King Charles X has initiated the conquest…

King Charles X has initiated the conquest of Algeria as an attempt to increase his popularity among the French people, particularly in Paris, the home of many veterans of the Napoleonic conquests.

"Skirmishing against the dey” is intended to bolster patriotic sentiment while turning eyes away from his domestic policies.

On the other hand, the dey of Algiers itself is weak politically, economically, and militarily.

Algeria is currently part of the Barbary States, along with today's Morocco and Tunisia, which depend on the Ottoman Empire, then now by Mahmud II, but enjoy relative independence.

The Barbary Coast is the stronghold of the Barbary pirates, which have for decades carried out raids against European, and later American, ships.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British Navy which has maintained a blockade and put the Mediterranean Sea under military surveillance.

Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America had culminated in the First and Second Barbary War (1801-1805 and 1815).

The same year, an Anglo-Dutch expedition, led by Admiral Exmouth, had carried out a punitive expedition, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers.

The dey had been constrained to sign the Barbary treaties, while the technological advance of U.S., British and French armies had overwhelmed the pirates' expertise at naval warfare.

King Charles X had made Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, minister of war in 1829 and Marshal of France in 1830.

Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, de Bourmont lands twenty-seven kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch on June 14, 1830, with thirty-four thousand soldiers.

To face the French, the dey sends seven thousand janissaries, nineteen thousand troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about seventeen thousand Kabyles.

The French establish a strong beachhead and push toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization.

Taking the advantage on June 19 during the battle of Staoueli, ...