the Levant]
"Soldiers, you are going to Syria, not to make war against any Power, but to aid the Sultan to bring back to obedience those of his subjects who have been blinded by fanaticism. In this distant land, rich in glorious memories, you will prove yourselves worthy descendants of those heroes who have gloriously carried there the banner of Christ."
The troops (barely 6000 in all) landed at Beirut, marched to within a few miles of Damascus, restored order, and withdrew. So far as the Lebanon was concerned, the problem was solved by the Organic Statute of 1861, confirmed in 1864, which constituted the district a Vilayet and granted autonomy under a Christian Governor approved by France and Great Britain. In theory the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was maintained; but French prestige had been enhanced, and her intervention secured peace to the Lebanon till the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
IX. Gain and Loss in Egypt
The prestige if not the power of France in the Levant was further advanced by the cutting of the Suez Canal by de Lesseps, who thus realized the project commended by the Directory to Bonaparte in 1798 and popularized by the disciples of Saint-Simon in the middle of the century. The Canal was opened in the presence of the Empress in 1869; and during the reign of the Khedive Ismail French influence was supreme in Egypt. The excavations of Mariette increased the reputation of French Egyptology, which had been brilliantly inaugurated by Champollion's deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. The creation by England and France in 1876 of the Dual Control to check the extravagance of Khedive Ismail, seemed to hold out the promise of growing power in the Valley of the Nile. Gambetta was eager to cooperate with Great Britain in defending the throne of the Khedive Tewfik against the rebellious Arabi; but the fall of Gambetta, after holding office for two months, brought a more cautious Ministry into power. Freycinet was ready for the military occupation of the Canal; but, scenting the hostility of Bismarck, he refused to recom-
