Pierre Deval (diplomat)

Deval was a member of a family which provided dragomans to the French diplomatic services to the Ottoman Empire since 1716.

Hussein Dey, Algeria's Ottoman ruler, demanded that the French pay a 28-year-old debt, contracted in 1799 by purchasing supplies to feed the soldiers of the Napoleonic Campaign in Egypt.

[2] In the "Bacri-Busnach affair" in 1797 two Jewish traders of Algiers, Bacri and Busnach, had sold for 14 millions of wheat to the French Republic, which were never paid back.

Hussein Dey, whose predecessors had financed the deal and was now the creditor, had written to Louis XVIII, but in vain.

[3] Deval refused to give answers satisfactory to the dey, and in an outburst of anger, Hussein Dey waved his fan (fly whisk) at the consul, becoming known as the Fly Whisk Incident.