Siege of Laghouat 1852
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 21 November 1852 – 4 December 1852 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1852 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Location | Algeria | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Africa | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | pacification of Algeria | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 33.8000, 2.8833 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Laghouat was an episode of the French pacification of Algeria. General Aimable Pélissier commanding an army of 6,000, besieged the city of Laghouat from 21 November until 4 December 1852, when the city capitulated. The brutal treatment of the inhabitants was part of the scorched earth tactic of the French army and one of the first instances of recorded use of chemical weapons on civilians.
The storming of Laghouat turned quickly into several days of massacres to punish the population that was treated as combating enemies. The battle also witness the several deaths on the French side including that of general Bouscaren, that added to the fervor of the French soldiers to want to take revenge on the population setting an example for other towns and cities throughout the south of Algeria. About two thirds (2,500 to 3,000 out of a total of 4,500 inhabitants remaining in the besieged city) including women and children were massacred.
The massacre left a deep trauma in the Laghouati population that endures to this day. The year when the city was emptied of its population is still known to the inhabitants of Laghouat as "the year of the Khalya", meaning "emptiness" in Arabic.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Laghouat (revision 1380323743), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Browse more: battles in Algeria · Africa · 19th century battles