Abdelkader had left Morocco after his defeat…
September 1845 CE
The encounter had been unplanned and poorly commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lucien de Montagnac, and went badly for the French troops.
After a first encounter, the French's numbers had been reduced from four hundred and fifty to eighty-two chasseurs and hussars against hundreds of Algerians (Abd-el-Qader's never massed more than about five hundred horsemen for pitched battle).
Cornered, the chasseurs of the carabinier company had taken refuge in a marabout, from which they had repulsed all assaults.
After a siege lasting many days, without food or water and short of munitions, they had been reduced to cutting up their musket balls in order to keep firing.
Emir Abdelkader had captured captain adjutant major Dutertre and had had him taken under guard to the front of the marabout to demand the chasseurs' surrender, but instead he used his time there to exhort the survivors to fight to the death, for which Abdelkader beheaded him.
Abdelkader then demanded that the French bugler sound the retreat, but he instead sounded the charge, while one chasseur replied to another of Abdelkader's other demands for their surrender with the word, Merde! (Shit) (in reference to Cambronne's answer at Waterloo).
When the remaining eighty survivors completely run out of munitions, they manage to break through the enemy lines with a bayonet charge, but only sixteen of them manage to rejoin the French lines (five of whom will die some days later).
Among the dead is Montagnac himself.
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