April 6.—Lady Hester was better. She informed me that Ibrahim Pasha’s affairs were growing critical; for Sherýf Pasha was so badly wounded in the leg that he could not stir from his bed, and Sulymàn Pasha was blockaded in the Horàn. These two generals, she added, had lost full 10,000 men, and the Arabs and Druzes were grown so bold that they had penetrated as far as Hasbéyah, and had made considerable booty.
As the Druze insurrection has excited considerable attention in Europe, and as the origin of it is but imperfectly known, I may be excused for making a short digression from my diary in order to give the reader such information respecting it as I picked up in conversation with individuals, who, from their proximity to the scene of action, may naturally be supposed to have drawn it themselves from good sources.
The prince of the Druzes, known by the title of the Emir of the Druzes, or the Emir Beshýr (Emir being his title and Beshýr his prenomen, as we should say Prince Edward), has, in the course of his long life—for he is now more than eighty-four years of age—been obliged to fly from his principality three or four times, having, on many occasions, with difficulty escaped the vengeance of three successive pashas of Acre, who, for his treasonable practices, by mandates from the sultan, sought his head. Twice or three times he took refuge in Egypt. His last flight to that country was not many years ago; where, until he was able to return to Mount Lebanon again, he lived, it was said, in obscurity, unnoticed by Mahomet Ali. He must be a wise man who could say whom Mahomet Ali noticed or not; for, during this apparent neglect, it is suspected the plan for the conquest of Syria was laid between them. On his return to Syria, the Emir Beshýr was reinstated in his principality. Some events, not necessary to our narrative, retarded for a time the projected invasion; but, at last, seizing upon a propitious moment, Ibrahim Pasha marched his father’s forces into Syria, besieged Acre, the stronghold of the country, took Damascus, all Cœle-Syria, and the sea-coast, and then led his troops, elate with victory, into Asia Minor, where he defeated the sultan’s army, and would have proceeded on to Constantinople, had not the intervention of the European powers arrested his course.
Returning to Syria, he organized his new government, and silently matured his scheme for bringing Mount Lebanon into subjection. In order to obtain popularity for himself, stories were industriously circulated by his emissaries of the total estrangement of Sultan Mahmood from every tenet and dogma of Islamism. He was said to frequent houses of ill repute, to dress like a Frank, to drink wine with the Greeks in the taverns at Pera, and to have lost all sense of Mussulman propriety. These scandalous rumours were promulgated in all directions with a sinister view to elevate, by comparison, the character and life of Ibrahim Pasha; for there is nothing so revolting to the true believers as any approximation to European usages and vices: and whatever some writers, in their ardour for civilization, as they designate it, may fancy, no amalgamation ever can be formed between nations so opposite in climate, habits, religion, and dress, as the Europeans and Orientals. Be this as it may, it is not improbable that these malevolent reports, to a certain extent, answered the ends for which they were designed, insensibly undermining the sultan’s personal influence, and disposing the Syrian mussulmans to regard Ibrahim Pasha as an apostle of their faith.
It was not until the fourth year from his first invasion that Ibrahim Pasha attempted the complete subjugation of Mount Lebanon. The Druzes are a warlike people, hardy, accustomed to fatigue and to the use of arms, living in villages difficult, nay, impossible of access for artillery, and easily capable of defence from their natural position. All their houses are of stone, and the interminable succession of field walls forms favourable breastworks for opposing an approaching enemy. Some old castles, dating from the time of the crusaders, are still standing in various parts of the country, generally on sites commanding the surrounding neighbourhood. Beside the Druzes, there is a race of Christians, known as the Maronite population, whose villages cover that part of the chain of Mount Lebanon which runs behind Tripoli as far as Calât el Medýk and the plain of Accár, where a narrow defile occurs, through which there is a communication between the plains of Accár and the Bkâa, which is the plain that divides Lebanon and Ante-Lebanon. Beyond this defile, the mountain rises into a lofty chain, running towards Latakia; and here dwell the Ansaréas, the Ishmaelites, and some other races:—but we have only to do now with Mount Lebanon.
By arrangements, supposed to have been previously made between the Emir and Ibrahim Pasha, and in order that it might look as if the Emir was taken totally by surprise, one fine night in the summer, several regiments of Ibrahim Pasha’s troops were marched from Acre, Sayda, and Tripoli, on one side, and from Damascus and Bâalbec on the other, so as to arrive at Btedýn (the Emir’s palace) at Dayr el Kamar (the chief town) and at all the other important points of Mount Lebanon, precisely on the same day, and as nearly as possible precisely at the same hour. Either that the time had been well chosen, inasmuch as the Druzes were then employed in harvesting and other agricultural labours, or else the plan had been so laid as to ensure success and to preclude resistance: the result was that the mountain was taken possession of without firing a gun. The Emir Beshýr, acknowledged to be the most consummate and perfidious hypocrite of modern times, played his part so well and feigned such great trepidation and alarm when two regiments marched into the courtyard of his palace, that he persuaded his household, his minister, and the Druze people in succession, that he was the victim of the stratagem as much as they were themselves.
