Along with the growing fiscal crisis, there was a rise in literacy, furthering public consciousness which reached its boiling point when Colonel Ahmad Urabi launched a protest against European control. He was briefly imprisoned before being promoted as Minister of War in a newly-formed rebel government. This aggravated the British and French governments to the extent of threatening war. In June 1882, riots broke out in Alexandria against foreign nationals. With this, the British and French intervened, the British launching an invasion in July of that year. Urabi and his forces were defeated that September at the Battle of Tell El Kebir.