initiative.[118] It was the same in 1878 when Lord Beaconsfield annexed Cyprus and secured a British Protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. No opportunity could have seemed better for the promotion of Zionist aims, but when Laurence Oliphant pointed this out he found scarcely an echo beyond a small circle of obscure Jewish dreamers in Southern Russia.[119] Indeed, until the time of Herzl all the most prominent protagonists of Zionism were Christians. The Dane, Holger Paulli, who in 1697 presented a Zionist scheme to King William III of England with a view to its submission to the Peace Conference of Ryswick, was a Christian,[120] and even the notorious Jewish pseudo-Messiah, Sabbathai Zevi, who raised the flag of Jewish nationality in Syria thirty years earlier, owed more of his inspiration to English Fifth Monarchy teaching than to Jewish tradition.[121] Nevertheless, there were two occasions on which the Jewish aspects of the Palestine question did enter the field of practical international politics. The first was in 1799, when Napoleon carried out his audacious raid on British interests in the East by his expedition to Egypt and Syria. A scheme for enlisting the support of the Jews by founding a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine formed part of the plans for the expedition secretly prepared by the Directory in 1798, and French public opinion was familiarised with it by a good deal of propagandist literature. The Jews were alleged to be anxious to support the French in the Levant, and a bogus Zionist scheme--very much on the Herzlian lines--supposed to be written by an Italian Jew--was widely circulated in France. It embodied an appeal to the Jews of the world to form a representative council through which they could negotiate with the Directory for Palestine. It was supported in a very soberly reasoned article by the _Décade Philosophique et Littéraire_, and was soon after published in the London Press and reprinted as a twopenny pamphlet by the _Courier_.[122] Ten months later Napoleon, marching from El Arish on the road which has lately been traversed by General Allenby, published a proclamation inviting the Jews of Asia and Africa to rally to his standard "for the restoration of the ancient kingdom of Jerusalem."[123] The scheme collapsed with the battles of Acre and Aboukir.