From 1912 to 1925, Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey was the first general resident under the French Protectorate in Morocco. A charismatic leader , Lyautey had to face his first territorial problems when he arrived in Morocco. At the end of 1912, the suitor El Hiba had just entered Marrakech and was quick to take French people hostage. Having secured a prior alliance with the Glaoui, Lyautey sent Colonel Mangin to confront the 10,000 warriors of El Hiba. With the help of artillery, he managed to defeat his enemies before making his triumphant entry into Marrakech and enjoying the delights of its palaces and gardens.
This was the beginning of his long Moroccan adventure and decisive for the organization of the country, on all levels: administrative, architectural, economic and social. Lyautey launched its first objectives of pacification and organization of tribes between the Oued Tensift, the
Atlas and the Atlantic coast to ensure freedom of communication with Mogador. In this way, it aims to open up the Marrakech region to trade and economic development.
The strong man of the country stands out from his peers and gives a social role to his position as an officer. He writes intelligently: "This country must not treat itself by force alone... I would be careful not to attack regions that are "dormant", that would be on fire if I entered them costing me a lot of people and a lot of trouble... If impatient public opinion prefers premature flashes to this slower but so sure method, all they had to do was not send me here".
This Catholic defender of Islam understands, among other things, that it is not by lowering the Sultan that the return to order will come. Despite the undeniable control exercised by France over Morocco, Lyautey decided to restore respect for the sovereignty of the Cherifian State and the Sultan's legislative power. It restores its prestige and tradition by reinventing a whole decorum and splendour fantasized by orientalists. A small detail that says a lot: Lyautey does not hesitate to hold the Sultan's stirrup when he gets off his horse during major ceremonies.
Lyautey is also the man who was soon nicknamed the "city builder" and who defended that "an open site is worth a battalion". Marrakech does not escape this logic and the general guidelines for the construction of the new city are dictated by it. He called on the architect Henri Prost to redraw the plans by softening the initial layout and combining the straight and rounded lines to introduce a certain variety to the planning. Lyautey wants a dualism to be respected between the new city and the old part of the city. The so-called "Avenue de France" was considered one of the jewels of colonial development, with its view of the Atlas Mountains and its proximity to the walls of the
Medina and the
gardens of the Menara. Now extended to become the main axis of the new tourist city, it has been renamed "boulevard Mohamed VI", an
ideal walk.
Morocco can remember Lyautey, just as Lyautey was in love with this country. So much so that he died in his native Lorraine in 1934, he still wished to be buried in Morocco.
This was done until his ashes were repatriated in 1961 to the Invalides where a magnificent tomb awaited him.
On the one hand, one can read on it, engraved in gold letters, the motto of the marshal:
"To be of those in whom men believe, in whose eyes thousands of eyes seek, the order with which roads open, countries are populated, cities emerge".
But if you look at the other side of this tomb, you can read in Arabic:
"The more I live in Morocco, the more I am convinced of the greatness of this country."
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