The real and decisive struggle began early in 1841. The right man was at last found by the French to deal with the hitherto indomitable Sultan of Tittery and Oran. The Government at Paris had begun in some sort to understand the power of their formidable adversary, and a serious effort was to be made. On February 22, 1841, General Bugeaud assumed office as Governor-General of Algeria. He had now come, not in the mood and with the policy of the day when he concluded the Treaty of the Tafna, but as one whose task it was to crush every rival power in Algeria. For this end, eighty-five thousand men were placed under his command. Thomas Bugeaud was a man of great ability, and he has the credit of devising the only method by which such an antagonist as Abd-el-Kader, in such a country, could be subdued. Against an adversary so mobile, so full of expedients and resource, mobility and incessantly offensive movements offered the only chance of success. The French Commander knew that it was no mere army, but a people in arms, that he was to encounter. His forces were at once organized in many small, compact columns, each composed of a few infantry battalions and two squadrons of horse, with a little transport train of mules and camels and two mountain howitzers. Picked men alone, acclimatized and used to toil, were employed, and they carried nothing but their muskets and ammunition, with a little food. These columns were placed under the command of such energetic leaders as Changarnier and Cavaignac, Canrobert and Pélissier, Bedeau and Lamoricière, St. Arnaud and the Duc d'Aumale. The campaign opened with the revictualling of Medea and Miliana, with great losses to the French, as Abd-el-Kader disputed every inch of the ground. Bugeaud, personally operating in Oran, reached Tekedemt on May 25th, and found it deserted and in flames. Boghar, Saida, and other fortresses were successively destroyed. The enemies of the Sultan were paying a heavy price for success. At the end of 1841 Bugeaud, out of sixty thousand men in the field, had only four thousand fit for duty. The rest had perished or were invalided for the time, from the toil of marches, incessant fighting, and the heat of the climate. The French Government's proposals of peace, on certain terms, only confirmed Abd-el-Kader in his resolve to try the extremities of war.