form incidental to international ineptitude. The ensuing chaotic state of affairs in the country led to the disturbances of 1840, continued in 1841, 1842 and 1845. The Porte sought to remove their causes by a change in the administration, appointing functionaries of its civil service, strange to the land and frequently transferred, to positions of trust whose tenure the native aristocracy considered part of their unalienable privileges. Bashir Qasim having made himself impossible, direct Turkish rule was introduced in the person of 'Umar Pasha, 32 who had to contend, in addition to the evil consequences of his predecessor's maladministration, with the animosities resulting from the gradual breaking up of the feudal system which had been a potent factor in the former solidarity of the Mount's interests: classand race-hatred combined with religious rancor made for disruption. 'Umar Pasha proved to be an excellent governor but the European Powers took exception at the alleged violation of Turkish obligations by his appointment and France in particular, asserting herself after the slight she had received by the expulsion of Muḥammad'Aly's son and vice-gerent from Syria without her co-operation, demanded for the benefit of her clients, the Maronites, that again a member of the Shihab family should be elected. Instead of this the representatives of the five Great Powers, who met in conference at Constantinople, May 27, 1842, resolved to adopt a scheme of divided government for the Lebanon, which had been outlined by Prince Metternich.

The Mount was cut up in two districts respectively confided, with due regard to the religious convictions of the majority of the people inhabiting each of them, to the care of a Christian and a Druze qā'ymaqām or governor, chosen from among the natives, the Shihābies being excluded. This dual system, altered in 1845 with a view to emendation of its most glaring defects, failed, however, to achieve even a moderate success. Notwithstanding the many regulations and arrangements for its smooth operation in villages with a mixed population of Christians and Druzes, several Christian communities, Dayr al-Qamar for instance, preferred direct Turkish rule to the blessings of such an organisation which, though "provisional,” remained in force until the catastrophe of 1860 it helped to bring about.

32 Michael Lettes, a Croat by birth, who commenced his career as a teacher of Sultan 'Abd'al-Majid and rose to high civil and military dignity; his name is connected with several brilliant exploits in the Balkans, in the Crimea and wherever he held a command.

Dividing Druzes and Maronites ever more, it gave full scope to plotting and counter-plotting, to the "sinuosities of Christian intrigue" Lord Dufferin and Claneboye attempted to trace 33 as a member of the International Commission appointed to examine the facts of the massacres and the circumstances which gave rise to them. The Maronites were the worst offenders, followed as good seconds among the other Christian communities, by the Orthodox Greeks 34 who had their full share in raising the wind that was to grow into such a frightful storm. The complaint of the Druzes that ever since the year 1841 the Maronites had "pertinaciously contemplated the uprooting of the Druzes from the Druze Mountain [Mounts Lebanon and AntiLebanon] and the establishment of their own independence therein, being puffed up with the idea of their great numbers and wealth, and being also led to pride by the representations of certain' interested persons, ,"35 was founded on incontrovertible facts. The heads of the Maronites were turned by the protestations of Popes who called them their "faithful servants," their "dearest sons;"36 by speeches in the Chambre des Députés like that of Crémieux, August 3, 1847,37 which created hopes of assistance when the hour should strike for delivering the blow they had in mind, and-who could know!-might confound the Turks together with the Druzes. Their clergy encouraged them in those wild expectations to the point of making them cry "Our Patriarch is our Sultan!" when the Turkish government interfered as it had a perfect right to do.38

The consular reports of the years preceding 1860 bear witness to the disorganising effects of the organisation introduced under European compulsion. Our author gives some particulars concerning the trouble brewing in both the Southern or Druze and the Northern or Maronite

33 Letter of November 15, 1860, to Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, British Ambassador to the Porte.

34 See the episcopal letter from the "humble Sophronius," Orthodox Greek Bishop of Tyre and Sidon, to his "glorious children" of Rashayyā, APPENDIX, II.

35 Druze Account of the Late Events in the Lebanon, presented to Queen Victoria with a Petition, dated August 17, 1860, and signed by Hamdan Bellini in the name of the gentry and commonalty of the Druze Nation of Mount Lebanon.

