LIFE OF ALI PACHA

PANJOHUR
North American Review, The
Volume 18, Issue 42
January 1824

Art. VI.—Ali Hissas di Tepeleni, Bassa di Jannina; Prospetto storico e politico del Sig. Malte-Brun.¹ In the Florence Antologia. 1821.

Fruitful as this age has been of extraordinary men, the individual, of whom we now propose to give an account, is one of the most remarkable, which it has produced. If, in estimating the characters of distinguished barbarians, we ought not apply to them the severe rules of morality by which civilized heroes and statesmen are judged, still less ought we, in tracing the rise from obscurity to eminence of an individual like Ali Pacha, forget that he owed everything to the force of his own character, in a far more literal sense, than those who rise from obscurity to eminence in civilized countries. A security of private rights protects every one in the exercise and application of his powers, however high the aim he may propose to himself. In a country like Turkey, superior talent is an offence against the government monopoly of all the means of influence. In most of the civilized countries of the world, there is a certain authorized path from any station, however low, to almost every point of honor and trust. In Turkey, favor and intrigue do all, and the cabals of the seraglio govern the empire, to the exclusion of every kind of rational politics. The only counterpoise to these cabals is the insolent spirit of the janisaries, itself an engine as uncertain and capricious in its operation, as that against which it affords the only check.

In this state of things, to rise like Ali Pacha, from an humble station in society, to a power far greater than that of several crowned heads of Europe; and to acquire and maintain this power by a series of successful enterprises for more than sixty years, without any particularly favorable external circumstances, and by the sole energy of character and fertility of personal resources, argue a truly great man. That the crimes of barbarous society,—cruelty, assassination, oppression in all its forms, and jealous despotic interference with individual rights must be numbered among his resources, is true. But we firmly believe, that the cruelties of Ali Pacha have been much exaggerated; that tales have been positively related of him, which, if they cannot be proved false, are such as could not be proved true, nor even rendered probable by any evidence; and that finally, Ali Pacha lived among those, who could probably be ruled in no better way.

In the year 1819, the road leading from the sea coast of Albania opposite to Corfu up to Yanina, was perfectly safe for unarmed travellers, by day or by night. Ten years before, that road was made wholly impassable, by the robbers who infested it, and according to the remark of Ali Pacha himself, he could not have traversed it with all his armies. No one can suppose, that to reduce tribes of warrior shepherds, men, who feed their flocks and pasture their herds, with daggers in their belts and guns over their shoulders, from a perfectly lawless state to one of perfect submission to government, and to do this in the space of a few years, is the achievement of a mild and paternal government. It was not to be brought about by distributing tracts, promulgating codes of law, or introducing the trial by jury. The evil required such a violent remedy, as can only be found in other different but violent evils. Without intending to disguise one of the dark shades of Ali’s character, we only express the opinion, that the vices of his religion, of his race, of his country, and in a word of the whole state of society in which he lived, may account for some portion of what is usually charged upon him, as personal crimes.

One more preliminary remark we beg leave to make. The authority for minute details of the lives of men in barbarous countries must often be extremely questionable. The want of the art of printing prevents the circulation of contemporary information, by the thousand channels of the periodical press. Recollection and tradition must be depended upon, farther than is warranted by the nature of those sources of evidence. The impartial reader must therefore bear in mind the medium, through which the statements laid before him have passed. The account we propose to give of Ali Pacha will be borrowed in a great measure from the late work of M. Pouqueville, who was for a long time the consul of France at Yanina; from the Travels of Mr Hughes, and from the Memoir of Malte-Brun, named at the head of our article, which is itself chiefly drawn from Pouqueville and the Travels of Mr Hughes. For the events of the last year of Ali’s life, we have also had recourse to the French Annu-aire, and the files of the continental newspapers.

Pouqueville certainly possessed the greatest opportunities for obtaining information. Long residence in the country and official access to Ali, must have put it in his power to collect, to observe, and to hear much, which would escape a traveller. Nevertheless, M. Pouqueville writes in a tone far too passionate to prepossess us in his favor. He vilifies Ali too much to pass for an impartial historian; he relates many things, which he could not know to be true, some which we know to be false, and several which are contradicted by other authority, as good in respect to them as his own. Mr Hughes’ work we have not at hand, and can make use of it only from the recollection of a former perusal, and the extracts made from it in the Memoir of Malte-Brun. Mr Hughes’ representation of Ali is in the main a good deal more favorable, than M. Pouqueville’s. These two writers, in particular, differ essentially in their details of the most odious event in the life of Ali, from which we would gladly be able to infer, that much abatement should be made from both. The Memoir of Malte-Brun, like every thing that proceeds from him, is highly judicious, and is the most valuable document we think relative to Ali Pacha, of which the public is in possession. We regret that we possess it only in an Italian translation.

Ali Pacha, according to the account which he used to give of himself, was descended from a Turkish family of Asia Minor, which came into Epirus with Bajazet Ilderim in the fourteenth century. Pouqueville objects to this pretended Asiatic descent, that Ali ‘produces no titles to substantiate such an origin.’ What sort of titles would have satisfied the French consul, and in what way they ought to have been exhibited, he does not inform us. He maintains, however, that it is the result of his own researches, that Ali is descended from one of those native Albanian families, who were converted from christianity to Mahometanism, at the time of the Turkish conquest. With respect to the original christian and subsequent Mahometan faith of these Albanians, we believe there is a good deal of justice in Lady M. W. Montague’s account of them, that they go to the mosque on fridays, and to church on Sundays, to make sure of their salvation under both creeds.

Pouqueville informs us, that the genealogy of Ali Pacha goes back to the end of the sixteenth century. As this is a period later by one hundred and fifty years than the conquest of Epirus by the Turks, we are at a loss for the Consul’s warrant to deny the account, which Ali Pacha gave of his Turkish descent, and to maintain him to have been of an Albanian stock. The first of his family, who signalized himself, was Muctar his grandsire, who perished, it is said, in the year 1717, in an assault made by the Turkish armies upon the island of Corfu, which was successfully defended by the Venetian general, the Marshal Schulemburg. The sword of Muctar was long preserved as a trophy, in the arsenal of Corfu, and disappeared while that island was occupied by the French. It is said that Ali offered a large sum for it. Muctar left three sons, of whom the youngest was named Veli, and was the father of the celebrated Ali Pacha.

The Albanians, it is well known, are a people wholly distinct from the Turks, of uncertain but probably of Sclavonian origin. A portion of them embraced Mahometanism, on the conquest of the country by the Turks, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but a portion also remained firm in their nominal attachment to the kind of christianity, which is capable of existing in a very barbarous and warlike region. Their local situation and lofty spirit had enabled them to hold a higher aspect toward the Ottoman government, than most of the conquered nations, and at the period at which the history of Ali Pacha begins, in the person of his grandfather, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, Epirus was divided into a great number of small cantons, nominally subject to two or three Pachas, but really possessed of a predatory and tumultuous independence. Muctar was at the head of a canton of this description, of which the town of Tepeleni was the capital, and he was possessed of a revenue of about three thousand dollars of our money; a considerable sum in that quarter, and m those days. Veli, the father of Ali Pacha, being the youngest of the three sons of Muctar, was expelled by his older brothers from his home, and his share in the inheritance, and reduced to take up the profession of a highway robber, an extremely reputable calling for a man of spirit in Albania, at the commencement of the last century. Having in this pursuit amassed a considerable sum of money, and attached to himself a strong band of kindred spirits, he found himself powerful enough, after a few years, to attack the town of Tepeleni, which was subjected to his elder brothers, and having succeeded in driving them to a wooden pavilion, he prudently set fire to it, and burned his brothers alive; an act of fraternal affection, which, according to Pouqueville, they would certainly have shown to him, had they been the conquering party.

Having thus engrossed the patrimony, and the lordship of the canton, Veli looked round for a matrimonial alliance, which might strengthen his interest, having then hut one wife, and she a slave. He accordingly married the celebrated Kamco, daughter of one of the neighboring Beys, and a kinswoman of Kurd, the Pacha of Berat, a descendant of the illustrious Scanderbeg. Of this marriage were born, about the year 1740, our hero, Ali Hissas, whose name has gained a place in history, and Shainitza, his sister. They were still in their infancy, when their father Veli died, leaving them, with three older children of a former marriage, to the care of their widowed mother, Kamco. Pouqueville informs us, that he received these details from Ali Pacha himself.

