in less than two years from that date, namely, on the 2d of June, 1800,
commenced the eleventh war of the Suliotes; being their third with Ali,
and the last which, from their own guileless simplicity, meeting
with the craft of the most perfidious amongst princes, they were ever
destined to wage. For two years, that is, until the middle of 1802, the
war, as managed by the Suliotes, rather resembles a romance, or some
legend of the acts of Paladins, than any grave chapter in modern
history. Amongst the earliest victims it is satisfactory to mention
the traitor, George Botzari, who, being in the power of the Pacha, was
absolutely compelled to march with about two hundred of his kinsmen,
whom he had seduced from Suli, against his own countrymen, under whose
avenging swords the majority of them fell, whilst the arch-traitor
himself soon died of grief and mortification. After this, Ali himself
led a great and well-appointed army in various lines of assault against
Suli. But so furious was the reception given to the Turks, so deadly
and so uniform their defeat, that panic seized on the whole army, who
declared unanimously to Ali that they would no more attempt to contend
with the Suliotes--"Who," said they, "neither sit nor sleep, but are
born only for the destruction of men." Ali was actually obliged
to submit to this strange resolution of his army; but, by way of
compromise, he built a chain of forts pretty nearly encircling Suli;
and simply exacted of his troops that, being forever released from the
dangers of the open field, they should henceforward shut themselves up
in these forts, and constitute themselves a permanent blockading force
for the purpose of bridling the marauding excursions of the Suliotes. It
was hoped that, from the close succession of these forts, the Suliotes
would find it impossible to slip between the cross fires of the Turkish
musketry; and that, being thus absolutely cut off from their common
resources of plunder, they must at length be reduced by mere starvation.
That termination of the contest was in fact repeatedly within a trifle
of being accomplished; the poor Suliotes were reduced to a diet of
acorns; and even of this food had so slender a quantity that many
died, and the rest wore the appearance of blackened skeletons. All this
misery, however, had no effect to abate one jot of their zeal and their
undying hatred to the perfidious enemy who was bending every sinew to
their destruction. It is melancholy to record that such perfect heroes,
from whom force the most disproportioned, nor misery the most absolute,
had ever wrung the slightest concession or advantage, were at length
entrapped by the craft of their enemy; and by their own foolish
confidence in the oaths of one who had never been known to keep any
engagement which he had a momentary interest in breaking. Ali contrived
first of all to trepan the matchless leader of the Suliotes, Captain
Foto Giavella, who was a hero after the most exquisite model of ancient
Greece, Epaminondas, or Timoleon, and whose counsels were uniformly wise
and honest. After that loss, all harmony of plan went to wreck amongst
the Suliotes; and at length, about the middle of December, 1803, this
immortal little independent state of Suli solemnly renounced by treaty
to Ali Pacha its sacred territory, its thrice famous little towns, and
those unconquerable positions among the crests of wooded inaccessible
mountains which had baffled all the armies of the crescent, led by the
most eminent of the Ottoman Pachas, and not seldom amounting to twenty,
twenty-five, and in one instance even to more than thirty thousand men.
The articles of a treaty, which on one side there never was an intention
of executing, are scarcely worth repeating; the amount was--that the
Suliotes had perfect liberty to go whither they chose, retaining the
whole of their arms and property, and with a title to payment in cash
for every sort of warlike store which could not be carried off. In
excuse for the poor Suliotes in trusting to treaties of any kind with
an enemy whom no oaths could bind for an hour, it is but fair to mention
that they were now absolutely without supplies either of ammunition or
provisions; and that, for seven days, they had suffered under a total
deprivation of water, the sources of which were now in the hands of the
enemy, and turned into new channels. The winding up of the memorable
tale is soon told:--the main body of the fighting Suliotes, agreeably to
the treaty, immediately took the route to Parga, where they were sure
of a hospitable reception, that city having all along made common cause
with Suli against their common enemy, Ali. The son of Ali, who had
concluded the treaty, and who inherited all his father's treachery, as
fast as possible despatched four thousand Turks in pursuit, with
orders to massacre the whole. But in this instance, through the gallant
assistance of the Parghiotes, and the energetic haste of the Suliotes,
the accursed wretch was disappointed of his prey. As to all the other
detachments of the Suliotes, who were scattered at different points,
and were necessarily thrown everywhere upon their own resources without
warning or preparation of any kind,--they, by the terms of the treaty,
had liberty to go away or to reside peaceably in any part of Ali's
dominions. But as these were mere windy words, it being well understood
that Ali's fixed intention was to cut every throat among the Suliotes,
whether of man, woman, or child,--nay, as he thought himself dismally
ill-used by every hour's delay which interfered with the execution
of that purpose,--what rational plan awaited the choice of the poor
Suliotes, finding themselves in the centre of a whole hostile nation,
and their own slender divisions cut off from communication with each
other? What could people so circumstanced propose to themselves as a
suitable resolution for their situation? Hope there was none; sublime
despair was all that their case allowed; and, considering the unrivalled
splendors of their past history for more than one hundred and sixty
years, perhaps most readers would reply, in the famous words of
