The government at Paris accepted his advice and proceeded to the task with the utmost energy. A battalion of the Foreign Legion, transformed into mounted infantry by mounting the men on mules, formed one of the flying columns. Other punitive expeditions were composed of native troops, who were provided with _méhari_ as speedy as the racing dromedaries ridden by the Touareg themselves, and accompanied by batteries of light mountain-guns. For, when the French once determine to do a thing, they usually do it well. From the outposts in Algeria, in Senegal, in the Sudan, the columns pressed forward relentlessly into the sandy wastes. The attacking hordes of tribesmen were mowed down by the withering fire of rifles and machine-guns; the strongholds which the Touareg had deemed impregnable hastily capitulated when they heard the terrifying whine and crash of the French shells. Soon the redoubtable Touareg confederacy was completely subjugated, its principal centers were occupied in force, a highly efficient police force was recruited from the tribesmen themselves—just as Porfirio Díaz recruited his famous _rurales nacionales_ from outlaws and bandits—and travel was made possible, if not altogether safe, from one border of the Sahara to the other. Shortly after France’s African empire had been completely reorganized in 1902, the effective area of French control in the western Sahara was increased to the extent of some 150,000 square miles by inducing the Moorish emirs of the Adrar, a fertile but sparsely inhabited region lying to the north of the Senegal, between the sand-wastes of El Juf and the Atlantic, to place themselves under the direct supervision of French officials. In the following year these regions were consolidated into a single territory to which was given the historic name of Mauretania.