prevailed; the deeds of the brave soldier were sung on the lyre, and the
skilful robber quoted as an example to the children by the father of the
family. Village feasts were held on the booty taken from strangers; and
the favourite dish was always a stolen sheep. Every man was esteemed in
proportion to his skill and courage, and a man’s chances of making a
good match were greatly enhanced when he acquired the reputation of
being an agile mountaineer and a good bandit.
The Albanians proudly called this anarchy liberty, and religiously
guarded a state of disorder bequeathed by their ancestors, which always
assured the first place to the most valiant.
It was amidst men and manners such as these that Ali Tepeleni was born.
He boasted that he belonged to the conquering race, and that he
descended from an ancient Anatolian family which had crossed into
Albania with the troops of Bajazet Ilderim. But it is made certain by
the learned researches of M. de Pouqueville that he sprang from a native
stock, and not an Asiatic one, as he pretended. His ancestors were
Christian Skipetars, who became Mussulmans after the Turkish invasion,
and his ancestry certainly cannot be traced farther back than the end of
the sixteenth century.
Mouktar Tepeleni, his grandfather, perished in the Turkish expedition
against Corfu, in 1716. Marshal Schullemburg, who defended the island,
having repulsed the enemy with loss, took Mouktar prisoner on Mount San
Salvador, where he was in charge of a signalling party, and with a
barbarity worthy of his adversaries, hung him without trial. It must be
admitted that the memory of this murder must have had the effect of
rendering Ali badly disposed towards Christians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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