Whilst the power of the Sultan was thus sensibly diminished, Mehemet Ali, who had taken no part in the Russian war, was preparing to avail himself of the embarrassed condition of the Empire for the prosecution of his own designs. This remarkable man was born at Cawala, a small seaport town in Roumelia, in 1769, the year which gave birth to Napoleon Bonaparte and to Wellington. His father was a yeoman farmer and he himself, in early life, was a small trader in tobacco. In 1798, however, Bonaparte's descent upon Egypt gave him his opportunity. Young Ali sailed for the country in which he was so rapidly to acquire fame, in the rank of second-in-command to a regiment of Bashi-Bazouks. In the troublous times which followed, his military talents and his statesmanlike qualities soon brought him into prominence. In 1804, the sheikhs of Cairo elected him Pasha, and, two years later, a, _firman_ of the Sultan confirmed their selection. The last obstacle to his complete ascendency over Egypt was removed, on March 1, 1811, by the terrible affair known as the massacre of the Mamelukes. The Beys and chiefs, to the number of 470, were invited to witness the ceremony of investing his second son with the command of the army destined for operations against the Wahabites. These men versed in all the wiles and stratagems of eastern politics complied, and walked blindly into the trap set for them by one who, they must have known, was their deadly enemy. On leaving the citadel of Cairo they were relentlessly shot down by a picked body of the Pasha's Albanian troops, at a point where the road becomes a narrow winding pathway cut out of the rock. Alone Emin Bey, by blindfolding his horse and by forcing him through a gap and down a high, precipitous bank, succeeded in escaping from the scene of slaughter.[270] During the next few years Mehemet Ali won a high reputation in the Moslem world by his wars against the Wahabites, and by his deliverance of the Holy Cities of Medina and Mecca from these enemies of the true faith. He had always entertained a great liking and admiration for Europeans, and his experience of French and English troops had impressed him with the superiority of western over eastern methods. As early as 1803 he had begun to build up a fleet, and with the assistance of Colonel Sèves, known in Egypt as Soliman Pasha, a former aide-de-camp of Marshal Ney, he hoped to obtain an army trained and disciplined on a European model. His efforts had been so far crowned with success, that, but for the intervention of the Powers, his son Ibrahim would, unquestionably, have crushed the Greek rebellion.