Ouidah. Robin Law
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Hueda which record that, in the second generation after Hufon, the royal dynasty split, when a dissident prince called Amiton, who had gone to Dahomey to secure recognition as king but was rejected by the people, established a rival dynasty at Séhoumi, to the north of Houéyogbé.56 The main body of the exiled Hueda at Houéyogbé, however, evidently remained hostile to Dahomey.
From the 1740s the exiled Hueda resumed their attempts to repossess their homeland by military force, and they continued to present a serious threat to Dahomian control of Ouidah down at least to the early 1760s. Their hopes of recovering possession of it were revived when Dahomey became involved in hostilities with the rising power of Gen or ‘Little Popo’, on the coast to the west, under its ruler Ashangmo, from 1737 onwards.57 The Hueda soon established a close alliance with Little Popo, and perhaps became politically subject to it.58 Dahomey’s position was further weakened by a renewed outbreak of war with Oyo in 1742–8. In 1743, when an Oyo army invaded Dahomey and the main Dahomian forces in Ouidah were withdrawn to meet this threat, the Hueda exiles, supported by allied forces from ‘Popo’ (meaning now, presumably, Little Popo rather than Grand-Popo), seized the opportunity to attack Ouidah, where they defeated the small Dahomian garrison remaining, pillaged and burned the town and blockaded the European forts. They occupied the country for more than three months before the Dahomians again drove them out. The Dahomian viceroy and the commander of the local garrison are both said to have been killed in this campaign, referring presumably to the Tegan and the Cakanacou.59
The Dahomians believed that the European forts in Ouidah had again assisted the Hueda, and after the restoration of their authority there proceeded to take reprisals. The director of the French fort was seized and deported, on the allegation that he had refused to grant refuge in his fort to Dahomians remaining in Ouidah during the Hueda invasion.60 Later in the same year, in June, the director of the Portuguese fort, Basilio, was also arrested, on the charge that he was in negotiation with the exiled Hueda and was harbouring Hueda emissaries within his fort; and at the same time the Gau, the commander-in-chief of the Dahomian army, laid siege to the Portuguese fort. Basilio was held prisoner for some time and released only to be deported from the country. Meanwhile, during his imprisonment, the Dahomian force attacked the Portuguese fort, on 21 July 1743; as had happened with the French fort in 1728, the roofs took fire and caused the powder magazine to explode, after which the Dahomians were able to enter the fort and massacre its inhabitants, including the returned exiled Hueda who had taken refuge in it; the African ‘head servant’ of the fort, who had led the defence in Basilio’s absence, blew himself up with gunpowder rather than surrender.61 Local tradition names the African leader of the defence of the Portuguese fort on this occasion as Amoua, though he is said to have been captured and killed by the Dahomians, rather than dying in the fighting.62 The demonstration of Dahomian power on this occasion was seemingly decisive for the future attitude of the European forts, which never afterwards ventured to support challenges to Dahomian authority.
Although Dahomian military control of Ouidah was thus decisively reasserted, Dahomian administration of the town was now undermined by serious internal divisions, which were part of a wider crisis of royal authority within Dahomey in the early years of Tegbesu’s reign.63 The new Tegan appointed after the Hueda invasion in 1743 antagonized the governors of the European forts, and was arrested and executed by Tegbesu, upon their complaints, in July of the same year.64 His successor as Tegan also alienated the European governors by his ‘oppressive conduct’ and, when they set out to the capital to complain about his behaviour, ordered their arrest and forcible return to Ouidah. Subsequently, it was alleged that he plotted to set himself up as an independent king in Ouidah, to which end he tried to seize the English fort in August 1745, but its governor was forewarned and refused him entry – although conceivably this was a false allegation contrived by the Europeans, as a means of revenge. However this may be, Tegbesu declared the Tegan an outlaw and dispatched military forces, which besieged him in his residence in Ouidah. The Tegan attempted to escape, but was killed in a second attempt to enter the English fort.65 In the aftermath of this revolt, the title of Tegan was evidently suppressed, his successor in office being given the title Yovogan, ‘Chief of the White Men’, which then remained the normal title of the governors of Ouidah throughout the period of Dahomian rule. This title had existed in the Hueda kingdom earlier, but the office there had had purely commercial functions, dealing with the Europeans as traders; the ‘Chief of the White Men’ in Dahomey, in contrast, exercised political authority in Ouidah, including over the European forts.
