Though stooping with age, he went about the country with a donkey loaded with books, and a little boy to lead him, doing what he could.

In a district northeast of Tripoli, he was encouraged in his work by the approbation of the Greek bishop Zacharias.
The political and religious events then occurring were intimately connected.

The conquest of Syria by Mohammed Ali, was the apparent cause of the religious movement among the Druzes already described.
The defeat of the Sultan's army at Nisib, in 1839, and the feelings of jealousy towards France and Egypt, then intimately allied, led to the determination of England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria to restore Syria and the Turkish fleet to the Porte.

The consequent armed intervention made Beirut the seat of war.

An English fleet bombarded the city, and the English officers, by a singular miscalculation, treated the Papal Maronites as their friends, and the Druzes as their enemies.