Ibrahim). The intervention of the powers, culminating in the shattering of the Egyptian fleet at Navarino (q.v.), robbed him of his reward so far as Greece was concerned; the failure of his arms in face of this intervention gave Sultan Mahmud the excuse he desired for withholding the rest of the stipulated price of his assistance.
This disappointment of his ambition would not perhaps in itself have sufficed to stir Mehemet Ali to revolt against his master; but it was ominous of perils to come, which the astute pasha thought it wise to forestall. The sultan’s policy had been consistently directed to crushing the overgrown power of his vassals; in the spring of 1831 two rebellious pashas, Hussein of Bosnia and Mustafa of Scutari, had succumbed to his arms; and, since he was surrounded and counselled by the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, it was likely that, so soon as he should feel himself strong enough, he would deal in like manner with Mehemet Ali. It was to anticipate this peril that Mehemet Ali determined himself to open the struggle: on the 1st of November 1831 a force of 9000 Egyptian infantry and 2000 cavalry crossed the frontier into Syria and met at Jaffa the fleet which brought Ibrahim as commander-in-chief. The combined forces at once laid siege to St Jean d’Acre.
The stubborn resistance of the garrison delayed Ibrahim’s progress; and, meanwhile, wild rumours went abroad as to Mehemet Ali’s intentions. He was master of the holy cities, and the official Moniteur Ottoman denounced his supposed plan of aiming at the caliphate in collusion with the sherif of Mecca. As for the pasha himself, he loudly disclaimed any such disloyal pretensions; his aim was to chastise Abdulla, pasha of Acre, who had harboured refugees from his “reforms”; to overthrow Khusrev, who had encouraged him in his refusal to surrender them; to secure the fulfilment of the sultan’s promise with regard to Syria and Damascus. Mahmud, on the other hand, was torn between hatred of the pasha and hatred of the Christian powers which had forced him to make concessions to the Greeks. Voices urged him to come to terms with Mehemet Ali, secure peace in Islam, and turn a united face of defiance against Europe; and for a while he harboured the idea. He was conscious of his own intense unpopularity, the outcome of his efforts at reform; he knew that in popular opinion Mehemet Ali was the champion of Islam against the infidel caliph, and that the issue of a struggle with him was more than doubtful. He was hampered by the unpaid debt to Russia; by unrest in Bosnia and Albania; above all, by the revolt of the Greek Islands, which had left his navy, deprived of its best sailors, in no condition to dispute the Egyptian command of the sea. In the end, however, his pride prevailed; in April 1833 the Turkish commander-in-chief Hussein Pasha left Constantinople for the front; and in the third week in May the ban of outlawry was launched against Mehemet Ali.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim had occupied Gaza and Jerusalem as well as Jaffa; on the 27th of May, a few days after the publication of the ban, Acre was stormed; on the 15th of June the Egyptians occupied Damascus. Ibrahim pressed on with characteristic rapidity, his rapid advance being favoured by the friendly attitude of the various sections of the Syrian population, whom he had been at pains to conciliate. He defeated the Ottoman advance-guard at Horns on the 9th of July and at Hamah on the 11th, entered Aleppo on the 17th, and on the 29th inflicted a crushing defeat on the main Turkish army under Hussein Pasha at the pass of Beilan. All Syria was lost to the sultan, and the Egyptian advance-guard passed the mountain defiles into Adana in Asia Minor.
