Sieges of Oran and Mers El Kébir

Oran's harbour. Painting of 1613 by Vicente Mestre.

Date	April – June 1563
Location	Oran and Mers El Kébir, present-day Algeria
Result	Decisive Spanish victory

Belligerents

Spanish Empire

Regency of Algiers
Kingdom of Kuku

France

Commanders and leaders

Alonso de Córdoba
Martín de Córdoba
Francisco de Mendoza

Hasan Pasha
Jafar Catania

Strength

1,500 men,
90 guns

100,000 men,
30 galleys,
15 galliots and fustas,
5 carracks

Casualties and losses

unknown

heavy human losses,
5 galliots captured,
4 carracks captured

The sieges of Oran and Mers El Kébir took place between April and June 1563. Its a major attempt for the Regency of Algiers to regain Oran and Mers el Kébir, and a major episode of hispano-algerian conflict. The siege of 1563 can be replaced on the Ottoman-Habsburg struggle for the control of the Mediterranean. A huge army of combined forces of Algiers, Kabyle principalities (Kuku and Beni Abbes) and other vassal tribes under the command of Hasan Pasha, son of Hayreddin Barbarossa, and Jafar Catania, tried to conquer the Spanish-controlled strongholds of Oran and Mers El Kébir on the North African coast, defended respectively by Alonso de Córdoba, Count of Alcaudete, and his brother Martín de Córdoba. The stubborn defense of the Spanish and the arrival of a relief fleet under Francisco de Mendoza frustrated the Ottoman intentions.

After the conquest of Tripoli to the Knights of Malta by the Ottoman admiral Turgut Reis in 1551, and the fall of Bougie to the governor of Algiers, Salih Reis, in 1555, the towns of Oran and Mers El Kébir remained as the only Christian strongholds in Barbary, along with the island of La Goulette, which helped fight the Ottoman and Moorish pirates who constantly plundered and razed the coasts of Naples, Sicily and the Levant. An Ottoman fleet composed of 50 galleys under the command of the renegade Hasan Corso besieged both cities in the Siege of Oran in 1556, but the Sultan Suleiman ordered lift the siege to withdraw the galleys to serve in the Eastern Mediterranean, so both Mers El Kébir and Oran remained in Spanish hands despite the poor state of their defenses.

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Wikipedia