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Guldenstedt's Voyages, i. 353, 369; Fonton, 42;

Malte Brun, vii.

63

Asia Minor.

of reduction to an invader without artillery,
guard the most important passes, or crown
the overhanging cliffs. Few roads, and most of
them practicable only for horses or foot-soldiers,
traverse this rugged region. That by the coast
stops at Trebizond. Only one road fit for car-
riages traverses the centre of the country by
Kars to Erzeroum, and it is defended by several
formidable forts. Altogether, Asia Minor pre-
sented the greatest possible difficulties to an
invading army; and they were much aug-
mented by the tyrannical nature of the Turkish
government, which had rendered great part of
the country a perfect desert, and in all so thin-
ly inhabited as to be incapable of fur-
nishing the supplies necessary for a 206, 209.
large army."

1 Fonton,

The Caucasus has, from the earliest times, been the abode of tribes inured to 65. privations by necessity, stimulated The Caucato exertion by suffering. It is a mis- sian tribes. take to suppose that the great migrations of the human species have descended from its snowy ridges. Mountaineers seldom emigrate, at least in inland situations, though they often plunder the vales beneath; it is the herdsmen of the plains who traverse the globe. The very rigor of their climate, the churlishness of the soil, the hardships of their situation, attach them the more strongly to their native land.

"No product here the barren hills afford,

which descends through the rival chains of El- | cording to Oriental ideas, and very difficult bruz and Ararat to the Caspian, the beauty of nature realizes all that the imagination of Milton has conceived of the charms of Paradise; and it is rivaled by the surpassing loveliness of those of the Kuban, which forces its way through rocky precipices from the western shoulder of Elbruz to the Black Sea. Vines, olives, apricots, peaches, and all the more delicate fruits, are there found in profusion; while green pastures nourish innumerable flocks on the mountain sides; and the finest crops of wheat, maize, and barley, reward the labor of the husbandmen at their feet. The beneficence of physical nature may be judged of by the extraordinary perfection of the animals of all kinds which are found in that favored region, and the exquisite beauty of the women, celebrated over all the world as combining all that is most perfect in the human figure. Erzeroum is the capital of this beautiful region, as of the whole of Asia Minor. It is a city containing a hunRemigg's Voy- dred thousand inhabitants; the ages, ii. 109, 120; seat of a pacha of three tails, or of the highest grade; and of an importance second only to Constantinople in the government 68, 69. and defense of the empire.1 Although Turkey has repeatedly been threatened by Russia from the side of Asia Military re- Minor, and the greatest danger she sources of has ever run, as will appear in the sequel, has arisen in that quarter, yet the military resources of that part of the Ottoman dominions are very great, and such as, if ably led and fully drawn forth, would seem capable of enabling it even to assume the offensive in that direction. The Pacha of Erzeroum has, in time of war, twenty thousand regular troops at his disposal, to which, when the strength of the Osmanlis is fully called forth, two hundred thousand hardy and brave Much surprise has often been expressed in irregulars may be added, all admirable horse- western Europe at the inability of the Russians, men, and, though undisciplined, thoroughly after above a century of conflicts, thoroughly trained individually to the use of arms. The to subdue the inhabitants of the Caucasus; but formidable nature of this force arises from the the wonder will cease when it is recollected fact, that the Mussulmans in the Asiatic provinces what difficulty the Romans, even with the of Turkey form a decided majority of the inhab- strength of the Cæsars, had to subdue the initants; they compose twelve millions out of six-habitants of the Alps, who guarded the very teen millions of its entire population. Though not capable of moving in masses under fire, or meeting the disciplined battalions of Russia in the open field, these hardy irregulars are most formidable in the defense of woody fastnesses or rocky heights, often extremely so in a swarm * Fonton, charge, and inferior to none in the 206, 207; world in the tenacity with which Ubicini, 25. they maintain walled towns.2 The nature of the country in Asia Minor, especially between the Caucasus and its Mountainous capital, Erzeroum, adds immensenature of the ly to its defensible nature against country, and a northern invader. Extremely want of roads. mountainous, intersected in all directions by ranges of hills, in general rugged and precipitous, and yet so twisted and interwoven with each other that it is a matter of necessity often to cross over them, it is as impervious to regular European troops, burdened with artillery and chariots, as it is easy of passage to the Turkish hordes, who are seldom troubled with any such encumbrances. Fortresses strong, ac

64.

