Rebel intelligence always seemed to be one leap ahead of the cumbersome, weary French columns: “We had to get there by forced marches,” says Leulliette. “Too late: the Arab bush-telegraph — fires which suddenly lit up from peak to peak — had moved faster than us.” Another excellent “early warning system” was provided by the large yellow and white dogs of the Aurès, which the French discovered could hear a patrol of six men in sandals a mile off. It was a tense and lonely existence: “We were to spend a whole winter on our own, more isolated than conquistadors forgotten in some new world,” Leulliette recalled, “if we passed through one of the douars by day, the fellaghas went there at night. If we camped there at night, they came back the next day, often only a few hours after we had left."

DEFINE: Illustrates how colonial-era fear suppressed dissent and masked underlying hostility among the local population.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 323