[172] [The Suliotes, after a protracted and often successful resistance, were finally reduced by Ali, in December, 1803. They are adjured to forget their natural desire for vengeance, and to unite with the Albanians against their common foe, the Russians.] [fo] {147} _Shall win the young minions_----.--[MS. D.] [fp] ----_the maid and the youth_.--[MS.] [fq] _Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe_.--[MS. D. erased.] [173] {148} [So, too, at Salakhora (October 1): "One of the songs was on the taking of Prevesa, an exploit of which the Albanians are vastly proud; and there was scarcely one of them in which the name of Ali Pasha was not roared out and dwelt upon with peculiar energy."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 29. Prevesa, which, with other Venetian possessions, had fallen to the French in 1797, was taken in the Sultan's name by Ali, in October, 1798. The troops in the garrison (300 French, 460 Greeks) encountered and were overwhelmed by 5000 Albanians, on the plain of Nicopolis. The victors entered and sacked the town.] [174] [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.] [175] Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians. [176] Infidel. [177] The insignia of a Pacha. [178] {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M. Darmesteter, "fou" ["properly madmen" (D'Herbelot)], a title bestowed on Turkish warriors _honoris causû_. Byron suggests "forlorn hope" as an equivalent; but there is a wide difference between the blood-drunkenness of the Turk and the "foolishness" of British chivalry.] [179] Sword-bearer. [fr] _Tambourgi! thy tocsin_----.--[MS. D. erased] [180] [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (_Don Juan_, Canto III.)-- "Earth! render back from out thy heart A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylæ!" The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"] [fs] {150} _A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned_.--[MS. erased.] [ft] ----_fair Liberty_.--[MS. erased, D.] [181] {151} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, vi. lines 39-46.] [182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia, about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish empire.]