On the death of Veli, the neighboring Beys, ‘his natural enemies,’ regarded a partition of his government among themselves as a matter of course, and began to put their forces in motion to take possession of Tepeleni and its dependent villages. Kamco, however, did not understand the law of nations in precisely the same sense, and quitted the harem to put herself at the head of the troops of her deceased husband. A petty war ensued between her and the neighboring Beys of Cormovo and Cardiki, in which Ali was early trained to the field. After a series of alternate successes and reverses in the course of this war, Kamco fell into an ambuscade, and with her youthful son Ali, and daughter Shainitza, was carried captive to Cardiki, an event connected with the most tragical occurrence, in the history of Ali Pacha. After enduring those indignities, in the most revolting excess, from which no age or sex is protected in the warfare of barbarous tribes; after suffering those outrages in her own person, and that of her youthful daughter, which left a sting never to be extracted, in the hearts of each, Kamco and her children succeeded in paying to the Cardikiotes the ransom imposed upon them, and were restored to liberty. Having already, it is said, secured to Ali the sole inheritance of her house, by poisoning her other sons, she devoted herself to educating him to be her future avenger.

Ali commenced his career, according to Pouqueville, at the age of fourteen, in stealing his neighbors’ goats, and thus augmenting his property, at the expense of theirs. As it is in this way, that war is carried on upon the frontiers of barbarous, not to say civilized nations, we are not disposed to deny that Ali made his debut in this way, nor can it be thought a great reproach on his military prowess, when he was yet but about fourteen years of age, that he was repulsed in a marauding attack upon the town of Cormovo. In one of his expeditions, being wholly without resources and deserted by his troops, he betook himself to the ruins of a monastery. While there musing on his prospects, he struck mechanically on the ground with his staff, and hearing a hollow sound, and meeting with resistance, he dug up with the end of his staff a casket filled with gold, with which he was enabled to raise a force of two thousand men, and return in triumph to Tepeleni. This anecdote was related by Ali himself to M. Vaudoncourt.

With the means thus obtained, Ali collected a formidable band of adherents, and began to evince a power and a spirit, which alarmed his neighbors. Kurd himself, the Pacha of Berat, the most powerful of the viziers of that quarter, took umbrage at the increasing forces of the youthful Ali, and sending a powerful army against him, surprised him and brought him prisoner to Berat. While his companions in arms were elevated to the scaffold, it was generally expected that Ali would share that fate. Being however a relation by marriage of Kurd, and at that time in the bloom of youth, and possessed of uncommonly insinuating manners, he succeeded in gaining the heart of the old Pacha, and was retained in his family, for some years, in a close but lenient imprisonment. At length the intreaties or intrigues of his mother prevailed, and he was released from his confinement and restored to the family domain of Tepeleni, where he remained tranquil till the death of Kurd, either protected against his enemies by Kurd’s influence, or awed by his power. The season of inactivity, which he had passed in his confinement at Berat, appears to have subdued in some degree the effervescence of his youth. Instead of pursuing a predatory warfare against his neighbors, he enlisted, as occasion invited, with his dependent forces in their service, and thus gradually acquired influence, and a reputation among the Beys of Epirus. At the age of twenty four, he entered into a matrimonial connection, and espoused the daughter of Capelan, Pacha of Delvino, the beautiful, celebrated, and deeply lamented Emineh.

His new father in law was a man of a still more uneasy natural temper than himself, and with the project of rendering himself independent of the Porte, was engaged in an extensive system of brigandage and private warfare, the only mode of accumulating resources, and gathering and paying troops. Pouqueville tells us, that Capelan Pacha looked for a zealous cooperation in this policy from Ali his new son in law; but that the latter, too shrewd to labor in any cause but his own advancement, instead of cordially aiding the projects of Capelan, afforded him only an exterior and insincere cooperation, and privately denounced him to the Porte, as a dangerous subject; and succeeded by stimulating Capelan to new excesses, and then acting in secret as an informer against him, in bringing him to the scaffold. The reward, which Ali promised himself for all this perfidy, was the inheritance of his father in law’s treasure. To this account of Pouqueville we object its purely gratuitous character. How could the French Consul be acquainted with the secret and treacherous informations given by Ali to the Turkish Court fifty years before? And knowing, as Ali did, the Turkish law, by which the property of a rebellious subject devolves to the Sultan, a law which actually went into operation on this occasion, what probability is there in the tale, that for the sake of this inheritance, to which he could not succeed, Ali denounced his father in law to the Roumeli Valicy, or Viceroy at Roumelia, and brought him, says Pou-queville, to the scaffold, a plac.e, by the way, to which Pachas are not brought?

On the death of Capelan, his son in law Ali was disappointed in his desires to receive the appointment to the Pachalic of Delvino. It was bestowed on Ali, the Bey of Argyro-Castro, a strong town in the province; but that Ali Pacha was not heinously aggrieved at the disappointment may be inferred from the circumstance, that a marriage was soon contracted between Shainitza his sister and Ali, the new Pacha of Delvino. About this time the ancient Kurd died, and Ali Pacha aspired to the succession to the government of Berat, and the hand of the daughter of Kurd, between whom and himself a mutual passion had long existed. The latter, however, had in dying, bequeathed the hand of his daughter to Ibrahim Bey of Avion, who also obtained the pachalic of the deceased Kurd. This preference of a rival in an affair at once of ambition and love, is said to have fixed a thorn in the mind of Ali, which rankled during the rest of his life.

We have been unable to collect with much certainty, from the contradictory accounts, whether it was at this period of his life, that he entered into the service of the Pacha of Negropont, from which he returned enriched with pay and plunder, and with great reputation as a warrior. Supposing it to be at this period, it was of course with favorable prospects, that Ali engaged in a conflict with the enemies of his family at Tepeleni. It is difficult, in the confused statement of Pouqueville, to discover precisely the nature of the affair. In its result, Ali betrayed the hostile party into an abortive attempt to assassinate himself, and falling upon them during the revelry of this supposed joyful event, he involved them in an indiscriminate slaughter. Their estates were divided among his followers, whose obsequiousness and attachment were ensured by these donatives, and thus Ali transformed himself into the undisputed master or despot of the Canton of Tepeleni.

We have already observed, that Ali had given his sister Shainitza in marriage to Ali the Pacha of Delvino. At the period at which we are now arrived, M. Pouqueville informs us, that she was solicited by her brother to poison her husband. As she refused to lend herself to this atrocious act, Ali prevailed on Soliman, the brother of the Pacha of Delvino, to commit this crime, and gave him the widow, his sister, as the reward. To all these horrors, repeated by the French Consul with a particularity of detail, which could not be known at the time, and which has no probability in any supposed motive by which they were prompted, we take leave to deny our belief. To his brother in law thus disposed of, Ali failed of succeeding in the Pachalic of Delvino. It was given to Selim Bey Coka, of a powerful native Albanian family. M. Pouqueville, however, tells us, that the simple circumstance of having murdered his brother in law procured Ali great additional reputation among his neighbors, and that he was particularly admitted to the intimacy of Selim Bey Coka, who had superseded him in the succession of the pachalic; all which sounds to us highly improbable. Selim Bey, being on the frontiers of the Venetian possessions at Bucintro, had sold to the government of Venice the wood of certain forests in the Pachalic of Delvino. This act of treason against the Sultan’s forest laws was no sooner committed, than Ali Pacha secretly denounced it to the Porte, and received in return a secret firman to take the life of Selim Bey. This he effected by artifice and fraud; and received as his reward the Pachalic of Thessally, his first appointment from the Porte, and his first title to the name of Pacha. He received at the same time, the extraordinary commission of Dervendgi Pacha, or Chief of the Passes, with instructions to free Thessally from the bands of robbers, with which it was infested,

We suppose him at this time to have attained the age of thirty years, and the energy of his character was now at once unfolded. With a force of four thousand men, which he was able to levy from among his Albanian countrymen,— the military Swiss of Turkey,—he swept his pachalic of the brigands that infested it; and did it at least the service of allowing it to be plundered by none but himself. His wealth, reputation, and influence grew with his successful administration of this small province; and in the course of a few years his reputation had so greatly increased, that he was advanced by the Porte to the Pachalic of Yanina. This place he held till his death, and from this, as a centre, extended his power over Albania, Thessally, and the greater part of continental Greece. His mother Kamco had thus far enjoyed the pleasure of witnessing his advancement, but about the time of his accession to the Pachalic of Yanina, she died, and left it as her death bed charge to her son Ali, and her daughter Shainitza, now wife of Soliman Pacha of Delvino, that they should exterminate the inhabitants of Cardiki, by whom, as we have related above, Kamco and her children were held for some time in bondage, and treatect with indignity.