36 RISTELHUEBER, op. cit.

37 "Les Chrétiens du Liban, mais ils sont nos frères depuis des siècles, non pas seulement nos frères en religion, mais nos frères à la guerre, nos frères sur les champs de bataille. Dans toutes les circonstances vous les avez trouvés; Saint Louis les a trouvés; Napoléon les a trouvés."

38 BLISS, op. cit., V.

section of the Lebanon; he tells us of the armed conflicts in and around the Shuf,39 of the insurrection of the peasants of the district of Kasruan, 40 who rose against their nobility, the sheikhs of the Christian house of Khāzin, that ground them to powder in the feudal mill. Nor was it in Syria alone that political discontent, overexcited by religious frenzy, led to acts of insensate retaliation. On July 15,

1858, a native mob at Jeddah fell upon the Christians in their midst; among their victims were the French consul and British vice-consul. Vengeance followed swiftly: eleven days later the town was bombarded by an Anglo-French squadron and on August 4 ten of the ringleaders were hanged. If anything, this incident increased the fanatic zeal of the Christians, more in particular of the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, who relied upon help from their European friends and had been supplied by them with the necessary funds to carry out their design, in the first place to buy firearms and ammunition,11 the money received to relieve the sufferers from the conflict which may be termed the first civil war, being misused for the promotion of a second. 42 "The Druzes did not want to fight; the Maronites thought their hour of victory was come. Custom-house returns can prove that upwards of 120.000 stand of arms and 20.000 pistols were imported into the Lebanon between January 1857 and the spring of 1860, while the sinister influence exercised by Bishop Tobia and his associates was so universally recognised that his withdrawal from Beyrout was insisted upon as a necessary preliminary to peace."43 "43 The Druzes, numerically far in the minority, 44 who had moreover sustained severe losses some

39 The name of this district, whose mountain peaks provide excellent posts of observation sedulously put to account by its turbulent inhabitants, has been derived according to some, from an Arabic root which expresses the idea of overtopping, looking down upon. 40 A stronghold of Christianity in the Mount.

41 C. H. CHURCHILL, The Druzes and the Maronites under the Turkish Rule from 1840 to 1860, p. 40.

42 JESSUP, op. cit., p. 163.

43 Despatch of December 19, 1860, from Lord Dufferin to Lord Russell, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. "Sinister influence" was not too strong an expression as proved by the Maronite prelate's conduct from beginning to end, and his arrogance is well illustrated by his words to an inhabitant of Dayr al-Qamar, quoted in a letter from a certain Halib Akawy to Sa'yd Bey Janblāṭ (Official Correspondence, Nr 373): "If you, people of Deir el-Kamar do not obey and refuse to go to war, then I will cause the Druzes and Christians together to attack you."

44 The number of Druzes and Maronites has been variously estimated, but all agree that the latter outnumbered the former by about two to one. A Table of the Statistics

years earlier while resisting first Egyptian then Turkish attempts to coërce them in the matter of conscription, 45 needed, indeed, great provocation to show fight. But when attacked, their superiority in military tactics and discipline soon allowed them to abandon the defensive for the offensive, however sure they were that, for the reason just named, they had no help to expect from the regular troops of the Ottoman army, detached for the maintenance of order in Syria. It would be anticipating our author's narrative to tell here how the situation became more and more critical; how, after isolated acts of violence and casual encounters, a Maronite champion, Tanyūs Ibn Shāhīn al-Bayṭār, one of the ringleaders in the rebellion which overturned the oligarchic government of the district of Kasruan, began hostilities in dead earnest with a band of three hundred men;46 how by their unity of purpose and better generalship the Druzes turned the tables on their aggressors and, goaded to madness, took revenge in a terrible manner; how, to all appearance, von Moltke's statement of 1841 became true: "Die Türkei ist nicht im Stande die Syrer durch eine kräftige Regierung wie der Militär Despotismus Ibrahims war, in gehorsam zu erhalten... 1947 But a short commentary may be allowed: Turkey was sadly handicapped. With regard to the Maronites, "filled with ideas of conquest and French protection."48 the Porte had to take into account the general international situation; with regard to the Druzes, when these showed a winning hand, the temper of the troops could not be ignored. The regulars of the fifth army-corps immediately concerned, not to speak of the irregulars, were chiefly Syrian recruits, Moslemin who knew the Christians and had old scores to settle with them. But even if they could have been of Mount Lebanon, sent on January 12, 1861, by Mr E. I. Rogers, British vice-consul at Bayrut, to Lord Dufferin, gives 102.105 Maronites and 56.035 Druzes capable of carrying arms, besides 40.125 Greek Catholics, 30.375 Orthodox Greeks, 28.935 Moslemin, including the Mutawalies, and 465 Jews.

