again in a state of turmoil. The 1845 Shakib Effendi Règlement had imposed an unpalatable political system on all parties in the Mountain, who hardly concealed their ill will toward any genuine implementation of its terms.1 The new representative institutions designed to regulate and deflate the prevailing tensions in the mixed sectors—the councils and wakils—failed in their task in view of the irreconcilable claims of the Druze muqaqata'jis who sought to reassert their authority over Christian tenants, villagers, and townsmen and the blunt refusal of the latter to yield to their former overlords, thus accentuating communal tensions in the Mountain. At the same time, the Druze notables and their Christian counterparts did their best to prevent a fairer redistribution of taxes, thus disappointing peasants in the Druze and the Christian sectors alike, and exacerbating the horizontal tensions in society. Things came to a head in the Christian sector when a peasant revolt against the Maronite Khazin shaykhs broke out in 1858. Soon, the whole Christian central sector was in a state of turmoil, with an angry and unchecked peasantry in arms.
Unrest eventually reached the Christians of the mixed sectors. The latter resumed their complaints about the intolerable tyranny of the Druzes.2 At the same time, the Maronites of the central districts, driven by an overconfident enthusiasm following the success of their movement against their own muqata'jis, "dispatched letters couched in the most inflated and bombastic terms to the great Christian centres calling on them to rise fearlessly against their oppressors, and promising them immediate assistance.”3 They incited their Christian brethren in the mixed districts to rise against their own shaykhs, boasting of their 50,000-man force. In the mixed sectors, therefore, the social dimension of the conflict intertwined with the ongoing battle for political dominance in the Mountain.
These Maronite designs prompted the indignant reaction of the Druzes. The Druze muqata'jis, determined to come to terms with a question that had plagued relations with their Christian tenants for the past twenty years, began to mobilize their own Druze tenants and followers. Christian boisterous threats against the Druze population in general facilitated this process, the social dimension of the conflict becoming totally overshadowed by the more essential struggle for mere existence. “The Druzes, in fact, felt it to be a struggle for successful and lasting ascendancy, or irremediable ruin and humiliation. And they declared war to the knife.”4
In such an explosive atmosphere, trying to determine who fired the first bullet that inflamed the whole Mountain is a futile exercise. The seeds of the conflict were sown some two decades earlier, and by 1860 both parties were equally determined to come to blows. The 1860 conflagration was a repetition and sequel to the inconclusive 1841 and 1845 contests, “distinguished by circumstances of more than usual brutality.”5 The contradictory logic of the two parties had only been exacerbated by the failure of either to impose its own views, leading each party, imbued with a feeling of self-righteousness, to perceive the “Other” as an aggressor, and its fight as a legitimate act of self-defense.
The exceptional ferocity of the ensuing fight can be attributed to the force each party drew from these intense perceptions of the conflict. “To depict therefore the quarrel between the Druzes and the Maronites as an onslaught of savage heathens on the inoffensive followers of Christian religion is a simple misinterpretation. It was a feud between two equally barbarous tribes in which the victors inflicted on their enemies the fate with which they themselves had been threatened.”6 Only total victory could satisfy the ambitions of either side.
Hostilities in Dayr-al-Qamar, Zahla, Rashaya, and Hasbaya led to the massacre of some 6,000 Christians, the displacement of 20,000 others, and the devastation of 200 villages, including the two most prosperous Christian towns, Dayr-al-Qamar (8,000 inhabitants) and Zahla (7,000–10,000 inhabitants).7 It was the Christians of the mixed districts who paid the heaviest price. Abandoned by their brethren in the north, they had once more taken the brunt of the Druze attack. The northern Christian sector was spared any military confrontation, and the contribution of its Maronite inhabitants was limited to one or two unsuccessful sallies at the start of the conflict. Thereafter, the young popular leader, Yusuf Karam, gathered a small force and rushed to the Matn, but he confined himself to a policy of cautious expectation and procrastination. The Comte de Paris, who was visiting the northern regions of Mount Lebanon at the time, described the bellicose preparations and demonstrations of the Maronites of this sector, but he regretted that they did not make use of their ardor under the walls of Zahla and Dayr-al-Qamar. In his view, they were “thoughtless and light-minded,” and totally oblivious of “the duties that in a nation each should observe in order to ensure the welfare of all" [my italics].8
This lack of determination to defend the “Maronite cause” among the Christians of the north was aggravated by the absence of any generally recognized leadership and total disorganization. The Christian troops consisting, as in 1841 and 1845, of small bands organized along parochial lines by village, family groups, or region balked at any sort of coordination of their efforts around some basic strategy. During one of their first assaults they were even reported to have shot at each other. As for the traditional political and military leaders of the community—the Emirs, shaykhs, and muqata'jis, many of whom had already been expelled from the Mountain by their peasants—they remained mostly aloof, secretly hoping for a Druze victory, which in their eyes represented the triumph of the old order of things.9 The clergy tried as hard as it could to organize and unify the efforts of their flock. But, the Church was apparently overwhelmed by the disunity and anarchy prevailing in the Christian camp, and soon after the first military reverses it tried as hard as it could to seek peace.10
Nor were the Christians in the heat of battle more united. The Maronites of Dayr-al-Qamar, who had been the most vociferous in denouncing the intolerable tyranny of Druze dominance, “found themselves perplexed and utterly at variance with each other on how to act . . . when . . . the storm suddenly gathered round them. . . . Thus, even in the extremity of their distress, the Christians were wavering and divided.”11
Hence, in 1860 as in 1841 and 1845, it was in great part the divisions of the Maronites and their conflicting interests, their lack of solidarity and concern for an alleged Maronite cause that accounted for their military defeat. This time, though, their military rout was decisive and their presence almost obliterated from the mixed districts. The hope of the Christians of these regions, vainly encouraged by their northern brethren and the clergy, to abolish Druze dominance had totally miscarried, and the project of the Church to establish Christian ascendancy over the whole Mountain had seemingly received a deadly blow. The disunity of the Maronites once more demonstrated the discrepancy between the ambitious plans of the clergy and concrete realities. Expressing this general conclusion, the French consul in Beirut, Bentivoglio, wrote on July 15: “The time to dream of unattainable independence has passed. The Christians have suffered a major setback and have to start over. But it is to be hoped that they will be wiser in the future and that they will not be forced to wage pointless, ruinous wars.”12
Paradoxically, however, it was to their devastating defeat and the consequent general Western outrage aroused by the massacres perpetrated by the Druzes that the Maronites owed their rescue. Once more, Maronite military reverses were turned into qualified political victory by Western, and especially French, intervention.
THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
News of events in Lebanon began to reach Europe in the first days of July 1860, arousing the indignation of the Western public, the press, and official circles. The French government, which acted as the motor for European intervention during the whole crisis, quickly took the initiative. On July 6, the French minister for foreign affairs, Edouard Thouvenel, suggested setting up a European commission that would meet to reexamine and eventually revise the 1842–45 arrangements for Mount Lebanon and adopt measures guaranteeing against the recurrence of hostilities.13 This first limited proposal of Thouvenel was, however, quickly overshadowed by a much bolder one following reports of massacres in Damascus, which occurred shortly thereafter, between July