Till the accession of Ali Pacha to the government of Yanina, which happened in the year 1788, this city had been remarkable for the strength and independence of its factions; and Pouqueville tells us, that Ali was obliged to wage a kind of warfare against the villages and farms belonging to its Beys and wealthy inhabitants, in order to compel them to receive him into the city, and acknowledge him as Pacha. Once established in this city, his policy began to develope itself; and seems to have consisted in the following principles. The first was by no means original with him, but one of the leading rules of Turkish policy, viz. to humble all the distinguished individuals in the community, and to break the power of parties and of men. This measure was attended in the case of Ali with a great accession of riches, derived from the confiscation of the estates of the wealthy Beys, on whom his power fell. Another principle of his government was more original. He called Greeks to his council, professed great respect for their religion, and enforced a real toleration throughout his domains. Under the influence of this system, Yanina became one of the principal seats of modern Greek improvement. If in this, Ali Pacha departed from the jealous Moslem policy, he did so not less, in building up the power of the Albanians, a people who have ever been the object of Turkish hostility.

The mountains of Albania have long been a nursery of men, whence all the warlike Pachas of the Turkish empire have drawn recruits. Large numbers of Albanians have fought in the armies of the Bey of Egypt, and wherever else wages and plunder were to be had. Several regiments of them have been admitted even into the Neapolitan service. But hitherto the Albanians, when in Turkish service, have formed but a corps in a Turkish army. Under Ali Pacha, an Albanian himself, they formed his whole army, and though that army was never called out in a hostile attempt against the government of the Grand Seignor, till the final revolt in which Ali perished, yet it must have been highly offensive at Constantinople to see the strongest vassal of the state, deriving his strength from an armed force of a different language, and doubtful faith, hostile by nature to the genuine Turks. That Ali Pacha, under these circumstances, should have persisted in organizing and retaining an Albanian army, shows that he had resolved to live and die chief of Albania; and to establish himself a power at home, which would relieve him from a dependence on Constantinople, for support or promotion.

At the time of his accession to the government of Yanina, Ali had two sons, Muctar and Veli, the children of Emineh, whom we have mentioned above. They were already of an age to take a part in their father’s military enterprises. The first of these, according to Pouqueville, was the destruction of Comovo, a town whose inhabitants were united with the Cardikiotes, on the occasion, when the mother of Ali was defeated, and with himself and sister made prisoner. We forbear to quote the anecdotes of the horrors of vengeance practised on the Primate of Cormovo, who, on the occasion above mentioned, had outraged the proud Kamco, regarding them as too disgusting to be repeated, on the mere assertion of Pouqueville. The Pacha of Berat, Ibrahim, of whom we have already spoken, alarmed at the progress of Ali Pacha, gathered his forces to resist him. He had soon reason to solicit peace at the expense of a part of his domains, which Ali had wrested from him, but which were assigned as a marriage portion to the eldest daughter of Ibrahim, who became the wife of Muctar, the oldest son of Ali Pacha.

We know not if there be any truth in Pouqueville’s accounts of the attempts soon after made by Ali Pacha, to take off Ibrahim by poison. The French Consul tells us, that Ali endeavored to persuade the wife of Ibrahim to perform this perfidious act, that she refused, and ‘that the intrigue remained buried in the secresy of the family.’ How this poisoning intrigue, after being buried thirty years in the secresy of the family of a Turkish Pacha, was disinterred for M. Pouqueville’s information, he has not told us. The same remark may be extended to another tale of poisoning, which immediately follows this.

In the year 1790, Ali Pacha made his first attempt against the Suliotes, a somewhat singular people, who, by a curious literary coincidence, have been brought into great celebrity, by the circumstance, that their country was visited on his travels, about fourteen years ago, by a poetical English lord. We have not room to give a minute account of this people, but will observe, in brief, that they constituted a sort of military, predatory, and pastoral confederacy, in the mountains between Yanina and the sea coast of Epirus. Protected in their fastnesses from the reach of the government arm, nominally christians in their faith, and virtually independent in their conduct, it is perfectly senseless to rail at Ali, the ‘legitimate’ ruler of the country, for attempting to subjugate them. Had they remained quiet in their strong holds, it would have been his duty as the Viceroy of the Porte, to bring them into obedience to its laws; but when we consider that they were perpetually engaged in predatory wars upon all the neighboring villages, christian and Albanian, and that they thus filled the country with confusion and danger, we are at a loss for the motives, from which Ali’s hostile policy toward these tribes is condemned.

In his first attempts on this people Ali met with little success. His troops made no impression upon their bands, in the inaccessible cliffs of Suli, and were harassed on their return to Yanina, laden with the spoils of the deserted Suliote villages. In the year 1792, he prepared with greater earnestness another attack upon them. As a preliminary step, he detached from their interest Ibrahim Pacha, who had hitherto stimulated them against Ali, proposed to Ibrahim to make a still closer union of their families in marrying his second son Veli with a younger daughter of Ibrahim, and thus succeeded in withdrawing the latter from the cause of the Suliotes. In pursuance of the same policy, he took occasion, according to M. Pouqueville, of the unsuspicious moments of the nuptial festivities to assassinate a nephew of Ibrahim, whom we suppose to have been forward in encouraging the Suliotes. The French Consul, after informing us that this assassination was perpetrated by the hand of Ali himself in the penetralia of his palace, in a room to which there was no access but by a ladder and a trap door, and to which he had betrayed his victim alone, undertakes to describe to us the manner, the gesture, the tone, and the instrument made use of by Ali on this occasion. To give such details of such scenes is to write romance, not history.

The second campaign was commenced against the Suliotes July 1st, with a corps of 9000 men. The Suliotes counted but 1300 in arms, and with these retired before the enemy into the interior of the mountains. The army of Ali, in the attempt to follow them, was annoyed by the missiles and rocks cast down on them from above, and fled, says M. Pouqueville, with a loss of 740 men. Why they should fly does not appear; but the good Consul tells us, that Ali himself took to flight with 1000 men, all that he had been able to rally, and entered Yanina in the night. Unable to succeed, by open force, Ali now resorted to fraud. He made peace with the Suliotes, and as M. Pouqueville himself characterizes his favorite people, ‘as avaricious rather of money than glory,’ he found no difficulty in engaging a band of their warriors to enter into his service, in a pretended expedition against the Bey of Argyro-Castro. Scarcely had the combined force of Albanians and Suliotes undertaken this march, when the latter were surrounded, and disarmed, and made prisoners by the Albanians. Ali now proposed to Tzavellas, the chief of the Suliote confederacy, to persuade his countrymen to submit themselves. Tzavellas, making an evasive answer, was sent home by Ali to consult his countrymen, leaving his troops and his son among them as prisoners and hostages. Arrived among his fellow citizens, he wrote a letter of defiance to Ali, of which M. Pouqueville has given us a copy. It is for the reader to judge of the probable authenticity of such a document. It is not the least suspicious circumstance about it, that it consists of idle and insulting generalities, which no sensible chieftain, who has great affairs in his hands, troubles himself to write. What followed after this attempt, M. Pouqueville does not inform us, except by saying in a note, that ‘the valor and audacity of Tzavellas and his wife obliged Ali Pacha, after three years of combats and reprisals, to restore to them their son, and the other prisoners.’ We infer from this, that the war continued with various success for three years longer, and that a pacification then ensued by the submission of the Suliotes. It is certainly somewhat to the credit of Ali Pacha, regarded as a Turkish governor waging war against rebellious christian subjects, that young Tzavellas and his fellow christians, after passing three years in Ali’s dungeons, wore their heads home.

