2-995-899 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Deir-el-Kamr, on the southern side of Mount Lebanon, lately destroyed by the Druses, 1860. A correspondent of the Daily News wrote: "Yesterday we had the fearful news of the village of Deir-el-Kamr being sacked, burnt, and every Christian male, to the number of two thousand and more, being put to the sword by the Druses (who, a fortnight before, had disarmed them) in cold blood. The women and children were allowed to escape... Of the men of Deir-il-Kamr not more than thirty have escaped. The town is all burnt...Deir-el-Kamr contained, a month ago, a population of 8000 souls...Of the men not more than 150 have escaped; of the women and girls about 2000 have reached Beyrout; and of the young children less than 200 are alive...this fiendish massacre was perpetrated upon a population which 24 days previously had surrendered to the Druses, had been promised protection by them...[Before the massacre, this was]...a picturesque mountain village...whose houses are built along a steep, rocky hillside. A sublime glen runs beneath it...Both the banks, as well as the slopes above them, are covered with terraces supporting soil on which a well-earned harvest waves in early summer, amid rows of mulberries and olives and straggling vines'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.