King Louis XIV sought to have the French flag respected in the Mediterranean, to preserve the economic advantages already obtained, and to play the role of "Most Christian King" (Rex Christianissimus) against Islamic powers, while seeing to the maintaining the French alliance with the Sublime Porte.

[1] France tried to settle the question of the Bastion, and the Spaniards of Oran tried to occupy Tlemcen and the English fleet threatened Algiers.

[2] In October 1680, Barbary pirates captured a number of French vessels, without declaration of war,[3] and took the captains and crews to Algiers as slaves.

[8] The French fleet succeeded in inflicting serious damage on the port and city of Algiers, without suffering any major losses itself, and it forced the Dey to sue for peace.

During the French bombardments which followed, in 1683, 1684 and 1688, Duquesne and then Tourville, would force the Dey to free all the Christians he held in slavery, but they did not succeed in ending the corsair war waged by the Regency of Algiers against European merchant vessels in the Mediterranean.

The Jews of Marseilles were suspected of passing warnings to their co-religionists in Algiers about the impending French assault, and this led to their being temporarily expelled from the city.

[11] Before a peace treaty could be signed though, Baba Hassan was deposed and killed by a Raïs called Mezzo Morto Hüseyin.

Mezzomorto threatened, if the firing did not cease, to put the Christian captives at the mouths of the cannons, still the bombardments continued.

[11] The Algerians replied to the bombs hurled at their city by tying the French consul, Jean Le Vacher, to the mouth of a cannon.

[16][11] The new Dey, Mezzo Morto Hüseyin Pasha agreed to free another 546 captives,[17][14] but refused to sign a peace agreement with Duquesne, who was then 79 years of age, so Louis XIV sent another envoy, Anne Hilarion de Tourville, to treat with him.

Hadj Mezzomorto killed more than forty Christians by cannon and the French responded by executing Muslim hostages on board.

[29] The new Dey sent a plenipotentiary to Versailles; Stadtholder of the United Provinces William of Orange who was Louis XIV's most bitter personal enemy.