While these events were transpiring in the interior of his domain, Ali was employed, as the Consul informs us, in tampering with a foreign power, (what power he makes a matter of mock secresy,) to aid him in setting up as an independent prince in Greece. A traitorous correspondence containing these proposals was intercepted by the Porte, and a Capidgi Bachi sent down with it to Yanina, to investigate its authenticity. Ali, according to the Consul, induced a wretched Greek, by mingled promises and threats, to confess, that he forged the correspondence. The Greek of course was hung on the spot, and Ali’s loyalty redeemed from suspicion. All this seems to us insipid and unlikely.² No names, dates, coincidences, or arguments are given, and we do not believe that Ali ever conceived the project of avowedly throwing off his dependence on the Porte.

The succeeding two years, up to the summer of 1797, were occupied by Ali in a war on a revolted Bey of Upper Albania, to which he marched by command of the Porte, and in which he made some accessions to his domains. The names of the persons and places mentioned in the accounts of these transactions are of too little notoriety to be repeated. An event of greater importance was the revolt of Passevend Oglou, Pacha of Widin, a frontier post on the Austrian side of Roumelia, one of the boldest and ablest of the Turkish governors of the last century. This revolt took place in the summer of 1797, when the French, by the treaty of Campo Formio, became masters of the Ionian Isles, and of the continental possessions of the Venetians in Greece, Prevesa, Parga, Vonizza and Bucintro. Ali Pacha, according to M. Pouqueville, succeeded in making Gentili, the French commandant of the Ionian Isles, subservient to his policy. He welcomed the tricolored flag, sent to Yanina on a message of fraternity by the French general, and wrote a letter to Bonaparte, which was published in the journals of the day. The return for this cajolery was, that Ali Pacha received from the French government leave to fit out an expedition by sea against two powerful Albanian cantons on the coast; an attempt he had never been able to make before, because the Venetians regarded the strait between Corfu and Albania, in the same light as the emperor of Russia does the Pacific ocean; viz. as a close sea. Ali received the French general’s permission to navigate this close sea with his galleys, fell upon the inhabitants, who were engaged in the festivities of Easter, in the spring of 1798, and killed 6000; a considerable number to be massacred without resistance, by a marauding band; but the French Consul, like the painter in the Vicar of Wakefield, with his diamonds, is never niggardly with his killed and wounded. The most vexatious thing in his account is, that he does not state the semblance of a provocation, on the part of these unfortunate cantons, belonging to another pa-chalic, and separated from that of Ali by impassable mountains, which made all access to them by land impossible;— Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.

His success on this occasion, however, raised Ali in the estimation of all good mussulmans, and procured him a brevet of Aslan, the Lion, with which he marched out, at the command of the Porte, and at the head of 8000 men, against the formidable rebel Passevend Oglou.

Forty pachas of Asia and Europe, with their feudatory powers, were in arms before the gates of Widin, when Ali Pacha appeared among them. At this moment, the intelligence reached the army, that the French had landed in Egypt. This invasion of the Grand Seignor’s territory led of course to an open rupture between the Porte and the French government. As the latter, by the possession of the Venetian forts on the Grecian continent, was the frontier neighbor of Ali, he immediately received orders to leave Widin, and repair to the defence of his own territory. Arrived at Yanina, he was able to lull the suspicions of General Gentili, who, for a French commander of a very important frontier station, appears to have been a credulous gentleman. Ali made him believe, that he was only raising troops and strengthening his army, by way of maintaining an armed neutrality between the Porte and France. Under this delusion the crafty Pacha enticed the French general Rose, commandant of Bucintro, to a parley at Philates, where he seized him and sent him a prisoner to Constantinople, At the same moment, he fell upon the French posts at Bucintro, Prevesa, and Vonitza, massacred or made prisoners their garrisons, and was only prevented from seizing Parga, by the appearance of a Russian fleet, which took possession of it for the Emperor Paul, at that time the august ally of the Grand Turk. Some of these movements are familiar to all our readers, who have been taught by Lord Byron’s muse to

and who may be gratified at being able, from the foregoing account, to place that event where it belongs in the order of history. As a recompense for his achievement, Ali now received from the Porte, the third horsetail, and the title of vizier, which goes with it. Lord Nelson, at that time cruising in the neighborhood, sent an officer to compliment him on the capture of Prevesa, and to apologize that his lordship did not make a visit in person to ‘the hero of Epirus.’

Ali passed the winter of 1798, in preparing the farther subjection of the Suliotes, by a new expedition against them. The French Consul does not inform us in what manner they had passed the time since the last pacification in 1795, nor what circumstances of provocation, or whether any, excited Ali to a new assault upon them. We think it not unlikely, that they had allowed themselves to be tampered with by the French, from the Ionian Islands. The Pacha took the field at the head of ten thousand troops. As he had concealed his designs till the last moment, the Suliotes were taken by surprise, and especially when they saw Bozzari, their ablest chieftain, at the head of seventy men, desert to the ranks of the vizier. This name of Bozzari appears in the very last accounts, which, at the time of writing, we have received from the patriots in Greece ; and proves that the valor of the father has descended to the son. Notwithstanding the overwhelming force with which they were invaded, and this defection of their leader, the Suliotes nevertheless determined on resistance. On an accurate enumeration of their bands, they were found to amount to fifteen hundred armed warriors, under the command of thirty one partizan chiefs. Collecting all the stores and munitions within their reach, they retired with this force to the mountains. The army of Ali moved forward to an assault, but being repulsed with the loss of three hundred and seventy killed and many wounded, the vizier determined to draw a cordon round the heights of Suli, and starve its citizens into submission. This plan accordingly went into operation. At the end of nine months, the Suliotes began to suffer from famine. They succeeded, however, in sending two hundred of of their old men, women, and children, to the Ionian Isles, then fallen into the hands of the Russians, by whom the fugitives were kindly received. At the end of three months more of additional sufferings, a party of four hundred men and seventy women, were able in a dark night to force their way to Parga, and return with provisions to their mountains. Parga is twenty miles from Suli, reckoning the French lieue at two and half miles. A march of forty miles through hostile hosts, in one night, for four hundred and seventy men and women, with delay sufficient to load with provisions, and carry them home on the back, is rather hard of digestion; but we have no right to contradict it. The exploit certainly surpasses that of the Spartans, who in three days marched one hundred and twenty miles to the aid of the Athenians at Marathon.

Ali, suspecting some treachery at this prolonged resistance of the Suliotes, thought proper to hang a few of his own captains, a circumstance, which, with the tediousness of the service, so discouraged the rest, that they broke up in disgust from their encampment and went home. The French Consul even avers, that they entered into a league with the Suliotes against the vizier. Of this, however, there are no proofs in his narrative, and in the spring of 1802, Ali was again early employed in measures to reduce these troublesome mountaineers. The Pacha of Adrianople, for what imaginable reason we are not told, took umbrage at these proceedings of Ali; and the latter was obliged to detach a part of his force under his oldest son Muctar, lately made Pacha of Lepanto, and now despatched by his father to hold the Pacha of Adrianople in check. This campaign was of short duration, and Muctar soon returned with his troops to enforce the siege, in which the Suliotes were held in their mountains. Veli Bey, the second son of Ali, was also sent by his father to the army, and the war was pushed with such vigor, that the Suliotes had soon no resource for water, but to let down from the inaccessible cliffs where they were nested, sponges loaded with lead into the Acheron, (which river the Consul identifies with that which flows through this region,) from which they thus drew up a scanty relief of their thirst.

