Marines love that part of the movie . . . although it never happened. John Milius got the gun stuff right, as he almost always does. (He's a serious gun nut.) But he tampered significantly with history. Roosevelt sent a fleet, but the only Marines to land were a handful who came ashore as reinforcements for the Consulate in Tangier. (Would've been a good idea if we'd done the same thing at Benghazi, a century later.) And Perdicaris was a 60+ year old man who didn't look a thing like Candice Bergen.
But the Raisuli was real enough, and fought an on again-off again war with the Spanish (who eventually occupied northern Morocco) and the sultan. In the 1920's, he came into conflict with another colorful Moroccan character: Mohammed ben Abd el Krim, who led the Rif Berbers in a revolt against Spanish occupation, known as the Rif War, that lasted for more than 5 years, and during which the Rifis defeated large Spanish forces on a couple occasions. In retrospect, the Raisuli's policy of using force when the enemy was weak and negotiating when the enemy was strong might have worked out better than Abd el Krim's all-out war with the Spanish (and eventually the French)--which ended in defeat and the occupation of the Rif.
Last edited by L. Brown; 05/24/15 09:51 AM.
