We are in 1830.
The Bourbon Dynasty has been restored for more than a decade now following the downfall
of Napoleon, and France is on the brink of yet another revolution.
The King of France knows his people are angry but in no way quells his efforts to increase
absolutism.
Instead, he has a plan to distract them.
This is the story of how pirates, unpaid debt and an unpopular king led to the invasion
of Algeria.
This is the story of the French Conquest of Algeria.
This video is part of a multi-channel collaboration called “Project Africa”!
We hoped to shed a light on the often-overlooked history of the continent of Africa so if you
enjoyed this video and wish to learn more, then make sure to check out the playlist in
the description.
In the beginning of the 18th Century, the might of the Ottomans, that had once threatened
the very core of the Christian world, was long gone and the empire had started its slow
decline into becoming the “sick man of Europe.”
And while it still held some influence in Northern Africa, the towns of Algiers, Tunis
and Tripoli had long become independent in all but name.
Without a large, centralized authority, the Berber pirates, which used these towns as
bases for their raids, had gained a significant amount of influence.
As a result, a wave of slavery and terror had spread throughout the Christian world
as towns from Italy to the Netherlands, and even Iceland, were raided by these pirates.
And while these number are still highly debated today, it is estimated that between the 16th
and 19th century, up to 1.25 million Europeans were captured and sold as slaves by these
Barbary pirates.
As such, it’s understandable why in 1830, France felt compelled to put an end to the
practice once and for all.
And you would be excused if you believed that this was their true intentions.
But by then, the Berber pirates had suffered a couple of harsh defeats in the hands of
the Americans and then the British and Dutch, which lead to a drastic reduction in their
activities.
Furthermore, the ruler of the regency of Algiers, known as the “Dey of Algiers”, had agreed
to no longer allow the trade of Christian slaves more than a decade prior.
And so, you start to realize that France’s intentions were much more flimsy.
You see, the King of France, Charles X, was facing stronger and stronger opposition by
the Chamber of Deputies for what they perceived as a shift towards conservatism after he appointed
the Prince de Polignac as his prime minister.
It’s important to note here that Charles X’s older brother had been guillotined less
than forty years ago.
In an attempt to keep his head on his shoulders while still strengthening his royal power,
he decided to distract his people with conquest.
And what better place to conquer than the evil pirates that have been enslaving Christians
for centuries?
The fan affair of 1827 became a convenient excuse to do just that.
Indeed, in 1789, the newly formed French Republic had bought on credit a large amount of wheat
from merchants in Algiers in order to support Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign in Egypt.
However, now, France was no longer a Republic and so, Charles X didn’t feel the need to
pay those merchants back.
The fact that they were Jewish probably didn’t help either.
These merchants were guaranteed by the Dey of Algiers himself, and so the Dey put further
and further pressure on France to pay them.
The French sent a diplomat, Pierre Duval, to negotiate with the Dey but that brought
them nowhere and in April 1827, during a heated debate, the Dey struck Deval with his fly-whisk,
then known as a fan, hence the fan affair of 1827.
France’s adequate, and definitely not overblown, response was to initiate a blockade against
Algiers, which did nothing more than slight French merchants who could no longer trade
while Barbary Pirates were still able to smuggle goods to the city.
Finally, in 1830, after the Dey had directed cannon fire towards the ship of a French ambassador
but mostly, seeing the growing discontentment of his people towards his rule, Charles X
decided that stronger actions were required and decided to order the conquest of Algiers.
On May 16th, 1830, Admiral Duperré at the head of a fleet of 600 ships left the port
of Toulon and headed towards Algeria.
A month later, General de Bourmont landed with his 34,000 men at the town of Sidi Fredj,
20km West of Algiers.
And while the Dey was able to raise an army 45,000 strong, he over estimated his strength
and ended up using only half of them.
Furthermore, his troops were less organized and poorly equipped compared to their French
counterparts.
Needless to say, the invasion didn’t take long and the Dey surrendered the city on July
5th and fled to exile in Naples.
In less than a month, France had ended the 300 years long rule of the Ottomans over the
city.
Charles X learned about his victory four days later.
The great and quick victory that he had hoped for did indeed occur, and as he had hoped
for, the victory was wildly popular among his people.
