Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  Ali, perhaps true to his real character, remains unmoved:

  Ali deemed anchorite or saint a pawn -

  The crater of his blunderbuss did yawn,

  Sword, dagger hung at ease:

  But he had let the holy man revile,

  Though clouds o’erswept his brow; then, with a smile,

  He tossed him his pelisse.

  Unlike Hugo, David Morier had first-hand experience of Ali and as one-time British emissary to his court he was in a better position to write about the Suliotes. Morier supplemented his personal recollections with tales supplied by a Greek physician with whom he was compelled to spend a period of quarantine at Corfu, to create Photo, the Suliote, a Tale of Modern Greece (1857). Modestly described as an ‘imperfect sketch’ or ‘fragment’ he attempted to give a picture of contemporary Greek and Albanian life in the manner of his more literary brother James, the author of the popular Adventures of Hajji Baba based on his experiences in Persia.

  As with the Pargians, the Suliotes provided dramatic inspiration for painters. The momentum for Greek liberty triumphantly fused the themes of romanticism and liberalism at the Paris Salon exhibition of 1827–8, with twenty-one works on modern Greek subjects being exhibited. Ary Scheffer showed two paintings on the theme of Greek women taking refuge from the Turks, once more linking events from Ali’s past with the current Greek war; Jeune filles greques implorant la protection de la Vierge pendent un combat based on incidents from Missolonghi and Les Femmes Souliotes. In both paintings the women plead to heaven. The latter recalls the incident at Zalongo where the Suliot women and children are huddled on the edge of the precipice prior to throwing themselves over.

  The narrative of the Suliot women’s sacrifice was equally well known in France and elevated to an evocation of the Romantic ideal of patriotic heroism and resilience. Again Pouqueville’s accounts provided inspiration. He had described the women singing and dancing as one after the other took the fatal step in his Histoire de la régénération de la Grèce (1824) an image taken up by the Romantic poet Alfred de Vigny in ‘Helena’ (1826) where the women go to their deaths singing in voices ‘steady and devoid of sobs’. The politician and writer Abel-François Villemain, whose portrait Scheffer painted, referred to them in his historical novel Lascaris (1825) as ‘these heroic and fierce mothers who, in order to escape from the barbarians, formed a funerary dance on the crest of a rock and leapt, one after another, over the precipice, holding their children in their arms.’ His fellow politician, writer and Orientalist, Alphonse de Lamartin, drew on Fauriel’s folk song collection adding with indignation, ‘Here is one of the prodigies of heroism and misfortune of which our age is a daily observer… And Europe just looks on!’ Pouqueville’s steadfast courage is replaced by fear and panic in Scheffer’s version where the women evoke pity by being depicted at the extreme of despair, broken and without pride or dignity. This deviation from the story was noted by the critics. In his review carried by the Revue encyclopédique, PA Coupin expressed confusion as to the picture’s purpose and Charles Farcy, in a statement echoed by many modern gallery-goers, said in the Journal des artistes, ‘really, one needs the catalogue in order to find out exactly what is [the subject] of the picture’. If the critics missed the point, it was a shame as Schaffer, a radical and philhellene, had intentionally modified the theme in an effort to fit better the mood and imagery of Liberal philhellenism, appealing to the public’s sympathies by showing pleading victims instead of heroic defenders, as the Greek cause hung in the balance before the intervention by the European powers. Ali’s life may have offered a spectrum of themes to be manipulated, Orientalist despot of legend to cartoon villain and lesson from history to entertainment, but it was as a vehicle for the cause of Greek liberty and the oppressed of Europe that it had its most profound impact.

  Fig. 61: The Suliote Women by Ary Shaffer (1827).

  1 Gavoyanios means Blind John; many folk musicians were blind.

  2 According to a review in the American newspaper Minerva for 1822 (Vol. I No. 37) this was an adaptation of the play Xenocles by the French writer Mr Planchet. The protagonist in Ali Pasha is called Zenocles.

  3 Byron took the name from a Greek folk song, a translation of which he appended to the first edition of Childe Harold.

  4 Adélaïde-Gillette Dufrénoy, Beautés de l’histoire de la Grèce moderne (1826).

  5 JPG Viennet, Parga, Poème au bénéfice du Parganiotes (Paris, 1820); TJ du Wicquet, Baron d’Ordre, Les Exilés de Parga. Poème (Paris, 1820); J Berchet, Les Fugitifs de Parga. Poème traduit librement de l’italien (Paris, 1823).

