Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  When the Turks took the city in 1821 the schools were burnt or destroyed. It took some years before education returned. In 1828, the Zosimas brothers founded the Zosimaia; it was open to Greek, Albanian and Turkish students. Anastasios Sakellarios a student of Psalidas returned from a spell teaching in his home village of Vredeto in Zagori to become its principal in 1833. As well as schools, the Zosimas brothers financed editions of the works of the humanist scholar, Adamantios Korais. They had sponsored his studies in Paris where he witnessed the French Revolution. From there his works were disseminated throughout the Greek-speaking world. His belief in the importance of the Greek language in fostering national identity and that only through education would Greece achieve independence had an important influence on Greece’s own revolution. He urged rich Greeks to ‘multiply throughout Greece schools and libraries; at common expense to send promising youths to Europe, that they may bring back her benefits to you; and entrust to them the education of our people’. Paradoxically, in 1802 when the Suliotes were fighting Ali he advised them as Albanian speakers: ‘When you have a little peace, bring to your country a teacher to instruct your dear children in the Greek tongue. When the warriors of Souli learn from what ancestors they have sprung, nobody will be able to defeat them, either by guile or by force’.

  War

  ‘You will see that Ali Pasha, the successor to Pyrrhus will surpass him in every enterprise’. In these words Ali described himself to a dragoman employed by the French as an interpreter who relayed them to Sir William Eton. Ali was in preparation at the time for his attack of 1792 on Argyrocastro and had mustered 20,000 Albanians. With regard to this likening of himself with the King Pyrrhus, Leake remarked, ‘Pyrrhus is the only great man of antiquity he [Ali] ever heard of except Alexander; of Alexander’s father at least, whom Aly most resembles in character, I find he has no knowledge.’ Ali was not content just to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps; he wanted the connection between himself and Pyrrhus to go further, claiming in an inscription in Greek over the gate of his castle at Ioannina that he was descended from Pyrrhus. Claims and titles were one thing but living up to them was another. He reputedly earned himself the title of Aslan, the ‘Lion’ on the Danube front, but the assessment of Ali as a military leader, his prowess and the capabilities of his forces, and to whether he lived up to his boast, is not straightforward. Richard Davenport claimed to have seen with his own eyes a watch set in diamonds presented to him by Prince Potemkin as a testimony of the esteem held ‘for his bravery and talents’ during the campaign where he distinguished himself at the head of his Albanian troops in the service of the grand vizier, Yussef Pasha. The fact that Potemkin was on the other side during the hostilities of 1787 perhaps suggests that Ali’s talents lay elsewhere; with his eye on Russia’s intrigues in Greece, he was prepared to keep the lines of communication and his options open to further his own ambitions.

  Warfare in the Balkans was a different affair to that carried out in the main theatres, on land or sea, during the French wars. There were no comparable set battles, certainly no Austerlitz, Waterloo or Trafalgar, even on a smaller scale. Ali owed his initial success to his brigand background, but he was astute enough to become aware of the more technical aspects of warfare. When on campaign for the Sultan he observed the discipline of the janissary units, but the janissaries were becoming a thing of the past. Like the Sultan, who was trying to modernize the Turkish Army, Ali was impressed by Western military advances. He became keen to adopt the latest models of army management and following the Sultan’s lead he initially sought aid from the French. The nature of the terrain in Albania and western Greece suited small-scale engagements and limited the use of large weaponry, so, despite the fact that Ali brought a greater sense of purpose and organization, increased the use of artillery and improved defences, military action was still usually of a sporadic nature following the traditions of banditry and guerrilla warfare. The levies of local irregulars were accustomed to a style of warfare that involved much noise but little loss of life. Defending a position they would dig a shallow ditch surmounted by rough palisades (tambouria) for one or two men who, shouting threats and abuse, proceeded to fire into the air or without taking aim. Their opponents, often known to them, would reply in kind, rarely making a direct assault unless they had good reason to expect surrender. Ali only engaged with European trained troops in his confrontations with the Ionian Islands and their mainland coastal dependencies or on campaign along the Danube border. The European volunteers who rallied to the Greek cause during the War of Independence discovered to their cost the problems of trying to impose Western ideas of military order on the Greek irregulars. The exceptions were the British who found themselves at advantage in that they had previous knowledge of the effectiveness of guerilla tactics from the Peninsular War.