At this moment, Emineh, the wife of the vizier, and mother of Muctar and Veli, fearing for the fate of her sons thus engaged with a desperate enemy, and, according to M. Pouqueville, moved with pity for the Suliotes themselves, undertook, in a moment of confidence, to remonstrate with her husband, and to plead for the Suliotes, about to become his victims. The vizier, enraged at her expostulations, seized a pistol and fired at a venture. The aim missed, but Emineh fell senseless in a swoon, and died before morning. M. Pouqueville gives us, at the length of an octavo page, the address of Emineh, and the reply of Ali. No soul was present with them at this scene, in the centre of the harem; but M. Pouqueville can put a dash at the very word, where the vizier broke in upon the expostulation of his spouse, and tells us in a note, that he had for authority for this report, of what no one could have heard, ‘Tosconi, the physician of Ali, his blind instrument of assassination, and his hired poisoner.’ A very respectable authority truly. But we can tell M. Pouqueville, that few of his readers will believe that he had even as good authority as that; for the long tragedy speeches are plainly of his own fabric, and were written, we presume, in the fourth story of some snug tenement in Paris.

The situation of the Suliotes meantime grew desperate. The seige was pressed with great vigor, their provisions were exhausted, and the four fortresses had been ceded by the Russians to the Ottoman Porte, by the treaty of March, 1800. The Suliotes were accordingly surrounded on all sides by the domains of Ali, without being able, as before, to look to a christian garrison at Parga for relief. The last assault, therefore, of the troops of Ali was successful, and, except a small band, who escaped to the sea coast, and thence to the Ionian Islands, the whole population was slain or enslaved. At the last moment, many of them were enabled to sell their lives dear, for their chief having retired to the magazine, waited till the troops of Ali had crowded into the fort where it was kept, and then applying a match to the powder, sacrificed his own life in destroying six hundred of the foe. The bugbear stories of the vengeance taken by Ali on the prisoners, which the French Consul relates without the pretence of an authority, are entitled to no credit, and are too disgusting to be repeated.

We have but few events, with which to fill up the space of four years in Ali’s life, immediately succeeding the capture of Suli. At the beginning of this period, viz. in 1802, a third son, Salik, was born to the vizier, of a Georgian slave. In recompense for his prowess in the final destruction of the Suliotes, the vizier was appointed Roumely Valicy, or Viceroy over all the Pachas of Roumelia. In this capacity he scoured the country, at the head of 40,000 men, and annihilated the brigands who infested it, or drove them to their retreats in the mountains. Having suppressed a revolt in Macedonia, which was the more immediate object of his campaign, he disbanded his army, and returned to Yanina. His conduct in keeping possession of Bucintro, which, by the capitulation with the Russians, was, with the three other forts, to be governed by a Waywode, sent expressly by the Porte, was complained of by the Russians, in their diplomatic intercourse at Constantinople.

On the arrival of M. Pouqueville at Yanina, in 1806, as French Consul General, Ali Pacha was at the age of sixty two, and had by his military success, or political intrigues, rendered himself master of all Greece, with the exception of the Morea, Attica, and Bceotia. Even the Morea soon ceased to form an exception, for Veli, his second son, was named Pacha of that province, in the course of the year. In the course of this year, also, war broke out between the Porte and Russia. Ali seized the moment to take possession of Prevesa, but failed in an attempt on Parga. Ali considered these forts as obnoxious to his arms, because, though governed by a Turkish Waywode, they were garrisoned by Russians. By the treaty of Tilsit, the French were again put in possession of the Ionian Islands, and immediately began again to intrigue with Ali, who, however, was able to cope with them in diplomacy, as well as in war. But in the great object of persuading them to make a cession to him of Parga, he met with no success.

In the year 1810, Ali began to bring to a crisis his designs on the territory of Ibrahim Pacha of Berat, to whose two daughters the two sons of Ali were married, but whose government had been long coveted by the ambitious vizier. He employed, for this purpose, Omer Bey Brioni, whose name will be repeated in the sequel, a bold and aspiring individual, who had been banished from Berat by Ibrahim; who had signalized himself in Egypt against the French; and had now returned to Yanina, in the possession of great treasures, acquired in the wars in that quarter. Omer Bey Brioni, with 8000 men, was sent to invade Berat; the town was taken by capitulation, Ibrahim was allowed with his wife to retire to Avion, and his son was sent to Yanina as a hostage. Ali thus became possessed of the Sangiac of Berat; and though the Porte was doubtless offended at this accumulation of power in his hands, it was not in a condition at that time to refuse his claims. He was, however, ordered to repair with his contingent to the Danube against the Russians. He excused himself on account of ill health. The Consul sneers at this as mere affectation, and an artifice to avoid the duty of marching. But it happened that Dr Holland was at Yanina at this time; that he prescribed for Ali; and that we have his unquestioned authority to the reality of his sickness. Dr Holland even gives us to understand, that his complaints were really of the nature alleged, according to Pouqueville, by Ali, We have no doubt, that did the circumstances of the case admit the production of impartial testimony on other occasions of Ali’s life, the most candid reader would be satisfied, that the Consul’s biography of the vizier is in many places a libel. Unable to join the army himself, the sons of Ali, Muctar Pacha of Lepanto, and Veli Pacha of the Morea, were sent in his place. The reader of poetry, who expected great things to be achieved, when

will be disappointed to hear, that these warriors returned with the loss of the greater part of their troops. Having, however, heard the events of this campaign from ‘dark Muctar’ himself, we have a right, after making all due allowance for the partiality to be expected in speaking of his own affairs, to assert, that the Consul’s insinuations upon this occasion are false; that the campaign was severe, and that the Albanian troops and chieftains signalized their valor. That Veli, on his return, was displaced from the Morea and appointed to the Sangiac of Thessally, proves nothing against his bravery in the war. The Turkish government, like most despotic governments, recompenses only success. Besides, honest Veli had most grievously oppressed the inhabitants of the Morea, and swept their fruitful fields so closely, that the Porte began to tremble for the gleanings.

It was at this period, that the external celebrity of Ali began to extend. A peace was concluded between the English and the Porte, and Major Leake, whose researches are before the public, landed at Prevesa, with a park of artillery presented by the English government to Ali. The English shortly after formed the siege of St Maura. The Consul exults over their credulity in thinking that Ali was sincere in wishing them success in this siege; while the crafty vizier in reality was aiding M. Pouqueville to introduce supplies of food and munitions of war. But the truth is, though M. Pouqueville has not even yet, to all appearance, found it out, Ali Pacha was holding a shrewd and somewhat disdainful neutrality between the two great powers, and aiding them to weaken, to occupy, to besiege, and to destroy each other. His court was now thronged with British travellers. Lord Byron, Mr Hobhouse, Dr Holland, General Stuart, and Sir Hudson Lowe were among those, who visited Yanina at this time, and we believe a good deal of the severity with which Pouqueville speaks of Ali arises from his depit, at seeing him an object of curiosity and attention to distinguished Englishmen.

In the year 1812, Russia was invaded by the French, and in consequence made peace with the Turks. Muctar Pacha was appointed vizier of Berat, a sufficient proof of the confidence placed by the Porte at that time in his family. By this appointment, the city of Cardiki was exposed to the troops of Ali, who seized the moment of executing upon its inhabitants the long cherished purpose of vengeance for the outrages there suffered in his youth, by his mother, his sister, and himself. Cardiki was invested, and captured, and its inhabitants massacred without pity or measure. Our only consolation in reading the accounts of Pouqueville and Mr Hughes are, that they differ so much, that both cannot be true, and we would hope, not for the credit of Ali, but of human nature, that they are both much exaggerated. The Consul indeed carries his horrors not merely to the incredible, but to the ridiculous, and winds up his chapter with an account of a pretended attempt at assassination on the part of Ali, by means of fulminating powder concealed in a despatch. M. Pouqueville, who appears to have been finger and glove with several ordinary characters, tells us he had this from the Genoese renegade, who prepared the powder. But the Genoese evidently imposed on the Consul’s credulity.

