Doesn't fit the timeline at all. France started using protectorates in the Maghreb, some Subsaharan states and Indochina mostly from the 1880s.
Anyway, the point was that after a spectacularly brutal conquest, the French state wanted to put in settlers on land they would expropriate from the Algerians. Direct military then civilian rule was more likely to achieve that goal than protectorate status.
But if it's a protectorate and there are still settlers in numbers akin to OTL, of course the fight for independence is going to be violent and of course relations are going to be terrible. Do you think one million people will readily agree to leave the land just because it's been called a protectorate and not départements?