It involved French troupes coloniales, under captains Félix-Ariel d'Assigny (1794-1846) and Armand Joseph Bruat (1796-1855), who were captured by the resistance fighters of the town of Dellys in Kabylia of the Igawawen.

[1][2] On 29 April 1827, Pierre Deval, Consul General of the Kingdom of France, was hit with a fly whisk by Hussein Dey in the Casbah of Algiers, in what became known as the fly-whisk incident.

[3] France then evacuated its diplomatic staff from the city of Algiers in retaliation, and the French government of Jules de Polignac decided on 31 January 1830 to organize a naval military landing in Algeria under the high command of Admiral Emmanuel Halgan.

[2] On the night of 15 May 1830, Lieutenant Bruat, on Le Sylène, returned from the Port Mahon in the island of Menorca, bringing dispatches for the commander of the blockade forces of Victor de Bourmont concerning the fleet preparing for the landing of Algiers.

[16] The second option was to show no resistance to the Algerians living in the vicinity and to let the natives of lower Kabylia take them hostages and lead them and transport them to Algiers, where the consular and diplomatic intervention could save them from execution.

[21][22] The two crews had walked a kilometer along the road to Algiers on 16 May, passing the Issers plain and the Col des Beni Aïcha, when they were attacked by a large group of armed Kabyles, under the command of Ibrahim Agha.

[9] This long march through a foreign country was followed by the conduction of hostages during the fifth day of captivity, 20 May 1830, at the Bouberack river (Oued Amara) and handed over to the officers of Dey Hussein.

It was a frigate of the French fleet which had seen the two brigs stranded on the shore of Dellys, and it had fired its cannon shells in order to ward off the Kabyles from these wrecks and to protect the boats which it sent in reconnaissance.

The governor of Dellys then transferred the sailors and soldiers who had been spared and remained alive with their commanders Bruat and d'Assigny to Algiers so that Ibrahim Agha could decide their fate.

Lieutenant Bruat was also able to communicate to Admiral Guy-Victor Duperré a detailed and secret report of the observations of a military nature that he had made note of from the shipwreck of Dellys to the jails of Algiers.

[38][39] When the sailors from the Le Sylène and L'Aventure brigs saw the French soldiers arrive under the command of General Charles-Marie Denys de Damrémont (1783-1837), they received them in their prison as liberators.

[40][41] When King Charles X arrived on the La Provence vessel at the port of Algiers, his first care was to demand the release of the prisoners of Le Sylène and L'Aventure, which he then immediately had sent to France.