But man and steel, the soldier and his sword;
No vernal bloom their torpid rocks array,
But winter, lingering, chills the lap of May.
Yet every good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And e'en those hills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.'

gates of Italy, and how long, in our own day. the naked Kaffirs, who never could bring six thousand men into the field, withstood the strength of Britain. The Caucasians have done no more with the Russians than they have done with all their neighbors for three thousand years: plunder is to them the condition of existence; the spoil of the vales at their feet, their chief excitement in war, their main source of riches in peace; and the rugged inaccessible nature of their country enables them long to carry on their depredations with impunity. The Russian army of the Caucasus, generally thirty thousand strong, is inured to constant conflicts with the mountaineers; the great military roads through the range are only kept open by large bodies of men; strong forts are placed at every station, and the very 2 Fonton, lazarettos loopholed and guarded, to 207, 210; prevent them from falling into the Malte Brun, hands of the enemy.2.

* GOLDSMITH.

vii. 92, 97.

66.

Intervention of

states.

Based upon a correct appreciation of the im- | the hills of Georgia from the sabres of the mense advantages which they derive Turks or the cimeters of the Persians; and the Russian from their own unity, and the weak- constant attacks, of which they were the obpolicy of ness to which their neighbors are ex- jects, from one or other of these powers, natuinterven- posed by their divisions, the Russian rally led to her protection being invoked by tion. policy in regard to all of them has her suffering co-religionists between the Euxine for a century and a half been directed to one and the Caspian, and the valor and hardihood object. This is to avoid direct conquest or fla- of the hills being arrayed under her banners grant usurpation, and never hazard an exten- against the ambition and fanaticism of the sion of territory till the circumstances of the plains. people, from whom it is to be wrested, have rendered them incapable of resistance. To accomplish this, their system is to foment discord and divisions among the inhabitants of the adjoining states, and protect the weaker against the stronger, till all effectual means of resistance have been destroyed, or the Muscovite strength is invoked to terminate their contests, or defend a portion of the people from the tyranny of the rest. The maxim “Divide et Impera" is not less the rule of conduct of the cabinet of St. Petersburg than it was of the Roman senate, and now is of the English government in India. By this means, the appearance of direct aggression is in general avoided, the path of conquest is prepared before it is attempted, and the dominant power is frequently on the defensive when hostilities actually commence, or it takes up arms only on an urgent and apparently irresistible appeal for protection from some suffering people in its vicinity. It is, in truth, the natural and usual policy of the strong in presence of the weak, of the united when surrounded by the divided; and so great is the advantage which in these respects they possess, that they can in general drive their future victims into the commencement of hostilities, and themselves maintain the semblance of moderation, while perseveringly pursuing a system of universal conquest.

67.

The situation of Russia, and the political and religious circumstances of the people Examples of by whom she is surrounded, have the applica- contributed no less than her internal tion of this unity and strength to the advantages principle. she has derived from the prosecution of this policy. Placed midway between Europe and Asia, she touches on the one side the states torn by the social passions of Europe; on the other, those divided by the divisions of religion an race which distract Asia. United in ambition and feeling herself, she is surrounded by countries disturbed by every passion which can afflict or desolate the world. In Poland, the path of conquest had been prepared for her by the insane ambition of a plebeian noblesse," as John Sobieski called it, and the divisions of a people in whom it was hard to say whether the passion for freedom, or the inability to bear its excitement or exercise its powers, have been the most conspicuous. In Turkey she found above seven millions of Christians oppressed by little more than three millions of Turks; and by raising the standard of the Cross, and preaching a crusade, she could at any time, at once, rouse to the highest pitch the religious enthusiasm of her own subjects, and proportionably distract the feelings and weaken the strength of her opponents. In Asia, where the Mussulmans were three to one, she enjoyed almost equal advantages, though of an opposite description; for the Christian religion had taken refuge in

