Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  Fig. 34: ‘The Vizier Ali Pacha, Giving the Fatal Signal, for the Slaughter of the Gardikiotes Shut up in the Khan of Valiare’, from Historical Portraiture of Leading Events in the Life of Ali Pacha, Vizier of Epirus, Surnamed the Lion, in a Series of Designs by W Davenport, 1823.

  When Ali was a little boy, deprived of his father, with no brother, and only a mother, we ran with arms in our hands to cut him off. He escaped, skilful as he is, upon which we went to Gariani (Kariyanni5) and burnt his houses. It is now fifty years since. It is for that deed that he slew us at the Khan; that he has sent our chief men to the island of the lake of Ioannina, and there put them to death; that he has dispersed our families among all the kazis under his authority, has razed our unfortunate town to the ground, and ordered that it may remain a desert forever. For he is a very just man, and in like manner slew the Khormoites,6 and ordered that not one should remain alive.

  Ali then concludes, ‘When I consider this terrible slaughter, I am much grieved, and I desire that so great an evil shall never occur again: For which reason I give notice to all my neighbours that they must not molest my house but be obedient, in order that they may be happy.’ If this massacre took place fifty years after the capture and molestation of his mother and sister, of which no mention is made, this would date that event at around 1760. The epithet ‘little boy’ would be more appropriate to someone born in 1750 rather than the earlier 1740 supporting the later date for Ali’s birth. Shainitza’s wrath was mollified when she received the hair from the victims’ heads to stuff the cushions of her divan, but Ali was still not satisfied. Other villages in the vicinity that were in some way connected to Gardiki were also ravaged or destroyed and Gardiki itself left a shell with building materials from the best houses taken to be used in the building of his new seraglio at Argyrocastro.

  Ali was now in his pomp and increasingly acting as an independent ruler. Over the next few years his court received a string of visitors, including a Persian khan and the deposed King Gustav IV Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) of Sweden. Gustav’s mishandled campaigns against Napoleon had resulted in defeat by Russia and a palace coup putting his Uncle Charles (XIII) on the throne. Ali’s lavish receptions impressed his guests and Gustav presented him with a sword belonging to his predecessor Charles II. Ali’s acquisitive nature was not satisfied. He was so impressed by a diamond in Gustav’s possession that he bought it for 13,000 pounds sterling, no doubt easing the unhappy ex-monarch’s financial situation. Ali went out of his way to please his European guests. At one party attended by Sir John Oswald in 1810 at Preveza an additional chef was imported from Santa Maura to join Ali’s own head cook for the occasion and the shopping list showed a heavy Italian-Ionian influence. Organizational duties fell to the notorious Thanasis Vagias, who undertook everything from simple transactions to ambassadorial dinners. For his trouble Vagias was provided with five okades of wine every day for his personal use from a local wine-seller. All that was left to spoil Ali’s satisfaction with his growing importance on the international stage was the irritating obstinacy of Parga.

  Fig. 35: The quarantine station at Santa Maura from The Ionian Islands: twelve plates London, 1821 by Joseph Cartwright.

  In 1812, after years of invincibility, Napoleon was in retreat after his ill-fated expedition to Russia and Ali thought the time was ripe for another attempt on Parga. He sent his son Mukhtar, Omer Vironi and Agos Vasiaris and 6,000 men to lay siege. After some fruitless preliminary negotiation with General Berthier, his troops under his nephew Daut Bey took the outlying village of Agia, massacring and enslaving the population, their territory converted to chifliks for his favourites. Parga, to where the redoubtable Papasoglu had moved to take command of the castle after his dwindling regiment had been ordered to Ancona in 1813, was then besieged by land, and by sea with a fleet from Preveza. In one attack Daut Bey was killed by fire from Parga Castle. Ali ordered Daut Bey’s body to be buried at the frontier in a mausoleum in view of the fortress at Parga as a reminder of what to expect. The French found themselves in an awkward position as they were not officially at war with Ali. So while the Pargians defended their town stoutly, the French resistance was lukewarm. At Anthousa, a hill between Agia and Parga that overlooked the town, Ali had a fortress built to use as a base of operations. When the British took Paxos, opposite to Parga, with the aid of the Greek Light Infantry, the Pargians decided to throw in their lot with Britain as the best policy for protection in the future and sidelining Ali who was now in a tricky diplomatic bind. They approached Captain Garland, and forces were diverted from the blockade of Corfu to take the town. After the French commandant refused to surrender it was agreed that if the inhabitants seized the town themselves, raising the British flag, the British forces would support them. On 22 March 1814, after a short struggle the Pargians took the town and raised the flag. The French garrison was exchanged for a small British one and the French were allowed passage to Corfu. Not only were the French in retreat from Parga, but they were also on the back foot and by May they had been defeated. The French ceded their possessions in the Ionian Islands and on the coast of Epirus to the British when in the Congress of Vienna of 1815 the British were given formal control of the protectorate of the Islands, the coastal towns were not mentioned, leaving the Pargians in limbo.