What he didn’t expect though was to end up deposed less than two weeks later following
a swift revolution known as the July Revolution.
Ironically, the revolution was only so swift because the troops that usually defended Paris
were busy taking over Algiers.
And so, it was his successor, Louis-Philippe 1er, that ended up reaping the rewards of
this conquest, bolstering his already wild popularity as he was known as the “Citizen
King”.
So much so that despite the anti-colonial sentiments of the now Liberal government,
one couldn’t really overlook the popularity boost it brought them, the definite ending
of piracy in the region and above all, the 55 million francs they had gained through
the plunder of Algiers.
But while the conquest of Algiers was a relatively easy task, colonizing and pacifying the whole
of Algeria would soon become an arduous and bloody undertaking.
From the get-go, France antagonized the local population through the sacking of Algiers
despite promises of protecting the liberties, properties and religious freedoms of the inhabitants.
Anti-colonial resistance was only further strengthened by the expulsion of all remnants
of Turkish authority, which created a power vacuum in which France’s strongest opposition
would quickly arise.
An opposition they would have to deal with for the next century.
Following the July Revolution, General de Bourmont attempted to sail back to France
in order to put Charles X back on the throne but his soldiers, as well as Admiral Duperré,
refused to do so, and De Bourmont fled to exile to be replaced by General Clauzel.
From there, France started a campaign of restrained occupation that was limited to the coastline
as they were harassed by the local Arab and Berber tribes whenever they tried to push
inland.
An early example of this is was when Clauzel took over the town of Médéa,
which quickly ended in a forced retreat following constant harassment by the Kabyle, a local
Berber tribe, and uprisings by the town’s people.
Less than a year later, the Kabyle were once more able to harass the French troops into
retreating and were so successful in doing so, that the French fled back to Algiers in
a disorderly panic.
Their victory fanned the flames of resistance, which lead to numerous attacks against colonial
settlements in the following months.
However, by then, France had a large financial interest in expanding into Algeria as they
had subsidized European settlements in the region, especially in the soil-rich plain
of Mitidja, and started to develop their colonial presence by building a local administration
and recruiting Zouaves, native auxiliaries to the French forces.
And so, France couldn’t afford to stop expanding and after a series of appointed and quickly
dismissed generals, Louis-Philippe finally appointed the Duke of Rovigo at the end of
1831.
With him, France was able to retake the towns of Bône and Bougie, towns which General Clauzel
had lost due to local Berber resistance.
However, his methods were brutal.
Too brutal, and so he was replaced in 1833 by the Baron of Voirol, who successfully established
French occupation in Oran.
Finally, on June 22nd, 1834, France formerly annexed the occupied areas of Algeria, which
held two million people, or two-thirds of Algeria’s population back then.
That same year, Voirol was replaced by the General Drouet d’Erlon, who was made the
first governor of French Algeria with the task of dealing with a rising new threat,
Abdelkader.
You see, while the Dey of Algiers and his governors, known as Beys, controlled the coastline
and major cities of Algeria, the inlands were largely ruled by tribal elders and nobles.
One of these nobles was the then twenty-five years old Abdelkader, who was elected Emir
in 1832 in order to lead a jihad against the French invaders.
It’s with this title that Abdelkader was able to sign a peace treaty with France which
gave him control over the entire province of Oran.
The prestige and time that the peace brought him allowed him to strengthen his influence
with the numerous tribes of Algeria.
This quickly made him a great threat to French hegemony over the region but d’Erlon did
little to stop him.
Finally, in 1835, following some altercations with the French over the allegiance of certain
tribes, Abdelkader ejected the French consul from the town of Mascara, which was a de facto
declaration of war.
The French and Abdelkader had a couple of bloody but indecisive battles but eventually,
the French were forced to retreat as they didn’t have enough supplies.
During their retreat, Abdelkader attacked them with 20,000 men and successfully routed
them at the Battle of Macta, which led to the dismissal of d’Erlon and the reappointment
of Clauzel.
Clauzel immediately attempted to counter these successes by leading an attack against Mascara,
but Abdelkader had already escaped.
In 1836, Clauzel occupied Tlemcen, left a small garrison and decided to retreat with
the remaining troops to focus on taking Constantine, which would end up being yet another disastrous
defeat.
