The Sahara Expedition That Was Mercilessly Hunted

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Sahara Desert is, without exaggeration, one of the harshest
regions on the planet, but most people know that to
some degree or another. What's often underappreciated, though, is just
how massive it is. It is by far the largest
hot desert on the planet, and in fact, for comparison,
it's about a million square kilometers larger than the entire
contiguous United States. Now imagine trying to cross it, let

(00:24):
alone build something across it. That is exactly what happened
in the eighteen eighties, and the results would be horrifying,
but not just because the harsh terrain. As always, viewer
discretion is strongly advised. By the early eighteen eighties, a

(00:48):
race to invade and colonize Africa by European countries was intensifying.
During this period, which is known as the Scramble for Africa.
European powers were slicing up the continent at will with
the belief that colonization was somehow their right. For France,
one of the boldest ideas to come out of this
period was the plan to build a railway straight across
the Sahara Desert, linking Algeria to French Sudan, which is

(01:10):
modern day Molly, and then from there eventually to the
rich territories of West Africa. If this sounds impossible to you,
you're not alone in thinking that. But if anyone was
going to do it, a man named Paul Flatters wanted
to be the man who made it happen. Now, Paul
wasn't exactly the poster child for a grand desert adventure.
By the time he was asked to lead the expedition,
he was forty years old and gray, with a fair

(01:30):
complexion and an average build. He apparently carred himself with
intensity and had a reputation for being both straightforward and stubborn,
but years of hard living in Algeria had taken their toll.
He suffered from chronics attica and was known to rely
heavily un morphine to manage the pain. His moods could
also apparently swing without warning. But underneath the physical wear
and terror was someone deeply devoted to the desert, fascinated

(01:52):
by its people, obsessed with its trade routes, and convinced
it could be the key to expanding France's colonial reach.
You see, Paul, the Sahara was more than just sand
and heat. He'd spent years in North Africa as a
military administrator, learning the local dialects and studying the land.
During that time, he'd built a sense that he understood
the region far better than anyone in Paris did so,

(02:13):
when word came down that the French government was looking
for someone to scout a viable trade route for the
Trans Saharan Railway, Paul loved heart for the job. He
wasn't the most obvious choice, but it seems as though
he was certainly the most determined, And again, the goal
of the project was nothing short of revolutionary. Building a
railway across one of the harshest environments on Earth was
no small feat. But France's interest in the Sahara wasn't new.

(02:36):
For four decades, the vast desert to the south of Algia
had represented mystery trade routes and the promise of connection
to France's southern colonies. Up to that point, there just
hadn't been not political will, ambition, or maybe more likely
than naivetate to try to make it happen, because the challenge,
other than the desert itself was the people who already
lived there. Chief among them were the Twareg, who were

(02:56):
a loose confederation of independent Berber tribes that spread across
at a normal from a swath of desert from Libya to
Molli to the French, the Twig were an obstacle, But
to Paul, who was much more knowledgeable about the region,
there were something in between political allies of approached correctly
and deadly enemies if offended. In either case, he seemed
to have a more realistic view of the land, but
also a bit of an unrealistic belief that he could

(03:18):
navigate the complexities. This was still better than the French imagination,
which was that the Sahara had always been a blank
spot in the map, as if it were some exotic
unknown waiting to be charted. But the reality was far different.
The Twaig people weren't passive players in the story of
European colonization. They had their own politics, alliances, and long
memories of outsetters who tried to force their way in

(03:39):
and again. The desert itself was no passive backdrop either,
with its harsh climate and oftentimes harsher terrain. But despite
all of this, Paul was convinced that the right leader,
with the right approach, could forge a path through it all,
and so with the blessing of the French government and
a mixture of idealism and confidence, he prepared to make
the attempts. When the French government began seriously exploring the
idea of a trans airin railway, they broke the plane

(04:01):
into three routes, Western, Central, and Eastern. The first two
would end up being scouted with little issue, but the
eastern route was the most dangerous since it passed through
the heart of the Targ territory, where French presence was
historically far less welcome and far more risky. That, of course,
was the one Paul insists on leading. Originally, Paul proposed
bringing more than two hundred armed soldiers for protection, but

(04:22):
that idea was opposed by Henry du Verrier, a veteran
explorer who thought subtlety would be safer than fours. Henry
apparently had a bit more of a romantic view of
the Towarg people and argued that smaller expeditions adapted to
local customs had a better shot of success. He described
the Twarg as honorable, peace loving desert people. In reality,
they were fiercely territorial and unafraid to defend their land.

