After two days and nights of incessant battle, in which men closed fiercely with pistols, swords, bayonets, and yataghans, the Sultan vanished with his force, leaving the French too exhausted and crippled by their losses for pursuit.  Two days later tidings reached them that he was in the Metidja, ravaging the plain and carrying terror to the very gates of Algiers.  Abd-el-Kader then bore away to the Atlas, ascended the mountains, penetrated beyond Tittery and reached the Sahara, everywhere inspiriting the tribes and raising fresh forces.  After sweeping over three hundred leagues of ground he returned, in recruited strength and new energy, to press upon Lamoriciere and his garrison at Mascara with all the rigors of a winter blockade.

In spite of his wonderful efforts, the Sultan could not but feel that he was struggling with adverse fortune.  The enemy by the seizure of his fixed establishments had gained possession of a large part of his territory and of the strongholds that had contained his stores of war.  His regular army had almost disappeared, and much of his credit among the Arabs had departed.  The ketna, which was his ancestral abode, had been laid waste.  He could not protect the families of his most faithful adherents from constant exposure, in spite of his vigilant activity, to the outrages of the detested infidels.  In this position, he resolved to remove from the scene of warfare those whom it was impossible for him to desert with any regard to feelings of religion and humanity.  He formed his famous smala, a new and remarkable organization consisting of a gathering of private families.  To this moving asylum of refuge and safety the Arab tribes sent their treasure, their herds, their women and children, their sick and aged persons.

The smala was a great travelling capital, containing at first more than twenty thousand souls, following the Sultan’s movements; sometimes in advance to the more cultivated regions, or in retreat to the Sahara, according to the fluctuations of the contest which he was so bravely waging.  In the Sahara, the tents of the smala spread to the distant horizon.  In the Tell, they filled the valley and rose up the slopes of the hills.  All the arrangements were of military regularity.  The different deiras, or households, with tents varying in number with their dwellers, were distributed into four great encampments.  Each deira knew its appointed place.  Each chief had his station marked and his special duties assigned.  Four tribes were set apart to protect and guide the smala in its wanderings, and the guard was composed of regular troops.  The existence of this organization, ever growing in extent, became a powerful check on the disaffection of the tribes.  When the French leaders tempted them with fair promises, the warriors bethought them of the pledges:  the women, the children, the flocks and herds, which were in the Sultan’s hands.  The genius of Abd-el-Kader had created a new and widely extended political engine.