European consuls at Bayrut, he had said:52 "Je n'ai d'influence que sur les Druses et les Musulmans; vous en avez sur les Chrétiens; retenez les uns, je retiendrai les autres." The brilliant idea of the consuls to engage Bishop Tūbiyā as a missionary likely to pour oil on the troubled waters, had simply the effect that both Muhammadans and Druzes became confirmed in their suspicions of a conspiracy formed by the Christians, in particular the Maronite clergy, backed by interested European governments, to despoil them of their land and goods. They were perfectly aware of the real worth of soi-disant disinterested European interference in the cause of humanity, civilisation and so forth. Experience of foreign activity through the regular consular channels and officially disavowed secret agencies, 53 enabled them to determine the right value of those fine words. So the violence of the Maronites, recoiling upon themselves, led to a popular movement favorable to the Druzes, which assumed more and more a political character, especially in Damascus54 where the Christians had given great offence by availing themselves of their enfranchisement following upon the Treaty of Paris, to insult the Muhammadans in every

52 As quoted by Mr von Weckbecker on the occasion referred to in the preceding note. Cf Khurshid Pasha's answer to the Consular Corps at Bayrūt when, after the massacre at Damascus, guarantees were asked for the safety of the first mentioned town, especially for its inhabitants of European extraction: “........under the Imperial auspices and with the assistance of the Most High, the town need be in no fear or apprehension whatever. Only the Government has specially to request that, in a corresponding spirit on your parts, you will be pleased to enjoin positively, upon your countrymen and your employés and protected persons, that in such critical times they will conform their words and actions to its requirements and abstain from any compromising conduct such as insult to or ill-treatment of persons they may have to complain of, which they have no right whatever to do at any time, and avoid uttering alarming and unfounded reports; and, in fact, that you will cause the local government to be thankful and able to carry into effect the measures required under existing circumstances." Nr 27 of Further Papers relating to the Disturbances in Syria, June 1860, Inclosure 2.

53 "I am also rather of opinion," writes Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer from Therapia, August 8, 1860, to Consul-General N. Moore at Bayrut, "that the attitude taken by some foreign agents and the overbearing spirit too much manifested by them had no small share in producing the state of feeling that recently manifested itself in so horrible a manner in one portion of Syria and exists throughout it."

54 This conviction is shared by many of the more discriminating authors on the subject, who agree with Mr JOHN BARKER, in his life British Consul-General at Aleppo and Alexandria, that the "massacre of the Christians at Damascus and Mount Lebanon in 1860, was altogether a political outbreak;. . . . . . . . See Syria and Egypt under the last five Sultans of Turkey, being a narrative of his experiences in office, compiled from his letters and journals, edited by his son E. B. B. BARKER, I, 43.

possible way, provoking reprisals. And even then it was only the rabble, getting out of hand, that committed the excesses which our author describes, not without due praise to the firmness in opposing them and the kindness in relieving the distress of the surviving victims, shown by 'Abd' al-Qadir, 55 who was by no means an exception, many of the higher and middle classes of the Muhammadan population taking the same course. This feature of the massacres and their unanimous condemnation by all Moslemin of standing in Syria and throughout the world, 56 have not received sufficient attention.

The Christians, fallen into their own pit, turned again to the foreign consuls, accusing the Druzes in the face of the strongest proofs to the contrary, of having started the trouble, abetted by the Turkish authorities under orders from Constantinople. There is no foundation whatever for the insinuations regarding Turkish motives which our author repeats. But they found a willing ear in Europe where the traditional belief prevailed that the Sultan resorted to periodical hecatombs to prevent his administration getting out of gear, as an enginedriver oils his locomotive to keep it in running order. Public opinion, wrought upon by letters in newspapers that live by catering to a public taste greedy for sensational stuff, went into hysterics over horrors far beyond the actual happenings and began to clamor for immediate intervention to stop the unspeakable Turk's slaughter of innocent, lamb-like Christians in their ten thousands, once more echoing Abraham a Santa Clara's: "Auff, auff ihr Christen und streittet wider den Mahometanischen Irrthum und Türkischen Erbfeind: Fort mit dem schlimmen Buben.....!" At first the European governments did not respond very promptly, realising that things had occurred in Syria which might reopen the Eastern Question to complicate still further the already intricate international situation. To use an expression