(04:43):
Especially from colonial encroachment. A compromise was eventually struck and
the expedition would go forward, but with less than half
the manpower Paul wanted. But satisfied with this anyway, Paul
returned to Algeria in November of eighteen seventy nine and
began assembling his team. On January twenty fifth, eight teen eighty,
the group set up from Constantine, near the northern coast,
heading to Warglar, about sixteen hundred klometers to the south.

(05:06):
And for more context on size, that six hundred klometers
is still only a fraction of the distance across Algeria alone,
but in any case, the core group included twelve Europeans,
some Algeriant soldiers, local cameliers and guides. A little over
a month later, they departed Warglar and pushed into the desert,
threading their way through valleys and past small towns. In fact,

(05:27):
even before Warglar, they were already squarely in the expanse
of Sahara Desert. If you click around on Google street
View in the area, often all you'll see is vast
sand dunes in every direction. The scale of it is
religious hard to fathom, and it must have been grueling
every day. The temperature as at the time of writing
this averages over forty degrees celsius or around one hundred
and five degrees fahrenheit, and Warglar alone, let alone further in.

(05:50):
By mid April, the expedition had reached the edge of
the territory and made camp near what was later determined
to be an infrequent seasonal lake. It was here that
things started to unravel. Supply lies by this point were
running low, and the locals were showing signs of hostility.
The desert was also unrelenting, so Paul made the difficult
but wise decision to turn back. The retreat north began

(06:11):
on April twenty first, but before they departed, Paul gave
the captain signed to the rear of the group a
surprisingly dramatic order. He told them to essentially fight the
last man if necessary, so the rest of the convoy
could get away, clearly indicating that tensions were much higher
than realized. Fortunately, the tuarg didn't attack, whether it was
restraint or strategy, they let the French leave without issue.

(06:32):
As they made the retreat, though, Paul sent a letter
to the chief of the local tarik promising to return
the falling winter. This was meant as a show of diplomacy,
trying to ease the tensions. The expedition that arrived back
in Warglar on May seventeenth, eighteen eighty, battered but intact.
It hadn't been a complete disaster, but it wasn't the
triumph Paul had imagined either. Still, the mission had gathered

(06:54):
useful information about the train and a river which looked
promising as a possible railway route to the French Guy government,
this was enough to justify trying again, giving Paul a
chance to handle what he viewed as unfinished business. Paul
didn't waste any time either, as the second expedition would
be a more complex mission, and officially it was peaceful
as it aimed to negotiate with TOWERG leaders and maybe
even establish a permanent French consulate deep in the desert,

(07:17):
But as with many colonial affairs, it seems clear no
one really believed that's what it was all about. The
unspoken goal was to assert themselves, secure trade routes, and
stake Francis claim on the region. In November of nineteen eighty,
Paul set up once again from Warglar at the head
of a group of more than ninety men. His team
included engineers, officers, soldiers, guides, and volunteers, many of them

(07:38):
North African locals with military experience. The journey began with
cautious optimism, and on November twenty seventh, they reached an oasis,
charting a slightly different route than the first expedition. A
few days later, the expedition joined a caravan led by
a prominent Sufi religious leader, hoping to signal to locals
that this was a mission of peace. However, simultaneously, local

(07:58):
tribesmen told Paul and the expedition leaders that entering to
our territory would bring trouble, but Paul brushed off these concerns.
By the time mid December rolled around, the expedition reached
one hundred and fifty kilometers from the Twarik stronghold of Insula.
Paul then sent word of the expedition's arrival to the
chief of the local Twarrek and waited five days for
a response, but none came. The expedition then continued on

(08:20):
and the route took them along the edges of the
Tatamit Plateau. They also passed ancient Roman ruins which were
the furthest Romans had traveled south, and from there they
moved toward the Mali border. By this point they were
closing in close to fifteen hundred ulmers of travel through
nothing but desert. On February sixteenth, eighteen eighty one, they
stopped at Burr Elgorama, which is a watering hole, to rest.