In 1814, Ali made an unsuccessful attack on Parga, then garrisoned by the French. It was soon after occupied by the English general Campbell, who issued a proclamation assuring to the inhabitants of Parga the protection of the British. By the treaty of 1800, to which we have already alluded, between Russia and the Porte, it was stipulated that the ancient Venetian fortresses on the continent of Greece, Vonizza, Preve-sa, Parga, and Bucintro, should be governed by an officer sent by the Porte, should be subject to no tax beyond one, which the senate of the Ionian Isles should fix, that no mosque should be built within their limits, and no Turk suffered to reside there. The Porte named, as the governor of these provinces, Abdalla Bey, who took up his residence at Pre-vesa, and appointed his deputies to the other three forts. That at Bucintro, however, was never evacuated by Ali, and that of Prevesa was immediately seized by him, on a war with Russia breaking out; since, though governed by a Turkish Waywode, it was protected by Russian guarantee.

When the French recovered possession of the Ionian Islands by the treaty of Tilsit, Parga passed into their hands; and on the fall of the French empire was occupied by the British. As the English were parties to the convention of 1800, by which these fortresses were ceded to the Porte, the latter naturally demanded Parga from them, when in the year 1814 it fell into their hands. Such was the position of Parga, of which so much has been said and written, at the period at which we are now arrived. Ali was authorized by the Porte to take possession of this fortress, and so long as Turkey is allowed to be a party to treaties with civilized nations, it is idle to complain of the surrender of Parga to them. The whole vice of the European policy is that of admitting into the pale of nations a people like the Turks, who, essentially barbarous in their character; ought not to be considered as invested with the rights of civilized nations, nor entitled to the privileges of the international code of the civilized world. England could not with any consistency refuse to surrender Parga ; and in exacting from Ali the sum of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling, as an indemnity for such of the inhabitants as chose to leave their native town and cross to the Ionian Islands, she did all that could be expected in her situation. We have no room to engage in the details of this affair, but there is one tragical circumstance that admits of some explanation. It has been said that, at the moment of departing from Parga, its inhabitants, having disinterred the remains of their ancestors and heaped them in the market place, set fire to them and reduced them to ashes, to prevent even the relics of their sires from coming under the sway of Ali. Now it was a traditional custom of the inhabitants thus to disinter the relics of the dead at certain intervals, and to hold a solemn festival over them, a disgusting practice, found also among some of the native tribes of this continent. If the anecdote related of the inhabitants of Parga be true, which is explicitly denied by some writers on the subject, it carries an expression of despair far less striking on the part of a people familiar with the horrid practice of digging up, and exposing in the market place, the bones of their ancestors, than if it had been done on that occasion alone.

It was in the year 1819, that Ali obtained possession of the long coveted Parga against the will, as we have no doubt, but by the external concession of the Porte, and in accordance with the stipulations of the great powers of Europe. As it was in less than a year from this time that his star of fortune began to wane, we may here pause a moment to survey his situation. He was then at the age of seventy eight according to Pouqueville. The Consul describes him at that period as worn out with the effects of debauchery, ‘his eyes dim, his voice nothing but a shrill and inauspicious squeaking, (glapissement,) his form bent under the weight of a guilty old age.’ We have the best authority in the world for pronouncing this to be a caricature. Few men at the age of seventy eight possess the vigorous aspect of Ali in the year 1819. His posture was upright, his face uncommonly free from wrinkles, his eyes unusually clear and mild in their expression, his whole countenance devoid of ferocity, cunning, or any of the other odious traits ascribed to his character, his voice firm and distinct, his motions and carriage easy. His family at that time consisted of Muctar, Beglier Bey of Berat, but resident at Yanina, as his father’s Kiaja, or lieutenant; of Veli, his second son, then Pacha of Thessally and resident at Turnavo, aged forty six, and of Salik his youngest son, Pacha of Lepanto, aged eighteen, whose nuptials were celebrated at Yanina, in the spring of 1819. Muctar had two sons, and Veli three sons and six daughters, and various intermarriages existed between them. It was understood that Ali had a large sum of money hoarded up in his different castles, but no one we presume will attach the least credit to the estimate which Pouqueville makes of it, viz. more than forty millions of dollars in coin. Though this sum is doubtless exaggerated, perhaps nine tenths, the great treasure which Ali had accumulated, was one temptation to the Porte to destroy him. The Ottoman policy had long been outraged by his virtual independence; he had violently dispossessed several of the neighboring Pachas, who held their governments from the Grand Seignor. These circumstances, with the leisure from foreign wars, which Turkey then enjoyed, appear to have urged the Porte to awaken from its long connivance, and in the summer of 1819, Pacho Bey, an old fugitive from the vengeance of Ali, whose romantic adventures are related, we know not how correctly, by Pouqueville, was sent as Capidgi Bachi from Constantinople, to summon Ali to appear there, and defend his conduct. His son Veli, at the same time, was displaced from the government of Thessally and appointed to the obscure post of Lepanto, a fate to which he attempted no resistance.

Ali, as the first step of precaution, employed some of his creatures at Constantinople to assassinate Pacho Bey, before leaving the capital. Having only wounded him, but not mortally, they were seized, and betrayed Ali as their employer. The vizier was in consequence declared to be Fermanli; or under the ban of the empire, a sentence very similar to that of excommunication, in the most powerful ages of the church. Various Pachas of Roumelia were designated to take the field against this potent rebel, and the command of the whole expedition was entrusted to Pacho Bey, on whom, by anticipation, the vizierate of Yanina, and the epithet of Conqueror were bestowed.

Although the attempt to assassinate Pacho Bey was made in the month of February 1820, no part of the force to be made use of against Ali was in movement till July. This interval had been busily employed by Ali, in organizing such means of resistance as his critical situation permitted. To this end, he revived and called into action the Armatolis, a species of militia composed of the christian population of Turkey in Europe, which, in former periods, had been organized into a regular band, distributed throughout the region in divisions or districts, and made use of by the Porte to hold their Pachas in check. This organization Ali had formerly suppressed as dangerous to his power; but now by intrigues and bribes he brought them into the field in his own defence, and among the most conspicuous of their leaders was Ulysses, who is now playing a very conspicuous part in the patriot armies of Greece. Little dependence, however, could be placed on troops thus assembled; and on the first hostile movements of the new Pacha of Thessally, the bands of Armatolis in that quarter deserted to the army of the Sultan, and the dominions of Ali beyond the Pindus were lost without a blow. Ulysses and his immediate followers remained faithful, and sustained during the summer a warfare with various success in Livadia, in the region of Parnassus, and about the straits of Thermopylae, against Pehlvan Baba Pacha, who from the rank of gladiator had raised himself to a Sangiac, and a high rank in the army of the Porte.

At the commencement of hostilities, Veli Pacha was at his residence at Lepanto. Despatching his harem and his valuables to Prevesa, he repaired himself to the capital to meet his father ; and at the same time Muctar returned from a tour of inspection in Upper Albania, which he had traversed for the purpose of suppressing any movement of disaffection. The situation of Ali was critical, but not desperate. The forts of Ochrida, Avion, Canina, Berat, Cleisoura, Preniiti, port Panormus, Santa-Quaranta, Bucintro, Delvino, Argyro-Castro, Tepeleni, Parga, Prevesa, Suli, Paramythia, Arta, Cinque Pozzi, and Yanina were severally in a state of defence; fortified by four hundred and twenty pieces of artillery, and seventy two mortars. In addition to these, in his castle in the lake of Yanina, he had a hundred pieces of artillery, a quantity of Congreve rockets, a present from the English, and abundant magazines of gunpowder. A line of signals was established from Yanina to Prevesa, to give the earliest intelligence of the appearance of the Turkish fleet.

To conciliate the slippery faith of his subjects at this juncture, and in imitation, of several illustrious potentates of Western Europe, Ali now promised his people a Constitution. To this end he despatched two Grecian emissaries to Corfu, who fulfilled their commission by purchasing at an apothecary’s one of the score of constitutions, which have been successively bestowed on the Ionian Islands, since the treaty of Campo Formio. This whole story is evidently what the vulgar call a hoax; whether M. Pouqueville fabricated it, or took it innocently from the wags of Corfu, who knew how the French ministry had been dealing with their constitution, does not appear. Ali’s object in the mission was to convey a sum of money to a place of safety at Corfu. On their crossing the channel of Corfu to return to Yanina, the commissaries were seized by the inhabitants of the coast, delivered up to the Turkish admiral, then just arrived with his squadron, and by him put to the torture.

