Hardly was this over than the Franco-Prussian War broke out and Algeria again became a center of agitation. The Kabyles for a short space threatened the peace of the whole country, capturing numbers of French centers and massacring the inhabitants. The French were obliged to send troops back from France at a very awkward moment, but they succeeded in quelling the insurrection. In 1879 the Berbers of the Aurès made an attempt to rise, but were rapidly repressed; the same lot awaited the insurgents of southern Oranie in 1881. I can not pass this point in the history of the conquest without mentioning a name great in the annals of Algeria though sadly forgotten by many historians. I refer to Cardinal Lavigerie, priest and administrator, founder of the order of the Pères Blancs who did more by his foresight and calm judgment to bring the Arabs under French rule than any governor during these turbulent times. His political activities were only eclipsed by his evangelical work, and his influence in North Africa has ever remained. Those who are interested in this subject will find some excellent reading in _Le Cardinal Lavigerie et Son Action Politique_ by J. Tournin. This book not only deals with the Cardinal’s long administration in North Africa but also throws much light on all those intrigues which finally led to the disestablishment of the Church in France. Since then little has occurred to disturb the peace of Algeria, and, in spite of a certain amount of unrest during the Great War, there has been no definite rebellion. The French conquest took long, but, when one looks at the stupendous difficulties which had to be overcome, one is surprised it was completed so rapidly. Everything was against it: an unstable government, which was overthrown at the outset of the campaign by an equally unstable rule, which itself disappeared a few years later to give place to the adventures of the Second Empire; statesmen who had no definite policy as regards North Africa, and generals who never had sufficient troops nor a free enough hand really to take up the conquest of the country seriously. Opposing them was an enemy, composed of born fighters, knowing the country as well as their horses, amazingly mobile, capable of concentrating to fight a battle and dispersing again like the sand, and inspired with the spirit of religious war. The country was overgrown with thick brush; there were no roads, great mountains to cross, and, once in the interior, no means of feeding or watering the army, with no towns from which food or cattle could be requisitioned, no wells or springs and a climate of great extremes.