century, established a kind of secret sect at Cairo as an offshoot of the great schism of the Ishmaelites, and that the "Assassins" were also derived from the sect established by Hakem. The Druses were said to believe in transmigration, to worship a calf (probably the Egyptian Apis) as some typical expression of a mythical idea; they had a number of convents scattered among the mountains, and also possessed a college for the study of Syriac. All the men were trained to the use of arms, and it was said that the emir could muster 40,000 at a very short notice. They were formidable enough in themselves, but as the Maronites were even more numerous it is doubtful whether the Druses would have gained all the advantage in an open conflict. They had resort to ambuscades, and were joined by other wild tribes, the Kurds, and the Bedouins. Aided by the Mussulman sects and unchecked by the Turkish authorities they had wrought themselves into a frenzy against the Catholic Christians, and the result was that 151 villages were in ruins in little more than a month and above 70,000 inhabitants of the Libanus were reduced to beggary, while about 7000 perished in the massacres, besides those who were killed in attempting an organized defence. Maronites were doubtless little less fierce and quarrelsome than the Druses, and hostilities between them had been frequent. The Christian villages were numerous, and the Maronite population amounted to above 200,000, amongst whom were many Europeans, beside those connected with the Catholic and Presbyterian missions, while many of the native families had European names, a circumstance attributed to the probability of some of the Franks in the first crusade having established themselves in the territory of the followers of the Latin Church settled in the Lebanon. It is not necessary to investigate the origin of the outrage which resulted in the savage onslaught of the Druses. It was said that some time in the month of May a Maronite monk was found murdered, and that by way of retaliation the Maronites killed several Druses on the first opportunity. At all events at the end of the month the Druses came down in force upon the villages near Beyrout, and The then attacked a large town under Mount Hermon. Instead of doing his duty by repelling the aggressors, the Turkish commandant ordered the Maronites to disarm, promising that he would protect them. They obeyed, and when they had given up their weapons he left them to their fate, the Druses rushed into the place and massacred the whole population, the Turkish soldiers making no effort to save them, but in some cases joining the assailants in the work of slaughter. For more than a month the atrocities were continued by the Druses, who, as they detested Europeans even more than they hated the Catholic Maronites, took little trouble to discriminate. Exulting at being able to carry on their ferocious excesses unchecked by the authorities who had been placed there to preserve justice and order, they succeeded in arousing the fanaticism of others, and at the beginning of July a Turkish mob in Damascus attacked and set fire to the Christian quarter of the city. In one day nearly 2000 Christians were massacred, and the French, Russian, Austrian, Belgian, Dutch, and Greek consulates were destroyed. A number of the more important Mussulman residents in Damascus made strenuous efforts to save the Christians, and gave them shelter and protection; but the Turkish governor, who had a military force under his command, remained apparently indifferent, or at least made no earnest effort to interfere, so that the brutal mob and its instigators murdered their victims with a complacency derived from the assumption that they acted under official approval. Although the affair might have been stopped by the troops before dark on the Monday, after that hour the mob increased in numbers every minute. Late in the evening about 300 soldiers were sent to put a stop to the outrage, but many of them very shortly joined in the plundering; while others used their arms to massacre the Christians. The whole Christian quarter, which included some of the finest palaces to be found in the empire, was soon one mass of flames; and as the inmates tried to escape they were thrust back on the burning piles by the bayonets of the Turkish regular troops. One of the military chiefs who EUROPEAN INTERVENTION-FUAD PACHA. commanded in Damascus was Osman Beg, the miscreant who but three weeks previously had delivered up at Hasbeyia upwards of 1500 Christians to be massacred by the Druses. No fewer than six times did Mr. Brant, the English consul, and the Rev. Mr. Robson, Irish Presbyterian missionary, at the utmost risk of their lives, go together to the Pacha Achmet, and urge him to do something to save the lives of the Christians. No; he said he could, and showed that he would, do nothing, but remained "consulting" in the castle. When the last despatches left Damascus, at 2 p.m. on the 12th of July, the burning, slaughter, murder, pillage, and other atrocities continued, and became worse than ever; for the fanatics of the place had been just then joined by a host of Bedouins, Kurds, Druses, and other scoundrels, who were only too pleased at the chance of pillage. The hero of the time was the brave and generous chief Abd-el-Kader, who repaid with interest the good-will with which he had been treated by the French after his defeat. In