Mogador was bombarded on the 13th of August, 1844.  Hostilities began at 9 o’clock A.M., by the Moors firing twenty-one guns before the French had taken up their position, but the fire was not returned until 2 P.M.  The ‘Gemappes,’ 100; ‘Suffren,’ 99; ‘Triton,’ 80; ships of the line.  ‘Belle Poule,’ 60, frigate; ‘Asmodee’ and ‘Pluton,’ steamers, and some brigs, constituted the bombarding squadron.  The batteries were silenced, and the Moorish authorities with many of the inhabitants fled, leaving the city unprotected against the wild tribes, who this evening and the next morning, sacked and fired the city.  On the 16th, nine hundred French were landed on the isle of Mogador.  After a rude encounter with the garrison, they took possession of it and its forts.  Their loss was, after twenty-eight hours’ bombarding, trifling, some twenty killed and as many more wounded; the Moors lost some five hundred on the isle killed, besides the casualties in the city.

The British Consul and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, with others, were obliged to remain in the town during the bombardment on account of their liabilities to the Emperor.  The escape of these people from destruction was most miraculous.

The bombarding squadron reached on the 10th, the English frigate, ‘Warspite,’ on the 13th, and the wind blowing strong from N.E., and preventing the commencement of hostilities, afforded opportunity to save, if possible, the British Consul’s family and other detained Europeans; but, notwithstanding the strenuous remonstrances of the captain of the ‘Warspite’, nothing whatever could prevail upon the Moorish Deputy-Governor in command, Sidi Abdallah Deleero, to allow the British and other Europeans to take their departure.  The Governor even peremptorily refused permission for the wife of the Consul to leave, upon the cruel sophism that, “The Christian religion asserts the husband and wife to be one, consequently,” added the Governor, “as it is my duty, which I owe to my Emperor, to prevent the Consul from leaving Mogador, I must also keep his wife.”

The fact is the Moors, in their stupidity, and perhaps in their revenge, thought the retaining of the British Consul and the Europeans might, in some way or other, contribute to the defence of themselves, save the city, or mitigate the havoc of the bombardment.  At any rate, they would say, “Let the Christians share the same fate and dangers as ourselves.”  During the bombardment, the Moors for two hours fought well, but their best gunner, a Spanish renegade, Omar Ei-Haj, being killed, they became dispirited and abandoned the batteries.  The Governor and his troops, about sunset, disgracefully and precipitately fled, followed by nearly all the Moorish population, thereby abandoning Mogador to pillage, and the European Jews to the merciless wild tribes, who, though levied to defend the town, had, for some hours past, hovered round it like droves of famished wolves.