Having captured the strategic town of Khénifra earlier in the year, the French, under General Hubert Lyautey, entered negotiations with Mouha ou Hammou Zayani, who led the Zaian.

The Zaian War lasted until 1921 when negotiations secured the submission of much of the confederation to French rule and a military offensive pushed the remainder into the High Atlas mountains.

[5] Resident General Louis-Hubert Lyautey served as the head of government and one of his main aims was to secure the "Taza corridor" in the Middle Atlas mountains linking Tunis to the Moroccan Atlantic coast.

[12] July saw increasing attacks on Laverdure's command and the outbreak of the First World War which significantly reduced the number of French forces based in Morocco.

[13] Lyautey was determined to hold Khénifra to use as a bridgehead for further expansion of French territory and referred to it as a bastion against the "hostile Berber masses" upon which the "maintenance of [his] occupation" depended.

[10] Successfully repulsing additional attacks on Khénifra, Henrys thought he had the upper hand, having proven that the reduced French forces could resist the tribesmen.

[14] The Zaian were now contained within a triangle formed by the Oum er Rbia, the Serrou river and the Atlas mountains and were already in dispute with neighbouring tribes over the best wintering land.

[15] He was instead ordered to keep to the French bank of the Oum er Rbia and had permission only to send troops out for convoy protection, wood gathering and road building.

[15] This was followed up by a cavalry charge which cleared the camp but was halted by a group of tribesmen who had rallied on a hilltop to the south and inflicted "numerous losses" on the horsemen.

[15][16] Urged on by the shrieking of their womenfolk, all of them, even any who before may have been somewhat hesitant, appear all round the horizon; onward, through the rain of machine-gun fire and shells they rush, wedging in and out through the underbrush and rocks until they are right up onto the French units already hampered by having to carry their dead, whom they must preserve from mutilation, and their wounded whom they must save.

[2][19] Hammou's nephew, Moha ou Akka, led a force of several thousand tribesmen around the French to cut off their route back to Khénifra.

[2] The Zaian assembled on the ridges surrounding the remaining French troops, who had formed a defensive square, before launching a final attack with "several thousand" men.

[24] The disaster left Captain Pierre Kroll as the senior officer of the remnants of the Khénifra garrison, some three companies of tirailleurs (one of which was an ad hoc unit made up from the partially equipped and badly shaken survivors of the battle).

[18] Henrys left Fez for Meknes from which he telegraphed Lyautey promising to "strike hard and fast" so that the "Laverdure disaster" did not threaten the French position in Morocco.

[1] Another part of the Khénifra relief force was the 6th battalion of the 2nd French Foreign Legion who marched from Mrirt and saw action at El Hammam and along the Oum er Rbia.

[1] Henrys observed the field of battle and ordered the burial of the French dead, finding many stripped of their clothing and some mutilated or decapitated by post-mortem dagger wounds.

[20][23] Although French forces subsequently fought several successful actions against the Zaian and recovered the captured weapons, El Herri showed that they could be beaten.

[27] The battle, along with the siding of the Ottoman Empire with the Central Powers in the First World War and slow French progress on the Western Front, led to increasing numbers of recruits for Hammou.

[29] Subsequent victories in the Middle Atlas restored the French image of superiority in force and led to increasing submissions and the withdrawal of the Zaian deeper into the mountains.

[33] Lyautey stated, in a letter to Minister of War Alexandre Millerand, that Laverdure, had he not died on the field, would have deserved "the most severe punishment" at the hands of a military tribunal.

[34] This school of thought was critical of Lyautey's campaign of negotiation backed up by the threat of military power, arguing that it cost too many casualties and that a bolder commander should be appointed instead.

[17][34] Lyautey believed that he had to constantly oppose this mindset, concluding that officers advocating it were "self-satisfied with its infallibility and convinced of the pitiful inferiority of those who do not submit to it blindly".