55 'Abd al-Qadir Ibn Muhy ad-Din, the famous Algerine chief, defeated by General Lamoricière in the battle of Sidy Brahim, December 21, 1847. Taken captive, he was sent to France and interned successively at Toulouse, Pau and Amboise. At the proclamation of the Second Empire in 1852, Louis Napoleon, just made Napoleon III, gave him back his liberty and he settled in Brussa, to move in 1855, after the earthquake which devastated that city, to Damascus where he lived comfortably on the fs 100.000 a year granted to him by the French Government. After the events of 1860 he came once more to the front in 1871, exhorting his insurgent countrymen to surrender, a piece of advice to which they paid not the slightest attention. He died at Damascus in 1883. 56 See APPENDIX, III.

of Gortshakoff, explanatory of his own country's inaction about that time, "c'était reculer pour mieux sauter." All had their irons in the fire but it required some thought and watching of the European equilibrium to decide how best to apply them. The European equilibrium! It was four years after the Congress of Paris which, as the Powers tried to make themselves believe, had settled the direful Eastern Question after its having been deliberately ignored-et pour cause! by the Congress of Vienna. A personal success for Napoleon III, the Congress of Paris and the extraordinary agreement concluded at Zürich, November 10, 1859, had made changes in the map of Europe which in Britain, Austria and Prussia aroused suspicions regarding French designs that might aim farther than Savoy and Nice. Russia confined herself for the moment to nursing the grievances which originated in her humiliation as a result of the Crimean War. Italy had her struggle for unity, Sardinia, under Cavour's guidance, blazing the path with Tuscany, Modena, Parma, Naples and the Marches of Umbria catching up while Venice, unavoidably delayed, had to stay behind until 1866, Rome until 1870. Italian affairs kept the European Cabinets and diplomatists very busy, superlatively so since Louis Napoleon in addition to a generally aggressive policy. showed no inclination to renounce the benefits expected from the protracted occupation of Rome by French troops and Garibaldi's feats with his Marsala Thousand often embarrassed his friends scarcely less than his enemies. There was, moreover, the Anglo-French campaign in China, an adjustment by force of differences of opinion concerning the application of the Treaty of 1858 which closed the Arrow business, the commanders of the respective contingents to the expedition being no doubt greatly astonished at taking part, side by side, as allies, in one military enterprise decided upon by their governments that indulged in continuous wrangling at home.

Considered as an item of political import, apart from their inherent atrocity, the massacres in the Lebanon could hardly be welcome at a moment when the international market was already glutted with lightly inflammable material. It seemed more than awkward indeed that the Eastern Question refused to be relegated to the background while so many other questions asked for a solution. But every one did what he could to make the best of this new factor in the political

game without falling foul of the principle that the integrity of Turkey in Europe had to be maintained as long as the problem of her partition presented unconquerable difficulties by reason of jealousies too easily excited. Lord Palmerston, faithful to the tradition formulated by William Pitt the younger, said on May 25, 1839, to M. de Bourqueney: "The least harmful guarantee of the European equilibrium is the conservation of the Ottoman Empire," though he declared towards the end of his career: "We shall not draw the sword for a corpse a second time."57 Napoleon wrote from St Cloud, July 29, 1860, to the Count de Persigny, French Ambassador to the Court of St James, in a letter evidently meant for the public at large:58 "Quand Lavalette 59 est parti pour Constantinople, les instructions que je lui a données se bornaient à ceci: Faites tous vos efforts pour maintenir le status quo; l'intérêt de la France est que la Turquie vive le plus longtemps possible." The Padishah though, knew perfectly well what to expect from this solicitude for the integrity of his realm and on the slightest occasion ostentatiously offered assistance to preserve it, since he, in the words of von Moltke, “aus jeder Hülfleistung

schwächer hervor [ging] als er in der Noth gewesen war welche den Beistand veranlaszt hatte."60 But, adroitly weathering every diplomatic tempest, he hoped for sunshine after storm and stress, and meanwhile introduced reforms in the internal administration of his domains, which tended to obviate future pretexts for intervention, making believe that the laws so promulgated owed their existence to interests of state and not to outside interference. 61

Nor seems it

"Making believe" is perhaps too harsh a word. quite correct to say with Count Nesselrode that the innovations of

57 H. VON TREITSCHKE, Germany, France, Russia and Islām (English translation, 1915). Cf the Count D'AUGEVILLE, La Vérité Sur la Question d'Orient et M Thiers, 1841, and of Lord Palmerston's speeches especially those held in the House of Commons on July 11, 1833, and on February 20, 1854.

