Ali Pacha | Page 4

the Continent; like mummies
which preserve but the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to
pieces, and getting parcelled out amongst bold adventurers who
skirmished over its ruins. Without mentioning local revolts which
produced only short-lived struggles and trifling changes, of
administration, such as that of Djezzar Pacha, who refused to pay
tribute because he thought himself impregnable in his citadel of
Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of Passevend-Oglou Pacha, who planted
himself on the walls of Widdin as defender of the Janissaries against
the institution of the regular militia decreed by Sultan Selim at
Stamboul, there were wider spread rebellions which attacked the
constitution of the Turkish Empire and diminished its extent; amongst
them that of Czerni-Georges, which raised Servia to the position of a
free state; of Mahomet Ali, who made his pachalik of Egypt into a
kingdom; and finally that of the man whose, history we are about to
narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose long resistance to the
suzerain power preceded and brought about the regeneration of Greece.

Ali's own will counted for nothing in this important movement. He
foresaw it, but without ever seeking to aid it, and was powerless to
arrest it. He was not one of those men who place their lives and
services at the disposal of any cause indiscriminately; and his sole aim
was to acquire and increase a power of which he was both the guiding
influence, and the end and object. His nature contained the seeds of
every human passion, and he devoted all his long life to their
development and gratification. This explains his whole temperament;
his actions were merely the natural outcome of his character confronted
with circumstances. Few men have understood themselves better or
been on better terms with the orbit of their existence, and as the
personality of an individual is all the more striking, in proportion as it
reflects the manners and ideas of the time and country in which he has
lived, so the figure of Ali Pacha stands out, if not one of the most
brilliant, at least one of the most singular in contemporary history.
From the middle of the eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to
the political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself
to-day, and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of all
Europe. Anarchy and disorder reigned from one end of the empire to
the other. The Osmanli race, bred on conquest alone, proved good for
nothing when conquest failed. It naturally therefore came to pass when
Sobieski, who saved Christianity under the walls of Vienna, as before
his time Charles Martel had saved it on the plains of Poitiers, had set
bounds to the wave of Mussulman westward invasion, and definitely
fixed a limit which it should not pass, that the Osmanli warlike instincts
recoiled upon themselves. The haughty descendants of Ortogrul, who
considered themselves born to command, seeing victory forsake them,
fell back upon tyranny. Vainly did reason expostulate that oppression
could not long be exercised by hands which had lost their strength, and
that peace imposed new and different labours on those who no longer
triumphed in war; they would listen to nothing; and, as fatalistic when
condemned to a state of peace as when they marched forth conquering
and to conquer, they cowered down in magnificent listlessness, leaving
the whole burden of their support on conquered peoples. Like ignorant
farmers, who exhaust fertile fields by forcing crops; they rapidly ruined
their vast and rich empire by exorbitant exactions. Inexorable

conquerors and insatiable masters, with one hand they flogged their
slaves and with the other plundered them. Nothing was superior to their
insolence, nothing on a level with their greed. They were never glutted,
and never relaxed their extortions. But in proportion as their needs
increased on the one hand, so did their resources diminish on the other.
Their oppressed subjects soon found that they must escape at any cost
from oppressors whom they could neither appease nor satisfy. Each
population took the steps best suited to its position and character; some
chose inertia, others violence. The inhabitants of the plains, powerless
and shelterless, bent like reeds before the storm and evaded the shock
against which they were unable to stand. The mountaineers planted
themselves like rocks in a torrent, and dammed its course with all their
might. On both sides arose a determined resistance, different in method,
similar in result. In the case of the peasants labour came to a stand-still;
in that of the hill folk open war broke out. The grasping exactions of
the tyrant dominant body produced nothing from waste lands and
armed mountaineers; destitution and revolt were equally beyond their
power to cope with; and all that was left for tyranny to govern was a