his house and its court-yards in Damascus not only the European consuls but many hundreds of Christians found shelter, and he, with his Algerines, held out against the horde of wretches who sought to destroy the refugees. The English consulate in the Moslem quarter of the town had been respected, and there several hundreds were sheltered, while 3000 were in the castle. It was said that 2000 had been massacred and the Christian quarter of the city was entirely destroyed, the loss of property being £1,200,000 sterling. The Lazarists, the Sisters of Charity, and other women of Damascus were at length enabled to leave for Beyrout under the protection of an escort of the brave followers of Abd-el-Kader, who had at the beginning of the massacre sallied forth with his men and saved the lives of numbers, who were at once taken under his protection and their needs provided for. From first to last the outrages were so horrible that the reports could scarcely be much exaggerated. Lord Dufferin was on his way to Deir-elKamar at the time of the massacre when the number of slain was put down at from 1100 to 1200. "I travelled," he writes, "over most VOL. IV. 65 of the open country before the war was over, and came to Deir-el-Kamar a few days after the massacre. Almost every house was burned, and the street crowded with dead bodies, most of them stripped and mutilated in every possible way. My road led through some of the streets: my horse could not even pass, for the bodies were literally piled up. Most of those I examined had many wounds, and in each case was the right hand either entirely or nearly cut off; the poor wretch, in default of weapons, having instinctively raised his arm to parry the blow aimed at him. I saw little children of not more than three or four years old stretched on the ground, and old men with gray beards. Beyrout itself was threatened by the infuriated and victorious Druses, and the presence of an English pleasure-yacht in the harbour, with a single gun, was supposed to have had more effect in averting danger than all the troops of the Turkish pacha, who rather connived at the massacre." If any necessity for intervention in the affairs of Turkey had never before existed it seemed to be justified at this time, and a convention of all the great powers intrusted France and England with the duty of interposing and restoring order. The admirals of the allied force had orders to disembark at Beyrout the soldiers furnished from France, and the disturbances were quickly arrested. On the 16th of July the sultan addressed a letter to the Emperor of the French, saying:"I have at heart that your majesty should know with what grief I have learned of the events in Syria. Let your majesty be convinced that I shall employ all my powers for establishing security and order in Syria, and that I shall severely punish the guilty parties, whoever they may be, and render justice to all. In order to leave no doubt whatever of the intentions of my government I have intrusted that important mission to my minister for foreign affairs, with whose principles your majesty is acquainted." Fuad Pacha, the minister sent by the sultan, was an honest and capable man. He carried retribution among the wretches who had been foremost in the atrocities, and caused more than one of the treacherous Turkish officials 68 to be executed and others of them to be degraded. When order was restored it was agreed by the representatives of the great powers meeting at Constantinople that a Christian governor of the Lebanon should be appointed in subordination to the sultan. It was nearly a year before the French troops left Syria; and Lord Palmerston wrote on the 26th of June, 1861, to Sir Henry Bulwer, saying: "I am heartily glad we have got the French out of Syria, and a hard job it was to do so. The arrangement made for the future government of the Libanus will, I dare say, work sufficiently well to prevent the French from having any pretext for returning thither." By that time occurrences of nearer and apparently much greater importance than the intervention in Syria were occupying earnest attention; and the eyes of Europe had, during the whole of the previous year, been fixed on the progress of events in Italy, to which we must now briefly return. It should be remembered as some key to the operation of the Franco-Italian war and to the events which immediately followed in Italy, that in April, 1856, a note was addressed by Count de Cavour and the Marquis de Villamarina, the Sardinian plenipotentiaries at the Paris conference, to the English and French governments, in which, after stating that they had hoped that the Congress of Paris would not separate without taking into serious consideration the state of Italy, and deliberating on the means to be adopted for the re-establishment of its political equilibrium, disturbed by the occupation of a great part of the country by foreign troops. They said that this hope had been disappointed, in consequence of the persistence of Austria in obliging the conference to be kept within the bounds of the questions marked out for discussion. They next called attention to the system of repression and violent reaction in force since 1848, to the number of political prisoners in the jails, the number of exiles, and the excited and revolutionary condition of the people. They then denounced the action of Austria in repressing the discontent of the subjects of