  Chapter 8

  The Aftermath

  The nations knew nothing before the French Revolution. The people thought that kings were gods upon earth, and that the people were bound to say that whatever the kings did was well done.

  Theodore Kolokotronis

  The death of Ali Pasha at Ioannina left a void and, with Turkish armies beset on all sides, how it was to be filled was in the balance. Ali’s ambivalent policies had served him well. Nobody ever knew whether they were his enemy or his friend, and in truth his only interests were selfish ones. His ability to play political games ran its course as the dynamics of power changed. In the end it proved to be internal pressures within the Ottoman Empire that left him exposed when foreign powers no longer needed him. He had used both the Suliotes and the Turks equally for his own purposes; and both played their part in his downfall. The man Byron called the Muslim Bonaparte had overreached himself like his French idol, but unlike him, and to the dismay of his loyal followers, his life was not to be spared. Although the Turkish reaction was to clamp down hard on Epirus to bring it to heal, other forces were at play. The existence of Ali’s breakaway fiefdom had created ripples that would lead to a momentous change within the Empire and affect the world order.

  When Lord Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824 he became an international hero and symbol of the Greek fight for freedom. His fame and sacrifice was such that he almost took on a mystical persona. As John Galt put it in his The Life of Lord Byron (1830), ‘the Greek people became impatient for Lord Byron to come among them. They looked forward to his arrival as to the coming of a Messiah’. For the Philhellenes and the propagandists for a free Greek state, Byron was a vital element in their efforts to promote their cause and as such he came to be seen as the obvious catalyst of Greek liberty. Galt was aware of the importance of the relationship between Byron and Ali Pasha and how in their own ways they had played a part in creating the new reality; but unlike Galt, for Hughes it was Ali Pasha who was the catalyst for the insurrection that followed. The Sultan’s gains in putting down Ali’s own bid for autonomy were short-lived. His audacity in creating an alternative state from within hastened the split of Greece from the Empire. Ali’s reprisals against insurrectionists were motivated by his own greed rather any form of loyalty, while his indifference to, or even tolerance of, intellectuals when it suited him allowed revolutionary ideas to spread. By belatedly espousing the Greek cause, whether meant or not, he furthered the momentum for change from within and his constant undermining of the Sultan was an inspiration for Balkan freedom.

  Ali’s activities had blinded the Sultan to the real danger of insurrection, to such an extent that he preferred to believe that dealing with his irritating upstart was the priority. Resources were kept occupied watching him rather than concentrating on the undercurrent of national awakening. In 1874 the historian Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy made the case for the start of the Greek War of Independence as early as the flight of the Suliotes from Ali; creating a focus for a national fighting force outside Ottoman control. The unrest throughout the Ottomans’ European provinces meant that the dream of Rigas for a pan-Balkan state was always a possibility. Through the Filiki Eteria the Greeks of the Danube provinces had allies amongst the Slavs and Rumanians and it was felt that another coordinated attack on the Empire from north and south could end Turkish rule in the region. When once again the flag
of revolution was raised in the Morea in March of 1821, it was to coincide with the march of Prince Alexander Ypsilantis and his Sacred Band of Greek volunteers from all over Europe into Wallachia and on to Bucharest. The hope was for Russian intervention to inspire a general revolt in Greece. The lack of expected local support and the assembly of a large Turkish army crushed Ypsilantis before he could force the Russians to back the insurrection as a fait accompli. For Ypsilantis the war was over; he spent the next seven years imprisoned in Terezín before being allowed to retire in exile within the Austrian boarders through the intervention of Tsar Nicholas I. The banner of Ypsilantis’ Sacred Band bore the device of the Phoenix rising from his ashes and despite this setback the fuse had been lit from Crete to Macedonia. The ever-truculent Maniotes in the Peloponnese were the first to rise up and by 21 March, the official declaration of the uprising when Bishop Germanos of Patras blessed the banner, the whole of the Peloponnese was up in arms. The Turkish preoccupation with Ali in Ioannina provided an ideal opportunity to strike for freedom. Ali’s showdown with the Sultan took Hurshid Pasha and his troops from the Morea and initially the Greeks were successful against the diminished Turkish forces. This momentum was key to keeping the revolt alive in its first year, until Ali’s death meant that the Turks could put their full weight behind dealing with the rebels. Theodoros Kolokotronis, hardened klepht and trained soldier under the British (he always proudly wore the helmet of the Greek Light Infantry), took Tripolitsa. It was while he was in the city that he learnt of Ali’s death. Many of his companions then feared that the 80,000-strong army that went against Ali would now turn on them. Kolokotronis would become the main figurehead of the Revolution and his son, Gennaios (‘brave’, a name he earned in battle), became prime minister of Greece.