  Fig. 36: The town and harbour of Vathi, Ithaka from The Ionian Islands: twelve plates London, 1821 by Joseph Cartwright.

  With any attempts to prise Parga from the British falling on the deaf ears of General Sir James Campbell, who was not to be taken in by any false claims, Ali turned to the Sultan. He accused Parga of being a nest of malefactors and along with the Suliotes, a danger to the Porte. When Campbell was replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Maitland as the governor of the Ionian Islands, the British Ambassador in Constantinople had been persuaded that a Turkish commissioner should be sent to Ioannina to treat with the various parties. Ali sent a deputy to Corfu on 16 March 1817 to inform Maitland that the Ottoman commissioner had arrived in Ioannina. Maitland was wary enough to have reinforced the thirty-man garrison at Parga tenfold while talks were under way lest Ali tried any pre-emptive moves. He was also aware that the Pargians would not take too kindly to any news that they might be ceded to Ali, so the garrison under Lieutenant Colonel Charles Philippe de Bosset was not there only to guard against any tricks by Ali but any violent reaction on the part of the inhabitants. While negotiations continued Ali set about undermining the population. The inhabitants were forced to repair the walls and prepare for attack in response to his feints and manoeuvres and he cut off supplies from his territories and grain from Cephalonia and Zante to create shortages. Finally on 17 May 1817 at loannina, the British, represented by John Cartwright, the British Consul in the Morea, and the Turks, represented by the Vizier Hamit Bey, signed a treaty ceding Parga to the Ottomans in return for Turkey resting its claims to the Ionian Islands. According to the treaty, it was left in the hands of Ali Pasha to guarantee the life, the security and the property of the citizens of Parga. Maitland promised any citizen who preferred to leave rather than remain under Ottoman rule would receive compensation for their losses. The Turkish government were unwilling to pay, but offered Parga to Ali if he were willing to pay. The first estimate by the Pargians was £500,000, the British and Turkish commissioners made separate assessments; the British, £276,075, the Turkish, £56,756. Nearly everyone in Parga chose to emigrate to Corfu, a humiliation for Ali and a burden to Maitland. The negotiations dragged on. In May, Maitland resolved the issue directly with Ali, an agreement was signed stipulating the terms including the compensation. The sum of £150,000 had to be paid by Ali before Parga was handed over.

  On the Orthodox Good Friday, 1 April 1819, between 3,000 to 4,000 Pargians began their evacuation, carrying with them the disinterred bones or ashes of their ancestors, the images of their saints, flags and handfuls of soil as a reminder of their homeland; they took to the sea in boats provided by the islanders (the British vessels had not
arrived on time) as refugees to start a afresh under British protection on Corfu, but always dreaming of their return. The sad moment of their arrival was witnessed by Kapodistria and his friend Dimitrios Arliotis, who described how the Pargians sat on the shore, gazing across the water to their former home with tears in their eyes, while Kapodistria gazed at them. In May Ali, who had been sniffing at the gates all the while, made his payment and marched into an empty town. On Corfu the commissioners distributed the compensation, after some niggling deductions by Maitland, and the exiles were housed and the poorest fed. The handing over of Parga was even at the time a highly controversial affair. The Pargians thought Maitland a dupe of Ali or in league with the Turks, nicknaming him ‘Sultan Thomas’. Kapodistria blamed the tragedy of the ‘sacrifice of Parga’ on ‘the bad faith and miscalculations of British agents’ leaving the population ‘obliged to deliver their old homes to Ali Pasha for a modest sum of money and carrying with them only the exhumed bones of their fathers’. The experienced Colonel de Bosset, a Swiss in the British Army who had fought at the Battle of Alexandria and was governor of Cephalonia between 1810–13,7 was highly critical of Maitland’s conduct. Maitland was accused of foolishly allowing Ali’s men to make the evaluations for compensation and even of embezzling some of the money. It was commonly believed that he and the British had betrayed and sold Parga, not just to the Turks, but to Ali in particular as a cynical reward for his help against the French. The evacuation of Parga was a black mark for British foreign policy and national esteem but it became a symbol of Greek suffering and was turned to useful propaganda for the Greek cause.

