insurrection, which, through all its stages, was destined to move
by fire and blood, and beyond any war in human annals to command the
interest of mankind through their sterner affections. We have said that
it was eminently a romantic war; but not in the meaning with which we
apply that epithet to the semi-fabulous wars of Charlemagne and his
Paladins, or even to the Crusaders. Here are no memorable contests of
generosity; no triumphs glorified by mercy; no sacrifices of interest
the most basely selfish to martial honor; no ear on either side for the
pleadings of desolate affliction; no voice in any quarter of commanding
justice; no acknowledgment of a common nature between the belligerents;
nor sense of a participation in the same human infirmities, dangers, or
necessities. To the fugitive from the field of battle there was
scarcely a retreat; to the prisoner there was absolutely no hope. Stern
retribution, and the very rapture of vengeance, were the passions which
presided on the one side; on the other, fanaticism and the cruelty of
fear and hatred, maddened by old hereditary scorn. Wherever the war
raged there followed upon the face of the land one blank Aceldama. A
desert tracked the steps of the armies, and a desert in which was no
oasis; and the very atmosphere in which men lived and breathed was a
chaos of murderous passions. Still it is true that the war was a great
romance. For it was filled with change, and with elastic rebound from
what seemed final extinction; with the spirit of adventure carried to
the utmost limits of heroism; with self-devotion on the sublimest
scale, and the very frenzy of patriotic martyrdom; with resurrection
of everlasting hope upon ground seven times blasted by the blighting
presence of the enemy; and with flowers radiant in promise springing
forever from under the very tread of the accursed Moslem.
NOTE.--We have thought that we should do an acceptable service to the
reader by presenting him with a sketch of the Suliotes, and the most
memorable points in their history. We have derived it (as to the facts)
from a little work originally composed by an Albanian in modern Greek,
and printed at Venice in 1815. This work was immediately translated into
Italian, by Gherardini, an Italian officer of Milan; and, ten years ago,
with some few omissions, it was reproduced in an English version; but
in this country it seems never to have attracted public notice, and is
probably now forgotten.
With respect to the name of Suli, the Suliotes themselves trace it to
an accident:--"Some old men," says the Albanian author, reciting his
own personal investigations amongst the oldest of the Suliotes, "replied
that they did not remember having any information from their ancestors
concerning the first inhabitants of Suli, except this only: that some
goat and swine herds used to lead their flocks to graze on the mountains
where Suli and Ghiafa now stand; that these mountains were not only
steep and almost inaccessible, but clothed with thickets of wood, and
infested by wild boars; that these herdsmen, being oppressed by the
tyranny of the Turks of a village called to this day Gardichi, took the
resolution of flying for a distance of six hours' journey to this sylvan
and inaccessible position, of sharing in common the few animals which
they had, and of suffering voluntarily every physical privation, rather
than submit to the slightest wrong from their foreign tyrants. This
resolution, they added, must be presumed to have been executed with
success; because we find that, in the lapse of five or six years, these
original occupants of the fastness were joined by thirty other families.
Somewhere about that time it was that they began to awaken the jealousy
of the Turks; and a certain Turk, named Suli, went in high scorn and
defiance, with many other associates, to expel them from this strong
position; but our stout forefathers met them with arms in their hands.
Suli, the leader and inciter of the Turks, was killed outright upon
the ground; and, on the very spot where he fell, at this day stands the
centre of our modern Suli, which took its name, therefore, from that
same slaughtered Turk, who was the first insolent and malicious enemy
with whom our country in its days of infancy had to contend for its
existence."
Such is the most plausible account which can now be obtained of the
_incunabula_ of this most indomitable little community, and of the
circumstances under which it acquired its since illustrious name. It
was, perhaps, natural that a little town, in the centre of insolent and
bitter enemies, should assume a name which would long convey to their
whole neighborhood a stinging lesson of mortification, and of prudential
warning against similar molestations. As to the _chronology_ of this
little state, the Albanian author assures us, upon the testimony of the
same old Suliotes, that "seventy years before" there were barely one
hundred men fit for the active duties of war, which, in ordinary states
of society, would imply a total population of four hundred souls. That
may be taken, therefore, as the extreme limit of the Suliote
population at a period of seventy years antecedently to the date of
tke conversation on which he founds his information. But, as he has
unfortunately omitted to fix the exact era of these conversations, the
whole value of his accuracy is neutralized by his own carelessness.