the small Italian states, and to that end occupying the greater part of the valley of the Po and of Central Italy, making the Adriatic an Austrian lake, converting Piacenza into a first-class fortress in contradiction to the Treaty of Vienna, holding a garrison at Parma, and preparing to deploy her forces all along the Sardinian frontier. This appeal by Sardinia against the occupation of Italy by Austrian troops was seriously received by France and England; the former, however, reserving any outspoken expression of principle which would be made to include Rome and the Pontifical States in the remonstrance against foreign occupation, Rome being then protected against insurrection by French troops. A message from the governments was sent to Naples, however, advising against the tyranny exercised over the people there; but the remonstrance was haughtily disregarded, and the result of communications was that both England and France recalled their plenipotentiaries from the Neapolitan court. The Treaty of Villafranca, by which Austria relinquished Lombardy, and Savoy and Nice were ceded to France, had neither completed the unity of the Italian kingdom nor stayed the progress of those who had set themselves to achieve Italian freedom. The infamous Ferdinand of Naples was dead-men had nicknamed him Bomba because in the earlier struggle for liberty, when the people of Sicily rose against his tyrannies, he gave his command in the one word "Bombadare!" and the town of Messina was bombarded from the citadel, with so much success in the destruction of the people and the suppression of their complaints that he afterwards repeated it in other places. We have already seen with what precise but indignant emphasis Mr. Gladstone had arraigned the government of Naples, and had dragged before the world the story of its treacheries and the secrets of its prison-houses;1 but neither remonstrances nor warnings changed the brutal indifference of the king to the wrongs inflicted on his subjects. He continued to believe in the policy of bombardment, and should the tortured inhabitants of Naples writhe into rebellion, the guns of 1 Vol. ii. p. 259. cessor. THE SWORD OF GARIBALDI-GARIBALDI HIMSELF. The public regard had been somewhat diverted from Italy during the first part of the Crimean war; but Piedmont became one of the allies in that vast campaign, and Sardinia had a voice in the Treaty of Paris in 1856. Three years afterwards France was in the field with Victor Emmanuel against Austria, and after Magenta and Solferino, Victor Emmanuel meant, not Sardinia only, but Italy. 67 the fortress of St. Elmo commanded the whole | fought on the side of national liberty. The city and would in a few hours reduce it to a general received him with friendly hospitality, heap of ruins. He was left to his own devices supplied him with funds to enable him to reach and to the gathering hatred of the people, a Tunis, and used some influence to support a tyrant imprisoned as it were amidst the corrupt proposition that he should receive a small and cruel instruments of his oppression, unable pension from the government at Turin. For to go beyond the reach of the guns which he a time Garibaldi retired to a lonely rocky island was ready to turn against the subjects who called Caprera, off the north-east coast of Sardetested him, abandoned by the representa- dinia, the place which afterwards became his tives of the western powers of Europe, who home. Soon afterwards he returned to America, refused to recognize his right to govern by the not again to take up arms, but to earn a living. rules of barbarism, and left a miserable ex- His young children were consigned to the care ample of the perverted authority by which a of faithful friends of his own childhood at sovereign can undermine a throne for his suc- Nice. In 1850 he was heard of as having settled in New York, where he made and sold candles in a small shop next door to that of another exile, his old friend and comrade General Joseph Avezzava, who had gone into trade as a tobacconist; but a seafaring life was more in accordance with Garibaldi's adventurous temper, and he soon left New York for Peru, where he obtained employment as master of a vessel trading to China. In 1854 he was once more in the United States, and took command of the Commonwealth, an American trader, in which he made a voyage to Shields, and while there received the present of a sword forged in Birmingham. This sword, which was presented to him while he was the guest of Mr. Joseph Cowen, the present member for Newcastle, had a gold hilt on which was an inscription stating that it was from the people of Tyneside, friends of European freedom. But events were taking place in Europe which drew him homeward, and though he might have to wait, he felt that till the moment came when he should again strike for Italy, he must be near at hand. There are many who well remember Captain Giuseppe Garibaldi, the quiet capable commander of a steamer which for several years traded between Nice and Marseilles, and some of those who had transactions with him which brought him to London, scarcely understood, or were completely ignorant of the fact, that this unpretentious self-contained man was the same who had fought for the independence of Monte Video, and had marched into Rome at the head of his old Italian comrades of Rio Janeiro, the nucleus of the victorious legion, Again, in the front, where