A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

60 THE MEMLOOKS.
ly attempted to maintain itself by exciting dis-
sensions among the INIem looks. Such was the
state of aifairs at the period of the French in-
vasion of Egypt by Buonaparte, who skilfully
seized upon the oppressions exercised over the
Egyptian people by their two INIemlook rulers,
IVIourad Bey and Ibrahim Bey (between whom
the supreme power was divided), as a pretext to
establish himself among them as the redressor of
their wrongs ;
while towards the Turkish govern-
ment he assumed the character of champion of
the insulted rights of the Porte.
The gallant resistance made by the Memlooks
to that invasion, their severe losses, in short the
whole details of the Egyptian occupation by the
French army, are so well known that I need not
here dwell upon them. .
Although
routed, the
Memlooks were not destroyed, and a sufficient
number of them still remained to render the
government of Egypt an irksome task to what-
ever ruler should attempt to resist their pre-
tensions.
At last, however, they found a match for them-
selves in Mohammed Ali, who was not the man
to yield to any such assumptions, even when
founded upon old uses and abuses; or to relin-
quish one iota of the power that was vested in