France occupied a unique position in the Near East. For centuries she had been recognized as shouldering a special responsibility in the protection of Catholics and of Catholic missions in the Ottoman Empire. This protectorate—which as late as 1854 had provided the occasion for a war between the empire of Napoleon III and Russia—had been acquired not by military conquest alone, but by outstanding cultural and religious services as well.[23] Certainly at the end of the nineteenth century French missions held a preëminent position in Turkey. French Jesuits and Franciscans maintained elementary, secondary, and vocational schools in Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, and numerous smaller towns throughout Syria and Palestine. A Jesuit school established at Beirut in 1875 rapidly expanded its curricula until it obtained recognition as a university, its baccalaureate degree being accredited by the French Ministry of Public Instruction early in the decade of the eighties. The medical faculty of this Jesuit University—said to have been founded under the patronage of Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta—was given authority to grant degrees, which were recognized officially by France in 1888 and by Turkey in 1898. In addition to the classical and medical courses, instruction was given in law, theology, philosophy, and engineering. A preparatory school, conducted in connection with the university, had an enrollment of about one thousand pupils. By 1907 it was estimated that over seventy thousand Syrian children were receiving instruction in French religious schools. In addition to these educational accomplishments mention should be made of the work of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, who made Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other towns centers of French religious and philanthropic activity.[24] The progress of German missions and schools was a challenge to the paramount position of France in the cultural development of the Near East. And it was not a challenge which was passed unanswered. To counteract the influence of German schools established, with the aid of the Railway Company, at a few of the more important points along the Anatolian lines, French missionary schools were established at Eski Shehr, Angora, and Konia.[25]