However, after a military expedition had to be sent to protect the mission from destruction by local warlords in 1892, civil control returned to the Belgian colonial authorities.

The first seminary in the Congo was established at Mpala, and later the mission played an important role in providing practical education to the people of the region.

At that time Albertville (now Kalemie), Mpala and Baudouinville (now Kirungu) were the main stations on the west shore of the lake.

[4] According to an 1886 in the Dublin Review, ... the fertility of the ground is such as to yield two crops of wheat or three of rice in a single year.

Palm oil and india-rubber are to be had in abundance, the ivory furnished is said to be of the best quality, and the forests contain inexhaustible supplies of valuable timber.

The stations were not only able to subsist on their own resources, but also to supply the wants of passing caravans...[5]In 1882 the International African Association had a military post at Karema on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika.

[7] He named the station after the friendly local chief Mpala, who on his deathbed told his people to obey the Europeans.

[8] On 30 November 1884 Reichart arrived at Mpala, coming from Katanga, and told him that his companion Richard Böhm had died in March.

[9] Storms had his people build a great square stockade 30 metres (98 ft) on each side, using five thousand trees.

[11] Storms found himself in a violent confrontation with Lusinga Iwa Ng'ombe, a powerful slaver whom the explorer Joseph Thomson called a "sanguinary potentate".

[6] King Leopold II of Belgium decided to focus his colonizing efforts on the lower Congo.

Lavigerie had a dream of founding a Christian kingdom in equatorial Africa to halt the tribal wars and to provide a base for the propagation of the faith.

[14] However, when two French priests, Isaac Moinet and Auguste Moncet, reached Mpala on 5 July 1885, Captain Storms handed over the fort, arms and ammunition, a sailboat and a garrison of askaris who had been paid for six months.

However, the priests were committed to Lavigerie's dream of a Christian Kingdom, and saw the territory that Storms had acquired as the nucleus of the new state.

The fathers led a military expedition against a rebel leader in which villages were burned and slaves captured.

[13] The French soldier Captain Léopold Louis Joubert offered his services to Lavigerie, and this was accepted in a letter of 20 February 1886.

He engaged in skirmishes in March and again in August, where his small force of thirty soldiers armed with rifles came close to defeat.

The constant fighting also worried some of the missionaries, notably Father François Coulbois, who were concerned that the slavers might decide to attack the mission itself.

In January 1889 the mission was cut off from the outside world by Abushiri Revolt against the Germans in Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam.

Victor Roelens, he brought all the most pious and best behaved pupils to Mpala and began to teach them the elements of Latin grammar.

The missionaries built a sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin on one of the hills that overlooked the Mpala plain in the hope that she would provide protection against the epidemic.

[26] On 19 July 1905 all the pupils at Mpala left for the mission at Lusaka Saint-Jacques et Sainte Emilie, about 60 kilometres (37 mi) inland from the lake.

The mission developed commercial farming of wheat, potatoes and onions in the period between the two world wars.

The missionaries taught the local people carpentry, masonry and boat making, all valuable skills.