58 And accordingly extensively published; in the London Times, for instance, first, August 1, 1860, in an English translation, the next day in the French original.

39 Napoleon's newly appointed Ambassador to the Porte.

60 Op. cit., Militär-politische Lage des osmanischen Reichs.

61 Reversing the dissimulation which caused a Padishah of earlier days, Murad III, to disregard the wishes of Pope Gregory XIII, “sapendo [il Signor Turco]....benissimo che le leghe si fanno per interessi di stato e non per paroli d'altri," as recorded by Giacomo Sorenzo. See Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, ed. E. ALBERI, II, 202.

Maḥmūd II,62 developed by 'Abd al-Majid,63 were "shattering the ancient power of the State without setting a new one in its place."64 After all, both father and son meant well when conferring upon their subjects liberal institutions à l'instar of those the western rulers were compelled to consent to by the progressive movement of 1848, but for which Turkey was still less ripe than the rest of Europe. Altered for acclimatisation on Turkish soil in the guise of Mahmud's Tanzīmāt or reform, which blossomed out in the Hatty Sharif, pro

62 Maḥmud II, son of 'Abd'al-Hamid I, who died April 7, 1789, was proclaimed Sultan on the 28th of January, 1808, after the violent death of Salim III and the imprisonment of his brother Mustafa. Maḥmūd's mother was a creole from Martinique, cousin of Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie who, as the widow of Alexandre de Beauharnais, married General Buonaparte and became Empress of the French to be divorced in 1809. Mlle du Lac de Rivery, returning home from school at Nantes, had been captured at sea by Barbary pirates and sold to the Dey of Algiers who made a present of her to his overlord at Constantinople. At first disconsolate, the fair captive was conciled to her fate by means of a piano, hastily ordered from Paris to allay her anger and indignation. Thanks more to her beauty than to her musical talent, she remained for quite a while the Padishah's favorite. Cf BARKER, op. cit., I, 11. Maḥmūd II died June 30, 1839, after an eventful reign in which he tried hard "to renovate the Ottoman Empire and to bring it into friendly communion with the Powers of Christendom." Letter of August 9, 1832, from Stratford Canning, then on a special mission to the Porte, to Lord Palmerston. See S. L. POOLE, Life of the Right Hon'ble Stratford Canning, Viscount de Redcliffe, I, 513.

63 'Abd'al-Majid, Maḥmūd's eldest son, seventeen years old when he succeeded to Sultanate and Khalifate, was called the "Christian Sultan" because of his inclination to favor his Christian subjects. "One day, his Minister Rashid Pasha asked to be admitted to his presence but was told he must wait until his Majesty had finished the chapter of the Bible he was reading." BARKER, op. cit., I, 13. "He possessed, wrote Canning in later years, a kindly disposition, a sound understanding, a clear sense of duty, proper feelings of dignity without pride and a degree of humanity seldom, if ever, exhibited by the best of his ancestors. The full development of these qualities found a check in the want of vigour which dated from his birth and which his early accession to the throne and consequent indulgence in youthful passions seemed to increase. The bent of his mind inclined him to reform conducted on mild and liberal principles. He had not energy enough to originate measures of that kind, but he was glad to sanction and promote their operation." POOLE, op. cit., II, 81. This estimate agrees on the whole with that of A. DE LA JONQUIÈRE, Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, p. 526, who calls him "le digne héritier des grandes idées de son père, [qui] avait vaillamment marché en avant." DE LAMARTINE, describing his personal appearance, says: "ses traits sont réguliers et doux, son front élevé, ses yeux bleus, ses sourcils arqués comme dans les races caucasiennes, son nez droit sans roideur, ses lèvres relevées et entr'ouvertes, son menton, cette base de caractère dans la figure humaine, ferme et bien attaché: l'ensemble noble, fier, mais adouci par le sentiment d'une supériorité calme, qui a plus le désir d'être aimé que d'être imposant; .... ." Nouveau Voyage en Orient, p. 63.

64 VON TREITSCHKE, op. cit.