Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
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,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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