Till the year 1791 the French had factories at Acré, Seidé, and Beirût. At that period they were all expelled from the territory of Jezzâr by a sudden mandate, which allowed them only three days to abandon their respective habitations, under pain of death. Passing over the common, but just rule of supposing, that in a quarrel of this magnitude neither party was perfectly free from error, it may be fit to inquire what motives induced this ignominious expulsion, when a simple dismission, to be signified by various other means, would have answered the same purpose. To this it can only be answered, that the character of Jezzâr is impetuous, and even capricious, on all occasions. Sometimes a warm friend, and then suddenly a bitter enemy, equally, to all appearance, without any adequate reason. As to the conduct of the French, themselves and the other nations in the Levant accord so ill, that I have never obtained a very accurate statement of it. It seems to have originated in the behaviour of a drogueman of the nation, who having in some way offended the Pasha, was by his order summarily strangled or hanged. The French remonstrated, and threatened him with an application to the Porte, which he did not greatly fear, and he punished, _as he termed it, their insolence_, (in asserting their undoubted right, according to the capitulations between them and the Porte,) in this concise manner. Many complaints were made, subsequent to this period, by the ministers of the Republic at the Porte, but to no purpose: that court in fact was otherwise engaged, and it may be doubted whether it could have punished the Pasha. The events that followed suspended the prosecution of those claims, which, as the merchants thus suddenly banished had lost much, it appeared they had a right to prefer: but at length Aubert du Bayet sent a young officer of the name of Bailli to the Pasha to demand redress in a tone perhaps rather too high. This gentleman, on arriving at Acré, April 1797, wrote a letter in French to the Pasha, which he had the bizarre idea of finding some Levantine drogueman to translate, _verbatim_, in the presence of that personage. The terms, it seems, in which this letter was conceived were so bold, that none could be found to present it, and the Pasha, under one pretence or other, refused to see the agent. On this Bailli retired to Yaffé. The answer Jezzâr sent to the claim of the Republic was, that private merchants were at liberty to settle under his government on the footing of any other nation, but that he would acknowlege no consul, nor consent to offer them any indemnification for the losses of the late factory. Jezzâr had early conceived an enmity against that nation, which was probably increased by those who rivalled them in commerce.