Peter the Great, who fully appreciated these advantages of his situation, first 68. made use of them, and gave the earliest example of the system of Peter the Great INTERVENTION. Passionately desir- in the affairs of ous of trade and commerce, and neighboring sensitively alive to the disadvantages under which his subjects labored from their inland and remote situation, it was his great object to extend his frontiers to maritime stations. By the conquest of Courland and Livonia, and construction of St. Petersburg, he accomplished this in the north; by the conquest of the Crimea his successors effected it in the south; by the interventions in the Caucasus and Georgia they brought their standards down to the Caspian. All these conquests, which entirely altered the position of Russia, and from a remote inland rendered it a first-rate political power, were effected by Russia taking advantage of her central situation, and steadily directing her energies to these objects. The oppression of the inhabitants of Georgia, who were Christians, by their formidable Mussulman neighbors in Persia and Turkey in Asia, gave Peter a pretext for intervening in the affairs of the Caucasus; "not," as the Russian historians express it, "in order to extend the limits of his empire by distant foreign conquests; but in order to prove the facility with which Russia could push its dominions to the shores of the Caspian, to consolidate its conquests, extend its iufluence, establish regularity in the relations of different states, and permit the growth, under its powerful shield, of an order of things 1 Fonton, accessible to the development of commercial relations."

79, 83.

Russians in

Inspired with these ideas, Peter set out ten years after his disaster on the Pruth, 69. at the head of 30,000 men, for the EstablishCaucasus, and, passing through the ment of the Gates of Derbend in less than a year, the Caucamade himself master of the whole sus and on country between the Euxine and the Caspian. the Caspian, as far as Astrabad. The Caucasus resounded with his exploits: the conquerors of Pultowa were irresistible to these rude mountaineers; for the first time in history the hill tribes of Central Asia felt the superiority of European arms and discipline. Persia and Turkey were alike compelled to yield to his ascendency; and by the treaties of 1723 and 1724 the Russian dominion was extended to the mouth of the Araxes and the shores of the Caspian. Subsequently, and for nearly seventy years, the mountains of the Caucasus were the theatre of almost incessant contests between the Russians, Turks, and Persians, who contended with each other for their possession; and not less with the Caucasians themselves, who seldom allowed the dominion of any to extend beyond the fortified posts which they

70.

Acceptance of the crown

of Georgia by the Em

peror Alex

ander.

Septem. 12,

1801.

occupied. But at length an important event took place, which cast the balance decisively in favor of Russia, and established the Muscovite dominion in a durable and solid manner to the south of the mountains. This was the bequest of George XIII., Prince of Georgia, who, himself a Christian, and feeling that his Christian subjects could only be protected from Mussulman oppression by the tutelary arm of Russia, bequeathed his whole dominions Fonton, to the Czar Paul by testamentary 85, 93. deed, dated 28th October, 1800.1 The death of Paul, which took place shortly after this event, caused some delay on the part of the Russian government in the acceptance of this magnificent bequest; but at length the Emperor Alexander, by his manifesto of 12th September, 1801, declared his willingness to accede to it, from a sense of duty, and a desire to protect the Christian population of the country. As this great acquisition brought the Russians into direct contact with Turkey and Persia beyond the great mountain-range which had hitherto separated them, it led to a decisive change of policy on the part of the cabinet of St. Petersburg on the Caucasian frontier. The first object was to secure and strengthen the central military road across the mountains by Vladi-Kaukas, and that was effected, though at the expense of almost continual hostilities ever since with the mountain tribes; with Turkey and Persia also she was involved in almost constant warfare, but there the weight and discipline of the Muscovites ere long made themselves felt. The fortress of Gandja was stormed in 1803, and the whole western range of the Caucasus subjected to Russia; and at length, after various vicissitudes of fortune, in the course of which her generals had often great difficulty in making head against the forces of Persia and Turkey, Derbend, with its important Gates, were carried and strongly fortified, Baka reduced, Anapa on the Euxine battered by a Russian fleet, and the Muscovite power established in a solid manner on all the western slope of the Caucasus, as far as the frontiers of the pachalic of Erzeroum. The peace of Bucharest with Turkey, in March, 1812, and of Gulistan with Persia, on 12th October, 1813, gave durable acquisitions of great value to Russia, both in Europe and Asia for in the former it brought her frontier forward to the Pruth, and rendered her master of the mouths of the Danube; while in the latter it gained for her the important district between the Araxes and the Akhaltakh range, as far as the chain of Allaghez. These acquisitions, besides a territory of great extent, rendered the Russians masters of the whole southern slope of the Caucasus, and brought their outposts with

1 Fonton, 100, 109.

* "Ce n'est pas pour accroitre nos forces, ce n'est pas dans la vue d'intérêt, ou pour étendre les limites d'un empire deja si vaste, que nous acceptons le fardeau du trône de Georgie; le sentiment de notre dignité, l'honneur, l'humanité seule nous ont imposé le devoir sacré de ne pas résister aux cris de souffrance partis de votre sein, de détourner de vos têtes les maux qui vous affligent et d'introduire en Géorgie un gouvernement fort, capable d'administrer la justice avecequité, de protéger, la vie, et les biens de chacun et d'étendre sur tous l'égide de la loi."— Proclamation de l'Empereur, 12th Sep., 1800. FONTON, 94.

in a comparatively short distance of the great frontier Persian fortress of Erivan.

sians, and fresh rup

As the territories thus acquired by the Russians, both toward Persia and Asia 71. Minor, however, were almost entire- Wars with ly mountainous, inhabited by semi- the Caucabarbarous tribes, passionately enamored, like all mountaineers, of free- ture with dom, and long inured to the practical Turkey and enjoyment of its blessings and its Persia. discord, under the nominal rule of Persia and Turkey, they brought them into almost constant hostilities with the Caucasian tribes. These rude but gallant mountaineers were not long of discovering the weight of the Muscovite yoke. Immense was the difference between its systematic exactions, supported by regular armies traversing great military roads, every post of which was strongly fortified, and never abandoned, and the occasional and transitory irruptions of the pachas to which they had been accustomed, who retired after their spoil had been collected, and were not seen for years again. Hostilities in consequence broke out on all sides; the power of Russia was soon confined to the fortresses occupied by its own troops, many of which yielded to the fierce assault of the mountaineers; and it was even with great difficulty that they succeeded in maintaining the great military lines of the Vladi-Kaukas and the Gates of Derbend. The courts of Ispahan and Constantinople were not slow in perceiving the advantages which this state of things promised to afford them, especially as Turkey appeared at that period about to be involved in hostilities with Russia on the Danube. They fomented the irritation, and aided the incursions of the tribes to the utmost of their power; and at length an open war broke out between Russia and Persia, in which the question at issue was, which was to become master of the Caucasus. The prospect was sufficiently dark for Russia; her army beyond the Caucasus, which the Czar could bring into the field, consisted only of eight battalions of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and some thousand irregulars, in all not ten thousand combatants; while that of the Persians was of triple the strength, consisting of 16,000 regular infantry, 12,000 regular cavalry, and 8000 irregulars, besides 24 pieces of cannon.'

1 Fonton,

108, 116.

1826.

But then was seen, as in India under the guidance of Clive and Wellington, 72. what can be done by the vigor and Battle of capacity of one man. The little ElizabethRussian army was commanded by a pol, Aug. 8, hero destined to distinguished celebrity in future times, GENERAL PASKEWITCH. Skillfully bringing all his guns to bear on the Persian centre, he opened upon it a concentric fire of such severity that it was already shaken, when the Russian battalions, advancing with the bayonet, completed its rout. Driven back in wild confusion, the whole centre took to flight, and the wings, which had never yet fired a shot, finding themselves separated and deserted, fled in confusion. The whole artillery aud baggage of the conquered fell into the hands of the victors, and the Persian forces were soon driven out of the Russian territory,

2 Fonton,

116, 117.

73. Glorious

106, 116.

74.

75.

