Voulet–Chanoine Mission

It was composed of 50 Senegalese Tirailleurs, 20 spahis (both units recruited in West Africa) and 30 interpreters, but the bulk was formed by 400 auxiliaries and 800 porters that were pressed into service.

The force was directed by nine Europeans: the two commanders, the artillery expert lieutenant Paul Joalland, Lt. Louis Peteau, Marine-Lt. Marc Pallier, the medical officer Dr. Henric and three NCOs.

Voulet completely ignored the local hierarchies and took liberties with the orders he received,[3] which were anyway very vague—he was asked only to explore the territory between the Niger River and Lake Chad, and put the area "under French protection".

Chanoine led most of the expedition overland across the 600-mile bend of the river, while Voulet took the rest of the men downriver to Timbuktu, held by Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-François Klobb, who provided him with another 70 tirailleurs and 20 spahis.

Chanoine had increasing difficulties finding provisions for his large column in the arid region where he marched; he started pillaging the villages on the way, and gave orders for anyone trying to escape to be shot.

When at the end of the month the mission left the Niger River to pass into the semi-desert areas extending east, their march became an endless orgy of looting and killing.

This decision eventually backfired: on 15 February Peteau wrote a letter to his fiancée that fully detailed the atrocities committed by Voulet and Chanoine that he had witnessed.

This brought about the decision by the Dupuy ministry on 20 April to arrest Voulet and Chanoine and send orders to the Governor-General of French Sudan, Colonel Vimard, to have them replaced at the head of the mission with the governor of Timbuktu, Klobb.

Among the chief concerns of the French government was that Voulet was carrying out his depredations in Sokoto, an unconquered territory that by the Anglo-French agreement of June 1898 had been assigned to the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Voulet was meeting considerable resistance to his advance from the local queen Sarraounia, and at Lougou on 16 April he encountered his hardest battle yet, with 4 men killed and 6 wounded.

[7] Voulet took his revenge on 8 May: in one of the worst massacres in French colonial history, he slaughtered all the inhabitants of the town of Birni-N'Konni, killing possibly thousands of people.

He also found the corpses of the expedition's guides; those that had displeased Voulet had been strung up alive in a position that the foot went to the hyenas and the rest of the body to the vultures.

This event meant that the original expedition had now accomplished all its main aims, that is, surveying the lands of Northern Nigeria and Niger (contributing to a clearer Franco-British delimitation of the colonial borders), uniting with the Foureau-Lamy mission and destroying Rabih's empire, which permitted the institution in September by the French government of the military territory of Chad.

[8] When, in August 1899, the government made public the atrocities committed by the Voulet's expedition and the murder of Klobb, a storm of indignation arose from the press, and France's claim of a "civilizing mission" in Africa was tarnished, as was the army, whose prestige was already considerably weakened by the Dreyfus affair.

[12] The expedition's eventual success greatly reduced the public indignation; and when the Radical MP Paul Vigné d'Octon proposed in the National Assembly on December 7, 1900 the formation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry, the government rejected the request as being "dangerous and purposeless".

[16] An enquiry requested by the Ministry of Colonies was closed on December 1, 1902, claiming that Voulet and Chanoine had been driven mad by the dreadful heat, the "soudanite aiguë".

After a long period of oblivion, the memory of the expedition was revived in 1976 by the writer Jacques-Francis Rolland in his Le Grand Captaine, honoured with the Prix des Maisons de la Presse.

The material collected for Moati's movie also provides the basis of the documentary Blancs de mémoire, directed by Manuel Gasquet, that follows in the expedition's footsteps and examines its impact on the inhabitants of the areas it passed through.

[19] In 2020, the documentary film African Apocalypse about the horror of Niger's colonial past, in particular focusing on Paul Voulet's horrific behavior, was produced as a non-fiction retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.