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Updated: June 7, 2025
Before the French expedition, bound for the Morea, had arrived, all the Egyptian forces had been withdrawn from the Peloponnesus, and the French only arrived after the Anglo-Egyptian treaty had been signed August 9, 1828. Mehemet Ali's chief ambition had always been to enlarge the circle of regeneration in the East. In Morea he had failed through European intervention.
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.
They prefer the late tyrant Bashaw, Asker Ali, to the present Mehemet, because Asker Ali, they say, did not fleece them so much or so plunder them of their money. 'Tis natural enough. One of the lower fellows had the impudence to say, "The English Consul receives bribes from Mehemet Pasha to let him remain in Tripoli."
Tewfik had the misfortune to enter upon a doleful heritage of an empty treasury, a starving people, and an army ready to mutiny. There were now two parties in Egypt. The military movement was of the least importance. The superior posts in the army had been occupied by Circassians since the days of Mehemet Ali. Slave boys were bought and trained as officers.
An opportunity soon offered itself. Some Egyptian fellahs had taken refuge under the guns of Abdallah Pasha; Mehemet Ali demanded these men, but the Governor of Acre refused to give them up, on the plea that they were subjects of the Grand Signor, and referred the matter to the Porte, who on this occasion was seized with a fit of humanity, and bewailed the oppression of the peasantry of the Valley of the Vale Inde Bellum. This was at the close of 1831.
It was on a tempestuous night that I returned to Alexandria, and went to the palace on the shore of the former Island of Pharos, to make my report to Mehemet Ali. The halls and passages, which I used to find full of Mamelukes and officers strutting about in the fullness of their contempt for a Christian, were empty.
The whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening attitude yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and counter-marched within the rampart, in full view yet notwithstanding even this, we never flinched. I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom.
Mahmud, however, who lived neither to see himself saved by the giaur fleets, nor even to hear of his latest defeat, had gone forward with the reorganization of the central and provincial administration, undismayed by Mehemet Ali's contumacy or the insistence of Russia at the gate of the Bosphorus.
Guizot has undertaken, also, to show that a war in behalf of Mehemet Ali would have been most unwise; and that it was for the interest of France to regain its weight in European affairs, not by the renewal of the bloody and fruitless contests of the past, but by methods of peace. He deemed it his duty not to give way to the "warlike tastes and inclinations" of the French people.
The people of the country knew, too, that Mehemet Ali was strong with the strength of the Europeans—strong by his French general, his French tactics, and his English engines. Moreover, they saw that the person, the property, and even the dignity of the humblest European was guarded with the most careful solicitude.
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