1807.

A.D. retired into indignant solitude to brood over his disappointment and await some fresh occasion of revolt.

The Russian war occurred opportunely to gratify his ambition; in conjunction with his brothers Demetrius and Theodore, he organized a fresh insurrection, and in the summer of 1807 raised the standard of liberty on the heights of Olympus. Various beys, agas, and governors of Northern Greece were prepared to act in concert with him, and his plans were even said to have been known and countenanced by members of the Ottoman cabinet, who were alarmed at the rapidly increasing power of the Vizir of Epirus. The rendezvous of the league was appointed at the eastern base of Mount Pindus, whence the troops of the confederacy were to descend upon the south of Thessaly, and having levied a sufficiency of troops, proceed to the attack of Joannina.

Blachavas was the first to repair to the appointed quarter; and in the ardour of his patriotism had even taken the precaution, before the arrival of the other leaders, to send forward his brothers with the strength of his troops to occupy the position of Kastri, which commands the passes leading to Macedonia and Epirus.* In the mean time, Ali, with a Fauriel, v. i. p. 202.

1807.

vigilance which never slept, had penetrated A.D. his movements. A traitor, called Deli Ghianni, son to a priest of Mezzovo, had given him early intimation of the designs of the confederates, and Mouctar Pacha, with a band of 4000 Albanians, was already in possession of Kastri when the party of Demetrius arrived. A brief but decisive struggle ensued; the Greeks were surrounded and cut to pieces, their commanders perished in the fray, and this premature destruction of his band completely crushed the hopes of Blachavas. For a time he continued as a freebooter to infest the vicinity of Mount Othrys, and having subsequently formed a connexion with some pirates of Trikkeri, he made frequent descents on the coast of Thessaly and the islands to the north of Negropont.

On the faith of a capitulation, which promised him security of life and property, he at last surrendered to the Capitan Pacha, and was handed over to the custody of Ali. As usual, the terms of his surrender were but the toils prepared by the tyrant to entrap him; and after being subjected in vain to every refinement of torture, in order to induce him to disclose the names of his associates, the Pacha issued final orders for his execution. "I had once met Blachavas," says M. Pouqueville, "at Milias, on Mount Pindus, in all the pride of freedom

1807.

of

A.D. and surrounded by his warlike companions; I saw him again, for the last time, bound to a stake in the court of the seraglio at Joannina. The rays of a burning sun fell full on his deeply-bronzed forehead, down which the sweat agony and exhaustion was flowing in copious streams. Even in death his eye still flashed defiance; and turning on me a look more serene than that of the monster who directed his torments, he seemed to call on me to witness with what calmness a hero can die. Without a moan or a shudder he received the last blows of his executioners; and his manly limbs, severed from his body, and dragged through the streets of Joannina, showed to the terrified Greeks the remains of the last of the chieftains of Thessaly."

It would belong less to the present subject than to a biography of the Vizir of Epirus, to enter with minuteness into the details of his subsequent proceedings, from the arrival of General Berthier at Corfu till the period of Ali's being declared fermanlit by the Divan. A few circumstances only may be mentioned as immediately affecting the interests of the Greeks; the remainder merely tended to the Fauriel, v.

*

Pouqueville, v. i. p. 294. Carrel, p. 237.

i. p. 204.

+ Outlawed.

1807.

consummation of his personal power, which A.D. finally excited the apprehensions and drew down upon him the vengeance of the Porte. On the failure of his hopes of gaining a footing in the Ionian Islands by means of France, he promptly turned his attention towards the English, who had commenced hostilities against the Porte in 1807; and one of his emissaries, a Turk of Morocco, named Seid Achmet, was privately dispatched to treat with Lord Castlereagh, and if possible induce him to attack the French in the islands.* But the scheme, though approved of, was not acted upon by England till a later period; and it was only in 1809 that active operations were commenced A.D. against Zante, Cephalonia, Cerigo, and the smaller islands. During the progress of the various sieges and blockades by which these were successively wrested from the French, Ali contrived, without openly offending either party of the belligerents, to maintain an appearance of amity to both. The assailants were amply and readily supplied with provisions from Albania; whilst the besieged were not only informed of all the movements of their enemies, as far as reached the ears of the Pacha, but even assisted in preparing the defences of those positions where assault was

*Hughes, v. ii. pp. 180, 185. Pouqueville, v. i. p. 257.

1809.

1809.

A.D. anticipated.* Ever sedulously attentive to his own interests, he managed at the same time to extract advantage from the circumstances of both; and profiting by the alliance and concurrence of the English, he embraced the occasion offered by the present crisis to put in execution a scheme which he had long meditated against the pachalic of Berat. Ibrahim, the governor of this province, he represented as a sworn partisan of France; and at a conference held at Missolonghi with some of the British agents, it was arranged that whilst the English pursued with vigour the reduction of the southern islands, Ali was to march to the north, and having secured by the conquest of Berat the entire coast of Epirus, he was to be prepared to cooperate with his allies in the expected siege of Corfu. No incident in the life of the Pacha serves more fully to illustrate the implacable ferocity of his character than this fatal attack on the dominions of a weak and helpless old man: it was the fulfilment of a dream of ambition and revenge which had occupied his imagination for nearly forty years of his life; since Ibrahim had obtained in marriage the daughter of Courd Pacha, to whose hand Ali had aspired in his youth, and succeeded on the death of his

* Life of Ali Pacha, p. 212. Perevos, v. ii. p. 73. Pouqueville, v. i. p. 319. Hughes, v. ii. pp. 186, 188.