Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  They fought like brave men, long and well;

  They piled that ground with Moslem slain;

  They conquer’d; -- but Bozzaris fell,

  Bleeding at every vein.

  His few surviving comrades saw

  His smile when rang their loud hurrah,

  And the red field was won;

  Then saw in death his eyelids close,

  Calmly as to a night’s repose,--

  Like flowers at set of sun.

  Fig. 65: Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826) by Eugène Delacroix.

  Abraham Lincoln read the entire poem to the Union troops in 1862 before the Battle of Fredericksburg during the American Civil War.

  In June 1827, the Acropolis in Athens, the last great stronghold in central Greece, fell to the Turks. The massacres, defeats and courage of the beleaguered Greeks coupled with the propaganda of the philhellenes and the growth of public support finally forced the great powers to act. With pressure from the Russians to help their Orthodox brethren and George Canning replacing Castlereagh, with whom he had fought a duel, as Foreign Secretary, Metternich’s policy of non-intervention was unravelling. To pre-empt Russian unilateral action, Canning brought Britain, France and Russia together to sign the Treaty of London to force an armistice between the belligerents and start peace negotiations, something the Porte was unwilling to concede from a winning position. Canning’s forceful actions had pushed him to the forefront, succeeding the Duke of Wellington as prime minister, but he died before he could see the results of his endeavours. To ensure compliance with the treaty the Mediterranean British Fleet was dispatched under Sir Edward Codrington, a veteran of Trafalgar. While the Greek provisional government at Nafplion was understandably ready to accept, the Porte rejected the terms of the treaty. Contrary to warnings from the Allies a large Turkish fleet gathered at Navarino and as the peace negotiations continued Ibrahim Pasha protested that he was being asked to uphold the ceasefire while the Greeks were carrying on operations; operations aided by Cochrane, who was organizing a revolt behind Turkish lines in Epirus and Church, who was besieging Patras. Turkish attempts to relieve Patras were foiled by Codrington’s naval blockade and when he learnt of the devastating effects of Ibrahim’s scorched earth policy that was reducing the population of Messenia to starvation his patience ran out. Reinforced by squadrons of the Russian and French Navy, Codrington acted on his own initiative, and without official sanction he engaged and destroyed the Ottoman Fleet. Although his victory did not bring about an immediate capitulation by the Turkish government, it was a turning point in the war, bringing European forces into play on the ground. With the Albanian and Egyptian mercenaries putting up little resistance to the battle-hardened French veterans of Napoleon’s army in the Morea, and the Russians once again driving across the Danube towards Constantinople, the Porte was forced to recognize an independent Greek state in the Protocol of London in 1830 and the Kingdom of Greece was established in 1832.

  Fig. 66: Botsaris surprises the Turkish camp and falls fatally wounded (1860–62) by Eugène Delacroix.

  During the war a number of provisional governments had been set up by the Greeks, all riven by faction fighting between idealists, pragmatists and opportunists. Finally in 1827, Kapodistrias, the most recognized Greek politician in Europe was invited to head the National Assembly. When he arrived in Nafplion it was the first time he set foot on the soil of the Greek mainland. The sick, forgotten and impoverished Ypsilantis had only recently been released from prison when he died in Vienna just days after Kapodistrias took up his post in January 1828. Kapodistrias struggled to impose the idea of national unity and revolutionary politics on the former klephts and independently minded Maniots and sailors of Hydra and Poros who had taken on the Turks. When Kapodistrias imprisoned Petrobey Mavromichalis he outraged the family and he was assassinated by Petrobey’s brother and son on the steps of the Church of St Spyridon in Nafplion. In an effort to maintain order the great powers, contrary to the spirit of the revolution, imposed a neutral monarchy on Greece, King Otto of Bavaria taking up the crown.

  A number of Ali Pasha’s former advisors and allies fought for the cause and served in the Greek administration. Ioannis Kolettis, one of his numerous doctors, became the representative for Epirus in the First National Assembly. Kolettis was a determined politician and in his capacity as Minister of War and the Interior used Alexis Noutsos and Christos Palaskas, a Suliot captain, to block his rival Odysseus. Odysseus had them murdered in their sleep. Makriyannis believed Kolettis had done this in the knowledge that Odysseus would react in this way, ridding himself of two other rivals. Kolettis’ former connections within Ali’s court, including Ioannis Gouras, meant he knew and could influence many of the captains gathering them around him. His control of the British loan to the Greeks in 1824 gave him power to organize his own Rumeliot party representing central Greece against the ‘Russian’ faction supported by Mavrokordatos, Botsaris and Kitsos Tzavellas and the Peloponnesian grouping around Kolokotronis. After the death of Kapodistrias, Kolettis became one of the most powerful Greek politicians and author of the Megali Idea or ‘Great Idea’, the final unification of all the Greek lands including Constantinople and the coast of Asia Minor, a major fixation of Greek foreign policy until the reversal of 1922 when the present borders with Turkey were established. He served between terms by Mavrokordatos as prime minister, and was succeeded on his death by Kitsos Tzavellas in 1847. The success of the War of Independence was only for the south. In 1854, during the Crimean War, Tzavellas led a revolt in Epirus supported by officers of Suliot descent. This time there was no British and French support; they actively supported their Turkish ally against Russia to maintain the status quo.

