, who at his pleasure made kings and destroyed kingdoms, the
ancient eastern part of the Continent; like mummies which preserve but
the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to pieces, and getting
parcelled out amongst bold adventurers who skirmished over its ruins.
Without mentioning local revolts which produced only short-lived
struggles and trifling changes, of administration, such as that of
Djezzar Pacha, who refused to pay tribute because he thought himself
impregnable in his citadel of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of
Passevend-Oglou Pacha, who planted himself on the walls of Widdin as
defender of the Janissaries against the institution of the regular
militia decreed by Sultan Selim at Stamboul, there were wider spread
rebellions which attacked the constitution of the Turkish Empire and
diminished its extent; amongst them that of Czerni-Georges, which raised
Servia to the position of a free state; of Mahomet Ali, who made his
pachalik of Egypt into a kingdom; and finally that of the man whose,
history we are about to narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose
long resistance to the suzerain power preceded and brought about the
regeneration of Greece.

Ali's own will counted for nothing in this important movement. He
foresaw it, but without ever seeking to aid it, and was powerless to
arrest it. He was not one of those men who place their lives and
services at the disposal of any cause indiscriminately; and his sole aim
was to acquire and increase a power of which he was both the guiding
influence, and the end and object. His nature contained the seeds of
every human passion, and he devoted all his long life to their
development and gratification. This explains his whole temperament; his
actions were merely the natural outcome of his character confronted with
circumstances. Few men have understood themselves better or been on
better terms with the orbit of their existence, and as the personality of
an individual is all the more striking, in proportion as it reflects the
manners and ideas of the time and country in which he has lived, so the
figure of Ali Pacha stands out, if not one of the most brilliant, at
least one of the most singular in contemporary history.

From the middle of the eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to the
political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself to-day,
and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of all Europe.
Anarchy and disorder reigned