However, Abdelkader kept harassing the French troops in Tlemcen and so General Bugeaud,
a Napoleon veteran who was used to fighting unconventional wars, was sent to reinforce
the garrison.
There, he decisively defeated Abdelkader in the Battle of Sikkak, which forced him to
limit Algerian resistance to guerilla tactics from now on.
On October 1837, France finally took over Constantine.
Sure, the town was strategically important as it was one of the biggest cities in Algeria
and its Bey had offered staunch resistance against the French, but above all, King Louis-Philippe
was hoping that the victory would give him enough popular support to dissolve the
Chamber of Deputies.
And at this point, you come to realize that the French conquest of Algeria was more driven
by politics than anything else really.
Despite France’s victory at Constantine, Abdelkader’s guerilla tactics were inflicting
severe losses on France and so, on May 1837, Bugeaud signed the treaty of Tafna, which
recognized Abdelkader’s control over much of the interior of Algeria.
Once more, this further bolstered his influence with the local tribes and when France broke
the treaty in late 1839 by marching through a mountain gorge known as the Iron Gates,
Abdelkader used this as an excuse to renew calls for jihad.
However, by then, the French were no longer messing around and had adopted harsher and
more effective tactics implemented by General Bugeaud, who had now been appointed as governor
of French Algeria.
These tactics took much from Abdelkader’s own guerilla tactics with an added bonus,
a brutal scorched earth policy, which devastated the Algerian population.
As Bugeaud described, "we fire little gunshot, we burn all douars, all villages, all huts;
the enemy flees across taking his flock."
Colonel Montagnac perhaps summarized it best by stating that the purpose of pacification
was to "destroy everything that crawl at our feet like dogs."
Entire Algerian tribes were, at best, forcefully deported to other places, sometimes as far
as Guyana, and at worst entirely massacred as what happened to the Ouled Rhia tribe in
June 1845.
To avoid the brutality of the French army, the 760 people strong tribe had taken refuge
in the cave of Dahra.
To smoke them out, Colonel Aimable Pélissier ordered the construction of a large wooden
pyre at the entrance of the cave, which burnt throughout the night.
The following morning, they found out that all 760 men, women and child as well as their
livestock had died.
When asked about it, Pélissier replied, "the skin of one of my drums have more value than
these 760 people.”
Eventually, he became a Marshall of France, the highest rank in French military, but not
before his army massacred 2,300 Algerians, or two-third of the city of Laghouat, following
its capture in 1852.
Following his trip to Algeria, French Philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who once favored the
conquest of Algeria, harshly criticized France’s brutality by writing, “We make war in a
much more barbaric manner than the Arabs themselves… it’s on their side that one finds civilization.”
In total, the French conquest of Algeria, along with the diseases and famines it brought,
killed an estimated 15% to 30% of the Algerian population.
The French themselves paid a heavy price as their losses, both civilian and military,
neared half a million.
Eventually, Abdelkader was forced to flee to Morocco in the face of growing French involvement
in the region as French troops now amounted 160,000.
After a Franco-Moroccan war that lasted less than a dozen days, the Sultan of Morocco outlawed
Abdelkader from his entire kingdom and ultimately, he was forced to surrender in 1847.
Despite being promised that he could enter exile in the Middle East after he surrendered,
France held him captive until 1852 before letting him to go to Damascus.
There, Abdelkader kept fighting for human rights and without any resentment to the Christian
nations that had destroyed his homeland, he saved the lives of thousands of Christians
during the anti-Christian riots of 1860, which had killed 3,000 Christians until then.
The act gained him recognition worldwide, including in France where he received la Légion
D’honneur, the highest distinction in France.
But that didn’t stop France from continuing their expansion of French Algeria and despite
several revolts, including the Mokrani Revolt of 1871, where 250 tribes rose against French
rule with an army 200,000 strong, the French kept repressing the locals and pushing on
and eventually, in 1903, France had finally pacified the region.
Algeria would only gain its independence almost sixty years later in 1962, but that’s a story for another day.
I hope you enjoyed this video my friends.
If you did, then I’m sure you will also love VC3’s great video on the Scramble for
Africa as well Ghipoli’s brilliant video on Liberia, America’s colony in Africa!
I promise that they’re worth checking out.
As usual, every link is in the description.