French Campaign on Algeria and the preparation to face it
1. Introduction:
Algeria's expanding dominance in the Mediterranean basin was driving the bloc of European countries against it, making it a target in European politics that had to be removed. This prompted European countries to raise the Algerian problem at their own conferences. It was explicitly stated in the Aix-La-Chapelle Conference in 1818 after being mentioned in the Vienna Conference. The location of Algeria at the time was enticing for Europeans, resulting in a rivalry among them as to who would get his share. After sinking the Algerian fleet in the Battle of Navarino, France was the first to conquer Algeria.
2- Franco-Algerian relations prior to the colonization:
The current Algerian state emerged around the beginning of the sixteenth century, and during the seventeenth century Algeria began to break away from the Ottoman Empire, eventually becoming totally independent of it. Its monarch was chosen by popular vote. The Algerian navy was able to expand its influence to the western side of the Mediterranean basin, thus imposing Algerian sovereignty on all European nations bordering the seas.
Especially in the Mediterranean basin, where they were subjected to taxes and levies simply for crossing the Mediterranean. As a result, several of them sought treaties and accords with Algeria. Algerian-French ties were established on this basis in 1561. France was supported during the French Revolution in 1789, when European regimes besieged the French Revolutionary government, which found no help except from the Algerian state, whose ruler agreed to provide it with assistance. This assistance consisted of loans without profits and supplies of Algerian wheat so that France would not suffer from famine. France, however, refused to pay its debts and therefore revolted, resulting in a significant conflict between the two nations that culminated in the Fly Whisk incident, then the naval blockade, and eventually the real occupation.
3- Reasons for occupation
Political Reasons:
The first of these reasons was France's desire for territorial claims, the most visible of which was the Kala fort, which France attempted to build as a rear base for it. Furthermore, the aspirations of the French rulers in Algeria, beginning with Louis XIV and ending with Napoleon Bonaparte, who pushed on the conquest of Algeria to eradicate the English presence in the Mediterranean basin. In 1802, he vowed to seize Algeria, demolish it, and humiliate its people in order to secure his ships in the Mediterranean basin. For this aim, the commander commissioned Bhutan in 1808 to spy on Algeria and set the occupation project in motion, but Napoleon failed to complete his goal owing to the exacerbation of his troubles on the European continent and his loss before the allied European countries in the Battle of Waterloo in 1814. However, during the reign of King Charles X, who took over the leadership of France in 1824, the royal family of the Bourbon line, which took over the affairs of France after the Vienna Conference in 1815, renewed the occupation idea within the framework of its political goals. He felt that launching a military war against Algeria would allow him to destroy his political opponents and absorb the French people's rage. In addition to blocking the way to Britain in the Mediterranean area, it invoked the Fly Whisk incident, which he regarded as political confrontation.
Religious Reasons:
France saw itself as the guardian of Catholicism, and victory over Algeria represented a victory for Christianity over the Islamic faith. This is what we learned from the words of the French commander Clermont Tonner when he imposed a blockade on the Algerian coast. He said the following: "The Providence intended that Your Majesty (the King)'s be raised powerfully in the person of your Consul by the fierce foes of Christianity. Perhaps our good fortune will help us propagate civility among the indigenous peoples and bring them to Christianity on this occasion." In addition to the description given by the French Campaign leader de Bourmont in the celebration set in La Casbah’s yard after the success where he says: “My Majesty, with this work (the invasion) you have made way for Christianity on the shores of Africa, and we wish only that this step is a beginning towards a flourishing civilization that has long left that estate”
These were the theological motives for France's fight against Algeria, and historians believed that France had opted to invade Algeria on this premise. And then developed plans, devised conspiracies, took the preparation, and sought for weak pretexts.
Economic reasons:
Due to Algeria's wealth in raw minerals, France sought to acquire the territory from its share as a colony in order to progress its economy. The latter is in desperate need of expansion and rejuvenation, in addition to giving significant sums and exporting its products that have accumulated without finding markets for their export, and General Peugeot, the father of the colonization in Algeria stated: Algeria would require industrial goods from France for a longer length of time, while Algeria could supply France with large amounts of raw materials required for industry.
The greedy French bourgeoisie, on the other hand, regarded the conquest of Algeria as a lucrative opportunity since it was a popular market for its commodities and a major provider of raw materials. In addition to bringing inexpensive labor, Algeria's soil is fertile and capable of producing, so the surplus population of Europe and France was channeled to agricultural growth.
4- Military Campaign against Algeria:
On June 16, 1827, France declared war on Algeria when Algeria's ruler, Dey Hussein, refused to apologize to the French authorities. Especially since the Algerian fleet, the protector of Algeria and Muslims in the Mediterranean basin, was decimated in the Battle of Navarino in Greece's Morea peninsula in 1827.
France sent the following military forces to invade Algeria:
36 thousand troops and four thousand cavalry, as well as ships filled with food, artillery, and military equipment for the campaign led by Count de Bourmont. Furthermore, this army had previously engaged in the most of Napoleon's conflicts on the European continent, giving him military experience and competence. The military operation began in Toulon and continued through the Spanish islands of the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Sidi Fredj. My father, Hussein Pasha, was informed of the campaign's progress through his spies until it reached Algeria, and 1870 guns were counted aboard the French fleet's ships.
5. Failure of the official resistance against the French forces:
The preparations for the military campaign in Algeria were very weak, as they were made up of volunteers of knights and foot soldiers with insufficient experience to face the occupying forces and no more than 30,000 recruits, including 9,000 knights. Artillery was almost non-existent, and on June 14, 1830, when the French armies arrived on the Algerian coast, the Algerian force tried to counter them and prevented them from descending by road on the beach of Sidi Fredj. The force was led by Dey Hussein's brother-in-law, Ibrahim Agha, who had no military experience, unlike the former commander Yahya Aga. On June 18, 1830, once the Algerian troops had been collected on a large plateau west of the capital, this ignorance of military matters underpinned the development of a poor strategy, namely an attack on the enemy's wings and a clash between peers. Al Hadj Ahmad Bay, governor of Constantine, politician, and military leader, also provided a military strategy in which the enemy forces should be crushed and their backs removed in order to cut off the military supplies of war and thus be extinguished once and for all.But Ibrahim Agha undermined the plan, mocked it and went along with it, disregarded it, ordered the advance of Algerian forces to confront the organized French forces that were waiting for him, and carried out a massive surprise attack against the Algerian forces and penetrated the Algerian front that was trying to prevent him from advancing to the capital and occupying it. In the context of Ibrahim Agha's weakness and mismanagement of his forces, the defeat opened the way for Count De Bourmont to move into the capital, Algeria and occupy it with little official resistance.
On July 5, 1830, he was able to impose the capitulation accord on Dey Hussein Pasha, allowing the enemy to capture the city and hoist the French flag on its towers and institutions.
He also did not follow the conditions of the contract and did not keep his promises, so he grabbed the Casbah riches and the treasury, which included more than 52 million gold francs, as well as removing the Algerian troops from the capital and stealing their property. After barely two years of occupation and the death of over two thousand worshipers within the mosque. They took over religious Hubous and converted the Ketchawa mosque into a church. The enemy artillery also demolished the capital's gates, including Bab al-oued, Bab Azzoun, and Bab al-Jazirah, as well as gardens, water channels, and orchards, and wrought havoc on the land, disfiguring the face of the capital.