  The fighters of the revolt were drawn from disparate sources, ex-armatoles and klephts, idealists and the dispossessed, peasants and foreign volunteers, and Vlachs, Albanians and Greeks. Ypsilantis and the Filiki Eteria had been hard at work and they had contacts in central Greece. Leaders such as Demetrios Panourgias (Salona), Athanasios Diakos (Leivadia), Demos Skaltsas (Phokis villages) and Vassilis Bousgos (Thebes) had served under Ali at some point in their earlier career. Bousgos had been under Diakos and Ali’s favourite Odysseus Androutsos. With the support of Ali, Panourgias had acquired influence as an armatole. He was a member of the Filiki Etaireia and led the first revolt in central Greece. With the aid of Yannis Gouras, Diakos and Makriyannis he captured the Castle of Salona, on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1821; the same day that Patriarch Gregory V was hung in reprisal during the ‘Constantinople Massacre’. It was Ali’s constant warfaring that unintentionally created the perfect environment for the future Greek freedom fighters to learn the art of war. The constant need to expand his military might soaked up his pool of manpower forcing him to spread his recruitment net beyond his close retainers, taking in promising individuals into his forces who then became skilled and experienced fighters ready to offer their services to the Greek cause.

  In early 1821, when Ali’s enemies were closing in, Odysseus Androutsos had slipped away to the Ionian Islands so that when the Revolution broke out he reappeared with 5,000 of his old comrades to establish himself in his old haunts as virtual dictator of the whole area known as Eastern Greece, from Parnassos to Athens. From his stronghold in the mountains he was able to keep the Turkish advance at bay. But Ali’s court had proved to be a dubious schooling. Brought up in the intrigue and faction fighting of the clans his career epitomized the independence of the klephtic leaders who found uniting under a common banner to be unsuited to their way of life; one they were reluctant to give up. By 1823 civil war had broken out between Kolokotronis and the other leaders. With Ali gone the Turks could turn their full force on the Greeks. Ali’s ex-Commander Omar Vironi was sent by Hurshid Pasha to crush the revolt north of the Gulf of Corinth joined by an army from Egypt under Ibrahim Pasha, son of the breakaway Muhammad Ali Pasha, to subdue the Morea. The revolt faltered with the insurrectionist forces riven by jealousy and infighting. Odysseus followed the example he learnt at Ioannina by seeing an opportunity to set himself up Ali-style within his own chiefdom. For Edward John Trelawny, who had followed Byron to fight for the Greek cause, he was an almost superhuman hero, ‘a glorious being, a noble fellow, a gallant soldier, and a man of most wonderful mind’ in the mould of George Washington or Simon Bolivar ‘appearing in different parts of Greece at nearly the same instant’ where he was able with 5,000 men to slay 20,000 of the enemy allowing them ‘no leisure to fortify cities or throw up entrenchments’. Trelawny became a trusted friend of Odysseus, commanding his troops in his absence, but his hero-worship was not shared by Thomas Gordon. Gordon, in his History of the Greek Revolution (1832), called Odysseus violent, cruel, subtle, ambitious and paranoid, the perfect mix of Albanian brutality and Greek mendacity and devoid of religion, patriotism or idealism holding to the klephtic ways under the new legitimacy of revolt. Like his mentor Odysseus’ self-aggrandizement went too far and he was imprisoned in 1825 by the Greek revolutionary government. He was murdered while awaiting trial under orders of one of his former lieutenants, Yannis Gouras, cousin of Panourgias of Salona. Trelawny had married Odysseus’ half-sister with whom he had a daughter, but divorced her upon his return to England. In Epirus, Ali’s army was at the disposal of the Sultan to use against the Greeks and Ioannis Makriyannis who had served under Ali was engaged in a guerrilla war of survival. Makriyannis knew Odysseus from the Ali days and he called his execution one of the darkest moments of the War of Independence. Makriyannis’s Memoirs of the War became one of the classics of modern Greek literature. The Noble Prize-winning poet George Seferis rated the work as the most important piece of prose in the language.