danger was to be found and a sword was needed, sounded the name of Garibaldi. When Rome had been abandoned by those on whom he had relied for support, he had marched out with the devoted band who answered to his appeal determined to fight his way to Venetia, and to make no compromise with the Austrians or with the troops of Bomba; but the enemy was in overwhelming force in the provinces of Northern Italy, and in the hardships and sufferings of that retreat from Rome his devoted wife Anita died, and he was desolate. Nothing could be done for Italy, and the cause for which he was willing to sacrifice his life appeared to him to have been betrayed and lost. He therefore surrendered to the carabineers, who took him to La Marmora, then in command at Rome. Victor Emmanuel had made peace with Austria after the battle of Novara. Venice, after a noble struggle, had succumbed. There was nothing left for Garibaldi but a prison or voluntary exile. To a prison neither La Marmora nor the King of Sardinia would send the patriot who had which was followed by a crowd of about 2500 | daughter Teresita and Madame Deideri her volunteers. This was in April, 1849, and it may be interesting to note what was said of the personal appearance of Garibaldi and his followers by one who was present at the time: "He is a man of middle height, his countenance scorched by the sun, but marked with lines of antique purity. He sat his horse as calmly and firmly as if it had been a part of him. Beneath his hat-broad-brimmed, with a narrow loop, and ornamented with a black ostrich feather--spread a forest of hair; a red beard covered all the lower part of his face. Over his red shirt was thrown an American poncho, white, lined with red, like his shirt. His staff wore the red blouse; and afterwards, the whole Italian legion adopted that colour. Behind him galloped his groom Aguyar, a stalwart negro, dressed in a black cloak, and carrying a lance with a black pennant. All who had come with him from America wore pistols and poniards of fine workmanship in their belts, and carried whips of buffalo skin in their hands." In 1855 Garibaldi had made his home in Piedmont, or rather in the island to which he had been allowed to retire years before. Caprera had become his own, purchased, it is said, for £520, a sum which he was able to pay out of about £1600 inherited on the death of his mother. It would have been no enviable retreat to any man unaccustomed to a simple mode of living: one might even say that only a man accustomed to hardship could have long occupied the quarters which the general appropriated to himself. Some improvements were made afterwards in the small square white house and its surroundings, but Colonel Vecchi, after visiting Garibaldi there in 1861, described it and its belongings graphically enough. It was situated on a level spot, shut in on one side by great rocks, and on the other by walls, the gate in which was a movable rail, a horizontal pole such as is used to let horses in and out of a meadow. There was a path running all round it. In front, on the other side of the path, some poles were stuck in the ground to make a trellis for the vines in summer. On entering, there was a vestibule which opened on the left into the room where Garibaldi's little guardian slept; on the right was the chamber occupied by the general. At the back a staircase led up to the roof and terrace; the short dark passage led to a small bed-room and to the kitchen. Here, on the right, was the winecellar; on the left, a pantry, from which the visitor passed into the secretary's room, which was also a bed-room, and the arsenal. "In August, when I first visited the house," said Colonel Vecchi, "there was only one chair, and that had no back. Now there are some new maple-wood chairs, presented by the officers and crew of the Washington, with the donors' names inscribed on the back, and some walnut-wood chairs belonging to Deideri. The hero's room, also, is more comfortably furnished. It contains a small plain iron bedstead, with muslin curtains hanging from acane tester, a walnut-wood writing-table, and a chest of drawers, with a dressing glass on the top, blocking up a window that looks towards the north. Close to the bed stands a deal stool, covered with books and letters. On a cord stretched from the walls across the room are hung to dry the general's red shirts and various other garments, for he changes his clothes every time he changes his occupation. The fireplace is in the middle of the wall at the end of the room; some logs are always kept blazing in it on account of the damp, for beneath the stone floor is the cistern which receives the water from the gutters when it rains, and this causes the flags to be always slimy and wet. On each side of the fireplace are bookcases containing works on shipping, history, and military tactics; but books and bundles of papers, to tell the truth, are all around, lying on every available piece of furniture. Over the mantelpiece hangs a portrait, in water-colours, of his infant daughter Rosita who died at Monte Video. At the head of the bed in an ebony frame hangs a lock of hair of his wife Anita, the brave woman who is no more. There never was a more simple Spartan retreat chosen by a hero." A simple retreat certainly, but not one judiciously chosen by a hero who suffered frequently from acute rheumatism; Garibaldi was never judicious in his own interests nor |