Against an adversary so mobile, so full of expedients and resource, mobility and incessantly offensive movements offered the only chance of success.  The French Commander knew that it was no mere army, but a people in arms, that he was to encounter.  His forces were at once organized in many small, compact columns, each composed of a few infantry battalions and two squadrons of horse, with a little transport train of mules and camels and two mountain howitzers.  Picked men alone, acclimatized and used to toil, were employed, and they carried nothing but their muskets and ammunition, with a little food.  These columns were placed under the command of such energetic leaders as Changarnier and Cavaignac, Canrobert and Pelissier, Bedeau and Lamoriciere, St. Arnaud and the Duc d’Aumale.

The campaign opened with the revictualling of Medea and Miliana, with great losses to the French, as Abd-el-Kader disputed every inch of the ground.  Bugeaud, personally operating in Oran, reached Tekedemt on May 25th, and found it deserted and in flames.  Boghar, Saida, and other fortresses were successively destroyed.  The enemies of the Sultan were paying a heavy price for success.  At the end of 1841 Bugeaud, out of sixty thousand men in the field, had only four thousand fit for duty.  The rest had perished or were invalided for the time, from the toil of marches, incessant fighting, and the heat of the climate.  The French Government’s proposals of peace, on certain terms, only confirmed Abd-el-Kader in his resolve to try the extremities of war.

Bugeaud’s main object was to establish permanent centres of action in the very heart of the Arab confederation of tribes, and, by rapidly consecutive expeditions radiating from these centres, to give his troops the ubiquity of Abd-el-Kader’s forces.  The chief seat of the Sultan’s power was the Province of Oran, and this was made the principal scene of operations.  Mascara was held by Lamoriciere, Tlemsen by Bedeau.  Changarnier was in observation on the western frontier of the plain of Algiers; Tittery was menaced by D’Aumale.  From Oran and Mostaganem three columns were sent forth against the tribes occupying the large expanse of territory lying between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean, and the tribes extending toward the Sahara.  The first force, headed by Bugeaud in person, marched along the valley of the Cheliff, and then joined the second column under Changarnier, coming from Blida.  The third body, under Lamoriciere, aimed at pushing Abd-el-Kader back to the south in order to separate him from the tribes assailed by Changarnier and Bugeaud.