“Fly whisk accident” The story of ‘feather’ which cause Algeria was occupied

“Fly whisk accident” between the Turkish pasha Hussein Dey and the French consul Pierre Deval is the casus belli which provoked the maritime blockade of Algiers by the French royal navy in 1827.

France’s debts

In 1800, during Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt, two Jewish merchants, Busnach and Jacob Bacri, offered the Directory to supply the French army with wheat. The contract is signed and the dey of Algiers advances the money for the entire operation. The Management Board’s coffers are empty and payment is postponed. Once in power, Napoleon postpones the payment of his debts until the end of the war. Under the Restoration, the government of Louis XVIII reimbursed half of the sum, the other part being blocked in legal arbitration. Thirty years after the loan, in 1830, the dey of Algiers has still not been paid.

The diplomatic incident

Receiving the French consul Pierre Deval in audience on April 30, 1827, the dey asked him for the King of France’s response to three “friendly” letters he had written to him. The consul answering him that the king could not answer him, and adding, in the words of the dey, “outrageous words for the Dey, the latter hit him” two or three times with light blows of the fly-wiper “. So there was never a bellows or a fan, but a ready-made pretext to create a diplomatic incident which will be exploited by French diplomacy. With the dey refusing to apologize, the case is viewed by France as a casus belli, prompting the dispatch of a squadron to blockade the port of Algiers. Diplomatic escalation will lead to the Algiers expedition.

Ultimatum to the Dey of Algiers (June 1827)

In June 1827, the French government sent two missions to Algiers, the first was to evacuate consul Deval and all French nationals from Algiers, the second had to issue an ultimatum to the dey of Algiers. The evacuation mission was carried out on 11 June 1827 by the schooner La Torche, while Captain Collet, who arrived soon after on board La Provence, was at the head of a naval division in charge of the negotiation mission. With diplomatic relations between Paris and Algiers broken off, Sardinian consul Datili de la Tour acts as mediator by issuing a 24-hour ultimatum to the dey, the rejection of which would lead to the blockade and war in Algiers.