 In the end the crisis passed without war breaking out, though it again established the importance of the Rhine in European culture and politics.The Greek War of Independence and the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29) had considerably weakened the Ottoman Empire, and after Sultan Mahmud II refused to acknowledge Muhammad Ali Pasha (viceroy of the Ottoman territory Egypt) as the Stadtholder of Syria, Egyptian troops moved into Palestine and Syria, reaching Anatolia by 1832.France had used the Turkish defeat in the Greek War of Independence to occupy Algeria, in 1830, and regarded Muhammad Ali Pasha as an ideal partner, supporting him in his effort to rid himself once and for all of his Ottoman overlord.