  Fig. 62: Kolokotronis and his personal escort (1828) by Pierre Peytier.

  Fig. 63: Nikos Mitropoulos hoists the flag at Salona by Louis Dupré (1821).

  The Ionian Islands had proved to be a valuable recruiting ground for the rebel cause and Richard Church, in charge of the Greek Regiment, had argued at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 for an independent Greek state. Church had kept in touch with his friend Kolokotronis and was eager to join the fray from the first. Byron too was hoping for the support of Church and his former colleague Colonel Charles Napier in beleaguered Missolonghi. As the war progressed, with the Greeks increasingly on the defensive, foreign fighters, including former enemies, the French, Russian and British, joined the cause. Although official international reaction was antipathetic to the Greek revolt, George Canning, now the commissioner in the Ionian Islands, was able to give logistic support while committees of Philhellenes in London and Paris raised funds and recruited volunteers. In 1823 Lord Byron was idly kicking his heels in Genoa when he heeded the call, putting action behind his fine sentiments; a decision that would cement his name in Greek hearts. With the backing of the London committee he set sail for Greece via Cephalonia to meet his old friend from Italy and revolutionary leader, Alexander Mavrokordatos, in Missolonghi. Mavrokordatos had been pushed back from his attempt on Arta by Reshid Mehmed Pasha, who had been at the siege of Ioannina. Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack Turkish-held Lepanto but before they could do so Byron fell ill. His death was a shock and internationally mourned and ironically a great boost to the Greek cause. Reshid was joined by Omar Vironi and Missolonghi was subjected to a long series of sieges. The siege of the town took on heroic proportions and its fall in 1827 and the massacre of the population, like that of the previous massacre on the island of Chios (1822), became a symbol of oppression. With the Greeks in disarray, Church was invited to take control of the army.

  Fig. 64: Detail of a painting (1822) by Theophilos showing Yannis Gouras fighting under the command of Odysseus Androutsos.

  To the north Reshid had subdued Thessaly, taking over the sanjak of Trikkala and he turned towards Attica and Athens. In Epirus the Turks had gradually retaken control. The Suliotes were defeated in 1822 and forced to flee once again f
rom their homeland, taking refuge in the Ionian Islands. Byron had not lost his admiration and affection for the nobility of the Suliotes and it was from them that he recruited a number to form his private guard prior to his arrival in Missolonghi. The Suliote leaders Markos Botsaris and Kitsos Tzavellas became distinguished generals in the war. Botsaris led a valiant attack on Karpenisi in the Pindus with only 350 Suliots where they ambushed the 3,000-strong vanguard of the pasha of Scutari’s army. When Botsaris was buried in Missolonghi, the leadership of the Suliotes passed to Byron, and his courage was immortalized by a number of artists and writers. Byron lamented the death of ‘the modern Leonidas’ in his letters and his funeral was described emotionally by Pouqueville and Dionysios Solomos, who likened the event to the funeral of Hector in Homer’s Iliad. One of the mourners was Georgios Karaiskakis, later commander-in-chief of the Greek Army. Bedridden at the time with TB, he is said to have wished that he might die the same glorious death as Botsaris. His wish came true at the battle in Faliro in Attica on St George’s Day, April 1827. After the death of Karaiskakis, Lord Thomas Cochrane, a naval veteran of campaigns for independence in Chile and Peru, and Church took over the leadership. Botsaris and Karaiskakis are held to be amongst the most revered figures in modern Greek History. The special relationship between Byron and the Suliotes is attested in the lament for Byron’s death by Solomos. Many other Suliotes lost their lives in the fight for freedom, especially defending the city of Missolonghi with Byron. Their role in the siege and the famous defiant sortie from the town in 1826 went down as a testimony to their bravery. The city of Missolonghi itself was proclaimed a Sacred City by Greece and the sortie is commemorated there on Palm Sunday every year. The date of Lord Byron’s death, 19 April 1824, was designated as ‘Day of Philhellenism and International Solidarity’ by the Greek President in 2008. Botsaris’ name too lived on abroad. James Fenimore Cooper quoted from the poem Marco Bozzaris (1825) by Fitz-Greene Halleck, the ‘American Byron’, in the Last of the Mohicans, which he was writing at the time.