Meanwhile, in 1802, a peace was patched up for a time between England and France at Amiens. Concurrently with this terms of peace were agreed upon between France and the Porte, under which the sovereignty of the Sultan over Egypt was recognized. When, two years later, war again broke out between France and England and other Powers, Bonaparte, then First Consul, reversed his action as regards the Ottoman Empire, and made an alliance with it a cardinal point of his new policy. After the conclusion of peace with France in 1802, Sultan Selim had a respite for a very few years before he was again involved in war. He directed his attention to serious internal reforms of his Empire. He fully recognized that the first and foremost of these must be the reorganization, if not the suppression, of the corps of Janissaries. Not only had the experience of late wars shown that they had become a most incompetent military force, quite unable to meet on equal terms the well-trained soldiers of Russia and France, but in every part of his Empire they were a danger to the State, endeavouring to monopolize power and to oust that of the pashas appointed by himself. They were also the main oppressors of the rayas. The task of suppressing them and of creating an army on the model of those of European Powers was a most difficult and dangerous one, for the Janissaries were, or pretended to be, the most devout of Moslems, and were supported by the fanatical part of the population. They had strong supporters in the Divan. The ulemas were almost unanimously in their favour. The Divan was divided into two parties, those who favoured reform and who gave support to the Sultan, and the reactionary party, who were opposed to all reform and championed the Janissaries. There was another serious division of the Divan—namely those who espoused the cause of Russia, not infrequently in the pay of that Power, and those who favoured France. After the conclusion of peace, France was represented at the Court of the Sultan by very able ministers, who soon regained the influence for that country which it had formerly enjoyed. Nowhere throughout the Empire were the Janissaries more turbulent and dangerous or more oppressive to the rayas than in Serbia. They aimed at governing the province in the same way as the Mamelukes in Egypt and the military Begs in Algiers and Tunis, and if they had been allowed to have their way, Serbia would have achieved a virtual independence of the Porte, under a military and fanatical Moslem despotism. The Janissaries there were almost as hostile to the Spahis inhabiting the provinces as to the rayas. They aimed at ousting the Spahis from their feudal rights in the country districts and at an assumption of ownership of land, more oppressive to the peasant Christian cultivators of the soil than that of the Spahis. Both Spahis and rayas appealed to the Porte for protection against these ruffians. The rayas in their petition to the Sultan said that—