coast of Beirut, sparking the revolt anew.44
The rebels now joined forces with the Ottoman and Allied British and Austrian forces in an offensive to expel the Egyptian army from Syria. They obtained a swift and startling victory over Ibrahim Pasha, compelling him to retreat with his army from all of Syria. Bashir II, who had linked his fate to that of the losing side, surrendered to the British forces in Beirut and was hence exiled first to Malta, and later to Istanbul, where he died some years later. However, his name was not easily forgotten, and his shadow continued to hover over Lebanon for a long time. Soon enough, the Church began to bitterly regret the loss of the advantageous position the Maronites had won for themselves under his rule and militated for his restoration. However, Bashir II had left an intricate legacy: the old order that he had tried to bend to his own advantage, and the structures and hierarchies that he had displaced to secure his own rule, could not be restored with impunity after such a long time, and the situation that obtained by the end of his rule could not endure. Attempts to institute a new order amid the intertwined tensions and contradictions that had emerged under his long rule plagued the Mountain in the years following his removal. His successor, the Ottoman appointee, Emir Bashir Kasim, a distant cousin of Bashir II also known as Bashir III, failed to assert his authority and was in turn quickly demoted, bringing to an end the Shihabi Emirate.
Some details of these dramatic events, relevant to this study, such as the aims and claims of the rebels, some foreign activity and influence, and their impact on local forces, need to be examined.
The insurgents did not raise explicit claims for the independence of Mount Lebanon or for the granting of privileged status to the Mountain within the framework of a larger Empire during the 1840 rebellion. Their demands focused on some local and specific grievances, especially the high level of taxation, which had risen manifold during Bashir II's reign and was further increased by Ibrahim Pasha, as well as other exactions such as forced labor imposed during the Egyptian occupation, and no claims regarding the overall status of the Mountain as such were made by the population of Lebanon. In one of their clearest and longest statements, the rebels, after repeating their usual complaints, asserted: “We have lost our children, lost our liberty and we no longer possess anything; in short we are living in appalling degradation. We have thus decided to rise to abolish [this] injustice and seek our tranquility and liberty. If the authorities take this [fact] into consideration and eliminate injustice we are ready to obey its orders, because our revolt does not aim at taking over the government but at eliminating this untenable injustice” [my italics].45 When the rebels failed to obtain satisfaction from the Egyptian authorities, they readily accepted the helping hand of the Ottomans and their European allies who promised to alleviate their grievances under a restored Ottoman administration. This reversal of allegiances came about all the more easily since the Ottoman Sultan had by then issued a firman—the Hatt-i-Sherif of Gulhané of 1839—"enjoining the end of injustices and the curbing of every oppressor”46 and promising fairer assessment and collection of taxes. Hence the rebels came to ask “to be allowed to return under the protection of our legitimate sovereign, whom we have not ceased to obey for the last four hundred years. We only ask to partake of the privileges and the rights of the Hatt-i-sherif, which our gracious emperor had granted to all his subjects without exception, without distinction.”47
However, it seems that ideas of independence and emancipation were promoted among the Lebanese during this period. These ideas and concepts were propagated at that time by some members of the foreign community in Beirut who supported and incited the rebels to stand firm. It is difficult to gauge the real impact of these foreign exhortations on the population or their elementary importance in the appearance of emancipative inclinations among some Lebanese circles. However, since they concurred with the articulation of such claims and concerns in Mount Lebanon, they are reported here, leaving some margin of uncertainty about their immediate impact and essential significance.
In his report to the French minister of foreign affairs on the 1840 rebellion, the French consul in Beirut, Prosper Bourrée, mentioned that the Greek consul in Beirut, “a young man of 19 years, who had turned [his consulate] into a branch of the Russian consulate,”48 as well as the British consul Moore, were inciting the Lebanese to rebel, extolling the virtues of “liberty, glory, religion”49 and quoting the example of the Greek people who had managed few years earlier to liberate themselves from Turkish domination by force of arms.50 These exhortations were apparently not totally ignored by the Lebanese rebels. At about the same time, vague mention of the Greek revolt appeared in the proclamations of the insurgents who enjoined the population of Lebanon to follow the example of the Greek insurgents who “have preceded you and already rebelled, and obtained full liberty.”51 In the same context, Bourrée and his successor often insisted on the role of a Jesuit priest, Father Ryllo, a Lithuanian who had joined the Polish revolt against Russian rule in 1830 and who was favorable to the establishment of a “Christian homeland”52 in Mount Lebanon. During the revolt, he encouraged the insurgents to take arms and helped them to organize, earning for himself the reputation of being “one of the motors of the . . . insurrection.”53 Egyptian authorities in Beirut at the time corroborated these contacts between the rebels and some members of the foreign community in this town, reporting continual movement between Beirut and the rebel camp by foreign nationals.54 Driven by a romantic enthusiasm, the European community in Beirut seemed animated by a deep sympathy for the cause of the rebels, prompting the then-French prime minister, Adolph Thiers, to comment wryly about “the coterie of young French and foreign men, who consider the insurgents very interesting, and who perhaps, in this perspective, want to encourage and support them.”55
At the same time, Ottoman and British agents greatly contributed to the fanning of local expectations and to substantiating ulterior claims. Among these figured Richard Wood, a special envoy of the British ambassador to Istanbul, Lord Ponsonsby, who accompanied the Ottoman forces in order to support and organize the revolt against the Egyptian presence in Syria and who, “in the anxiety and eagerness of the contest going on . . . , made frequent and extensive promises [my italics] ... to the Maronites to induce them to rise” on behalf of the Ottoman government.56 British and Ottoman pledges for assistance included the preservation of the “ancient rights and privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Mountain”57 and an exemption from illegal taxes.
Reappraising in 1842 the role of foreign parties in sowing ideas of independence in Lebanon, Bourrée judiciously affirmed: “Until last year, the idea of independence did not exist among the Arabs. The allied expedition has brought the seed, but for a number of reasons, its development will be very slow.”58
When he wrote these lines, Bourrée may also have had in mind his own role during the events of 1840. Trying hard to conciliate the contradictory terms of French policy in the Levant, at the time divided between its traditional protectorate over the Catholics, which he deemed greatly endangered by a French stand opposed to the Maronite rebellion against Egyptian rule, and the French government's decision to safeguard the Egyptian hold over Syria,59 Bourrée came up with a proposal that he conveyed to Paris. The importance of this “plan,” as he called it, lay in the fact that the idea of establishing an independent Catholic principality in Mount Lebanon, under the protection of France, apparently then made its first and explicit appearance on the local scene. “These dangers,” he wrote, “would all vanish with the recognized independence of the Prince of Lebanon, with the creation, finally, of a Catholic principality that would be independent or merely required to perform a few acts of vassalage.” Such an entity, he added, would allow France “without convention or treaty or title but by the very necessity of things, to become the natural protector of the Christian Catholic emir.”60
Bourrée then expounded personally, and on his own initiative, this idea to Emir Bashir II, who, quite practically, objected to his exalted interlocutor that Mount Lebanon could not become independent without the adjunction of a port and the Bekaa Valley for its supply of grain.61 Bourrée did not mention whether he ever communicated his “plan” to any representative