It was about the end of July, that the Ottoman fleet appeared off Prevesa, and at the same moment Pacho Bey took the field in Thessally as Commander in Chief, while the Pacha of Scutari in Upper Albania, aroused the Beys in that quarter, and placed it in a state of revolt. To meet the danger thus gathering on all sides, the members of the family of Ali were distributed to the most important posts. Veli Pacha was sent to Prevesa; Muctar and Salik his younger brother returned to Berat; Hussein the son of Muctar was entrusted with the command of Tepeleni, and Mehemet the son of Veli with that of Parga. The old vizier himself, who at the age of seventy nine exhibited a vigor unsurpassed by that of his sons and grandsons, remained at Yanina as the centre of operations. Under himself and commander in chief of his troops, he appointed Omer Bey Brioni, already known to the reader, and who has since performed a conspicuous part in the Grecian war.

Success soon appeared to smile on the arms of Ali. The Pacha of Scutari retreated before Muctar, for Ali had contrived to stir up the Montenegrins in the rear of Scutari, who made him work nearer home. Pacho Bey remained stationary in his camp on the borders of Macedonia, and the Turkish fleet unable to supply itself with provisions at Prevesa, retired to the coast of the Morea. This, however, was a momentary and deceptive aspect of things. The fleet, provisioned and reinforced, returned to the coast of Albania, and all its strong holds surrendered promptly at the summons of the Capudan Bey. Muctar, no longer safe at Berat, retreated to Argyro-Castro. Pehlvan Pacha had but to appear before Lepanto, when it surrendered, and all the country of iEtolia and Acarnania submitted to the Sultan. Pacho Bey put himself in motion, and was soon in force at Larissa; and Mehemet Pacha the son of Veli, to whom the defence of Parga had been entrusted, surrendered that city, and his own person, with very little resistance, to the Capudan Bey. The surrender of Parga was the signal for the Suliotes, who had fled to the Ionian Islands, and who had entered the service of the King of Naples, to return to Greece, and crowding into the ranks of the Turkish army, they added some force and much bitterness to the warfare, which was concentrating itself against Ali. The siege of Prevesa, where Veli was posted, was immediately formed, and the son of Veli, now a prisoner in the Turkish army, where he was treated with the greatest tenderness and respect, was employed by the Capudan Bey in writing to his father and his uncles, to invite them to desert the cause in which they were embarked, and submit to the Sultan.

Pacho Bey, in pressing forward toward Yanina, defeated the outposts of Ali at Krionero. Notwithstanding this reverse, Ali was still formidable, for Omer Bey Brioni was stationed in the difficult passes of Pindus with 15,000 men, the best troops in the service of Ali, and commanded by three of his trustiest lieutenants. But the hopes, which Ali justly placed upon this force were suddenly blasted, for at the appearance of Pacho Bey, the whole army, generals, generalissimo, and troops deserted to his standard.

This was the moment for executing the plan, which Ali had conceived of destroying the city of Yanina at the approach of the enemy, and shutting himself up in the castle of the lake. Ordering the miserable inhabitants to save themselves by flight, the guns of his three castles were turned upon Yanina and it was soon in flames. The unhappy fugitives plundered by the Albanian troops of Ali in the moment of escape, were saved from their hands only to fall into those of the Turkish soldiery. Nor was the fate of the Albanian troops themselves more fortunate. After gratifying their avidity with the plunder of the wretched subjects of their master, instead of returning and shutting themselves up with him in the castles, they disbanded their companies, and dispersed themselves among their native villages, where the peasantry and shepherds, as occasion offered, took vengeance on them for all the cruelties they had suffered for years at their hands. Thus the whole country was filled with confusion, terror, and blood.

On the 19th of August 1820, Pacho Bey with all his forces encamped within the ruined walls of Yanina, and pitching his tents beyond the range of the guns of the castles, displayed the three horsetails, and was formally proclaimed vizier. Ali Pacha, however, had still 8000 men in his castles, he commanded the lake by a strong flotilla, and being thus possessed of the means of drawing provisions from the surrounding country, was still in a condition to make a formidable and protracted resistance, the rather, as the army of Pacho Bey, or Ismael Pacha as he was now styled, was wholly unprovided with artillery. Ulysses with his Armatolis formed a part of the garrisons of Ali. Discontented with their confinement, these gentry, to the number of 1500, began to excite a mutiny within the walls of the castles, of which Ulysses, who remained faithful, hastened to apprise the vizier. Instead of the severity to have been expected, the crafty Ali directed Ulysses to foment the disaffection, and in a short time the names of 1500, comprehending all who were dissatisfied with their position, were reported to Ali. Forming these men into a band under Ulysses, the gates were opened to them, with the appearance of sending them out upon a sortie, but with secret orders to Ulysses, to desert with them to the enemy. By this step the castles were rid of the disaffected; and the army of the Turks, already short of food, swelled by 1500 hungry Armatolis. To complete the whole manoeuvre, Ali contrived, by the agency of Ulysses, to excite suspicions and jealousies between the Turks and these new comers; the latter soon betook themselves to the woods, whence they subsisted by cutting off the Turkish convoys, and Ulysses escaped in safety to his namesake’s island of Ithaca, whence he was soon to appear among the champions of regenerated Greece.

Despairing of immediate success in the siege, Pacho Bey or Ismael Pacha had recourse to intrigue. He addressed a letter to Veli, who still held out in Prevesa, enclosing him a firman of the Grand Seignor, by which he was constituted Pacha of St Jean d’Acre, in Syria, on condition of surrendering to the Sultan. The supplications of his son, a prisoner in the Ottoman fleet, and the suggestions of interest prevailed over the sense of duty to his father, or even his distrust of Ismael’s sincerity, and accepting the offer, he opened the gates of Prevesa, and repaired to the vessel of the Capudan Bey, by whom he was treated with the most flattering attentions. Muctar Pacha, then in the castle of Argyro-Castro, tempted in like manner by the offer of the Pachalic of Kuthaye in Asia Minor, with his youngest brother Salik Bey, hastened to follow this example, and received a Turkish safe-conduct to repair by land to Constantinople.

With the news of the defection of the three sons of Ali, a train of battering cannon and artillery reached the camp of Ismael. Here, however, discontent had begun to appear. Pehlvan Pacha demanded that an assault should be made on the castles; and being opposed by Ismael from the manifest absurdity of the attempt, he broke out into open mutiny. He was immediately taken off by poison, and his treasure, the fruit of indiscriminate plunder to the amount, says Pouqueville, of 300,000 dollars, was sent to Constantinople. This prompt police was attended only with momentary effect. The approach of winter, which showed itself in the snows of Mount Pindus, was the signal for many of the Beys, who composed the Turkish army, to withdraw without ceremony to their estates. The Suliotes who, listening to the first dictates of vengeance, had pressed into the Turkish army, and to whom a restoration to their native rocks had been promised, were exasperated by the delay, which was visible on the part of Ismael, to fulfil the stipulation. Finally, the whole country found that even the despotic government of Ali was far less onerous, than the presence and ravages of a numerous, needy, undisciplined Turkish host. To add to the embarrassment in which Ismael was placed, Ali succeeded in forming an alliance with his oldest and most implacable enemies the Suliotes, who organized themselves into an army in his cause, and encamped on the sides of Pindus. Not daring to engage this new enemy, and pressed with the severity of the season, Ismael Pacha was reduced to the humiliating necessity of raising the siege of Yanina, and repairing to Arta. Thus closed the eventful campaign of 1820.

