Editing Algerian War (section)

=== Pieds-noirs ===
[[File:Commando de chasse V66 du 4me Zouaves.jpg|thumb|[[Commandos de Chasse]] of the 4th [[Zouave]] regiment. Zouave regiments were mostly composed of European settlers.]]
''Pied-noir'' (literally "black foot") is a term used to name the European-descended population (mostly [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic]]), who had resided in Algeria for generations; it is sometimes used to include the indigenous [[Maghrebi Jewish]] population as well, which likewise emigrated after 1962. Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy and [[Malta]]), starting in 1830. The Jews arrived in several waves, some coming as early as 600&nbsp;BC and during the Roman period, known as the [[Maghrebi Jews]] or Berber Jews. The Maghrebi Jewish population was outnumbered by the Sephardic Jews, who were driven out of Spain in 1492, and was further strengthened by Marrano refugees from the [[Spanish Inquisition]] through the 16th century. Algerian Jews largely embraced French citizenship after the [[décret Crémieux]] in 1871.

In 1959, the ''pieds-noirs'' numbered 1,025,000 (85% of European Christian descent, and 15% were made up of the indigenous Algerian population of [[Maghrebi Jewish|Maghrebi]] and Sephardi Jewish descent), and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them fled, the first third prior to the referendum, in the largest relocation of population to Europe since the Second World War. A motto used in the FLN message to the pieds-noirs was "a suitcase or a coffin" ("''La valise ou le cercueil''"), repurposing a slogan first coined years earlier by ''pied-noir'' "ultras" when rallying the European community to their hardcore line.

The French government claimed not to have anticipated such a massive exodus; it estimated that a maximum of 250–300,000 might enter metropolitan France temporarily. Nothing was planned for their move to France, and many had to sleep in the streets or abandoned farms on their arrival. A minority of departing ''pieds-noirs'', including soldiers, destroyed their property before departure, to protest and as a desperate symbolic attempt to leave no trace of over a century of European presence, but the vast majority of their goods and houses were left intact and abandoned. A large number of panicked people camped for weeks on the docks of Algerian harbors, waiting for a space on a boat to France. About 100,000 ''pieds-noirs'' chose to remain, but most of those gradually left in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily due to residual hostility against them, including machine-gunning of public places in [[Oran]].<ref name="ina">{{cite web|url=http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&from=fulltext&full=pied+noir&datedif_annee1=1962&num_notice=2&total_notices=36|publisher=ina.fr|title=Alger Panse Ses Plaies|access-date=2017-01-13|archive-date=19 April 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070419233350/http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&from=fulltext&full=pied+noir&datedif_annee1=1962&num_notice=2&total_notices=36|url-status=live}}</ref>