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In the meantime the indefatigable Hussein Pasha had succeeded in re-organising an army with about 40,000 regulars of the reserve; it was echeloned between the capital and Koniah, reinforced by the troops brought by the Grand Vizier; it was sufficiently numerous to have prevented Ibrahim’s further advance; but there was neither skill in the general nor ardour among the troops; the councils of the European instructors were, as usual, disregarded, while the Egyptian army, on the contrary, was almost exclusively under the direction of European officers. A single piece of artillery would have sufficed to defend the passage of the Taurus, and yet when Ibrahim appeared on its northern declivity he had to encounter but a few irregulars, of whom he soon gave a good account. He then fixed his camp on the plain of Erekli, at one hundred and sixty days’ march of a camel from Constantinople, and then advanced upon Koniah.

Reuff Pasha, who had provisionally assumed the command of the Turkish army until the arrival of Red-chid Pasha, prudently fell back upon Acken at the approach of the Egyptians. But forgetting the disastrous day of Koulaktche, the Grand Vizier merely assumed the offensive instead of taking up a position in the mountains; and, allowing the unusual rigour of the season to thin the ranks of the enemy, he precipitately advanced. The cold was so excessive, the weather so dreadful, and the roads rendered so impassable by the snow, that only a small portion of the artillery and ammunition could follow the movement, so that they found themselves, as at Horns, without provisions in the presence of the enemy.

Some distance from Koniah, Redchid Pasha sent forward his selector at the head of a body of irregulars, with orders to advance across the mountains up the village of Lile, which was occupied by a strong detachment of Arabs, while the Grand Vizier on his side with the grand army, was to pursue the route of the plain. The attack was to have been simultaneous, but unfortunately the selector arrived too soon on the scene of action, and was totally defeated. Undaunted by this check, the Grand Vizier continued his advance, and did not halt till he was in presence of the enemy, whom he found strongly entrenched, and prepared to give him a warm reception. It was the 29th of the Redgeb (21st of December), and from the advanced hour of the day there was no alternative but to attack, otherwise he must have passed a night upon the field, without bread, exposed to the action of an intense cold that would have paralysed the ardour of the troops.

Redchid Pasha made therefore no dispositions for attack, but his order of battle was best: he drew up his army in four lines, thus rendering useless a great part of his troops, and when he at length resolved to alter his dispositions for a more extended order of battle, he did not reconnoitre the ground to ascertain if it would permit such an extension of front. His left wing therefore was unable to deploy, and remained formed in columns of attack, while the enemy’s artillery committed dreadful havoc on their profound masses. He committed also another fault, that of placing his artillery between the interval of the lines, so that it did not reach the Egyptians, while theirs on the contrary, posted in their front, did great execution.

Mehemet Redchid’s main plan of battle was to attack with the mass of his forces, composed chiefly of Albanians, the centre of the enemy’s army, whilst the cavalry should make a demonstration upon the wings. But Ibrahim, who had foreseen this manoeuvre, leaving only on the point attacked a sufficient force to make ahead for a short time, turned his adversary to the gorges of the mountains. On gaining the flanks of the Ottoman party, he impetuously attacked and routed their cavalry, and afterwards advanced against the principal Turkish corps, which thus found itself attacked on both sides. The Albanians, in spite of all the efforts of the Grand Vizier, broke and fled.

Redchid Pasha then put himself at the head of his guard for a last effort, but after performing prodigies of valour, he was again repulsed, and fell, severely wounded, into the hands of the Egyptians. The loss of the Turks was immense; one regiment alone, the first infantry of the line, left 3,000 men upon the field of battle.

The battle was decisive. The second army of the Grand Seigneur was annihilated, and the road to Constantinople again open to Ibrahim; and the tottering empire of Mahmoud was saved by the intervention of the Russian Autocrat, who felt that it was his own property that was at stake rather than that of the unfortunate Sultan. Mehemet Ali is now on independent sovereign, and it is to the military genius of Europe that he owes this glory; while the once formidable empire of Mahomet is rapidly sinking under an accumulation of evils, the operation of which European diplomacy will in vain attempt to arrest.