Mahmud, in desperation, now turned for help to the powers. Russian aid, though promptly offered, was too double-edged a weapon to be used save at the last extremity. Austrian diplomacy was, for the moment, that of Russia. France had broken her long tradition of friendship for Turkey by the occupation of Algiers. Great Britain, prodigal of protestations of goodwill, alone remained; and to her Mahmud turned with a definite offer of an offensive and defensive alliance. Stratford Canning, who was at Constantinople for the purpose of superintending the negotiations for the delimitation of the frontiers of Greece, wrote home urging the government to accept, and suggesting a settlement of the Egyptian question which foreshadowed that of 1841. Palmerston, however, did not share Canning’s belief in the possible regeneration of Turkey; he held that an isolated intervention of Great Britain would mortally offend not only Russia but France, and that Mehemet Ali, disappointed of his ambitions, would find in France a support that would make him doubly dangerous.[1]
In the autumn Sultan Mahmud, as a last independent effort, despatched against Ibrahim the army which, under Reshid Pasha, had been engaged in pacifying Albania. The result was the crowning victory of the Egyptians at Konia (Dec. 21). The news reached Constantinople at the same time as Count Muraviev arrived on a special mission from the tsar. The Russian offers were at once renewed of a squadron of battleships and of a land force for the protection of the capital. Efforts were made to escape the necessity of accepting the perilous aid. Ottoman agents, backed by letters from the French chargé d’affaires, were sent to Mehemet Ali and to Ibrahim, to point out the imminence of Russian intervention and to offer modified terms. Muraviev himself went to Alexandria, where, backed by the Austrian agent, Count Prokesch-Osten, he announced to the pasha the tsar’s immutable hatred of rebels. Mehemet Ali merely protested the complete loyalty of his intentions; Ibrahim, declaring that as a soldier he had no choice but to obey his father’s orders, advanced to Afium-Karahissar and Kutaiah, whence he wrote to the sultan asking his gracious permission to advance to Brusa. He was at the head of 100,000 men, well organized and flushed with victory; the Ottoman army survived only as demoralized rabble. Panic seized the Seraglio; and at the beginning of February the assistance of Russia was formally demanded. The representatives of France and Great Britain made every effort to secure a reversal of this fatal step; but, while they were threatening and promising, Russia was acting, and on the 10th of February a Russian squadron entered the Bosporus.
In view of this it became necessary for the objecting powers to take a new line. The new French ambassador, Admiral Roussin, had arrived on the 17th; he now, with the full concurrence of Mandeville, the British chargé d’affaires, persuaded the Porte to invite the Russians to withdraw, undertaking that France would secure the acceptance by Mehemet Ali of the sultan’s terms. A period of suspense followed. The Russian squadron was detained by contrary winds, and before it could sail peremptory orders arrived from the tsar for it to remain until Ibrahim should have repassed the Taurus mountains. Meanwhile, Mehemet Ali had scornfully rejected the offers of the Porte; he would be content with nothing but the concession of his full demands—Syria, Icheli, Aleppo, Damascus and Adana. France and Great Britain now urged the sultan to yield, and in March a Turkish agent was sent to Ibrahim to offer the pashaliks of Syria, Aleppo and Damascus. The crisis was precipitated by the arrival on the 5th of April of a second division of the Russian fleet in the Bosporus, and of a Russian force of 6000 men, which landed on the Asiatic shore. The Porte now tried once more to modify its terms; but the Western powers were now intent on getting rid of the Russians at all costs, and as a result of the pressure they brought to bear on both parties the preliminary convention of Kutaiah, conceding all the Egyptian demands, was signed on the 8th of April, and Ibrahim began his withdrawal. The convention stipulated for the bestowal of the pashalik of Adana on Ibrahim; but when on the 16th he received the official list of appointments, he found that Adana had been expressly reserved by the sultan. He at once arrested his march; but the pressure of famine in the capital, caused by the cutting off of supplies from Asia and the presence of the large Russian force, compelled Mahmud to yield, and on the 3rd of May a firman ceded Adana to Ibrahim under the pretext of appointing him muhassil, or collector of the revenue.
When Lord Ponsonby, the new British ambassador, arrived at
- ↑ Canning’s original memorandum is in the Foreign Office Records in the volume marked F.O., Turkey: From Sir Stratford Canning (August to December, 1832). It bears elaborate pencil notes in Palmerston’s handwriting, in part already obliterated.
