The Beni-Amers, the men whose four thousand sabres had waved in exultation around the young leader of the Djehad; the men whose splendid courage had opened before him the path of glory and of empire, had gone over to the French. Abd-el-Kader resolved to attack them. Suddenly descending upon them he swept through their encampments, slew numbers, and carried off a great booty. A French battalion stationed among them vainly strove to arrest his progress. An Arab chief, one of his old followers, boldly singled him out, rode up, and fired at him point-blank. The ball missed, and Abd-el-Kader shot the traitor dead with his pistol. The Sultan knew that all was lost unless he could obtain external aid. The smala was now reduced to his own deira, a bare thousand souls, wandering about in miserable fashion. After another desperate engagement with Lamoricière during which the Arab women cheered on the warriors, and Abd-el-Kader and his men fighting in the presence of their wives and children performed new prodigies of valor, he succeeded in safely establishing the noncombatants on the territory of Morocco. Bugeaud, now become a marshal, wrote to his Government declaring that all serious warfare was finished. In the summer of 1844, the violation of Abderrahman's territory by French troops under Lamoricière and Bedeau led to some warfare, in which the Moroccan troops were twice defeated. The people of the country were strongly in favor of Abd-el-Kader; and when their Sultan, after a French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador, made a treaty with France by which the Algerian hero was "placed beyond the pale of the law throughout the Empire of Morocco, as well as in Algeria," and was to be "pursued by main force by the Moroccans on their own territory," the Moorish population was filled with resentment. Letters reached Abd-el-Kader from Fez, the capital, dictated and signed by the first grandees in the State, both civil and military, and from the commercial classes, inviting him to ascend the throne of his ancestors. Had he been a mere adventurer or usurper he might have lived henceforth, and died, Emperor of Morocco, But his whole soul was patriotically bent on one object, the freedom and independence of Algeria. He disdained to wear a borrowed crown. As he afterward declared, "His religion forbade him to injure a sovereign chosen and appointed by God." During the year 1844 the Sultan had made a rapid incursion into the Tell, everywhere appealing to the tribes; but he found the national spirit overawed by the presence of French detachments in all directions, and he returned to his deira in despondent spirit. He now received appeals from some of his devoted caliphs to undertake a fresh campaign, especially from the loyal and chivalrous Ben Salem, who dwelt in the gorges of the Djur jura Mountains. To him Abd-el-Kader replied, promising to come "as soon as affairs in the west were settled."