However, it is probable, from the internal evidence of his book, which
brings down affairs below the year 1812, that his information was
collected somewhere about 1810. We must carry back the epoch, therefore,
at which Suli had risen to a population of four hundred, pretty nearly
to the year 1740; and since, by the same traditionary evidence, Suli
had then accomplished an independent existence through a space of eighty
years, we have reason to conclude that the very first gatherings of poor
Christian herdsmen to this sylvan sanctuary, when stung to madness by
Turkish insolence and persecution, would take place about the era of the
Restoration (of our Charles II.), that is, in 1660.
In more modern times, the Suliotes had expanded into four separate
little towns, peopled by five hundred and sixty families, from which
they were able to draw one thousand first-rate soldiers. But, by a very
politic arrangement, they had colonized with sixty-six other families
seven neighboring towns, over which, from situation, they had long
been able to exercise a military preponderance. The benefits were
incalculable which they obtained by this connection. At the first alarm
of war the fighting men retreated with no incumbrances but their arms,
ammunition, and a few days' provision, into the four towns of Suli
proper, which all lay within that ring fence of impregnable position
from which no armies could ever dislodge them; meantime, they secretly
drew supplies from the seven associate towns, which were better situated
than themselves for agriculture, and which (apparently taking no part
in the war) pursued their ordinary labors unmolested. Their tactics
were simple, but judicious; if they saw a body of five or six thousand
advancing against their position, knowing that it was idle for them
to meet such a force in the open field, they contented themselves with
detaching one hundred and fifty or two hundred men to skirmish on their
flanks, and to harass them according to the advantages of the ground;
but if they saw no more than five hundred or one thousand in the hostile
column, they then issued in equal or superior numbers, in the certainty
of beating them, striking an effectual panic into their hearts, and also
of profiting largely by plunder and by ransom.
In so small and select a community, where so much must continually
depend upon individual qualities and personal heroism, it may readily
be supposed that the women would play an important part; in fact, "the
women carry arms and fight bravely. When the men go to war, the women
bring them food and provisions; when they see their strength declining
in combat, they run to their assistance, and fight along with them; but,
if by any chance their husbands behave with cowardice, they snatch
their arms from them, and abuse them, calling them mean, and unworthy of
having a wife." Upon these feelings there has even been built a law in
Suli, which must deeply interest the pride of women in the martial honor
of their husbands; agreeably to this law, any woman whose husband has
distinguished himself in battle, upon going to a fountain to draw water,
has the liberty to drive away another woman whose husband is tainted
with the reproach of cowardice; and all who succeed her, "from dawn to
dewy eve," unless under the ban of the same withering stigma, have
the same privilege of taunting her with her husband's baseness, and
of stepping between her or her cattle until their own wants are fully
supplied.
This social consideration of the female sex, in right of their husbands'
military honors, is made available for no trifling purposes; on one
occasion it proved the absolute salvation of the tribe. In one of the
most desperate assaults made by Ali Pacha upon Suli, when that tyrant
was himself present at the head of eight thousand picked men, animated
with the promise of five hundred piastres a man, to as many as should
enter Suli, after ten hours' fighting under an enfeebling sun, and many
of the Suliote muskets being rendered useless by continual discharges,
a large body of the enemy had actually succeeded in occupying the sacred
interior of Suli itself. At that critical moment, when Ali was in the
very paroxysms of frantic exultation, the Suliote women, seeing that the
general fate hinged upon the next five minutes, turned upon the Turks
_en masse_, and with such a rapture of sudden fury, that the conquering
army was instantly broken--thrown into panic, pursued; and, in that
state of ruinous disorder, was met and flanked by the men, who were now
recovering from their defeat. The consequences, from the nature of the
ground, were fatal to the Turkish army and enterprise; the whole camp
equipage was captured; none saved their lives but by throwing away their
arms; one third of the Turks (one half by some accounts) perished on
the retreat; the rest returned at intervals as an unarmed mob; and the
bloody, perfidious Pacha himself saved his life only by killing
two horses in his haste. So total was the rout, and so bitter the
mortification of Ali, who had seen a small band of heroic women snatch
the long-sought prize out of his very grasp, that for some weeks he shut
himself up in his palace at Yannina, would receive no visits, and issued
a proclamation imposing instant death upon any man detected in looking
out at a window or other aperture--as being _presumably_ engaged in
noticing the various expressions of his defeat which were continually
returning to Yannina.
