THE REOCCUPATION OF NORTHERN AFRICA 291 
friends — England, Spain, and Italy — were materially 
strengthened. Germany was shown to be no longer domi- 
nant in European politics, and the diplomatic isolation of the 
German Empire itself was hastened. 
But, before France and Spain were able to put into execu- 
tion the Algeciras program, troubles arose within Morocco 
which threatened to nullify all the good intentions of the 
European states. In May, 1906, M. Charbonnier, an em- 
ployee of the French-Algerian steamboat company, was 
murdered in Tangier and serious anti-foreign demonstra- 
tions occurred in Sud-Oranais, Tafilet, and Mogador. In 
February, 1907, Ben Mansour, an Arabian Sheik of pro- 
French sympathies, was assassinated in Tangier; and the 
killing of Dr. Mauchamp, a French surgeon, by a mob in 
Marrakesh on March 19, was followed by a terrific outbreak 
in Casa Blanca on July 81, in which a large part of the 
town was demolished and nine Europeans slain. Similar 
uprisings took place in various parts of the country, and all 
the foreigners in the interior fled to the seaports, as rapidly 
and as secretly as possible, most of them suffering great 
hardships. Raisuli, the most powerful and intrepid of the 
sheiks now rising in rebellion throughout the land, carried 
off Kaid McLean, the Scotch commander of the Sultan’s 
bodyguard, in June; and by the middle of the summer 
Morocco was in the throes of civil war.! 
Abd-el-Aziz, who, since the death of the Grand Vizier, 
Sidi Akhmed, in 1900, had been ruling in person, was now 
thirty years of age and a man of European training, consid- 
erable culture, and good intentions. But he was lacking in 
energy, in will power, and in political experience; and he was 
rapidly losing popularity on all sides because of his extrava- 
gance and his predilection for Europeans, a large number of 
whom — particularly Englishmen — he had drawn into his 
! French Yellow Book, Affaires du Maroc, 1906-07, pt. mI.