Scarcely had the withdrawal of the French troops from Belgium been effected, than grave news was received from the east. At Konieh, in Asia Minor, on December 21, 1832, Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali, the rebellious viceroy of Egypt, was reported to have inflicted so signal a defeat upon the Turkish army, as to place it beyond the Sultan's power to resist his advance to the shores of the Bosphorus. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, with all the fearful complications which it would entail, appeared to be upon the point of taking place. The Sultan, Mahmud II., had always been keenly alive to the necessity of remedying the decrepit condition of his Empire. But only a Peter the Great could have eradicated effectually the many evils from which Turkey was suffering, and Mahmud was merely an Oriental despot. All through his reign, however, he set himself resolutely to destroy the almost independent power which some of his Pashas had begun to assume over the provinces which they governed. He imposed the European dress upon his ministers and officials, he introduced the French system of drill into his army, and he exterminated the janissaries, when they rebelled against his innovations. Even at a time of profound peace reforms of this superficial character could have effected little real improvement. Under the actual conditions under which they were carried out they proved a cause of anarchy and a further source of weakness to the State. In 1821 the Sublime Porte was called upon to deal at the same time with the rebellion of Ali, the celebrated "Lion of Janina," and with the more serious national rising of the Greeks. After the struggle in the Morea had been carried on for three years, with ruthless barbarity on both sides, the Sultan was reluctantly compelled to invoke the aid of his too powerful vassal, the Pasha of Egypt. The intervention of the well-equipped fleet of Mehemet Ali deprived the Greeks of the sea power, which had been the secret of their success. Nevertheless, Ibrahim's invasion of the Morea in 1825, by compelling the Powers to interfere, gave Greece her independence. The romantic episodes of the struggle, the classic memories with which the theatre of war was associated, had gained for the insurgents the popular sympathies of the western nations. The philhellenism of the French and English people gradually drove Villèle[269] and Canning to concert measures for terminating the conflict with Nicholas, whose subjects were eager to strike a blow on behalf of their co-religionists.