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Whenever the Sultan showed signs of obduracy. El Glaoui would summon Berber horsemen down from the hills to surround the Arab towns in ragged but menacing array. In 1951, Juin forced a showdown, demanding that the Sultan condemn the Istiqlal and fire all nationalists from the government. Berber horsemen headed for Rabat, and Juin had a plane waiting at the airport to carry Mohammed V to exile if he balked. Glumly, Mohammed V capitulated; he denounced "violence," but he refused to condemn the Istiqlal. To Juin, it was clear that Mohammed would have to go.
One day in the spring of 1953, old El Glaoui got into his Cadillac, began rounding up signatures demanding the Sultan's abdication. The Glaoui was armed with a photograph of the Sultan's lissome daughter Aisha in a one-piece bathing suit. How could Mohammed be Imam to his people when he allowed his daughter to expose herself in public, offending every right-thinking Moslem? Urged on by the French, back-country chiefs signed up, until El Glaoui had the signatures of 311 of Morocco's 323 caids. In a matter of days a crestfallen Sidi Mohammed was bundled onto a plane with his two wives, five children, and assorted veiled ladies of the court for exile in Corsica. El Glaoui briskly produced his replacement as Sultan—goateed Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa, a timid cousin of Sidi Mohammed's.
The Terror. Exile consolidated Mohammed's place in the hearts of his people as his presence never had (a process which the British seem doomed to repeat in Cyprus with Archbishop Makarios). Moroccan women began to see Mohammed's face in the full moon. Imams refused to say prayers in Cousin Moulay Arafa's name. The French did their best to discredit Mohammed, releasing a flood of stories of alleged collaboration with the Nazis, and hustled him even farther away, to Madagascar. Back in Morocco, anger swelled, and terrorism began. Trains were derailed, warehouses fired, boycotts of French goods organized. It became virtually a death sentence for an Arab to be caught smoking a French cigarette.
The French reacted with brutal ratissages, in which thousands of Moroccans were savagely beaten with clubs in the search for a handful of terrorists. Moroccans were thrown in jail simply for shouting the Sultan's name. French colons launched counterterror, shooting down Frenchmen suspected of sympathy with Moroccan aspirations.
The end came in a welter of blood in Morocco and political chaos in Paris. The Berbers rebelled against El Glaoui and his stooge Sultan, went on a major uprising in the Atlas Mountains. The last straw for the French came when El Glaoui himself drove into Rabat in his black Bentley and blandly declared: "I identify myself with the wish of the Moroccan nation for a prompt restoration of Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef."