Publisher's Synopsis
The beginning of the nineteenth century was a time of audacious enterprises and strangevicissitudes of fortune. Whilst Western Europe in turn submitted and struggled against asub-lieutenant who made himself an emperor, who at his pleasure made kings anddestroyed kingdoms, the ancient eastern part of the Continent; like mummies whichpreserve but the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to pieces, and getting parcelledout amongst bold adventurers who skirmished over its ruins. Without mentioning localrevolts 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 himselfimpregnable in his citadel of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of Passevend-Oglou Pacha, whoplanted himself on the walls of Widdin as defender of the Janissaries against the institutionof the regular militia decreed by Sultan Selim at Stamboul, there were wider spreadrebellions 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; ofMahomet Ali, who made his pachalik of Egypt into a kingdom; and finally that of the manwhose, history we are about to narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose long resistanceto the suzerain power preceded and brought about the regeneration of Greece