  During his alliance with the French Ali utilized their expertise in military training and fortification building, but as circumstances changed he was happy to turn to the British. An example of the different attitude to warfare comes from Signor Niccolo in Ioannina, if it is to be believed. The host of Byron and Hobhouse was at the siege of Berat for three months, where ‘he used to smoke his pipe in the midst of the shooters, that though there were forty pieces of cannon in the castle, besides mortars and 6,000 besiegers, he once heard the list of killed and wounded, after a battle of forty-eight hours, three killed – two wounded’. The intervention of newly developed British technology was required to bring affairs to a speedier conclusion. The city fell eventually with the aid of 600 Congreve rockets. These had been brought over as a gift by Leake, who then trained the Albanian soldiers in their use. Such devices had appeared in 1807 at the siege of Alexandria in the campaign against Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Turks’ nominal vassal in Egypt. The rockets were notoriously inaccurate but their explosion had a demoralizing effect, creating more terror than a cannonball.

  In a letter to Stratford Canning, Foresti describes an engagement between Ibrahim Pasha and Ali in 1810. Encouraged by the French, the pasha of Avlona attempted to regain Berat while Ali was on his way to Larissa. Ali doubled back and in a pitched battle defeated Ibrahim, leaving 300 casualties. Such an event was ‘not remembered to have taken place in Albania before where it is not uncommon for parties to contend for months without losing any men’.

  During wartime, Ali reputedly could assemble an army of between 40,000 to 50,000 men in a matter of 2 to 3 days, and could double that number in 2 to 3 weeks. The estimates of his forces vary wildly; Holland: 30,000; Leake: ‘not less than 16,000’ armed with muskets; and Sir William Hamilton, former private secretary to Lord Elgin and ambassador extraordinary to the Sublime Porte in a letter of 1803 to Lord Hawkesbury the British Foreign Secretary, ‘in the space of a few days he can raise 300,000 troops’. His regular supply of troops was drawn from his Albanian subjects, but others could be volunteered or persuaded to join his cause. Many of his Greek warriors later involved in the War of Independence received their training in Ali’s army, but the most feared were his own men, for as Eton says, the ‘good Turkish soldiers’ used for his attack on Argyrocaster ‘were the more formidable, as they were all Albanians’. Although Ali’s janissaries and most of his Albanian levies were Muslim, he had a Catholic battalion, known as the Mirdites, recruited from the north of Albania. His Western allies were used to increase his manpower and supply modern weaponry. Once Ali had subjugated his provinces he undertook a comprehensive review of the defences of his territories, improving existing fortifications or building from scratch. Like his army, this had a dual purpose, to protect from foreign incursion, but also to keep under a hard-fisted control a population notorious for its bloody feuding and independence. Charles Cockerell gives us a picture of the situation at Ioannina in 1814.

  Fig. 48: Congreve Rocket troop in action.

  The fortresses on the promontory into the lake are of the vizier’s building. He has always an establishment of 3,000 soldiers, 100 Tartars (the Sultan himself has but 200)
, a park of artillery presented him by the English, and German and other French artillerymen. We seem to have supplied him also with arms and ammunition in his wars with Souli and other parts of Epirus. Perhaps it is not much to our honour to have assisted a tyrant in dispossessing or exterminating the lawful owners of the soil, who only fought for their own liberty; but one must remember that, picturesque as they were and desperately as they fought, they were nothing but robbers and freebooters and the scourge of the country.

  According to Edward Everett, the two forts at Ioannina possessed 29 pieces of 12 and 24 pounder cannon and five mortars supplied by the French under Vaudoncourt, and of the regular force of 8,000 in his provinces, Ali maintained 3,000 constantly in Ioannina.

