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 al