the second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots.  These last were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in abject poverty.  There was also a class of Arabs, namely, the Bedouins or rovers, who would never attach themselves to the soil, but were the children of the desert.  These wandering Arabs, divided into tribes on both sides of the valley, numbered nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, and could furnish from twenty to twenty-five thousand horse.  They were brave, but fit only to harass the enemy, not to fight him.  The third and last race was that of the Turks; but it was not more numerous than the Kopts, amounting to about two hundred thousand souls at most, and was divided into Turks and Mamluks.  The Turks were nearly all enrolled in the list of janizaries; but it is well known that they frequently had their names inscribed in those lists, that they might enjoy the privileges of janizaries, and that a very small number of them were really in the service.  Very few of them composed the military force of the pasha.  This pasha, sent from Constantinople, was the sultan’s representative in Egypt; but, escorted by only a few janizaries, he found his authority invalidated by the very precautions which Sultan Selim had formerly taken to preserve it.  That sultan, judging that Egypt was likely from its remoteness to throw off the dominion of Constantinople, and that a clever and ambitious pasha might create there an independent empire, had, as we have seen, devised a plan to frustrate such a motive, should it exist, by instituting a Mamluk soldiery; but it was the Mamluks, and not the pasha, who rendered themselves independent of Constantinople and the masters of Egypt.

Egypt was at this time an absolute feudality, like that of Europe in the Middle Ages.  It exhibited at once a conquered people, a conquering soldiery in rebellion against its sovereign, and, lastly, an ancient degenerate class, who served and were in the pay of the strongest.

Two beys, superior to the rest, ruled Egypt:  the one, Ibrahim Bey, wealthy, crafty, and powerful; the other, Murad Bey, intrepid, valiant, and full of ardour.  They had agreed upon a sort of division of authority, by which Ibrahim Bey had the civil, and Murad Bey the military, power.  It was the business of the latter to fight; he excelled in it, and he possessed the affection of the Mam-luks, who were all eager to follow him.

Bonaparte immediately perceived the line of policy which he had to pursue in Egypt.  He must, in the first place, wrest that country from its real masters, the Mam-luks; it was necessary for him to fight them, and to destroy them by arms and by policy.  He had, moreover, strong reasons to urge against them; for they had never ceased to ill-treat the French.  As for the Porte, it was requisite that he should not appear to attack its sovereignty, but affect, on the