fluence of the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt,
notably of Khosrev, the grand vizier, who had never forgiven his
humiliation in Egypt in 1803. Mahmud also was already planning reforms
borrowed from the West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of
opportunity of observing the superiority of European methods of warfare,
was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet and
an army on modern lines, partly as a measure of precaution, partly as an
instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes of ambition. Before
the outbreak of the War of Greek Independence in 1821 he had already
expended much time and energy in organizing a fleet and in training,
under the supervision of French instructors, native officers and
artificers; though it was not till 1829 that the opening of a dockyard
and arsenal at Alexandria enabled him to build and equip his own
vessels. By 1823, moreover, he had succeeded in carrying out the
reorganization of his army on European lines, the turbulent Turkish and
Albanian elements being replaced by negroes and fellahin.[23] His
foresight was rewarded by the invitation of the sultan to help him in
the task of subduing the Greek insurgents, offering as reward the
pashaliks of the Morea and of Syria. Mehemet Ali had already, in 1821,
been appointed governor of Crete, which he had occupied with a small
Egyptian force. In the autumn of 1824 a fleet of sixty Egyptian
war-ships carrying a large force of disciplined troops concentrated in
Suda Bay, and, in the following March, Ibrahim as commander-in-chief
landed in the Morea. But for the action of European powers the
intervention of Mehemet Ali would have been decisive. His naval
superiority wrested from the Greeks the command of the sea, on which the
fate of the insurrection ultimately depended, while on land the Greek
irregular bands were everywhere routed by Ibrahim's disciplined troops.
The history of the events that led up to the battle of Navarino and the
liberation of Greece is told elsewhere (see NAVARINO and GREEK
INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF); the withdrawal of the Egyptians from the Morea
was ultimately due to the action of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who
early in August 1828 appeared before Alexandria and induced the pasha,
by no means sorry to have a reasonable excuse, by a threat of
bombardment, to sign a convention undertaking to recall Ibrahim and his
army.

The Syrian campaigns.

Before the final establishment of the n