Early next year operations recommenced, more than once brought it to the verge of disand the Russians, being considerably solution. After the victories of reinforced, were able to bring 16,000 Marshal Munich in 1739, and of Russian syspeace with men into the field. The effect was the Austrians and Russians under tem of interPersia. decisive. Sardar-Abad and Nakhitch- Prince Cobourg in 1789, and the vention reOctober 29, evan were taken, ERIVAN carried by taking of Belgrade, the Russians garding them. 1827. assault, and Tabriz opened its gates. were earnestly counseled by their general to Threatened with destruction, the Persians had march direct upon Constantinople, and rouse a no resource but in submission, and on 29th national war by proclaiming the independence October, 1827, a peace was concluded between of the Greeks under a Christian prince;* and althe courts of St. Petersburg and Ispahan, on though the intervention of the other European terms eminently advantageous to the former. powers prevented that design from being carBy this treaty the Muscovite dominions in Asia ried into execution at that time, yet it was only were greatly augmented. The Khanat of postponed. Peace between Russia and Turkey Talish, the province and great fortress of is never more than a truce; the designs of the Erivan, were ceded by the Persians, and the cabinet of St. Petersburg on Constantinople are Muscovite dominion came to include the holy unchanged and unchangeable. The Empress mountain of Ararat. In addition to this, Per- Catherine christened her youngest grandson, sia ceded the important harbor of Anapa on brother of Alexander, Constantine, because for the Black Sea to Russia, with its adjacent ter- him she destined the throne of Constantinople, ritory. These names will convey but little and that of St. Petersburg for the elder brother. ideas to a European reader; but it will aid the Although the designs of immediate conquest facility of conception to say that it gave the were laid aside for the present, the foundation Russians the entire dominion of the Caucasus, was established for future inroads in the right and as thorough a command of the entrances of intervention, stipulated for the cabinet of St. into Persia as would be given to France by the Petersburg in the affairs of Wallachia, Moldaacquisition of the whole of Switzerland and via and Servia, by the treaties between the Savoy, with the fortresses of Alessan- Russians and Turks in 1774, 1792, and 1812. Fonton, dria and Mantua, and the harbor of The Divan, pressed by necessity, glad to avert Genoa, for an irruption into Italy.' or postpone the cession of fortresses or provThe system of intervention, so successfully inces, and not foreseeing the use which would practiced by the Russians in Asia, be made of this right, acceded to it without Affairs of was not less ably taken advantage of difficulty, and thereby gave the Russians the Wallachia in Europe. The peculiar situation of means, at any time when they might deem it and Molda- the provinces of Moldavia, Walla- expedient, of availing themselves of some real chia, and Servia, which adjoined the or imaginary grievance, under which the southern provinces of Russia, gave them great Christian inhabitants of Turkey might be advantages for the prosecution of that system. thought to labor, to declare war 1 Valentini, Although the two former provinces had been upon the Porte. All the subse- 57, 58; Gorconquered by the Turks, yet they had never quent wars between the two pow- don's Greek been thoroughly reduced to subjection, and ers have taken their rise from these Revolution, were rather in the condition of tributary states treaties.'t than provinces of the empire. They paid an annual tribute to the Porte, but they were gov- jancé, près Choczim, entre le Dneister et le Pruth, le * 66 Après la victoire qu'il avait remportée à Stawouterned by their own rulers, or "hospodars," as Marechal Munich écrivit de Jassy aux conseillers de son they were called, who were nominated by the Imperatrice, qu'il fallait profiter des circonstances favorSultan; and as the great majority of the in-ables, et marcher réunis aux Grecs, sur Constantinople, habitants were Christians, they were chosen in que l'élan, l'enthousiasme et l'esperance de cette nation, general from the descendants of the princes of the old Byzantine empire, who dwelt at the Fanar in Constantinople. Servia, a strong mountainous and wooded country, had long aspired after, and in some degree attained, the blessings of independence. Under their intrepid leader, Czerny George, its inhabitants had, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, waged a long and bloody war with the Ottomans; and although it terminated, on the whole, to their disadvantage, and the Turks remained in possession of the principal fortresses in the country, and compelled a tribute from the inhabitants, yet their subjection was more nominal than real; the power of the Osmanlis did not in truth extend beyond the range of the guns of their fortresses; and in the rural districts the people, nine-tenths of whom were Christians, practically enjoyed the blessings of self-government and independence.

via.

Subsequent to the time of Peter the Great, the Russians had repeatedly made such good use of this distracted state of the northern provinces of the Ottoman empire, as to have

i. 12, 18.

ne se retrouveraient peut-être jamais portés à un pareil point.'"-VALENTINI, 192.

This right of intervention, which has ever since ic relations of Russia and Turkey, is founded on the treaborne so prominent a part in the differences and diplomatties of Kainardji in 1774, Jassy in 1792, and Bucharest in 1812. By these treaties, Russia, after having conquered, restored to the Porte, first the whole, and afterward a conditions: 1. The Porte engaged to protect the Chrislarge part of Bessarabia, upon the following among other tian religion and churches, without hindering in any manner the free exercise of the former, or putting any obchurches. 2. To restore to the convents, or the persons stacle in the way of repairing the latter, or building new from whom they had been taken, their lands in the districts of Brahilov, Choczim, and Bender, and to hold the ecclesiastics in that consideration which their sacred office required. 3. To have regard to humanity and generosity in the levying of taxes, and to receive them through deputies to be chosen every two years. 4. That neither the pacha nor any other person should be entitled to levy taxes, or make exactions of any description, excepting such as were authorized by decree or custom. 5. That the natives should enjoy all the advantages which they had in the reign of Mohammed IV. 6. The provinces of Molda

via and Wallachia were to be allowed to have chargésd'affaires with the Sublime Porte, of the Christian com

munion, to watch over the interests of the Principalities, and their agents were to enjoy the privileges of embassa dors by the law of nations. 7. The ministers of Russia were to be permitted to make representations in favor of the Principalities, and complain of the infraction of these

The court of St. Petersburg made great efforts 76. in the latter part of the eighteenth Repeated in- century to raise the population of surrections of the southern provinces of Turkey the Greeks. against their Ottoman oppressors. With such success were their exertions attended, that more than once the Morea, Albania, and the Isles, were roused into insurrection against the Turks, and for some years the Morea was practically independent. The effect of these insurrections, which were all in the end suppressed, was to the last degree disastrous to the inhabitants of the country, but it produced an inextinguishable and indelible hatred between them and their oppressors. At the period of its final subjugation by the Turks in 1717, the Peloponnesus was supposed to contain 200,000 inhabitants, but during the course of the century many fearful calamities contributed to thin their number. In 1756 a dreadful plague appeared, which carried off one-half of them. Before they had well recovered from this calamity, the ill-conducted expedition of Orloff in 1770 occasioned still heavier misfortunes, for the inhabitants were excited to rebellion, and after having expelled the Turks at first, they were abandoned by the Russians, and overwhelmed by a horde of Albanians, who exercised unbounded cruelty and rapacity over the whole country for the next ten years. In 1780 these severities produced another insurrection; and the Empress Catherine, by sending her fleet into the Mediterranean, effected a powerful diversion in favor of the Greeks; but they were again abandoned by their allies, the Ottomans renewed their oppression, the plague reappeared in 1781; and such was the devastation produced by these concurring causes, that the inhabitants were reduced to 100,000 souls. Disheartened by these repeated desertions and misfortunes, the Greeks in the next war, which broke out in 1789, refused to move, and the Empress transferred her intrigues to Epirus, where her agents succeeded in stirring up an insurrection of the Souliotes, who gained a brilliant victory over ALI PACHA, the Lion of Janina, as he was called, while the islanders carried on for some months a brill1 Gordon, i. iant but fruitless contest with the 30, 31. navy of Constantinople.' These repeated and unsuccessful insurrections had produced a more universal and bitter feeling of exasperation of the peration in Greece against the Osmanlis than in any other part of the Ottoman dominions. Deeds of cruelty had been mutually inflicted, deadly threats interchanged, which could never be treaties whenever circumstances might require it. 8. Russia restored the islands in the Archipelago which she had conquered, stipulating for the inhabitants the same privileges, and for herself the same right of intervention, as obtained in regard to the Principalities. 9. The treaty of Bucharest, in 1812, stipulated that the Servians should have the right of administering their own affairs, upon paying a moderate contribution to the Porte. It was natural and laudable in the Russian government to make these stipulations in favor of their co-religionists in Turkey, especially when subjected to such a ruthless and despotic government as that of the Ottomans; but it was evident what innumerable pretenses for interfering in the internal affairs of Turkey these claims were calculated to furnish. In truth, they inserted the point of the wedge which might at any time split the Ottoman empire in pieces. See the treaties in SCHOELL, Traités de Paix, xiv. 67, 503, 539.

