LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Mount Lebanon.

      Why then had this entity perished? And why did Murad ask for the help of the French to restore this independent Christian entity? It is because, Murad explained, this valiant nation had been overwhelmed by a deceitful Ottoman plan to occupy Lebanon. This design had finally succeeded when the Ottomans, realizing that they could only achieve their aim by excluding the Shihabs, took advantage of the reestablishment of their rule in 1840 to dismiss Bashir II. Since then, the poor Christians of these regions were suffering all kind of torments and persecutions under Ottoman rule: “What change has been wrought in this land in just the last four years! Insulted daily by the infidel, tormented by the cruellest abuse, the most disgusting humiliations, deprived of her princely protectors, for whose return she continually pleads, the Maronite nation thought that those times of persecution, of sad, horrible memories, had returned; many of those sons, snatched from their country, are moaning amid the infidels, in oppression and slavery, happy if, in their pain and suffering, they remain loyal to the true faith, the religion of their brothers!”⁶⁵ This image of persecuted Christians appealed to Catholic circles in France and probably matched their own views and fantasies. But Murad was not only seeking to preach to the converted. He was seeking an effective French intervention, and he elaborated a full argument to substantiate his appeal for official French help, which he indirectly presented as an unfulfilled French commitment.

      The French and the Maronites, in Murad's account, had maintained strong relations since the time of the Crusades and had helped each other in times of need. Hence, for instance, the Maronites had welcomed among them the last Crusaders of the region of Antioch, when that town was conquered by the Mamluks.⁶⁶ These links between the French and the Maronites had evolved into an effective “moral alliance, [my italics] the recollection of which has remained profoundly engraved on the spirit of these populations,” since the Crusade of St. Louis.⁶⁷ When the latter landed in Cyprus, Murad wrote, he recruited Maronites who advised him to land in Beirut and conquer Syria instead of Egypt and thus benefit from their support. Instead, Louis IX chose to attack Egypt and met disastrous consequences. When he finally managed to reach Acre, “the prince of Lebanon send to King Louis . . . twenty five thousand men . . . led by one of his sons, laden with all kinds of presents and provisions.”⁶⁸ In recognition of his gratitude, the august king sent a letter to the Emir of Mount Lebanon and to the bishops of his nation promising henceforth the protection of the Maronites by the French monarchs.⁶⁹ More so, the French king even adopted the Maronites, assimilating them to the French nation itself: “We are convinced that that nation, established under the name of Saint Maron, is part of the French nation, for its friendship for the French people resembles the friendship that French people feel for one another. It is therefore just that you and all the Maronites should enjoy the same protection that the French enjoy near us, and that you should be accepted into employment as they are themselves.”⁷⁰ It is necessary here to make a brief digression to examine more closely the issue of this letter of protection from St. Louis to the Maronites, which is today generally recognized as apocryphal.⁷¹ Murad asserted in a footnote of his Notice that “this letter is from a very old Arabic manuscript in the Maronite archives; the manuscript's author claims to have translated it from Latin to Arabic.” ⁷² However, no copy of the Latin original was presented or has ever been found.⁷³

      The absence of documentary evidence raises some questions about the role of Murad in initiating the “St. Louis legend,” which was long considered as an established fact reproduced by many eminent historians and publicists, and which merits some further examination. A study of other letters by Murad to King Louis Philippe reveals that in an earlier petition dated February 1840, Murad, soliciting French intervention in favor of the Maronites of Aleppo, reminded the king of the traditional protection of his community by the French monarchs, according to “traditions based on authentic documents.” Murad then textually quoted the letters of Louis XIV and Louis XV without any mention of a letter by St. Louis.⁷⁴

      It is only in a letter dated April 30, 1844, and addressed to the French king, that Murad mentioned for the first time the letter of St. Louis that, according to him, “our historians found in our archives.”⁷⁵ Hence, it seems plausible to suggest that he might have been one of the first to initiate the St. 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

Скачать книгу