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 latter against Ibrahim Pasha in both the Lebanon and Hauran close ties had been riveted between Briton and Druse, while the Maronites had trimmed to the Egyptian, and to a Power which lately had stood out of the European Concert. Both Great Powers, working equally in their own interests, the one for peaceful change, the other for peaceful conservation, failed equally, and both were responsible for the outbreaks of 1845. The Maronites began them in the hope of driving the Druse remnant right out of the Mountain; but the Druses rendered worse than they had received. Both Great Powers showed themselves commendably impartial in encouraging the Porte to deal out evenhanded justice and in blaming it for what had been largely their own work.

Reassertion of Turkish Authority.—When this account was settled, or, rather, deferred, the Mountain relapsed for fifteen years into such quiescence as interrupts the activities of a volcano, in which subterraneous forces continue at work. The Porte, anxious to complete the task of Ibrahim, found the Lebanon an impediment. It was successful enough with the Kurds and Turcomans of the north, against whom expeditions proceeded in 1845 and 1846, suppressing chieftains and deporting villagers from Amanus and Taurus into the lowlands, and vice versâ; and it pacified, if it could not break, the Hauran. But when, in 1846, it sent a strong force into the Lebanon to effect wholesale arrests among feudal sheikhs of both parties, the result was not satisfactory. The Maronites rather than the Druses were weakened, the latter being always better able to replace lost leaders: and the chances of future trouble were only strengthened. the more so since the interest and sentiment of the Turks inclined them inevitably to be tender with the Druses. Were they not a minority fighting by themselves against a majority suspected of reliance on the intervention of a European Power?

Latin and Greek Rivalry about the "Holy Places."—Turkish favour towards the Druses became