Mehemet Ali, and then turned his attention to England. He
found difficulty in obtaining her concurrence by promising to give up
the chief ports of Egypt. These negotiations, suspended the first time
by M. Dro-vetti, the French consul at Alexandria, co-operating with the
pasha, were again renewed some time after through the influence of
the English ambassador, who, in the name of his country, demanded the
re-establishment of the Mamluks, guaranteeing the fidelity of Elfi. The
Porte at once sent a fleet to Egypt bearing a firman, appointing Mehemet
Ali to the pashalic of Salonica. At this juncture, the viceroy, feeling
sure of the support of the sheikhs, who had assisted him to his present
position, only sought to temporise. He soon received the further
support of the Mamluk beys of Bardisi's party, who forgot their personal
grievances in the desire to be revenged upon the common foe; at the same
time, twenty-five French Mamluks, urged thereto by M. Drovetti, deserted
the ranks of Elfi's adherents and joined Mehemet Ali.

The Pasha of Egypt possessed a zealous partisan in the French ambassador
at Constantinople. The latter, perceiving that the secession of
the Mamluks made the regaining of their former power an absolute
impossibility, pleaded the cause of Mehemet Ali with the Porte, and
obtained a firman re-establishing his viceroyalty, on condition of his
payment of an annual tribute of about $1,000,000.

The power of Mehemet Ali was beginning to be more firmly established,
and the almost simultaneous deaths of Osman-Bardisi and Muhammed el-Elfi
(November, 1806, and January, 1807) seemed to promise a peaceful future,
when, on March 17th, the English, displeased at his reconciliation with
the Porte, arrived in Egypt. Their forces numbered some seven or eight
thousand men, and it was the intention to stir up the Mamluks and
render them every assistance. A detachment of the English forces, led
by General Fraser, took possession of Alexandria, which the English
occupied for six months without being able to attempt any other
enterprise. The remainder of the troops were cut to pieces at Rosetta by
a small contingent of Albanians: thus ended the expedition. The viceroy,
who at the beginning of the campaign had displayed really Oriental
cruelty, and sent more than a thousand heads of English soldiers to
Cairo to decorate Rumlieh, finished his operations by an act of European
generosity, and delivered up his prisoners without de