45 Cf H. PETERMANN, Reisen im Orient, I, 77 ff.

46 "Une bande armée de Chrétiens était venue la première passer de la Caimacamie chrétienne dans celle des Druzes. Ce fut le début de cette guerre civile qui a fini par tant de calamités." Note of Fu'ad Pasha joined to the protocol of the twenty-second meeting of the International Commission held at Bayrut, February 27, 1861.

47 Deutschland und Palästina, first of five articles written for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung and published in book form under the title Zur orientalischen Frage. Cf VON MOLTKE'S Briefe über Zustände und Begebenheiten in der Türkei.

48 Letter of Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, British Ambassador to the Porte, to ConsulGeneral N. Moore at Bayrut, Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Syria, 1860-1861, p. 65.

relied upon the Rumelian crisis had made it necessary to draw largely on the disposable battalions, reducing their strength to such an extent that it did not seem wise to attempt a forcible repression of the Druzes in the flush of their victories: a defeat might have led to a general insurrection very difficult to quell. There existed furthermore open hostility between the highest civil and military dignitaries in the land. Khurshid Pasha at Bayrut, Governor-General of the province of Sayda, and Aḥmad Pasha, Governor-General of the province of Syria proper and commander-in-chief of the troops in 'Arabistan, 49 were on bad terms, which explains the reluctance shown by Tahir Pasha, 50 military commander in the former's territory, to carry out his orders, the officers of lower rank following suit. Khurshid Pasha cannot be held responsible for the delinquency of the soldiery charged to him in our author's version of the "marvels of the time concerning the massacres in the Arab country:" that fault lay with Aḥmad Pasha who, despite the extenuating circumstances referred to, which, however, hardly applied to his dereliction of duty in the case of Damascus, paid the extreme penalty after degradation from his high military rank and civil dignity.

Nor was Khurshid Pasha the fiendish schemer we are invited to believe him to be because he did not like the Syrian Christians-for obvious reasons!-and entered into negotiations with the Druzes. His meetings and discussions with the latter, rather of a conciliatory than of an inflammatory character, might have made for peace if, heeding his urgent request, the representatives of the Powers to whom he appealed, had aided him in his efforts to bridle the unchained passions. When he was arraigned before the tribunal instituted to try the officials accused of negligence and misconduct, the prosecution failed to substantiate the charges preferred against him of premeditated instigation to the horrible crimes committed in his pashalic. 51 Reliable evidence pointed the other way, furnishing proof that, addressing the

49 The Arab Country, here used in its Turkish military sense as a collective name for the provinces of the Ottoman Empire inhabited by people of Arabian descent or speech. 50 Tahir Pasha had received his military education at Woolwich and was considered one of the most brilliant officers in the Turkish army.

51 "Quant aux fonctionnaires et officiers Ottomans. . . . . ils ont, et cela est vrai surtout de Kourchid Pacha, fait appel à tous les moyens qu'ils avaient à leur disposition pour prévenir la guerre civile." Statement of Mr P. von Weckbecker, Consul-General of Austria at Bayrut, speaking of the result of the judicial inquiry by the tribunal referred to, in the twenty-second meeting of the International Commission, held February 27, 1861.