(08:41):
They did note at the time, but by the time
they set foot near BurrH Algarama, their fate had been sealed.
The Twarek had been preparing for the arrival of the French.
In fact, before the French even left Wargler word had
spread through the desert and a coalition of Tuarak fighters
began making plans to wipe out the expedition. It's even
believed that some of the expedition's own guides had been
feeding the kwarg updates and steering the group deeper into

(09:02):
hostile territory. By the time they reached them, around six
hundred armed fighters gathered near the wells waiting for the French.
The tare had been shadowing the expedition, studying their movements,
watched them get deeper into the desert and further from
safety and paul. Despite the growing unknees around him believed
he was protected. He placed his trust in those around
him and in the belief that TWARAG leadership would never

(09:23):
allow violence against French guests in the territory. As they
rested at the waterhole, Paul then made a fateful decision
when he left the main camp behind with a group
of officers and scientific staff along with several camels. A
guide warned him that something felt off and that it
wasn't safe, but as he had been before, Paul waved
it off and assured the guide that there was nothing
of fear and right on cue. Barely half an hour

(09:45):
after finding the well, the group was surrounded twareg fighters
under lances and old muskets closed in from all directions.
Chaos then erupted and some men tried to get on
the camels and run, but the spooked camels refused to move,
and what followed was swift and brutal. Paul and the
entirety of the expedition's leadership were all killed, as were
around thirty camel drivers. There would be no dramatic defense,

(10:08):
just a group of men caught off guard and overwhelmed
by an enemy that knew the train and the weaknesses
of their target. Only ten men managed to escape to ambush,
and the twag took nearly all the expeditions two hundred
and fifty camels, leaving the rest of the men to
die in the sand. The horror, however, wasn't over just yet.
Back at the main camp, the remaining men had no
idea what happened or how bad it was about to get.

(10:29):
The sounds of gunfire and distant shouting eventually faded into
sounds for those of the main camp. When it was
realized what had happened, the remaining men were left staring
down the reality of their situation. Although their camp hadn't
been attacked yet, their commander was now dead, and their
supplies were scattered, and maybe most importantly, they were now
stranded in the middle of the Sahara with no real
escape plan. Once the dust had settled, the men had

(10:52):
time to regroup. A man named Lieutenant Joseph Deannis took
command of the fifty six remaining men, including just four
French officers. They still had some weapons to defend themselves,
but the problem was without camels, their ability to carry
anything was severely limited. This led to the difficult decision
to burn up most remaining supplies just to keep them
from falling into Torg hands. They also split up the

(11:14):
food and ammunition, and divided the missions coins among themselves.
The strongest men were also given the few waterskins left
that carried water, and with no time to waste and
little choice, they began walking the fifteen hundred clumbers between
them and Warglaw. It's probably no surprise that it didn't
take long for things to fall apart. The Tarek, who
had already taken so much for them, weren't finished either.

(11:35):
They followed them from a distance, hunting animals and stealing
what they could, keeping the remaining men constantly on edge.
Hunger and thirst also set in quickly, and by February
twenty second, less than a week later, the men were
almost out of food. A few days later they were
eating anything they could find just to stay upright. As
this was going on, some of these stronger men went
ahead in hopes of finding animals or water, but there

(11:56):
were just nothing waiting for them in the desert. And then,
with the survivors now probably at their most desperate, the
Twig would turn once again for another brutal, but this
time deceptive attack. A group of twig then approached and
offered the survivor's milk, meat, and fruit at an almost
extortionist high price, but the money mattered little at that moment.
The survivors were also so desperate that they never stopped

