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Mauritania is a country quite unlike any other. From the first stirrings of its history as an “Empire” supported by the slave trade and the anti-French sentiment of the British and the pro-Profit sentiment of the Americans it prospered greatly under its first King.

Moric I of Mauritania returned in 1785 to the island that had up until then been marked down in various maps as Malagasy, Madagascar, and Libertalia and received the warm welcome he had been expecting.

With the few volunteers that he had and the large majority of natives who remember the fact that Moric had not only designed an alphabet and built schools for them on his trip to the island but had even gone so far as to try to improve their standard of living with medicine and unification of many tribes he manages to formulate a revolt against the French garrison at Foulpointe which he then designated as the capital of his new kingdom.

What was the allure of Mauritania in those early years? Was it the relative freedoms promised by the Benovsky monarchs, the wild wheeling and dealing of business and the attainable wealth? We may never know but we do know that the many friends that
Moric I made along his way eventually show up on the island.

Many people are hard pressed to find a reason as to why the first non-American and non-British immigrants to the island are Poles but the explanation lays in the fact that Moric I had already guaranteed the Polish, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Russians, and even the Swedes large plots of land deep into the island.

So by 1787 there were already the first stirrings in Europe of the idea of a mass exodus to Mauritania and Moric I was more than ready to take advantage of it. That was not the only plan for ensuring his power as King of Mauritania which at the time was still only his capital and the north of the island.

He also personally sponsored known Arab slave traders and pirates in their adventures, just so long as they would return with captured ships. In his many adventures he realized that there were large untapped markets, everywhere. So that there were already plans in the works to start recruiting fighting men and sailors from Formosa, Brazil, and secret prisoner raids onto the Kamchatka where Moric I had been imprisoned twice.

Moric I was a man that moved at a dazzling pace and by 1790 had already established the Mauritanian Navy, the aforementioned pirates and raiders, the Mauritanian Foreign Legion, the aforementioned Formosans, Brazilians, prisoners from Kamchatka, Austrians, the odd American, British merchants with too much time on their hands, Polish nationalists that followed one of their heroes to a new land, and the assortment of Hungarians and Zanzibari slave-soldiers that would eventually form the core of the force.

Added to this was the Mauritanian Land Army, which consisted chiefly of naturalized Europeans and local Betsimisaraka tribesmen who had a long history with both the musket and war. In the enlightened period of the 1790s Mauritania was considered strange because it still allowed its armed forces to not only raid other, local tribes for slaves and loot but actively supported it.

Though Moric was not always successful, in the central highlands the kingdom of Merina threatened his eventual control of the whole island. The Merina king at the time King Andrianampoinimerina had been hard at work uniting the highland clans through the simple process of marrying the princesses and killing off the princes while at the same time forcibly reforming the technologies of his people through the use of implements like the metal spade.

Both men were definite thorns in the other’s side. Both were well learned and had even possibly met briefly while Moric had last been on the island. Both men were excellent military commanders and could almost predict the other’s moves. Both men had been quick to pull in allies to be used against one another, for Moric the multitude of princes who had been either dethroned or were currently fighting Andrianampoinimerina and for Andrianampoinimerina the western tribes who had never received the full benefits of the reforms implemented by Moric. Both sides were well armed and bloody minded.

The final straw came when King Andrianampoinimerina issued the announcement that “the sea is the boundary of my rice-field.” When Moric heard this he was reported to have flown into a rage and demanded that a final strike be inflicted upon the damned Merina kingdom and that the man who would bring him the head of Andrianampoinimerina would be made an official Earl and given lands in the interior.

So in 1791 the Mauritanian Foreign Legion which was sadly better equipped and armed than the actual Mauritanian Army set off with a force of five hundred and forty three legionnaires. Their only objective was to give chase and try to either capture or kill King Andrianampoinimerina or a member of his court.

They were led by a recent immigrant from the United States. A man named Andrew Jackson.
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