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During his stay, Mr Paton paid frequent visits to the Pasha, whom he generally found in an audience room overlooking the precipitous descent to the Danube, "studying at the maps: he seemed to think that nothing would be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from the principal ports of Asia Minor, up to the depôts of the interior, so as to connect Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Koniah, Kaiserieh, &c., with Samsoon, Tersoos, and other ports."
A single piece of artillery would have sufficed to defend the passage of the Taurus, and yet when Ibrahim appeared on its northern declivity he had to encounter but a few irregulars, of whom he soon gave a good account. He then fixed his camp on the plain of Erekli, at one hundred and sixty days' march of a camel from Constantinople, and then advanced upon Koniah.
In the meantime the indefatigable Hussein Pasha had succeeded in re-organising an army with about 40,000 regulars of the reserve; it was echeloned between the capital and Koniah, reinforced by the troops brought by the Grand Vizier; it was sufficiently numerous to have prevented Ibrahim's further advance; but there was neither skill in the general nor ardour among the troops; the councils of the European instructors were, as usual, disregarded, while the Egyptian army, on the contrary, was almost exclusively under the direction of European officers.
On the 14th of May the field-marshal arrived at Koniah, where he displayed the most culpable negligence and carelessness.
Some distance from Koniah, Redchid Pasha sent forward his selector at the head of a body of irregulars, with orders to advance across the mountains up the village of Lilé, which was occupied by a strong detachment of Arabs, while the Grand Vizier on his side with the grand army, was to pursue the route of the plain.
He then advanced towards the plains of Anatolia, where he met Rashid Pasha. It was now December, 1830, and the atmosphere was heavy with a thick fog. The armies opened fire on each other on December 21st, with the town of Koniah in the background. The grand vizier was at the head of close on sixty thousand men, while the Egyptian army only comprised thirty thousand, including the Bedouins.
The battle of Koniah was the last act in the Syrian drama. The sultan's throne was shaken, and its fall might involve great changes in the politics of the world. Ibrahim Pasha was only three days' journey from the Bosphorus, and the way was open to him, with no Turkish army to fight and the whole population in his favour.
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