These ports lie from Tripoli to Acre. Therefore, unfortunately, operations had to begin in the Lebanon. A British force landed in August 1840, called out the mountaineers, armed them without distinction of creed, and in three months swept both the Egyptians and Emir Beshir off mountain and littoral. Armed, blooded, and free, Druses and Maronites parted company to face one another, demand mutual satisfaction for accumulated griefs, and assert their respective equality or superiority in the future. Neither Great Britain nor France, it is clear, desired a civil war Lebanon; but, while the former had armed both parties, the latter was favouring one and inspiring it to demand majority rights. British sympathy, therefore, inevitably went out to the minority, which, for its part, had been quick to recognise the discord of the two Powers and the superiority of British influence with the new Ottoman Powers that were. Tension lasted until October 1841, and then broke in rapine and massacre—Druses on the one side, Maronites, with Metawali, on the other, and the blame as much on one as the other. Not till January 1843 was there any truce. The Porte tried direct government in vain, and at the instance of the Powers consented at last to control a dual autonomy under a Maronite and a Druse.
Outbreaks of 1845.—This may have been the best that could be done while native passions were hot, and the new accord between Great Britain and France was weakened by the unpopularity of Louis Philippe's government and the avowed intention of Legitimists, Clericals, and Imperialists to force French interests in Syria to the front. But it was a bad measure. The hands to which the Powers had just entrusted Syria were fatally weakened. While the rest of the country could be brought under direct control of the Imperial centre, the Porte was compelled in Lebanon, to accept a survival of the old order of decentralisation, so constituted as to remain an open sore. For, in reality. there was no peace yet. Too lately had the Mountain
