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1805.

A.D. Arcola than did Niko Tzaras at the bridge of Pravi. Enclosed in a position where they could neither advance nor retreat, the lives of his 300 soldiers were in the blades of their yataghans; for three successive days they maintained the unequal struggle, till their provisions, their water, and, last of all, their ammunition was expended. There remained no other alternative than to attempt a passage at the point of the sword, and at sunrise on the fourth morning Tzaras commenced the onset. His soldiers, flinging aside their tophaic and drawing each his sabre, rushed furiously towards the river; the Turks, panicstruck at their impetuosity, yielded and left the passage for an instant unguarded; that instant was sufficient, the Greeks gained the bridge and passed it unimpeded, then severing the chains, by which it was suspended on the northern side, they hurled it into the stream of the Karasou, and with a loud shout of triumph pursued their way to the north.* The expedition was, however, fruitless; the passage of Tzaras was effectually stopped by the Ottoman guards at the defiles of Rhodope, and he was compelled, after a perilous retreat, to return

* Carrel, p. 232. Amongst the Kleftic Ballads of M. Fauriel will be found one spirited song on the victory of Niko Tzaras at the bridge of Pravi; v. i. p. 192.

to Alassona, where he arrived at the moment when Ali was recommencing, with unprecedented rigour, his hostilities against the Klefts.*

This war was conducted, on the part of the Greeks, with infinitely more spirit, and to greater advantage, than any previous; the bands of the various chieftains co-operated enthusiastically in their measures for mutual protection, and after twelve months of uninterrupted skirmishing, Ali was at last compelled to purchase peace, and honourable terms were offered to the most distinguished of his opponents who chose to enter into his service. A few only were utterly defeated and compelled to surrender, or disperse in search of

Finding on his return that the Armatolic, hereditary in his family, had been bestowed by Ali on another chieftain, Niko Tzaras abandoned Alassona and became a pirate on the eastern coasts of Thessaly, where his three vessels, rigged with black canvass, were long a source of as much terror to the seamen of the Gulf of Salonica as his predatory expeditions had been to the natives of Olympus. He was at length killed, in 1807, in an engagement with a party of Albanians who had attacked his men when on shore for fresh water; he had repulsed the assailants, but was struck down by a bullet from a concealed enemy, when returning after the skirmish to his vessel. His comrades bore him bleeding to his "black ship," where he expired a few days after, and was buried by his pallikaris in the island of Scyros. Fauriel, v. i. p. 189.

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new asylums in the event of their rejecting the conditions of the vizir. Amongst the latter was Palæopoulo, the former ally of the Pacha. After the discomfiture of his clan he wandered for a time amidst the wild mountains of Etolia, and after enduring every extremity of privation and hardship, he finally retired to Constantinople, where he was received and protected by a few generous inhabitants of the Phanar. The majority of the Klefts, however, still remained independent and unsubdued; and vast numbers of hardy spirits, allured by their example, or impelled by their own sufferings, were daily flying from the lowlands to join their forces in the hills. Thus at the termination of the campaign, notwithstanding the dispersion of a few warlike bands and the defection of those who had accepted the terms of the Pacha, the proportion of resistant heroes thus forced into brigandage and rebellion, was perhaps more than equal to those who had appeared in arms at its commencement.*

The attention of Ali was, however, attracted to another point ere he had leisure to fully prosecute his designs against them; and Youseph the Arab, a wretch equal to

* Rizo, p. 165. Life of Ali Pacha, p. 171. Pouqueville, v. i. pp. 229, 248, 289. Carrel, p. 234. Fauriel, v. i. Introd. p. lxxiii. lxxvii,

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his master in atrocity, was deputed to observe A.D. their movements and carry on the war. Under the savage rule of this monster the villages of Pindus and Agrafa, the chief strongholds of the independent Armatoli, were widowed of inhabitants; and the popular songs of the Greeks abound with details and execrations of his cruelty and crimes. By measures such as these, Ali had so far succeeded in enlarging and consolidating his territory, that at the commencement of the year 1806, his dominion A.D. may be said to have extended over the entire of ancient Hellas, with the exception of a few isolated towns and the provinces of Boeotia and Attica; and even the latter, in fact, might be considered as virtually submitted to him, since their vaivodes and rulers were creatures for whom his interest had procured their appointments.

In the mean time matters had been rapidly tending to a rupture between Russia and the Porte. On the assumption of the imperial dignity by Napoleon, the Sultan had been the first to congratulate him on his enrolment amongst the legitimates of Europe; and the Emperor, ever prompt to improve an advantage, lost no time in returning his expressions of good-will through his ambassador Sebastiani, who forthwith replaced Marshal Brune as

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A.D. minister at Constantinople. It had for some time before been an important object with Napoleon to destroy the triple alliance of the English, the Russians, and the Turks in the Mediterranean; and the seizure of Malta by the former had been so represented to Paul I. who had lately accepted of the Grand Mastership of the Order, that he was readily induced to accede to his wishes. A complete revolution was instantly effected in the policy of the cabinet of St. Petersburgh; and the Czar, who but two years before had armed for the expulsion of an invading army from one of the remote provinces of the Sultan, now waited but for a favourable pretext to commence hostilities and attack him in his capital. An insult offered by the Turkish mob to his minister Tamara, when visiting the mosque of the Sultan Solyman, was gladly embraced as an occasion of quarrel, and an immediate rupture with the Porte was only prevented by the assassination of the unfortunate monarch when on the eve of proclaiming hostilities. Alexander, his successor, adopted a line of politics different from that pursued by his father; on a proper explanation of the affair having been offered by the Divan, he contented himself with recalling Tamara, on the grounds of his having accepted presents from the Sultan, which might

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