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In my turn I told them all about the battle of Nezib, a very interesting description of which I had had the good luck to hear from two young Prussian officers, eye- witnesses of it, one of whom became the celebrated Marshal von Moltke; and also all I learnt about the Eastern question on my visits to the Embassies, to Therapia and Buyukdere.
We were ushered into an audience-room of great extent, with a low carved roof and some old-fashioned furniture, the divan being in the corner, and the windows looking over the precipice to the Danube below. Hafiz Pasha, the same who commanded at the battle of Nezib, was about fifty-five, and a gentleman in air and manner, with a grey beard.
It was an unprecedented demand, and occasioned great consternation, but must be obeyed. The army was raised, and was estimated at eighty thousand. It encountered an Egyptian army of about the same number on the plains of Nezib near Aleppo, on the 24th of June, and the Turkish troops were scattered in all directions.
You, my dear, must know as well as I, that the balance of power in Europe could not possibly be maintained in any such way; and though, to be sure, for the last fifteen years, the progress of the old robber has not made much difference to us in the neighborhood of Russell Square, and the battle of Nezib did not in the least affect our taxes, our homes, our institutions, or the price of butcher's meat, yet there is no knowing what MIGHT have happened had Mehemet Ali been allowed to remain quietly as he was: and the balance of power in Europe might have been the deuce knows where.
And Dilean, and Mizpeh, and Joktheel, Lachish, and Bozkath, and Eglon, And Cabbon, and Lahmam, and Kithlish, And Gederoth, Bethdagon, and Naamah, and Makkedah; sixteen cities with their villages: Libnah, and Ether, and Ashan, And Jiphtah, and Ashnah, and Nezib,
Mehemet Ali knew himself to be strong enough to carry a sceptre ably, and he realised that there would be no need for his numerous pashalics to pass out of his family. Henceforth his mind was filled with thoughts of independence and the rights of succession. The viceroy and the sultan continued to strengthen their forces, and a conflict occurred near Nezib on June 24, 1839.
The Turkish governor was at this time Hafiz Pasha, the unsuccessful commander at Nezib, lately appointed in the room of Kiamil, who had been displaced at the mandate of Russia for the share he had taken in the first election of Prince Alexander; but his jurisdiction is now confined to the fortress and the Turkish quarter, which lies along the Danube; the remainder of the town, lying piled street upon street up the steep bank of the Save, being under the Servian authorities.
The recommencement of the struggle between ancient Turkey and that youthful Egypt which the genius of Mehemet Ali had created, had just ended in the final defeat of the Turks in the battle of Nezib a defeat which was closely followed by the death of Sultan Mahmoud, the last of the determined autocrats of the race of Othman.
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.
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