Tuesday, July 24.—Her ladyship dictated another letter to Count Wilsensheim. It was written in French, like all those addressed to foreigners, but which have all been given translated: for the style of Lady Hester’s French was composed of Anglicisms, and, in turning them into her native tongue, the very expressions which she would have used seemed naturally to present themselves.
Lady Hester Stanhope to Count Wilsensheim, Chamberlain
to His Imperial Majesty, &c. &c.
Jôon, June 24, 1838.
Sir Count,
I have delayed answering your amiable letter until I thought your voyage was over. I am happy that his Royal Highness quitted this country when he did; not because of the plague—the season was gone by this year for that—but because of the aspect of affairs, and of the Druze insurrection, which has grown considerably hotter, and which would have made it impossible to travel with any comfort.
Ibrahim Pasha began the war in the Horàn with forty-five thousand men; the Druzes had but seven thousand, assisted by some tribes of the Arabs of the Desert. Ibrahim Pasha has lost thirty thousand, between Nizàm troops (as they are called), Sugmans, and Albanians, without reckoning the wounded. The Druze army, I believe, does not at present exceed two thousand five hundred men: but each man of that two thousand five hundred is singly worth twenty. The last seat of the war was about fourteen leagues distant in a strait line from my residence. The Druzes, after having well beaten Ibrahim Pasha and killed some of his officers, retreated to the Horàn, pursued by the Pasha.
You no doubt are aware that his Highness the Pasha, in concert with the Emir Beshýr, disarmed the Druzes some time ago by a stratagem, which gave the government means to take their sons as conscripts for the nizàm. After that, they, in like manner, disarmed the Christians: but necessity has compelled the pasha lately to give them their arms again, in order to enable the son of the Emir Beshýr to join the pasha’s forces with a reinforcement of Christians, which he stood in need of to garrison the skirts of the mountain on the side of the Bkâa. The Druzes killed a great many of these Christians, and they could have annihilated them: but they said to them, “You are not to blame: it goes against us to exterminate you, for we have always lived with you on friendly terms; but we will slay without pity every Christian we find in arms, excepting those of the mountain.”
The French government has done an imprudent thing in removing Mr. Consul Guys from his post at Beyrout; because that gentleman had very extensive connexions amongst the bishops and priests, and all the numerous sects of Christians found on Mount Lebanon; and, by his information and experience, had means of giving them good advice. For, if by chance those Christians gave heed to bad counsel, it might not be impossible that half the Franks who inhabit this country would be massacred by the Nabloosians, the Druzes, the Ansaréas, the Ishmäelites, the Shemsíahs, the Kelbías, and the Koords in general, who occupy the country between Mount Lebanon and Aleppo on the side of Gebel el Segaun, not far from Antioch.
As I know how to speak no language but that of the Orientals, you will forgive me, Sir Count, if I call you the Pope’s Grand Vizir. It devolves, therefore, on you to think of a way to make Monsieur Guys return to the post which he has just quitted:—a thing, in my opinion, very necessary both for the safety of the country, and of the Europeans in it. I have a great esteem for Monsieur Guys, but I see him so seldom, that, whether he is far or near, it is pretty much the same to me. As for the Christians here, I do not interest myself more about them than about other men—perhaps less; not on account of their religion, but of their qualities, of which egotism and perfidy are marked characteristics in most of them. As a religion is with me neither more nor less than a costume of adoration, it is all one whether it is green, white, blue, or black. To me it is all the same whether a man prostrates himself before a piece of wood, or before a cockle-shell, as the Metoualis do, provided his heart addresses itself to the Almighty.