Louis “myth,” or at least that he was one of the first to reproduce it.76 In this case, the mystery remains as to who so fortuitously “discovered” or penned this letter, and, if it was Murad, what factors or persons influenced and incited him in this direction. It must be remembered that Murad was then visiting Paris, where he was in close contact with Catholic circles and where “he appears to have found an abundant supply of aliment for that overheated zeal which he had previously displayed in service of the House of Shihab.”77
This assumption can be further substantiated by the fact that in his text Murad reproduced, along with St. Louis's letter, two other letters of protection by Louis XIV and Louis XV—duly authenticated this time. However, the protection promised by these two kings was much more modest than that of St. Louis. The two monarchs committed themselves only to protect and defend the spiritual and religious liberty of the Maronites, in line with the general protectorate of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire. This may explain why Murad was in need to produce, or at least reproduce, the much stronger moral commitment found in the letter of Louis IX. He also aimed to relay the impression of an effective and continuous protection of the Maronites by French kings since the days of St. Louis.
Murad moreover situated the origin of the “moral alliance” between the French and the Maronites at the end of the period of the Crusades, when the Franks were in need of the help of the Maronites. Given that Murad intended to ask for French help this time, he might have “selected” to date the beginning of their alliance during this period in order to present his request for French help as a kind of reciprocated service. This view is substantiated by a letter of the Maronite bishop to Louis Philippe, in February 1840, in which he asserts that “the powerful protection which France used to bestow upon the Maronites was a reward for the services they had done them.”78
In the same way, Murad elaborated on an imagined confirmation of this protection by Napoleon Bonaparte, whom the Maronites used to consider an “enemy of the Church.” The French general, Murad added, had allegedly declared to a delegation of Maronites coming to meet him near Acre: “I recognize that the Maronites have been French from time immemorial; I too am Roman Catholic; you will see that through me, the Church will triumph and extend its domain far and wide.”79 Pushing this argument of an identification between Maronites and the French, Murad asserted that even the Turks acknowledged this fact by forwarding their messages to the Maronites with the following formula: “To the Maronite-Frankish nation, to the Frankish-Maronites.”80 The Maronites themselves had also come to assume that they were a “French nation, by sentiment as well by religion.”81 The Maronite nation thus imperceptibly turned into the “French of the Levant,” an expression found since then in some French and Maronite texts.
Thus, in Murad's narrative, the ties between the Maronites and the French had evolved through history into a total identification between the French and Maronite “nations.” However, the two partners in this relationship were not equal. It was more of an affiliation between a patron owing protection to his younger relative, due to obligations imparted on him for moral and religious considerations. Hence, for Murad, the Maronites were at one and the same time “the allies and the protégés of the French.”82
This moral obligation of the French to protect the Maronites is one of the main underlying themes of Murad's book. It aimed at reinforcing his appeal for French help. Indeed, the whole of Murad's book is directed toward this final aim, and the bulk of it is only a mandatory preamble to this objective. So, after relating the history of his community and that of its historical links with France, Murad finally comes to the point. For four years, the Maronite nation had been overwhelmed by the “worst torments,” he asserted. Since it lost the protection of its legitimate princes and that of France, it had been overpowered by a hostile Muslim Ottoman army and was in dire need of French assistance. If France did not want to help them any more, the Maronites were ready to die in defense of their religion. However, they hoped that France would not abandon them to this dreadful fate: “France, we hope, will not remain indifferent to our plight, deaf to our entreaties and our prayers; on more than one account, she owes the Maronite Christians her effective and powerful protection [my italics]. As a Catholic country, could she watch her brothers in Jesus Christ oppressed, slaughtered in cold blood? As a Great Power, is she not bound by the most formal assurances, by treaties, by letters from her kings? Would gratitude not suffice for her to see this protection as a duty?”83
This is why Murad finally appealed to France to fulfill the “commitment reiterated by Guizot to . . . do her utmost to restore to the Maronites of Lebanon the government they had lost and yearn for with all their heart.”84
Murad did not specify in his treatise the kind of French help he had in mind. For that, we have to consult his personal correspondence, among which two letters addressed to Guizot, one dated March 27, 1842, and the other November 27, 1842, explicitly solicit a French military intervention “in the name of Christendom, with a view to re-establishing Shihabi rule.”85 Thus, the political project of the Maronite Church of establishing a semi-independent Emirate in Mount Lebanon became tied to and, more so, dependent upon, French military intervention. After the collapse of the plans of the Maronite Patriarch to mobilize his community and to impose its dominance on the ground, and following his reliance on French diplomatic support in Istanbul and the failure of such policies, the Church was slowly turning toward the only solution left: foreign military intervention. The recent military operation of the Allies and the Ottomans to reestablish Ottoman rule or, more probably, the intervention of the European powers that contributed to the liberation of the Greeks some years earlier, as well as the numerous exhortations of some French circles, may have inspired and instigated such designs. But the main reason for this plea for foreign military intervention was the acknowledgment by the Church, after its reversals locally and in Istanbul, that it did not possess the means required to fulfill its ambitions. Or, to use Murad's own words in a personal letter to King Louis Philippe, “[The Maronites] know that they must await their deliverance from the King of France . . . after God.”86
The aspirations of the Maronite Church to establish an autonomous Christian Emirate hence became tied to French designs in the region. However, if the French government needed the Maronites to secure its influence and a foothold in the region in case of an eventual intervention, should the Ottoman Empire disintegrate, it was not willing as yet to take any initiative toward the realization of the Maronite project, a fact that generated much friction and misunderstanding between both sides as well as some frustration among some Maronite circles.
The legacy of Murad was therefore twofold. First, he laid the basis for the historical legitimization of the Lebanist project and ideal. Many Lebanese and foreign publicists would follow in his footsteps, refining his initial blueprint. The second aspect of Murad's legacy is more ambiguous. Murad's views concerning the religious affinity and the identification of the Maronites with the French were more rarely integrated into the core of the Lebanist ideology. Future advocates of a Lebanese identity preferred to tone down such an association, or to appeal to more secular grounds of affinity between the Lebanese and the French, but they did often refer to Murad's vision of France's “moral obligation” to assist in the liberation of the Lebanese without encroaching on their independence and identity.87
More concretely, Murad was to have a successor in the person of Father ‘Azar, who, in 1846–47, undertook a mission to France similar to that of Murad, with the aim of requesting France's support for the Maronites. Less distinguished than his eminent predecessor, and speaking barely a few words of Italian and no French at all, Father ‘Azar seems to have endured many difficulties before being introduced to members of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, to whom he presented apparently outdated, and greatly exaggerated, petitions regarding the distressful situation of the Maronites and their urgent need for French support. These supplications ended up in the French Chamber of Deputies through the intermediation of a Catholic deputy, provoking strong criticisms of French governmental policy concerning Mount Lebanon.88
