ghbouring Pasha formed a league
against him, and laid siege to his capital, when Mehemet Ali negotiated
his pardon for a sum of 60,000 purses, which of course the people paid.
Interest soon prevailed over gratitude; the Pasha of Acre felt there
was more to be gained from Constantinople than from Cairo--that the
authority of the Sultan in the Pashalic would never be more than
nominal, and that the Porte, satisfied by some presents, would not be
in a condition to prevent his exactions; he therefore sought, on every
occasion, to get rid of the influence of Mehemet Ali, and to excite the
jealousy of the Porte against him. 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.

The moment was favourable for the Viceroy's great designs. Europe was
sufficiently agitated to leave him no apprehensions of an intervention
on the part of Russia. The Albanians and the Borneans were in open
revolt, and insurrections had broken out also in several Pashalics
on the side of Upper Asia. The Sultan was considered the slave of the
Russians, and his conduct excited the contempt and hatred of the whole
empire. In the meantime, since the revolution the exactions of the
government had extended to every object of production and industry,
while the conscription decimated the most industrious portion of the
population; and if to this organised system of spoliation we farther
add the ravages of the plague and cholera, we may form some idea of the
wretched state of those provinces, and shall be no longer surprised that
the Egyptians were everywhere hailed as deliverers.

Ibrahim Pasha, the step-son of Mehemet Ali, was placed at the head
of the Egyptian army. Of a short, thick-set figure, he possesses that
gigantic strength which Homer so loved in his heroes, and which inspires
such respect among barbarous nations. To strike off the head of a bull
with a blow of his scimitar--to execute, like Peter the Great, his
victims with his own hand--to fall, dead drunk, amid the broken wrecks
of champagne bottles, are three diversions of his. But latterly his