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The Ottoman sultan Mahmud II recognized Mehmed as Egyptian governor but set him a test that would kill two birds with one stone. Ever since 1517, the sultans had proudly guarded the hajj as Protectors of the Two Sanctuaries, Mecca and Medina, but now an obscure family of puritanical fanatics, from the deepest Najd, had stormed the cities. The family were the Saudis, who starting in 1744 as amirs of Diriyyah had made an alliance with the ascetic Sunni preacher Wahhab to liberate Islam from polytheism, magic, corruption and Shiite heresy, in order to reassert its origins. The Saudi amir Abdulaziz, who took Riyadh, accepted the allegiance of Qatar and Bahrain, then attempted to overthrow the al-Saids of Oman, dispatching an army under a black Nubian amir that failed to dislodge the family. In 1802, he sent his son Saud the Butcher into Ottoman Iraq, to storm the Shiite sanctuary of Karbala, where he massacred thousands of Shiites. Karbala was avenged when a Shiite stabbed Abdulaziz. The Butcher advanced into Hejaz, where he was resisted by Gahlib, amir of Mecca, one of the Hashemites descended from the Prophet: it was the start of a feud between the two first families of Islam that lasted into the twentieth century. The sultan ordered Mehmed to destroy the Saudis.

Mehmed’s son Tousson retook the Holy Cities but struggled to beat the Saudis, and became downhearted. ‘Don’t give up and don’t despair,’ advised the father, ‘for despair is a disgrace not befitting you.’ When Tousson died of the plague, Mehmed himself galloped into Arabia to counter-attack, assisted by his red-haired eldest son Ibrahim, possibly adopted, who had slaughtered the Mamluks. Ibrahim now proved a superb general, chasing the Saudis to Diriyyah, where he captured the young amir Abdullah and sent him to Constantinople. After being made to listen to the lute – a painful punishment for a Wahhabist – Abdullah was publicly beheaded. Everyone presumed they would never hear of the Saudis again.

Having added Arabia to his fiefdom, Mehmed now planned to conquer Sudan. At home, he embarked on visionary reforms, took personal ownership of Egyptian land, reformed the law, created schools for women, traded sugar and cotton – he micromanaged everything, his ambitions Napoleonic. ‘I’m well aware that the [Ottoman] empire is daily heading toward destruction,’ he said. ‘On its ruins, I’ll build a huge kingdom … up to the Euphrates and Tigris.’ In Paris, the Mehmed Ali of Europe was mustering the biggest army ever seen in Europe to conquer its biggest country.

NAPOLEON, MARIE AND MOSCOW: THE FRENCH ARE LIKE WOMEN – YOU MUSTN’T STAY AWAY TOO LONG

In May 1812, Napoleon left Marie Louise as regent in Paris, looking after the king of Rome, and invaded Russia with his multinational Grande Armée of 600,000. ‘The game’, he said, ‘is always with him who makes the fewest mistakes.’ Despite advice from those who knew better, Napoleon underestimated the vastness of Russia, the passion of Russian patriotism, the ferocity of Russian soldiery and the toughness of Alexander. Expecting Alexander to negotiate, he advanced deeper, the Russians retreating until the beleaguered tsar was forced to appoint a revered marshal, Prince Mikhail Kutuzov, an unflappable one-eyed veteran, to stand and fight. More men were killed in the few hours of grindingly bloody butchery at Borodino than in any engagement until the first day of the Somme in 1916. It was a stalemate, but Kutuzov retreated and abandoned Moscow.

Napoleon found himself in a deserted burning city, waiting for a surrender that never came.^* As brutal winter descended that October, he left Moscow and fought his way back across Russia before abandoning his men to save his throne. ‘The French are like women,’ he joshed. ‘You mustn’t stay away too long.’ Galloping across Europe, he reached Paris in December, having lost 524,000 men, more of them killed by typhus than by Russians.

‘What a career he’s ruined,’ Alexander exclaimed. ‘The spell is broken.’ Now it was Alexander’s turn for vengeance. Russia and Prussia joined a coalition funded by Britain, but Napoleon raised new armies and dazzled his gathering enemies with virtuoso manoeuvres. ‘Write to Papa François once a week,’ he told Marie, ‘send him military particulars and my affection.’ At Lützen in May 1813, after defeating the Russians and Prussians, he told her, ‘I am very tired, I’ve gained complete victory over … Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia.’ He added in a message to her father Franz that she ‘continues to please me in the extreme. She’s now my prime minister …’