44 
TIIE FRENCH SOUDAN. 
ward their military outposts along the banks of the Senegal, to facilitate 
the transit of the commerce between their colony and the interior of 
the Soudan. In April, 1857, the Hadji advanced to lay siege to the 
French post at Medina, then defended by Paul Holl with seven 
Europeans and some fifty Senegal native troops and Laptots. After a 
siege of ninety-seven days Omar was obliged to retire repulsed, having 
been defeated in two encounters with a relief column despatched as 
soon as possible by Faidherbe, and the colony of Senegal was thus 
saved from imminent destruction. 
The line of posts previously projected by General Faidherbe was 
subsequently formed by Borgnis-Desbordes, but it was not occupied 
without considerable trouble. It was at first thought that the natives 
and chiefs might be conciliated by pacific overtures and missions; and 
indeed from previous experiences this appeared a feasible plan. But 
although the missions of Lieuts. Marly, Jacquemard and Monteil (made 
in 1879-80) along the lower and middle courses of the Senegal suc¬ 
ceeded perfectly well in this respect; and although Captain Gallieni 
met with an equal success in the higher Senegal as far as the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Kita, the circumstances were not the same when this last 
officer reached the line of the watershed and approached the basin of 
the Niger. There he soon encountered some more barbarous populations 
of untameable attitude, and whose warriors were fiercely hostile to the 
French explorers at the instigation of the successors of Omar. 
The unfavourable attitude of the Toucouleurs and the Bambarras was 
still more manifest when Alimadou, Sultan of Segou and of Nioro, the 
son and successor of Omar had interned the members of the Gallieni 
mission during ten months, at a distance of some forty kilometres from 
Segou. Ahmadou had inherited the largest portion of the empire 
founded by his father, 1 and his territories extended directly across the 
road which the French desired to trace between the Senegal and the 
Niger. The Toucouleur chiefs, the councillors of Ahmadou, reminding 
him of the wars which Omar had waged against the French in Senegal 
in the days of Faidherbe, urged him to resist. Ahmadou hesitated to 
embroil himself with the foreigners, but his hesitation came to an end 
when he learnt that Colonel Borgnis-Desbordes, pushing on in advance, 
had taken the Toucouleur village of Goubanko, after occupying the 
village of Kita, which the Malinka inhabitants, formerly subject to the 
Toucouleurs, had voluntarily submitted to the French protectorate. 
The Sultan of Segou, greatly alarmed, at once signed with Captain 
Gallieni, on the 21st March, 1881, a convention which gave to the 
French access to the Niger. Peace having been thus concluded with 
the Toucouleurs, it was only necessary to repress some signs of resis¬ 
tance exhibited by the Bambarras of the Niger valley in order to reach 
Bammako, where the French post was constructed in March, 1883. 
Unfortunately, just at the very moment when all difficulty was thus 
surmounted on the line from Kayes to Bammako, along which was 
being constructed a section of the railway from Kayes to Bafoulabe, 
fresh complications arose towards the south. 
1 Tidiani, his brother, had the government of the kingdom of Macina, the last conquest of Omar, 
and Aguibou, another of his brothers, had that of Dinguiray, the home of the Toucouleur power. 