(12:18):
to consider the consequences of accepting food from them either.
The dates, as it turned out, had been purposely laced
with a toxic plant known for causing hallucinations, panic, and death.
Shortly afterward, those who ate them apparently went insane. Some
screamed and staggered, while others ran wildly into the desert,
find their guns and gasp before air as the poison
burned their lungs. A few were saved by vomiting, but

(12:41):
most who had them weren't so lucky, As if things
couldn't get worse. While this was all going on, the
twarg struck again. Three of the guides, who had refused
the dates and knew better than to trust the offer,
were captured and then had their heads taken. A holy
man who had accompanied the exhibition, was also finished, in
a way so gruesome that it shook even the targ
who witnessed it. As the attack erupted into chaos, survivors

(13:03):
ran in all directions just to escape. This left a
core group that was able to escape and continued stumbling north. However,
already the next time they encountered, the survivors were ambushed
again by a force of Toric fighters already there waiting
for them. A fight then broke out, and Joseph was
killed once again. The survivors scattered, breaking into smaller groups,
and as the days went on, with each group under

(13:24):
the immense stress of essentially being hunted, they also became
increasingly paranoid that the others were hoarding food or water.
This would lead to what little discipline that remained evaporating quickly.
As starvation set in, an exhaustion to cold, hunger more
powerful than anything the men had experienced before, began to
set in. It didn't happen all at once, but as
men began to die and survivors were too weak to

(13:45):
bury them, those who remained found themselves with little choice.
The last surviving Frenchman, Sergeant Joseph Popaguay, resisted the descent
into the unthinkable at first. When other soldiers gave one
of the dying Algerian soldiers mercy, they offered him some sustenance,
but he refused. In time, though, the hunger won and
he joined them, and before long he too was dead

(14:06):
and eaten. What began as a proud mission of exploration
had become a nightmare of betrayal and survival at all costs.
The survivors were little more than walking skeletons as the
days passed, but on an April second, four Algerian soldiers
stumbled into Wargla. A few others were then found along
the route, either crawling or passed out in the sand.

(14:27):
Two days later, eleven more gods crawled into the town
to tell the story no one could quite believe. They
spoke of ambushes, poisoned dates, horrific attacks, and desert madness,
everything that had to endure to reach the safety of
the city. By the end of the month, around a
dozen more survivors in total had traveled the fifteen hundred
kilometers against impossible odds, to end up in Wargla. When

(14:48):
news of the disaster finally reached France, the reaction was
immediate and furious. The press exploded with headlines demanding revenge.
Politicians also called for swift military retaliation against the twarg
and rem nude efforts to conquer the Sahara once and
for all. The sheer brutality of what had happened shocked
a nation that had grown used to framing its colonial
campaigns as noble missions of civilization. After the initial upward, though,

(15:12):
interest began to fade. The shock wore off and was
replaced by hesitation. The loss of pauln his men had
exposed just how little France knew about the region and
just how ill equipped it was to control it. Plans
for the trans Saharan Railway were then quietly shelved. Further
military expeditions into the desert were delayed, and for nearly
twenty years, the French pulled back from aggressive attempts to
colonize the central Sahara. The French public then quickly found

(15:35):
someone to condemn for the failed expedition. Henry the explorer,
who insisted on a soft approach and painted the Touark
as noble and peaceful, bore the brunt of it. His
romanticized view of the desert people now seemed tragically naive,
and the pressed horn to him. He tried to defend
his position with more expeditions, but the guilt followed him
in eighteen ninety two. He would end things on his

(15:56):
own accord, and it's believed to be a result of
his guilt. What remained of the Flatters expedition were letters
written before the first attack and scattered accounts from the
few who survived. Ironically, those letters became some of the
only detailed sources of information about the Central Sahara available
to the French for decades. In the end, the expedition
was a lesson in an arrogance and an underestimate in

(16:16):
the people and the environment you're trying to control, and
for the French it was a moment of colonial defeat
that they couldn't spin into something glorious. If you made
it this far, thanks so much for watching. If you
have a story suggestion, feel free to submit it to
the forum found of the description. Also, if you want
to support the channel, consider joining the patron or becoming
a channel member here on YouTube. Anyways, thanks again and

(16:38):
hopefully I will see you in the next one.