The Birth of Modem Egypt 39
bribe of four thousand purses, which was the greater part
of the private fortune of one Georges Gohari, a Coptic
financier and tax farmer expropriated by Mehemet AH.
So Constantinople, which had little concern with Cairo
beyond getting a share in the plunder of Egypt, decided
that more money seemed likely to come through
Mehemet AH than through the Mamelukes.
A working arrangement thus established with the
Turks, Mehemet AH started to rid Egypt of the British.
They were still subsidising the Mameluke chiefs, Bardissi
and Elfi, who were campaigning respectively in Upper
Egypt and the Delta. Both these chieftains now died of
'' indigestion summarily and simultaneously, and the
British were left to fight their own battles. A coup de
main against Constantinople having failed, Rear Admiral
Louis appeared off Alexandria with a small force of four
thousand men under General Frazer (March 17, 1807).
. But by then the Mamelukes in the Delta had been dis-
persed and those in Upper Egypt driven up the Nile to
Assiout. None the less, the British disembarked and
occupied Rosetta, where their garrison was soon after-
wards forced to capitulate, while their force in the field
was defeated by Mehemet AH with the loss of half its
number. Five hundred British soldiers were marched as
prisoners into Cairo slave market between the heads of
as many of their dead comrades set up on poles. The
British evacuated Alexandria (September 14, 1807) and
made a separate peace with Egypt. Mehemet AH, who
had helped the British to humiliate the French in 1801,
had now, without help, inflicted an even greater humilia-
tion upon the British. The Pasha of Egypt became
thereby the champion of Islam, who had vanquished the
foreign victors of Turks and Mamelukes. But, thanks
to sea-power, this reverse had little reaction on the