In 1821, a more momentous series of events began. The insurrection of the Greeks commenced in Wallachia and Moldavia, and spread with contagious rapidity through all the quarters of European Turkey. Our limits, already exceeded, oblige us to pass entirely over the fortunes of this revolution, which, it need not be said, received from Ali all the encouragement it was in his power to bestow. The Porte, at the same time, became embroiled with the Russians, and every thing seemed auspicious to the lately desperate cause of the old vizier. But notwithstanding the multitude of calls upon the attention and resources of the Porte, it determined to prosecute the war against Ali with increased vigor. Ismael Pacha having disappointed them by his want of energy, the chief command of the armies was conferred on Churschid Mehemet Pacha of the Morea, a rich, stern, and warlike Turk of Anatolia, formerly Grand Vizier and Pacha of Aleppo. With this appointment, he received from the Porte a present of a thousand purses, and all the Pachas, Beys, and Agas of Roumelia were placed under his command. Ali meantime had not been idle. His dexterity and his gold had enabled him to excite again the Montenegrins, the Servians, and the Armatolis, and to produce formidable diversions in almost every quarter.

Churschid repaired in great force to Yanina, but the progress of the Greek insurrection in all quarters, particularly in the Morea, obliged him soon to make large detachments from his army, and to depute his ablest generals to the most important posts. In this way he was so much weakened, that during the summer of 1821, he was obliged often to act on the defensive, and his communications with Arta, Prevesa, and Parga were constantly cut off. He received, however, a reinforcement of 8000 men from Scutari, and was enabled to keep Ali confined to the castle of the lake of Yanina. Toward the end of the summer, Prince Mavrocordato, soon after elected the first President of the Executive Council of the Greeks, appeared in Epirus, and there organized a provincial government. With this government, Ali immediately attempted to put himself in connexion, and though the Greeks could not but feel a great distrust in his character, yet their interest was now the same ; and while they served him by furnishing occupation to the Turkish army, his treasures, still abundant, were freely opened to them. Exasperated at the delays which attended his reduction, the Porte directed the death of Muctar and Veli, then prisoners at Constantinople, whose heads were accordingly exhibited on the Seraglio gates.

Concentrating his energy upon the siege, Churschid collected in the autumn of 1821, from twelve to fifteen thousand men before the castles, in which Ali was shut up, with a garrison now reduced to about fifteen hundred. His principal engineer, Caretto, an Italian, was seduced from him at this juncture; in consequence of which, and the weakness of his garrison, one of his castles, that of Litharitza, was on the 13th of November carried by storm. Ali however had constructed mines beneath it, and soon after its occupation, caused it to be blown up. As the site of this castle commands that of the Lake, to which Ali was now reduced, his position was all but desperate. Still, however, he possessed some means of protracted resistance, and a great success on the part of the Greeks might yet have saved him.

Such an event seemed to be in train. The combined Grecian armies, which had long formed the siege of Arta, in which Ismael Pacha, somewhat in disgracej held the command, succeeded in the capture of the place on the 24th of November, and Ismael fell into the hands of the Suliotes, They were solicited to deliver him up to the vengeance of Ali, but there was no mode of conveying him to his castle, and he found the means of effecting his escape from the Suliotes. On returning, however, to his countrymen, he was seized and sent to Constantinople, and his head soon figured on the impartial Seraglio gates.

Though Ali lived to see the downfall and destruction of Ismael, who, as Pacho Bey, had had the chief agency in stirring up the storm against him, his exultation was brief. Possessed of the site of the castle of Litharitza, Churschid constructed a battery that commanded the castle of the Lake, and thus brought the siege toward a close. The garrison of Ali had been reduced to a few hundreds, and was daily weakened by desertions, to which they were invited by Churschid. The accounts of the final catastrophe of Ali are given with such contradiction, that we are reduced to the necessity of selecting that, which appears most probable, though it is liable to the objection of proceeding from a hostile source. According to the accounts, which were circulated by the Porte in Constantinople of the circumstances of his fall, Ali had been reduced to shut himself up in a tower of his castle, with only thirty adherents. This tower consisted of three stories, the upper story was occupied by the vizier, the second story was filled with his treasures, and the lower with gunpowder, in the design of blowing up the tower, if reduced to that extremity. It could not be expected of the attendants of Ali, that they should be all willing to expose themselves to such a fate, and they were constantly tempted to surrender their master, by the offers of Churschid. In these offers Churschid proposed the most favorable conditions, not only for them, but for their master also; and by the most solemn oaths of honor and religion, guaranteed to Ali his life and treasures. In some of the accounts, it is related that the young wife of Ali, Basilica, beguiled into a belief of the sincerity of these offers, joined her solicitations with those of his servants, and induced him to surrender himself to Churschid. By the official account, which on this point at least is highly suspicious, Ali attempted, on capitulating, to obtain a guaranty of his life, but was told that this depended on the pleasure of the Sultan alone, whose will should be ascertained by a special messenger. After many conferences and much hesitation, Ali trusted to the oaths and adjurations of Churschid, and, with thirty followers, gave himself up, and was conducted to an island in the lake, till the pleasure of the Sultan should be known; While in confinement, he was treated with the honors due to his rank, and was visited respectfully by Churschid, and his high officers.

It is said that he did not despair till the last of making terms for his life. On the day of his death, he called for wine, saying, that, ‘though forbidden by the Koran, he needed a little in the exhausted state of his health.’ On the 5th of February, 1822, the will of the Porte being learned, the death of Ali was decreed; and the execution of the sentence entrusted to the Kiaja of Churschid, Mehmed Pacha. He entered the presence of Ali, and engaged in a conversation with him, of which the object was doubtless to provoke the old vizier to some passionate expression, that might furnish a pretence for an assault. Unbroken by his disasters, Ali refrained from the use of language to which he was thus insidiously provoked. Exasperated by his prudence, the cowardly assassin seized the old chief by his long white beard, spit in his face, and loaded him with the names of traitor and infidel. Unarmed, weakened by his long confinement, and eighty two years of age, he still grappled with the murderer, but received, says the official account, a mortal wound in his left breast, of which he fell dead. Guards then entered the room and severed his head from his body. The few remaining followers of Ali were massacred on the spot. The head of Ali was sent to Constantinople, and on the 24th of February, was nailed to the Seraglio gates.

Such is the history of this remarkable man. In his mode of life, he was austere and simple. He rose early, and took his coffee and pipe. He then received the reports of his agents on public affairs, and the petitions of those who sought his interference, pronounced in all important cases, and directed in the affairs of his army or navy, till noon. His dinner was spare, and he made but little use of wine. After dinner, he was accustomed to sleep an hour or two, and then with his pipe, to resume, till seven or eight o’clock in the evening, the same attention to affairs, in which he had passed the morning. He made frequent journeys throughout his states, and took his meals and passed his nights in the houses of the inhabitants. No one ever knew in the morning, in what place he was that day to give audience, or occupy himself in the cares of government. Many summer residences, and villas near Yanina were alternately occupied by him for a day, and sometimes several in the course of the day. This was not from fear, but activity, or restlessness of mind. That it was not from fear of his life, was evident from his manner of traversing the streets and roads unattended but with a couple of servants. In point of religion, Ali was far from being a devotee. He went but once a year to the mosque, which was at the period of the Ramazan, in full procession; his sword borne by his Selictar Aga, his. banner by the Bairactar Aga ; with four armed officers by the sides of his horse, and twenty Chiauses, with staffs and silver apples on them, in front, while two domestics scattered perfumes over him. His harem, like that of every Turkish nobleman and prince, was filled with women, but after the death of Emineh, he was much influenced by a young wife Basilica, of christian parentage, but educated from infancy in the seraglio. He was formally married to her in 1816, and permitted her to have the christian service celebrated in the interior of the palace. She was equally conspicuous for beauty and goodness, and often successfully interposed her good offices in favor of those, who had incurred the displeasure of Ali. In conversation Ali was remarkably gracious and intelligent; and his treatment of strangers was in the extreme of hospitality. His person was not in perfect proportion, his limbs being somewhat too short for his body; a defect, however, which did not make its appearance when he was mounted. In the decline of age, he became corpulent and inactive, but, as the foregoing history has shown, lost not his energy and fertility of resource, but with his life.

His final resistance to the Ottoman Porte, as much as any single event, occasioned the first movements of the Grecian Revolution. His long protracted defence was highly favorable to the cause of independence in that country, and his fall was providentially delayed, till the armies of freedom and christianity had made such progress, as to bid, we trust and pray, an eternal defiance to the proud, the cruel, the barbarian despotism, which has so long afflicted the fairest corner of the earth.