On the morning of the 11th Izzet Pacha joined me, and shortly after I received information that 2000 of Souliman’s soldiers had deserted; I immediately put the troops in motion, intending to march on him, having had no information that he had decamped; to this Izzet objected; the old man was afraid of being left at D’Jounie, and insisted on two battalions being sent there. I offered him one for his protection; this did not satisfy him; he invented all sorts of stories,—first, that Ibrahim was again collecting his forces, and was advancing,—and many others of the same nature; and when he found I was inexorable, he said the weather was changing and the troops would all get wet. This was quite true; we had not seen a cloud the whole summer, but now the sky became overcast, and there was every appearance of a storm; I, however, observed to old Izzet that I never understood that a shower of rain was a sufficient reason to prevent an attack upon an enemy’s camp. The troops were ordered to march, and Izzet returned to D’Jounie, and on announcing his approach by firing his pistols in the usual way, one went off by accident and wounded him in the leg; it is a pity it had not gone through his head, for never was there a more unfit man to govern a country than the man in question: he had once before lost a Turkish army by starvation, had cut off his own wife’s head, and was a notorious tyrant and savage; and this was the man chosen to govern the Syrians. Representations were made to the Porte, and they very wisely recalled him. On my arrival at the beach I found Souliman had decamped during the night, leaving his artillery behind, removing, however, the day before, all his tent equipage near the town, without being at all molested. Had intelligence been sent to me early on the 11th I should have had no difficulty in advancing on Souliman, and probably cutting off the greater part of his division, as well as preventing Ibrahim from retiring on Corneille and collecting his forces there; such a movement would have encouraged the advance of the mountaineers, instead of remaining in the neighbourhood of Basquinta and allowing Ibrahim and Souliman to retire quietly with a defeated army, and assemble at Zachle, a little above the plain of the Bekaa. Before I went off to the flag-ship I received the following letter from the Admiral:— “Beyrout, Oct. 11, 1840. “My dear Commodore,