Corneille--_Qu'ils mourussent_. That was their own reply to the question
now so imperatively forced upon them; and die they all did. It is an
argument of some great original nobility in the minds of these poor
people, that none disgraced themselves by useless submissions, and that
all alike, women as well as men, devoted themselves in the "high Roman
fashion" to the now expiring cause of their country. The first case
which occurred exhibits the very perfection of _nonchalance_ in
circumstances the most appalling. Samuel, a Suliote monk, of somewhat
mixed and capricious character, and at times even liable to
much suspicion amongst his countrymen, but of great name, and of
unquestionable merit in his military character, was in the act of
delivering over to authorized Turkish agents a small outpost, which had
greatly annoyed the forces of Ali, together with such military stores as
it still contained. By the treaty, Samuel was perfectly free, and
under the solemn protection of Ali; but the Turks, with the utter
shamelessness to which they had been brought by daily familiarity with
treachery the most barefaced, were openly descanting to Samuel upon the
unheard-of tortures which must be looked for at the hands of Ali, by a
soldier who had given so much trouble to that Pacha as himself. Samuel
listened coolly; he was then seated on a chest of gunpowder, and powder
was scattered about in all directions. He watched in a careless way
until he observed that all the Turks, exulting in their own damnable
perfidies, were assembled under the roof of the building. He then
coolly took the burning snuff of a candle, and threw it into a heap of
combustibles, still keeping his seat upon the chest of powder. It is
unnecessary to add that the little fort, and all whom it contained, were
blown to atoms. And with respect to Samuel in particular, no fragment of
his skeleton could ever be discovered. [Footnote: The deposition of two
Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escaped with
a dreadful scorching, sufficiently established the facts; otherwise
the whole would have been ascribed to the treachery of Ali or his son.]
After this followed as many separate tragedies as there were separate
parties of Suliotes; when all hope and all retreat were clearly cut off,
then the women led the great scene of self-immolation, by throwing their
children headlong from the summit of precipices; which done, they and
their husbands, their fathers and their sons, hand in hand, ran up
to the brink of the declivity, and followed those whom they had sent
before. In other situations, where there was a possibility of fighting
with effect, they made a long and bloody resistance, until the Turkish
cavalry, finding an opening for their operations, made all further union
impossible; upon which they all plunged into the nearest river, without
distinction of age or sex, and were swallowed up by the merciful waters.
Thus, in a few days, from the signing of that treaty, which nominally
secured to them peaceable possession of their property, and paternal
treatment from the perfidious Pacha, none remained to claim his promises
or to experience his abominable cruelties. In their native mountains of
Epirus, the name of Suliote was now blotted from the books of life, and
was heard no more in those wild sylvan haunts, where once it had filled
every echo with the breath of panic to the quailing hearts of the
Moslems. In the most "palmy" days of Suli, she never had counted more
than twenty-five hundred fighting men; and of these no considerable body
escaped, excepting the corps who hastily fought their way to Parga. From
that city they gradually transported themselves to Corfu, then occupied
by the Russians. Into the service of the Russian Czar, as the sole means
left to a perishing corps of soldiers for earning daily bread, they
naturally entered; and when Corfu afterwards passed from Russian to
English masters, it was equally inevitable that for the same urgent
purposes they should enter the military service of England. In that
service they received the usual honorable treatment, and such attention
as circumstances would allow to their national habits and prejudices.
They were placed also, we believe, under the popular command of Sir
R. Church, who, though unfortunate as a supreme leader, made himself
beloved in a lower station by all the foreigners under his authority.
These Suliotes have since then returned to Epirus and to Greece, the
peace of 1815 having, perhaps, dissolved their connection with England,
and they were even persuaded to enter the service of their arch-enemy,
Ali Pacha. Since his death, their diminished numbers, and the altered
circumstances of their situation, should naturally have led to the
extinction of their political importance. Yet we find them in 1832 still
attracting (or rather concentrating) the wrath of the Turkish Sultan,
made the object of a separate war, and valued (as in all former cases)
on the footing of a distinct and independent nation. On the winding
up of this war, we find part of them at least an object of indulgent
solicitude to the British government, and under their protection
transferred to Cephalonia. Yet again, others of their scanty clan meet
us at different points of the war in Greece; especially at the first
decisive action with Ibrahim, when, in the rescue of Costa Botzaris,
every Suliote of his blood perished on the spot; and again, in the fatal
battle of Athens (May 6, 1827), Mr. Gordon assures us that "almost
all the Suliotes were exterminated." We understand him to speak not
generally of the Suliotes, as of the total clan who bear that name,
but of those only who happened to be present at that dire catastrophe.
Still, even with this limitation, such a long succession of heavy losses
descending upon a people who never numbered above twenty-five hundred
fighting men, and who had passed through the furnace, seven times
heated, of Ali Pacha's wrath, and suffered those many and dismal
tragedies which we have just recorded, cannot but have brought them
latterly to the brink of utter extinction.