Algeria, French conquest of (1830-57). In 1827 the dey of Algiers struck the French consul round the face with a fly-whisk. The dey ruled a small unstable state: half of his 28 predecessors were said to have met violent ends. He, like the neighbouring rulers of Constantine, Oran, and Medea, were nominally subject to Turkey, but the activities of pirates on the North African coast had already provoked European and American intervention. Inland, the deys had no authority over the proud and warlike Berber tribesmen. Not only were French merchants heavily involved in trade with Algiers, but the government of Charles X scented an opportunity to gain domestic popularity by foreign adventure, and in June 1830 a French expeditionary force landed at Sidi Ferruch, marched on Algiers, and took it a week later. This success did little for Charles X, who abdicated on 2 August.
As the French moved inland they were fiercely opposed by the tribes, and Abd al-Qadir, emir of Mascara, led three major risings. In 1836 Gen Thomas Bugeaud was sent to command in Algeria, and the success of the French campaign owed much to his efforts. In 1844 he defeated Abd al-Qadir's Moroccan allies at Isly, though the emir himself did not capitulate until 1847. Bugeaud lightened the equipment of his troops, forming ‘flying columns’ which pushed deep into the hinterland under able subordinates like Cavaignac, Changarnier, and Lamoricière.
If resistance to invasion was weakened by factionalism, it was nonetheless determined. In 1836 a French assault on Constantine was beaten off, and the following year the city fell only after a week of bitter house-to-house fighting and the death of Gen Damrémont, the French commander. It was a vicious war, and French methods could be brutal. Razzia (raids) and pillage were standard tactics, and Pélissier, one of the heroes of the conquest, asphyxiated some 600 civilians who had taken refuge in a cave. Yet Bugeaud was as much pacifier as conqueror. He used public works to help reconcile the tribes he had beaten, and the raising of local units, forerunners of French African troops like spahis and Zouaves, who were to distinguish themselves on many battlefields, helped provide warlike men with a martial outlet. White colonists, many of them ex-soldiers, moved in behind the fighting: there were 109, 000 of them by 1847. The whole of Algeria was not physically occupied until 1857, and complete pacification was not achieved before 1881.
— Richard Holmes
