First Battle of Boudouaou

The First Battle of Boudouaou in 25–26 May 1837, during the French conquest of Algeria, pitted the troupes coloniales under Colonel Maximilien Joseph Schauenburg against the troops of Kabylia of the Igawawen.

When Emir Abdelkader was preparing to negotiate a truce with the French invaders in 1837 in order to devote himself to building his Emirate which would then encircle the Casbah of Algiers, he then stepped up his attacks against agricultural farms and French military posts in Mitidja to balance the balance of power to its advantage.

He then set up his command center in Titteri mountain range and, from 8 May 1837, caused an insurrection of the Kabyles of the Khachna mountain range, the Beni Aïcha region and the Issers plain to the east of the rich plain of Mitidja.

This is how the attack on the Mercier farm in Réghaïa by the rebels commanded by Emir Mustapha, brother of Emir Abdelkader, was going to create an already fragile military shift between the French soldiers and the Kabyle rebels who had imposed themselves and content to reign east of the Oued Boudouaou [ar] since the fall of power in Algiers during 1830.

This attack was followed by looting and sacking of this agricultural farm overlooking the Kabyle country, and this upheaval at the gates of Algiers forced Governor General Charles-Marie Denys de Damrémont and his lieutenant General Alexandre Charles Perrégaux to undertake a military expedition on 17 May 1837. on the Beni Aïcha and the Issers to counter the allies of Emir Abdelkader and push them back towards the eastern shore of Oued Isser.

The bitter failure that Colonel Maximilien Joseph Schauenburg suffered during the expedition to the Col des Beni Aïcha during the day of 18 May 1837 because of the bad weather which had fallen on his military column in this spring season and because of its ignorance of the marshy and bushy terrain of the Beni Aïcha region around Meraldene River, dealt a terrible blow to the morale of the troupes coloniales engaged in the expedition, but also to the soldiers who had remained stationed in a military camp in the joint ownership of Boudouaou.

The Kabyles of Beni Aïcha under the direction of the marabout Cheikh Ali Boushaki had been reinforced and backed up by the reinforcements arrived from Laazib Zamoum under the direction of Cheikh Ben Zamoum, and who all together thwarted the expedition of Colonel Schauenburg who is then withdrawn in the haste and the rout towards the camp of Boudouaou to spare its troops of a programmed and imminent decimation.

When Colonel Schauenburg brought back from the Col des Beni Aïcha on 19 May 1837 his three thousand soldiers to the Boudouaou camp by a very strong sustained march to flee the Kabyles who were defending their land, they then found a supply convoy there to meet their food needs.