The History of the Mazagran
How a battle in Algeria brought an iconic cup, and iced coffee, to France
Ever wonder what those distinctive cups are called?
In 1840, a small skirmish in the 17-year long French conquest of Algeria became memorialized as The Battle of Mazagran.
The story goes a French contingent of 132 soldiers, holed up in a fortification at the town of Mazagran and facing a siege by several thousand Algerians, was running out of gunpowder an…