Greatly elated, Ibrahim flung himself into the arms of his companion in glory, Suleiman Pasha.  His prediction was verified:  “This time we will go to Constantinople, or they shall come to Cairo.”  They set out for Constantinople; but the viceroy was again generous.  Through the mediation of Captain Caille, aide-de-camp to Marshal Soult, who, in the name of France, demanded a cessation of hostilities, Mehemet Ali desired his son not to proceed into Asia Minor; so the general halted before Aintab, the scene of his victories, as he had done on a former occasion before Kutayeh.

Consumptive and exhausted with his excesses, Mahmud, whose virtue lay in his ardent love of reforms, died before his time, but this untimely demise at least spared him the knowledge of the Nezib disaster and the treason of his fleet, which passed into the hands of the viceroy.  Hafiz Pasha, routed by Ibrahim, was arraigned on his return to Constantinople for leading the attack before receiving the official mandate; but the Turkish general produced an autograph of his defunct master.  The sultan had been false to the last, and deceived both European ambassadors and the ministers of the empire, by means of mysterious correspondence, combined with his protestations for the maintenance of peace.

It was while Mehemet Ali was organising the national guard of Egypt, and arranging the military training of the workmen employed in his many factories, that the unlucky treaty of July 15, 1840, which gave the whole of Syria to the Sublime Porte, was concluded.  Four Western Powers had secretly met in London and agreed to deprive the sovereign of the Nile of his conquests, and fling him again at the foot of the throne, which he had treated as a plaything.  Mehemet Ali haughtily protested against the desecration of his rights, and France, his faithful ally, with hand on sword-hilt, threatened to draw it against whosoever should touch Egypt.  England and Austria covered the Syrian sea-coast with their sails and guns.  Beyrut, Latakia, Tortosa, Tripoli, Saida, Tyre, St. Jean d’Acre were bombarded and fell.  This formidable coalition despatched Lord Napier to Alexandria as negotiator.  Mehemet Ali accepted the overtures, and a convention guaranteed to him, as Pasha of Egypt, rights of succession unknown to all other pashalics of the empire.  The hatti-sherif of January 12, 1841, consolidated this privilege, with, however, certain restrictions which were regarded as inadmissible by France, the viceroy, and the cabinets.  A new act of investiture, passed on June 1, 1841, confirmed the viceroy in the possession of Egypt, transmissible to his male heirs, and also in the government of Nubia.  Mehemet Ali asked no more, France declared herself satisfied, and, to prove it, became once more a member of the European league by the treaty of July 15, 1841, which, without being directly connected with the European question, dealing as it did with the claims of Turkey upon the Dardanelles, implied, none the less, accordance upon the Eastern situation.  As a token of reconciliation, the Ottoman Porte soon raised its former rival, Mehemet Ali, to the rank of sadrazam.