This work struck Lesseps's imagination, and was one of the influences that gave him the idea of constructing a canal across the African isthmus. Fortunately for Lesseps, Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, owed his position in part to the recommendations made on his behalf to the French government by Mathieu de Lesseps, who was consul-general in Egypt when Ali was a colonel. Because of this, Lesseps received a warm welcome from the viceroy and became good friends with his son, Said Pasha. Politically, the British were allied with the Ottoman capital in Istanbul—to prevent the Russians from Black Sea access to the Mediterranean Sea—and had also repelled Ali's attempt to invade the Ottoman capital in 1833. The French were able to manoeuvre in Egypt under Ali's graces by playing off the British aggression against Ali in Istanbul.