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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 Pachô 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 manœuvre, 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, Pachô 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 Kuthayé 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 thefirst 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 prin

cipal 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 disgrace, 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 Pachô 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 New Series, No. 17.

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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.

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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 remain

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