on an honorable task of Christian civilization in those lands, are for her a matter of influence and illustration that it is imperative to keep intact, for that patronage and the salutary action of those missions, by accustoming the populations to look upon France as the source of the benefit and comfort that come from the West, can only plant seeds that will favor our political designs in future eventualities [my italics].
At the same time the French minister was enjoining his diplomats on the ground to preserve “as much as possible” the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and to give to the Porte “advice in conformity with a provident and generous friendship.”11
However, the latitude of the French government to pressure the Ottoman government on the Mount Lebanon issue was constrained by the often conflicting interests of the other European countries—especially Great Britain, who imposed itself as the patron of the Druzes in the Mountain—the net refusal of the Ottoman government to consider French proposals, as well as the limits of France's protectorate of the Catholics, which in no way entitled it to press for the adoption of a special political status for the Maronites in Mount Lebanon.12
Guizot's cautious and ambiguous stance did not, moreover, satisfy the vocal Catholic and legitimist opposition in France who, along with some liberal and republican politicians and publicists, advocated a more forceful policy to support the Maronites in Mount Lebanon, while at the same time advancing French international position and interests.13 Their stances were inspired by a Romantic enthusiasm, fostered by a wave of religious revival and a fascination with the Middle Ages and the Crusades that followed the restoration of the monarchy in 1815. They were also animated by news of the conflict in the Lebanese Mountain that accompanied the reestablishment of Ottoman rule and by exaggerated and at times fanciful Maronite petitions emphasizing their trials at the hands of the Druzes and the Ottomans. Throughout the 1840s, the Catholic, legitimist, and liberal opposition mounted a sustained campaign in favor of the Maronites and repeatedly criticized the policy of the government in the press and in the Parliament, where they advocated stronger French support by diplomatic, and even military, means for the Maronites in Mount Lebanon.
In one stormy parliamentary debate on the Lebanese question in 1847, for instance, sparked off by a set of Maronite petitions from the mixed districts presented by a Maronite priest, Father Jean ‘Azar, and which presented a dramatic account of the exaggerated misfortunes of Maronites, the Catholic opposition once more pressed the government for some firm French action in line with France's “secular right” to protect the Catholics of the Ottoman Empire, which they felt entitled, and indeed obligated, France to support the Maronites. “Would you renounce an ancient policy espoused by every French ruler from Charlemagne to Napoleon, including Saint Louis, Francis I, Henry IV and Louis XIV? . . . You are retreating from the protection of Lebanon's Christians, who might ask you for a single ship and a few hundred sailors!” asked the Catholic and legitimist deputy, Comte de Quatrebarbes, addressing his peers before vehemently adding: “No, you will not want the only Christian people that for eight centuries has remained independent and free in the midst of the Ottoman Empire, in the very cradle of Christianity, in the places where one cannot take a step without treading on French bones—no, you will not want that people to vanish. Sooner or later, you will force the powers that be to protect them.”14
Another eloquent exponent of the Maronite cause was the French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine, who as early as 1835 advocated the emancipation of the diverse nations of the Ottoman Empire from a decaying Ottoman Empire “in the name of humanity and civilization.” For him, the dislocation of Ottoman Empire was inevitable, and sooner or later the diverse populations and nations it was oppressing would replace it. Europe, and more specifically France, had a central role to play in the emancipation of these oppressed nations and their guidance on the path of civilization. In this mission civilisatrice aiming at regenerating the East, Europe could rely on the various Christian populations, and France could rely especially on the Maronites, “one of the finest, purest, and most bellicose people on whom France can, someday, depend to bring part of the Orient under its legitimate influence.” Lamartine repeatedly urged the French government to adopt a more assertive policy to support the “unfortunate” Maronites, who were subjected, since the demise of Emir Bashir II in 1840, to a campaign of “annihilation, oppression and devastation.”15
The repeated interpellations of the French opposition did not, however, perturb Guizot, who tried as best as he could to dampen their enthusiasm and who reminded his critics of the confines of the French protectorate of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire and the limits of French influence and authority on the Lebanese question: “We should not believe that our Capitulations have granted us in the Ottoman Empire sovereignty rights; we should not believe that they have granted us the right to decide on the administration of these provinces. Nothing of the kind had ever been written, or claimed or practiced. The Porte has remained and remains today sovereign over the populations, even the Catholics among them, that we protect; The Porte has never ceased one instant to exercise over them the rights of sovereignty.” The help and assistance that traditions entitled France to lend to the Maronites, added the French minister of foreign affairs, “stemmed not by virtue of a special and direct right of protectorate but by way of influence and in a way of recommendation.”16 Nevertheless, the French minister decided to dispatch, in response to his critics, a commission of inquiry, presided by the Comte de Lallemand, attaché at the French embassy in Istanbul, and Eugène Borée, an eminent Orientalist close to the French Catholic circles who maintained tight relations with the Lazarists he eventually joined, to investigate the situation in Lebanon. The commission toured the Mountain and presented a report that vindicated the conciliatory Lebanese policy of Guizot and tempered for a while the ardor of the French opposition on the Lebanese issue.17
The subtleties of the French official position with regard to Lebanon were not clearly discerned by the Patriarch and the Maronite clergy. In their opinion, as the Patriarch put it, their cause was just, and it was only natural that Catholic France should uphold and back their aspirations. The sudden celerity of the French officials to defend their cause and support them materially and politically as of 1841 only reinforced their conviction. This misguided appreciation of the French stance by Maronites clerical circles enhanced their expectations and confirmed their determination to obtain the confirmation of the rule of a Maronite governor.
The Patriarch and clergy's misreading of the French official position was also influenced by the stance of French Catholic, legitimist, and liberal opposition, whose views were beginning to filter through to the Maronite clergy by way of missionaries, travelers, and French residents. Their views, directly and indirectly, fanned the aspirations of the Maronite Church. A sort of mirror game was established between some clerical Maronite circles and these French groups whereby an idea was put forward by one of the two sides, adopted and reproduced by the other, and thus gained credibility and authority through this process of mutual confirmation. The image of “persecuted Christians groaning under the weight of Ottoman tyranny” circulating among French Catholic opposition circles in France was adopted by some Maronite clerics who readily reproduced it. In their turn, the Maronites nourished this view with their own imaginations and added their own particular visions to it. The image of Maronites oppressed by their Muslim overlords, as well as the “dream” of some French opposition circles to uphold a Christian principality in the Levant approximately matched, and sometimes even exceeded, the Maronite clergy's views and ambitions. At any rate, they could easily be adapted to the pretensions of the Church for the Maronites and rearranged to fit its own project.18 Nicolas Murad stands out as a representative figure and a typical product of this ongoing process. He was the first Maronite to publish a pamphlet in French responding to and reproducing these inferences while adding other original features to the French “dream,” which henceforth became a sort of “Franco-Lebanese dream.”19
The mirror game between some French parties and Maronite clerical circles gave birth to a vague political project aimed at establishing a Christian entity in the Levant under French aegis, as well as a whole concordant legitimizing history. The fantasies entertained by part