  Fig. 67: The Murder of Kapodistrias (c. 1870s) by Charalambos Pachis.

  On his return to England in 1810, Leake, now promoted to major, was granted an annual allowance in consideration of his services in Turkey since 1799. His colleague Spyridion Foresti also received a pension from the British government for his vital intelligence service on the recommendation of the four naval commanders including admirals Nelson and Collingwood. In his retirement Leake set to work on his detailed and sober accounts of Greece and Albania, but he was not impartial. He saw Turkish rule as inept and the Muslim population as lazy. As a philhellene he was hopeful that the Greeks would someday throw off the degrading effects of years under Ottoman despotism. In a political pamphlet Greece at the End of Twenty-three years of Protection (1851) he criticized successive British governments for their lack of support towards a Greek state and for showing ‘a preference for incurable barbarism to progress and civilization’ which resulted in the continued ‘abasement of Greece’. The border between the new Greece and Turkey still ran as recognized in 1830 from Arta to Volos and included Euboea and the Saronic and Cycladic Islands. Crete and the other islands remained under Turkish control. The Ionian Islands were under British protection until they were handed over to Greece as a goodwill gesture in 1864. In 1881 Greece gained Thessaly. Crete broke from Turkish rule in 1898 only to become part of Greece in 1913 when Albania achieved its own independence, but Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace would have to wait until the border settlements after the First World War. The Dodecanese Islands only became part of Greece in 1947 after a period of Italian occupation from the First World War.

  Fig. 68: Ali Pasha’s statue in Tepelene, photo Derek Smith.

  The immediate result of the Greek uprising for the rest of the Ottoman Empire was a reaction by the Porte to reimpose its grip on defecting regions. Through a combination of harsh reprisals, increased central control and long-needed administrative and fiscal reform the Sultan Mahmud fought to maintain the integrity of the Empire. His Tanzimat reforms introduced a council of ministers, European style clothing and laws, land reform and the final abolition of the janissaries setting Turkey on a course of modernization. In independent Greece there was a desire to wipe out the memory of Turkish rule and a programme of de-Ottomanizat
ion was introduced. Under King Otto, the second son of the fanatical admirer of ancient Greece, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the new capital of Athens was transformed as much as possible into a neoclassical stage set. When Edward Lear travelled to the border at Lamia in 1848 he noticed that in Greek lands all traces of Turkish occupation had already been removed. In 1922 the final break with Turkey came with the exchange of populations removing Greeks from Asia Minor, and transforming Constantinople into Istanbul, and Turks from Greek territory. Despite the achievement of Greek and Albanian nationhood and the pride that accompanies it in Epirus, north and south of the border the memory of Ali Pasha could not be erased. Although he was ruthless without prejudice, for Muslim Albanians he could be seen as a patriot, for Christians on both sides he made Epirus important again and for all a source of fascination; Ali’s exploits for good or ill leave a deep impression on the local populace.

  Glossary

  armatole, armatoli (p), Christian Greek militia within the Ottoman Empire

  armatoliki, area administered by the armatoli

  Filiki Eteria, Friendly Society, the secret organization for Greek independence

  hospodar, lord, specifically in Moldavia and Wallachia

  klepht, bandit, freedom fighter

  palikar, warrior

  voivode. voyvoda, governor

  Turkish terms

  aga, agha, honourific title given to a civilian or military officer

  ayan, notable person

  bey, governor

  chiflik, ciftlik, system of land ownership

  dervendji-pasha (derbendler basbugu), guardian or governor of the passes

  Divan, council of the Ottoman state

  divan efendi, presided over the council of the local governors

  eyalets or viyalets, first level province; the Eyalet of Rumeli (Rumelia) encompassed most of the Balkans with its capital variously at Edirne, Sofia and Monastir

  hamam, bathhouse

  harach, poll tax

  harem, separate part of a Muslim house for women; for the Sultan and ruling class this would include servants and concubines

  janissaries, elite corps made up of Christian captives converted to Islam

  khan, inn with a courtyard

  millet, an autonomous religious community responsible for its own laws i.e. the Christian millet

  pasha, a governor of high rank, an honourary title

  pashalik, area governed by a pasha

  sanjak, subdivision of an eyalet

  seraglio, walled palace

  serai, mansion, lodge

  Sublime Porte, ‘High Gate’, the residence of the government in Constantinople/Istanbul, generally the government was referred to as the Porte Sultan, hereditary sovereign of the Ottoman Empire

  timar, fiefdom, subdivision of a sanjak

  vizier, high official or minister: grand vizier, chief officer of state with military responsibility

  Bibliography and Sources

  Fig. 69: Frontispiece to Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

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