returning to justify himself. The minister asks him to stay to supervise Brazza. He finally leaves two days before his illustrious predecessor. This one, having amply seen and heard, decides to return. He feels himself weakening. He has been gone for five months and his mission, including travel, was not to exceed six months.
Then begins the last stage. Having refused the tipoye prepared for him, it was standing and leaning on Thérèse's arm that Brazza left the city of the same name; he walks awkwardly towards the "beach", the boat's pier leading to the other side of the immense Congo, in Léopoldville. The stopover in Libreville is painful, the fever does not leave him. At each stop, he hesitated to take himself to the hospital; this time there is no other solution. He therefore arrives, after having made the most express recommendations to Inspector General Charles Hoarau-Desruisseaux in order to save “his” Congo and France from shame.
Watched over by his wife and by Captain Mangin, the illustrious patient wears himself out in a little iron bed. Doctors know their impotence. The photograph of little Jacques, her child who disappeared two years earlier at the age of 5, is, at her request, placed on the bedside table; he died around six o'clock in the evening, September 14, 1905, after receiving Extreme Unction.
General de Gaulle, who was well aware of all this, had immense esteem, coupled with great tenderness for the profoundly evangelical dimension of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. When France was liberated in 1944, one of the first moves he made was to significantly reassess the pension that France allocated to the de Brazza family. This pension, in fact, had not been reviewed since 1905 and the family lived in Algiers in great destitution. Only two great Frenchmen were entitled to a pension for life for them and their direct descendants: Louis Pasteur and Brazza.