  Ali the Builder

  The most immediate reminder of Ali Pasha in Epirus is the one he left in stone. Split between Greece and Albania, these remains are still relatively unexplored by visitors and historians. With the best known tending to be in Greece, this gives only a partial impression of his legacy. Foremost among these are the numerous fortifications attributed to Ali. Protecting his gains was a primary concern. To do this he either refurbished existing castles, many dating back to Venetian or Byzantine times, or built modern fortifications from scratch. Ali’s building spree coincided with his success in courting the Western powers. This enabled him to gain access to the latest techniques of fort building through the aid of European architects and engineers.

  The coastal towns and ports were of particular strategic importance and Ali expended much energy to bring them all under his control and keep them. Once he had secured the coast he set about improving existing defences and building new ones where necessary to create a defensive line from Preveza to Avlona. In many cases the improvements were minor. Avlona, when Leake was there in 1804, had an ‘apology for a fort’ with ‘ruinous walls, with towers and a few cannon’. When Ibrahim Pasha was installed here after the fall of Berat, Ali must have been content to leave things be, perhaps preferring the town’s defences not to be too secure. The centrepiece was still the Venetian sixteenth century round tower that acted as a citadel within the moated town walls, all of which was sadly demolished in 1906. South from Avlona, the truculent inhabitants of the Himara littoral were a different matter. They had been so harshly dealt with in 1798 that Ali appears to have deemed a minimum show of force as sufficient. At Himara itself only small adjustments were made to the ancient castle. Further south in the bay at Porto Palermo a significant fort was built on the site of a much older castle. ‘Ali’s tower’, as Pouqueville calls it, is a well-preserved fort attractively situated on an island within the bay and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Local legend has it that Ali built it in honour of his wife Vassiliki, whereas Hughes more realistically saw it as part of a plan to encircle the pashalik of Delvino, underlining that Ali’s motives were to control the local population as much as to repel invaders. Over the entrance is a message from Ali: ‘Who would dare touch these walls, the black snake will eat his eyes’. But it has been questioned how much of the work is actually his. Its triangular construction with corner bastions is similar in style to the fifteenth or sixteenth century Venetian triangular fort at Butrint built prior to the evolution of the star design. The Venetian attribution is further enhanced by its general situation that suggests a seaward connection. In 1921 an American brigadier general, George P. Scriven, reported the castle at that time was called Venetian and the plaque above the entrance gate, which is now missing, was probably a carving of the lion of St Mark. The location under a hill from which it could be bombarded by cannon fire also suggests an early date.

  Fig. 49: ‘Ioannina the capital of Albania: Turkey in Europe’ (1836) from Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor by Rev. Thomas Walsh, illustrated by Thomas Allom.

  As at Avlona, Leake and Pouqueville found Porto Palermo less formidable than at first sight. The garrison only consisted of ten men when Leake visited, armed with two four-pounders. Two years later Pouqueville counted ‘a few guns, of no service either to command the entrance or to protect the shipping at anchor’. If it was built with the aid of French engineers it is surprising Pouqueville does not mention this. This less than impressive state of affairs in conjunction with his offer of the castle and port to the Royal Navy in 1803, suggests that Ali no longer feared insurrection from the local populace. The fort served as a Soviet submarine base under Albania’s communist dictatorship and it has been suggested that the re-ascribing of its construction to Ali probably suited the regime’s nationalistic agenda. Near the castle is a large church. Whether it was built by Ali along with other public works in an effort to win hearts and minds after his invasion, or for his wedding to Vassiliki, remote enough from the capital not to cause disquiet amongst the Muslim and Orthodox faithful as has been proposed in the tourist literature, is another Ali enigma. In contrast, although Ali ruined the mosque at nearby Borsh, he renovated the medieval castle of Sopoti. Similarly after he destroyed Nivitza, he erected a small square fortress just to the north at Agios Vasilis (Shen Vasil), which Pouqueville says was ‘regarded by the Albanians, and for some time by Aly himself, as the key of the Ceraunian mountains’.

  When Himara’s loss of independence was followed by the fall of the strategically more important former Venetian ports, the more urgent work was begun to upgrade their defences. At the Skala of the Forty Saints (Saranda), Ali added a fortress (1804) with two round towers at the two opposite angles and a dwelling for the bulu-bashi or head of the military district in charge of a few soldiers. At Butrint, the retreating French Army had destroyed the triangular Venetian castle to prevent it falling into his hands, so he took over a fortified estate situated at the mouth of the Vivari channel belonging to a Corfiote family and began a series of improvements including the installation of gun emplacements. The reorientation of the main defences seaward shows that the fort was no longer protecting a link to Corfu but a border crossing and against attack from the sea. Despite its small size it became one of Ali’s most important residences. It was upgraded again in response to the British capture of Corfu in 1814. Similarly at Igoumenitsa he built or rebuilt the harbour fort and set about major restructuring programmes at Preveza and Vonitsa.

  At Preveza, despite the town having been held and fortified by the Turks and Venetians, the surviving fortifications are mainly the work of Ali. To guard their prize possession the Venetians built the Castle of Bouka overlooking the narrowest point of the inlet into the Ambracian Gulf, but they blew it up in 1701 before handing the town briefly back to the Ottomans. Constant attack and counter-attack had left the town’s walls in need of an overhaul. So when Ali retook the town in 1807, he had grand designs. He hoped to make it his main coastal base and the necessary refortification was undertaken with the aid of French engineers, overseen by Colonel Vaudoncourt. Cockerell summed up Preveza thus:

  In Venetian days Previsa had no fortifications. Now the pasha has made it quite a strong place, with several forts and a deep ditch across the isthmus, though the cannons, to be sure — which are old English, ones of all sorts and sizes — are in the worst possible order, their carriages ill-designed, and now rotten as well. The population has fallen from 16,000, to 5,000 at the outside, mostly Turks.

  Hughes agreed. He found the artillery was a hotchpotch of all types, many of which were unserviceable.

  the bastions of the surrounding wall are mounted with guns of all calibre, from old ship cannon, twenty-four and thirty-two pounders, to small swivels and light field-pieces, all intermingled together. Most of these guns are quite useless, and would either burst at the first discharge or at least shatter to pieces their rotten carriages.

  Ali instigated a break with Ottoman traditions of fortress building and the remains of Preveza reveal his assimilation of Western ideas. Although he may have been eager to adopt new techniques he was not so hands-off to leave things to the experts as Vaudoncourt found out to his cost. Ali was incapable of allowing one
man to get on with the job, often employing a number of architects on the same project and with conflicting aims. In consequence of his interference, greed and haste to cut corners the results were often inadequate, being built for show rather than for utility. The old town occupies the corner of the northern promontory facing inwards to the gulf. On the two landward sides of the town Ali built a 2km long earth rampart and moat using conscripted labour; by the time of Leake’s visit in 1809, it was already beginning to crumble. At the north-east point where the wall projected into the gulf, it was augmented by the stone-built Pefkakia bastion with embrasures facing south to protect the port. At the opposite more exposed corner overlooking the seaward entrance to the gulf, the wall was reinforced with a fort known as the Castle of Saint George. Further to the south-west outside the town walls with gun batteries commanding the seaward approaches Ali built the pentagonal Pantokrator fort on the site of a church. Within the walls he refurbished most of the Castle of Saint Andrew, which the Turks had built as a replacement for the defunct Castle of Bouka, with a central tower protected by a rectangular wall and a defensive ditch. The two of its four corner towers that face the harbour are polygonal bastions that once had walls extending from them to enclose the port. On the site of the Castle of Bouka, he then had provided himself a seraglio with stones, Hobhouse informs us, plundered from the ancient ruins of Nicopolis nearby. On the opposite shore further into the gulf at Vonitsa, Hobhouse thought the existing fortress not very strong. Ali made improvements and when General Richard Church took the town in 1829 during the Greek War of Independence he reported it as the strongest of all the Turkish fortifications. On the route from Vonitsa to the offshore island of Leufkas, on which Ali had intentions, he built a further three forts.