Despite their defeat in 1743, the exiled Hueda also continued to pose a military threat. Later in the same year they raided the beach south of Ouidah, destroying the tents of European traders there; and at the beginning of 1744 there were rumours of a further attempt to reoccupy their homeland, although it is unclear whether in the event this took place.66 Subsequently, further raids were mounted on Ouidah by forces from Little Popo, presumably operating in support of the exiled Hueda; and the Dahomians in response progressively strengthened their garrison in the town. In August 1747 a party of ‘Blacks from Accra’ (referring evidently to Little Popo, which had been founded in the 1680s by refugees from Accra) raided the beach south of Ouidah, killing most of the Dahomian forces posted there, including their commander the Cakanacou, but was then beaten off by the main garrison from Ouidah. Shortly afterwards, on a report that Ashangmo himself was marching to attack the town, the Dahomians sent down ‘another General of War Cockavo’, with instructions ‘to remain here to protect this place’; and later in the year the garrison was further reinforced, when the king sent down ‘another General of War Joehena for this place and Bunjam, another General of War for the Beach’.67
Of the additional ‘generals’ mentioned, ‘Cockavo’ is evidently identical with ‘Caukaow’ or ‘Cakaow’, given later in the eighteenth century as the title of ‘the military officer who commands in Whydah’.68 In the nineteenth century this title is recorded in a shorter form, Kao, nowadays generally rendered locally in a French form, ‘Caho’.69 Dahomian tradition identifies the Caho as the general who commanded in Agaja’s conquest of Hueda in 1727;70 and local tradition in Ouidah also associates the appointment of the first Caho with the original Dahomian conquest.71 The wording of the contemporary report, however, implies that it was an office newly created, or at least newly assigned to Ouidah, in 1747. Initially, the Caho seems to have been posted to Ouidah on a seasonal basis, rather than residing there permanently, since the English fort records down to 1755 refer to him as recurrently ‘sent down to take care of the country’.72 But, in the longer run, the office became localized in Ouidah. Unlike the Cakanacou, the Caho resided in Ouidah itself; his encampment is shown in a map of 1776 as close to but separate from the town, to the north-west;73 the site is nowadays incorporated within the town, but still bears the name of Cahosaramè, ‘Caho’s quarter’. The significance of the appointment may have been not only reinforcement of the existing garrison at Ouidah, but also to remove operational command of it from the Yovogan. Of the officers sent to Ouidah later in 1747, the ‘Bunjam’ is referred to again in the following year, when the first holder of the title was replaced, and is then described more precisely as ‘2d General of War for the Beach’.74 This indicates that this officer served as deputy to the Cakanacou in command of the garrison at Zoungbodji; his appointment therefore presumably represented a strengthening of this garrison. ‘Bunjam’ in these documents is probably a miscopying of ‘Dunjam’, and represents the title Dognon, which is recalled in local tradition as that of the Cakanacou’s deputy.75 The third name ‘Joehena’, however, represents ‘Zoheino’, which is recorded later as the title of one of the four leading officers of the main Dahomian field army.76 His posting to Ouidah was evidently only temporary; in the following year, the Caho and the ‘Zoheino’ were summoned back to the capital, and the Caho alone (together with the replacement Dognan) returned to Ouidah.77
Although Dahomey was able to make peace with Oyo in 1748, at the price of becoming its tributary, fighting against the exiled Hueda, supported by Ashangmo of Little Popo, continued. In January 1752 the Hueda again raided the beach south of Ouidah, but were ‘repulsed’ by the local Dahomian garrison; and shortly afterwards ‘Aproga General of War’ was ‘sent down