The wars, in which the adventurous courage of the Suliotes (together
with their menacing position) could not fail to involve them, were in
all eleven. The first eight of these occurred in times before the French
Revolution, and with Pachas who have left no memorials behind them of
the terrific energy or hellish perfidy which marked the character of Ali
Pacha. These Pachas, who brought armies at the lowest of five thousand,
and at the most of twelve thousand men, were uniformly beaten; and
apparently were content to be beaten. Sometimes a Pacha was even made
prisoner; but, as the simple [Footnote: On the same occasion the Pacha's
son, and sixty officers of the rank of _Aga_, were also made prisoners
by a truly rustic mode of assault. The Turks had shut themselves up in a
church; into this, by night, the Suliotes threw a number of hives, full
of bees, whose insufferable stings soon brought the haughty Moslems into
the proper surrendering mood. The whole body were afterwards ransomed
for so trifling a sum as one thousand sequins.] Suliotes little
understood the art of improving advantages, the ransom was sure to
be proportioned to the value of the said Pacha's sword-arm in battle,
rather than to his rank and ability to pay; so that the terms of
liberation were made ludicrously easy to the Turkish chiefs.
These eight wars naturally had no other ultimate effect than to extend
the military power, experience, and renown, of the Suliotes. But their
ninth war placed them in collision with a new and far more perilous
enemy than any they had yet tried; above all, he was so obstinate and
unrelenting an enemy, that, excepting the all-conquering mace of death,
it was certain that no obstacles born of man ever availed to turn him
aside from an object once resolved on. The reader will understand, of
course, that this enemy was Ali Pacha. Their ninth war was with him; and
he, like all before him, was beaten; but _not_ like all before him did
Ali sit down in resignation under his defeat. His hatred was now become
fiendish; no other prosperity or success had any grace in his eyes, so
long as Suli stood, by which he had been overthrown, trampled on, and
signally humbled. Life itself was odious to him, if he must continue to
witness the triumphant existence of the abhorred little mountain village
which had wrung laughter at his expense from every nook of Epirus.
_Delenda est Carthago! Suli must be exterminated!_ became, therefore,
from this time, the master watchword of his secret policy. And on the
1st of June, in the year 1792, he commenced his second war against the
Suliotes, at the head of twenty-two thousand men. This was the second
war of Suli with Ali Pacha; but it was the tenth war on their annals;
and, as far as their own exertions were concerned, it had the same
result as all the rest. But, about the sixth year of the war, in an
indirect way, Ali made one step towards his final purpose, which first
manifested its disastrous tendency in the new circumstances which
succeeding years brought forward. In 1797 the French made a lodgment in
Corfu; and, agreeably to their general spirit of intrigue, they had made
advances to Ali Pacha, and to all other independent powers in or about
Epirus. Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that ill-fated
city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the
following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber
a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place
with his overwhelming cavalry, before they could agree upon the mode of
defence, and long before _any_ mode could have been tolerably matured.
The result was one universal massacre, which raged for three days, and
involved every living Prevesan, excepting some few who had wisely
made their escape in time, and excepting those who were reserved to be
tortured for Ali's special gratification, or to be sold for slaves in
the shambles. This dreadful catastrophe, which in a few hours rooted
from the earth an old and flourishing community, was due in about equal
degrees to the fatal intriguing of the interloping French, and to the
rankest treachery in a quarter where it could least have been held
possible; namely, in a Suliote, and a very distinguished Suliote,
Captain George Botzari; but the miserable man yielded up his honor and
his patriotism to Ali's bribe of one hundred purses (perhaps at that
time equal to twenty-five hundred pounds sterling). The way in which
this catastrophe operated upon Ali's final views was obvious to
everybody in that neighborhood. Parga, on the sea-coast, was an
indispensable ally to Suli; now, Prevesa stood in the same relation
to Parga, as an almost indispensable ally, that Parga occupied towards
Suli.