  Three letters from the Ali Archive give us an insight into his role in the affair and the nature of his demands while negotiating with the British Ambassador. In April 1818, Haxhi Shehreti and Elmaz Metze, his replacement in Constantinople, wrote to Ali informing him that the British Ambassador had been trying to find a solution favourable to Ali on the matter of the financial settlement and that he had met one of Ali’s agents, Konstantis Agrafiotis, to say that the British government had agreed to contribute financially towards the compensation, which otherwise would have been Ali’s responsibility. However, it transpires from a letter to Ali from Agrafiotis that the British did not accept the accusation that they were in any way responsible for the decision of all the Pargians to leave their homes. They could not have predicted such an outcome which was probably due to their fears linked with the massacre at Preveza, for as Holland put it, Ali had never forgiven the Pargians for their truculence and they in return ‘regard him with a mixture of fear and detestation’. Also the cap that Ali had asked of sixty families maximum being allowed to leave could not be imposed retrospectively so the British had given permission for them all to leave their homeland. Parga would be Ali’s last triumph. Having at last achieved his goal of complete mastery of the coast he reached the zenith of his power, but as he knew himself, he was sitting on a powder keg that a single match could blow up. Constantinople itself was a tinderbox, where a number of fires raged, said to be the work of discontented janissaries. Elmar Metze informed Ali that the Sultan had sought refuge from a fire in his unoccupied house there. Normally such a visit by the holy presence of the ‘king’ would require the house being closed down, but on being informed that the house belonged to Ali, the Sultan relented, allowing the building to remain in use; an act Metze reassuringly interpreted as all being well and Ali still in favour.

  A quarter of a century of war between France and various European alliances was finally brought to an end in 1815 with Napoleon’s defeat by Britain and Prussia at Waterloo and his exile to St Helena, ushering in the prospect of peace in Europe for the first time in generations. To preserve peace the major powers adopted a policy under the guidance of the Austrian foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich, to uphold the balance of power by acknowledging each other’s spheres of interest and opposing revolutionary or nationalistic movements. A weak link in the chain was the fragile Ottoman Empire, and its impending internal disintegration as the ‘Sick man of Europe’ became a headache for succeeding diplomats dealing with what was to be known as the ‘Eastern Question’. For Britain a stable Turkey was important as a counter to Russian expansion in the East. The prospect of an entente and stability within the Balkans was not necessarily good news for Ali as it made him part of the problem rather than the solution. He could no longer rely on foreign allies to use as a veil for his ambitions, playing them off against each other and the new reality exposed him to closer scrutiny by the Porte. On the Ionian Islands the Greek regiments were disbanded and many klephts who had served under foreign flags had nowhere to go unless they joined the Neapolitan service or, paradoxically, the service of Ali Pasha. Having abandoned hope of getting the islands he turned his efforts to improve his towns and palaces, but signs of strain were beginning to show. In 1818 his beautiful new palace at Tepelene was struck by lightning and gutted by fire. His treasures valued at £2m were saved but his furniture was lost. Ali’s relationship with his sons was one of lord and servant, or ‘slave’ in Veli’s words in response to a request for financial assistance to repair the damage. All the revenue from their pashaliks was in Ali’s view held in common, for him to dispose of. Ali’s attitude to his family was that they were part of his networks. He would work to get them positions at court by force or through lobbying, sometimes financial, and they would give him undying loyalty in return. Ali continued the policy of securing his position through the tentacles of marriage alliances, as Hughes witnessed in 1814 when Veli’s son Mahmet married the daughter of a bey of Larissa, but by 1819 the tide was turning and such tactics would no longer prove effective. His one-time friend, Ismail Pashabey, let it be known to the Porte that Veli had been depriving the government of its revenues from Thessaly. Veli was downgraded once more, and transferred to the tiny pashalik of Lepanto, which Mukhtar had to give up to his brother, curtailing Ali’s power east of the Pindus.

  In 1816 Ali had taken on a new wife, marrying Kyra Vassiliki, his favourite mistress, amidst much ‘pomp and ceremony’. The beautiful, according to Hughes, Vassiliki Kontaxi was a Greek from the village of Pilsivitsa in Thesprotia near the Albanian border. She had come to Ali at the age of 12 to intercede for her father’s life and after granting her father pardon, she was introduced into his harem. Vassiliki had been allowed to continue in her Orthodox faith and she undertook a number of charity initiatives and financed restoration work to monasteries on Mount Athos. Ali must have indulged her to some extent for she was reputed to have ameliorated some of his policies; and in 1818 she was bold enough to be inducted into the clandestine Filiki Eteria, the secret organization working for Greek freedom, directly recruited by Nikolaos Skoufas, one of the three founding members of the organization. It is said also that she had a brother, George Kitsos, who went on to fight in the Greek revolt. The society had begun to broaden its recruitment to include a certain number of women. Before his death in that year, Skoufas had suggested systematically contacting all women who by their proximity to institutions of power might be useful to the cause, specifically nominating Vassiliki. Skoufas was from the village of Kompoti near Arta and he had worked at various times as an apothecary, a commercial secretary and a hatter. As a merchant he had travelled to Russia, and while in Odessa he had become acquainted with Athanasios Tsakalov and Emmanuil Xanthos. Xanthos was a merchant from Patmos, but Tsakalov was a fellow Epirote from Ioannina who was in Russia to be with his father. Tsakalov had studied physics in Paris where he had been a co-founder of the Ellinoglosso Xenodocheio (the Greek-speaking Hotel), a secret organization whose purpose was to educate the Greeks for the struggle against the Ottomans. The three men came up with the idea of founding a new secret organization to prepare the ground for Greek independence.

  To solve the problems of the Empire, Sultan Mahmud like his predecessor Selim, had returned to reform. With the Serbian uprising having been brought to a conclusion, creating a semi-independent state (1817), and other Balkan
troublemakers brought into line, Mehmet Sait Halet Efendi, the Sultan’s favourite minister, drew the attention of the Sultan to what he portrayed as Ali Pasha’s continued disloyal acquisition of personal power. In 1814 his encroachments into the territory of the pasha of Salonika (Thessaloniki) where his agents had been active in a number of towns had caused complaints.8 Ali’s men had been collecting taxes from the region since 1808, causing problems with the local agas, and he had a network of informers to keep him aware of developments. Despite his excuses and the giving of gifts, his massacre at Gardiki had gone down badly with the Divan. With his stock falling at Constantinople, Ali looked to other means to safeguard his position, leaving nothing to chance. He decided that one way to nullify his enemies was to make secret moves to formalize what had in essence been true for a number of years, his existence as an independent state. Through Metze he tried to get his Greek diaspora friends posts as ambassador to Vienna and consuls to the Ionian Islands, Trieste and Leghorn (Livorno). The imperial dragoman, Michael Soutsos, said there might be a chance of Vienna, but by the end of 1818 he had been transferred to the post of voivode of Moldova. In 1818, in a bid for Russian support Ali let it be known that he was friendly towards the aims of the Filiki Eteria who were also looking towards the Russians for help. The Filiki Eteria, who were aware of Ali’s manoeuvres were happy to encourage him to rebel, in the hope it would create the right circumstance for their own bid for independence. For his part Ali thought he could use the Greeks for his own ends and he approached those employed at his court, announcing that he would assist their organization. But the Greeks kept a distance in case he betrayed them.