The Christian nations were shocked into activity by the terrible tidings from Syria. Fifty European warships soon reached the harbor of Beirut, and an army of ten thousand French soldiers was landed. Just in time to avoid foreign intervention, however, the sultan sent two of his own regiments from Constantinople to quell the disturbance, and shortly afterwards the grand vizier himself came to Syria with additional troops. These soldiers were but a handful in comparison with the Druse army or even the Turkish regiments which had been assisting in the slaughter; but when the mysterious, unwritten messages go forth from Constantinople commanding that a massacre shall be stopped—or shall be begun—they are understood at once in the most inaccessible mountain villages of the empire.
As soon as order was restored, the conscription, from which holy Damascus had been exempt since the days of Mohammed, was strictly enforced as a punitive measure; and over twenty thousand Damascene Moslems were sent in chains to the coast, whence they were transported to regiments in distant provinces of Turkey. Furthermore, a levy of a million dollars was laid upon the city, and its governor and a hundred prominent Moslem residents were hanged for their share in the massacres, as were also a few officials in other parts of the country. Not a single Druse, however, was executed for partaking in the awful slaughter.
The European powers now insisted that there should never be another Moslem ruler over the Christians of Lebanon, and such pressure was brought to bear upon the Turkish government that the district was made a practically independent province. Its governor must be, like the Maronites, a Latin Christian, although, in justice to the Druse population, he may not be an inhabitant of Syria. His appointment is subject to the approval of the six great powers and he cannot be removed without the consent of their ambassadors at Constantinople. The province pays no taxes to the imperial government, nor may Turkish troops be stationed within its boundaries except under certain stringent restrictions. Lebanon has its own army of volunteer militia; and the free, independent bearing of these mountaineers is in striking contrast to that of the underpaid, underfed and poorly clothed conscripts of the regular army.
The rulers appointed under the new régime have not all been equally capable and honest. Some have understood the language of bakhsheesh as well as their Turkish predecessors. The commercial growth of the province has also been hampered by the lack of a seaport. Yet since 1861 the mountaineers, Druses and Maronites alike, have enjoyed an unprecedented quiet and an increasing material prosperity. The old feudal wars have ceased, the tyrannical political power of the Maronite hierarchy is greatly diminished, education is rapidly advancing and the valuation of property in the Lebanon district has greatly advanced. In the words of Lord Dufferin, who was a member of the international commission which framed the new plan of government, “until the present day the Lebanon has been the most peaceful, the most contented and the most prosperous province of the Ottoman Dominion.”
A guard of Lebanon soldiers
The village of Deir El-Kamr, where no Druse dare dwell
Yet the cruel past has not entirely sunk into oblivion. The Maronite village of Deir el-Kamr, for instance, has still one mosque; but no Moslem dwells there, nor dare a Druse pass through this neighborhood where the massacre of unarmed Christians lasted until more than two thousand corpses lay within the enclosure of the government-house. On the other hand, there are Druse hamlets where no Maronite would trust himself. Ten years ago, when Beirut was in one of its periodic tumults, five thousand Lebanon soldiers, stalwart, brave and well-armed, encamped just outside the city limits, waiting for one more anti-Christian outbreak—which fortunately did not come—as an excuse for wiping out the Moslem population. Looking across a deep gorge of Lebanon, I once saw a file of Turkish soldiers laboriously making their way up the steep mountainside. They were seeking a murderer, so I was told, but a murderer of no common mettle; for from his inaccessible retreat among the cliffs he had sent to the government of Beirut a bold acknowledgment of his crimes, accompanied by the threat that whenever in the future a Christian should be assassinated in that city he would immediately descend to the coast and take the life of a Moslem in exchange.