77. Mutual exas

Greeks and

Turks.

either forgotten or forgiven. The savage disposition and arrogant temper of the Turks, which is often obliterated during the tranquillity of peace, reappeared with terrible severity during these disastrous contests. Not a village in the Morea but bore testimony to the ravages of the Ottoman torch; not a family but mourned a father, brother, or son, cut off by the Turkish sabre, or a daughter or sister carried off to the captivity of the Turkish harems. The Turks had almost as great injuries to avenge; for in the political, not less than the physical world, action and reaction are equal and opposite; and the cruel law of retaliation is the invariable and unavoidable resource of suffering humanity. The disposition of the Greeks, light, gay, and volatile as their ancestors in the days of Alcibiades, rendered them in a peculiar manner accessible to the influence of these feelings, and turned the ardent spirit of ancient genius into the inextinguishable Gordon, i. thirst for present vengeance.'

32, 33.

78.

The first dawn of the Greek revolution appeared in the dubious hostility, and at last open rebellion, of Ali Pacha.* Insurrection This celebrated man, at once one of of Ali Pacha.

which he took his name. * Ali Pacha was born in a little village of Epirus, from His father, Veli-Bey, having been despoiled of his share of the little paternal inheritance by his elder brothers, engaged as a private soldier in bania, where men became alternately heroes and banditti. one of those bands of nomad adventurers common in AlHaving risen to command among his comrades, Veli-Bey

re-entered his native village at the head of his band, and

burned his brothers in the house which had been the subject of contention between them. After this he was appointed Aga of Tebelen, and married the daughter of a bey, named Chamco, a woman of great beauty, and a savage energetic character, in whose veins some of the blood of Scanderbeg is said to have flowed. She transmitted to her son Ali, who afterward became the pacha, the energy, the passions, and the ferocity of her race.

Veli-Bey died young; but his widow Chamco, who was endowed with a masculine energetic spirit and indomitable courage, resolved to preserve for her children, by intrigue, the force of arms, and the influence of her beauty, which was still at its zenith, the power which her Tebelen, put on the dress of the other sex, and placing husband had acquired in Tebelen. She left her retreat in herself at the head of a band of the mountain chiefs of Albania, who were devoted to her by admiration for her courage and the influence of her charms, ventured to house, who contended with her for the command in Tebelen. She was defeated and made prisoner; but, like the Greeks of old, she subdued her conquerors by her charmis, and being ransomed by a young Greek whom she had captivated by her beauty, she re-entered Tebelen, where she occupied herself for several years in the education of her son Ali and his sister. In one of his first expeditions he "Go, coward!" said she, presenting to him a distaff, "that was defeated, like Frederick the Great and Wellington. trade befits you better than the career of arms.'

measure her strength with the enemies of her husband's

Ashamed of his defeat, Ali fled from his paternal home,

teau, where he had taken refuge for the night, enrolled

In conse

discovered a hidden treasure in the ruins of an old cha thirty banditti under his standard, with whom he pillaged the adjacent country. Surprised by the troops of Courd Pacha of Albania, he was brought into his presence in order to be beheaded; but his youth and beauty softened the heart of the ferocious chief, who pardoned him, and restored him to his mother in Tebelen. He then married the daughter of Delvino Emine, an alliance which at once gratified his love and forwarded his ambition. quence of it, he was secretly engaged in the first efforts of the Greeks to achieve their independence in 1790, when they reckoned on the support of Russia. This attempt, however, proved abortive, and it led to Ali's father-in-law being strangled by the Turks. He was succeeded in the pachalic of Delvino by the Pacha of Argyro-Kastro, to whom he gave his sister Chainitza in marriage. She, however, was enamored of Soliman, her husband's younger brother; and Ali having advised his sister to poison her husband, in order that she might espouse the object of her affection, and she having refused to do so, he insti

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