a long-sought pretext for the occupation of the Jiaozhou Bay area. Austria Austria concluded various treaties with the Ottoman Empire in 1699 (Treaty of Karlowitz), 1718 (Treaty of Passarowitz), and 1739 (Treaty of Belgrade) that secured a right of protection over "the religious" in the Empire and even at Jerusalem, though never including a guarantee of liberty of worship. Austria never exercised authority as a protector except in the countries bordering on Habsburg Austria, notably Albania and Macedonia. In 1848 the Austrian Protectorate was extended to the Christian missions in the Sudan and Nigritia, which were in the care of Austrian priests. When the Coptic Catholic hierarchy was restored in Egypt by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, the new patriarch and his suffragans placed themselves under the protection of Austria. Position of the Holy See The Holy See defended the French Protectorate on several occasions. Whenever missionaries sought protection from any other country, the French diplomatic corps complained to Rome, and the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith reprimanded the missionaries and reminded them that France had the sole right to safeguard their interests in non-Christian nations. This happened in 1744 and 1844. Italy sought to establish its own protectorate by patronizing missionary activities and winning the allegiance of those it supported, but the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith refused to support its efforts. Instead, on 22 May 1888, the Congregation wrote to the Italian missionaries in the Levant and the Far East to remind them that "the Protectorate of the French Nation in the countries of the East has been established for centuries and sanctioned even by treaties between the empires. Therefore, there must be absolutely no innovation in this matter; this protectorate, wherever it is in force, is to be religiously preserved, and the missionaries are warned that, if they have need of any help, they are to have recourse to the consuls and other ministers of France." On 1 August 1898, Pope Leo XIII wrote to Cardinal Benoît-Marie Langénieux, Archbishop of Reims: In parallel with this recognition of French exclusivity, the Holy See declined to establish its own diplomatic relations with Turkey and China, even when supported by those governments. Leo XIII rejected any proposal to exchange legates or ambassadors at the instance of French diplomats, who told him those countries had less interest in amicable relations with the Holy See than in evading