Mehemet Ali, who was anxious above all things to have his viceroyalty in Egypt made hereditary, that he might transmit his honors to his brave son, cast about in every direction to find friends among European diplomatists.  Six years before, he had proposed to England, France, and Austria a partition of the sultan’s empire.  “Russia,” he said, “is half mistress of Turkey already.  She has established a protectorate over half its subjects, who are Greek Christians, and where she professes to protect, she oppresses instead.  If she seizes Constantinople, there is the end of your European civilization.  I am a Turk, but I propose to you to inaugurate a crusade which will save Turkey and save Europe.  I will raise my standard against the czar; I will put at your disposal my army, fleet, and treasure; I will lead the van; and in return I ask only my independence of the Porte and an acknowledgment of me as an hereditary sovereign.”  This proposition was promptly declined.  It was renewed, in 1838, in a modified form, but again England, France, and Austria would not listen to the viceroy’s reasoning.  Mehemet Ali became a prey to despair.

Sultan Mahmoud meantime was no less a victim to resentment and anxiety.  He hated his enforced subservience to Russia, and above all he hated his great subject and rival, Mehemet Ali.  With fury in his heart he watched how, shred by shred, his great empire was wrenched away from him,—­Greece, Syria, Servia, Algiers, Moldavia, and Wallachia.  Little remained to him but Constantinople and its surrounding provinces.  Russia, all-powerful in the Black Sea, could at any moment force him to give up to her the key of the Dardanelles.  Among the Turks (the only part of his subjects on whom he could rely) were many malcontents.  Fanatic dervishes predicted his overthrow, and called him the Giaour Sultan.  He had destroyed Turkish customs, outraged Turkish feelings, and by the massacre o the Janissaries, in 1826, he had sapped Turkish strength.  He now began in his own person to set at nought the precepts of the Koran.  All day he worked with frenzy, and at night he indulged himself in frightful orgies, till, dead drunk, he desisted from his madness, and was carried by his slaves to his bed.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Louis Blanc, Dix Ans.]

In the early months of 1839 Mahmoud made quiet preparations to thrust Ibrahim Pasha out of Syria; and in June a great battle was fought between the Egyptians and the Turks on the banks of the Euphrates, in which Ibrahim Pasha, by superior generalship, wholly defeated the Turkish commander, Hafiz Pasha.

Sultan Mahmoud never heard of this disaster.  He died of delirium tremens the very week that it took place, and his son, Abdul Medjid, mounted his throne.  Ibrahim Pasha immediately after his victory had made ready to threaten Constantinople, when despatches from his father arrested him.  Mehemet wrote that France had promised to take the part of Egypt, and to settle all her difficulties by diplomacy.