Admiral Codrington at once sailed to Nauplia.  The Greeks were willing to accept an armistice, but the Turks scorned the offer.  At about this time an Egyptian fleet of ninety-two vessels sailed from Alexandria and joined the Ottoman fleet in the bay of Navarino (September 7th).  Five days later Admiral Codrington arrived and informed the Turkish admiral that any attempt to leave the bay would be resisted by force.  French vessels had also arrived, and Ibrahim agreed not to leave the bay without consulting the sultan.  A Greek flotilla having destroyed a Turkish flotilla, Ibrahim took this as a breach of the convention and sailed out to sea, but Codrington succeeded in turning him back.  Ibrahim now received instructions from the Porte to the effect that he should defy the Powers.  A new ultimatum was at once presented and the allied fleet of the European Powers entered the bay of Navarino.  The Turco-Egyptian fleet was disposed at the bottom of the bay in the form of a crescent.  Without further parleying, as the fleet of the English and their allies approached, the Turks and Egyptians began to fire, and a battle ensued, apparently without plan on either side:  the conflict soon became general, and Admiral Codrington in the Asia opened a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and quickly reduced his vessel to a wreck.  Other vessels in rapid succession shared the same fate, and the conflict raged with great fury for four hours.  When the smoke cleared off, the Turks and Egyptians had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with fragments of their ships.

[Illustration:  161.jpg A DISTINGUISHED EGYPTIAN JEW]

Admiral Codrington now made a demonstration before Alexandria, and Mehemet Ali gladly withdrew his forces from co-operating with such a dangerous ally as the sultan had proved himself to be.  Before the French expedition, bound for the Morea, had arrived, all the Egyptian forces had been withdrawn from the Peloponnesus, and the French only arrived after the Anglo-Egyptian treaty had been signed August 9, 1828.

Mehemet Ali’s chief ambition had always been to enlarge the circle of regeneration in the East.  In Morea he had failed through European intervention.  He felt that his nearer neighbour, Syria, which he had long coveted, would be an easier conquest, and he made the punishment of Abdullah Pasha of Acre, against whom he had many grievances, his excuse to the Porte.  In reality it was a case of attacking or being attacked.  Through a firman of the Divan of Constantinople, which had been published officially to the European Powers, he knew that his secret relations with Mustapha Pasha of Scodra had become known.  He knew also that letters had been intercepted in which he offered this pasha money, troops, and ammunition, while engaging himself to march on the capital of the empire, and that these letters were now in the hand of the Sultan Mahmud.  He wras also informed that the Porte was preparing to send a formidable army to Egypt; and his sound instinct taught him what to do in this position.