But, although Ibrahim Pasha had thus concentrated in the Lebanon a sufficient force to overawe the Druzes, the material fact was not to be overlooked that they were still in possession of their arms, which, under favourable circumstances, they might turn against the occupants. His first step, therefore, was to disarm them, which was done effectually; those who were refractory being either bastinadoed, or, if they exhibited any very aggravated resistance, put to death. Many, however, succeeded in secreting their weapons. Not to have too much work on his hands at once, Ibrahim exempted the Christians from the disarmament, and, by cajoling and pretending he was disposed to favour them, he flattered the petty vanity, that readily manifests itself in a population which the superiority of the Druzes and long habits of servility to mussulman masters had kept somewhat in a state of inferiority; for, although the Maronites, who never live much away from Mount Lebanon, hold themselves not at all inferior to the Druzes, it is not so with the Greeks and Greek Catholics of the villages, who, creeping through life in abject submissiveness to their rulers, were easily entrapped by so flattering and unexpected a compliment. The consequence was that, what with fine silk girdles and turbans of brighter colours than before, what with a brace of pistols and the conceit their new privilege inspired, persons who had returned to the mountain after the absence of a year, would not have known them. Thus was created a certain degree of dislike in the breasts of the Druzes, who saw the Maronites and other Christians take the part of their oppressors against them; but, when a sufficient time had elapsed for leaving this source of jealousy to ferment between the two parties, Ibrahim Pasha played off another of those tricks for which he is unrivalled. Abbas Pasha, his nephew, one day happened to see one of the principal Christians, a warden of the Emir Beshýr’s, dressed out very finely, with his pistols in his girdle, and with side arms; “Who is that man?” said he, in a loud tone of voice; “what is all that finery? what is the meaning of those pistols, of that khanjàr, and that sabre? why, what am I to wear, if those fellows appear in my presence such fine gentlemen? Some remedy must be found for this—I must see to it.” True enough he did; for, very shortly after, the Christians were desired to bring their arms and give them up, and the same measures were resorted to for enforcing the order in reference to them which had already been applied with such savage rigour to the Druzes.
The whole of Syria was now defenceless. The beautiful bazars of Damascus, once famous for their finely-tempered blades and weapons of defence, which, for many centuries, conferred such a remarkable reputation on the artificers of that city, were now shorn of their splendour. The Turks, who, in general, have always been proud of displaying their sabres, guns, and pistols, on their persons or suspended over their sofas, were now crestfallen: sadness was depicted in every countenance, and only wolves, jackals, and partridges seemed to rejoice in the change that had taken place.
But the spirit of the Druzes was not broken: they began to suspect that they had been betrayed by the Emir Beshýr. Circumstances transpired from time to time which led them to suppose that their independence had been made a traffic of between him and Mahomet Ali, and that they had been sold to enrich the coffers of the one, and enlarge the domains of the other. The equivocal conduct of the Emir Beshýr, his overacted apprehension, the treachery discoverable in some of his measures, finally, his known duplicity, led them to the conclusion that he had betrayed them. To complete their disasters, Ibrahim Pasha introduced the conscription among them, a measure so revolting to their usages, and so utterly at variance with the voluntary levies of their forefathers, that the severest punishment, not even the fear of death, could induce them to submit patiently to so hateful an infliction.
The Druzes are inhabitants of three provinces of Syria, viz., Mount Lebanon, Gebel Aali, near Aleppo, and the Horàn. The proximity of the Horàn to the Desert and to the Bedouin Arabs, who acknowledge the authority of neither pasha nor sultan, obviously suggested that district—little known, indeed, to European travellers, but affording many natural means of defence, and far removed from garrisons and cities—as a refuge from the conscription. Many recruits, therefore, fled from their families in Mount Lebanon to the Horàn, until, from increase of numbers and of sufferings in a common cause, they mustered in sufficient force to oppose resistance to the Pasha’s troops. They were joined by the Bedouin Arabs, who hover round that quarter, and, in their approaches towards Damascus, gave considerable apprehension to their Egyptian masters. Sheryf Pasha marched to quell the insurrection, and Suliman, Pasha of Sayda, joined him. We have already seen that Sheryf Pasha was wounded in a rencontre with them; and, taking up the events that occurred in the course of the campaign from that date, I shall insert them in my diary as they come to my knowledge.[10]