It was about this time that Niazi received a letter from the Monastir Centre of the Committee which gave him great encouragement. It thanked him and “the heroic self-sacrificing men of Resna” for the splendid work they were doing, and informed Niazi that his friend, Major Enver Bey, the clever staff officer who had performed distinguished service in Macedonia, had thrown up his commission, and at the head of a band of _fedais_ was actively preparing the population in the Tikosh district, while other officers had also organised bands, and taken to the mountains. The fortunes of the cause appeared very bright. He also learnt from this letter that General Shemshi Pasha had been publicly assassinated in Monastir on July 7. The General, after reporting progress to the Palace, had left the telegraph office and was driving in his carriage to join the two battalions with which it was his intention to surround Niazi’s band, when he was shot dead by an officer in uniform. Fifteen hundred people were surrounding the carriage at the time, but not one attempted to, or had any wish to arrest this executioner of the Committee’s will, who strolled quietly off. The ill-fated Shemshi was an energetic commander, and had he lived there would undoubtedly have been some severe fighting between such troops as would have remained loyal to him and the Committee’s bands. Shemshi would probably have led his troops to disaster, for his boldness and confidence in himself amounted to rashness, and he despised his enemy. Ambushes had been prepared for him on the roads by which he would have had to march; and Niazi, operating in a difficult mountain country, with an armed population skilled in guerilla war to stand by him, was now in a position to hold his own for an indefinite time against any forces that the Government could send against him. There can be little doubt that the death of Shemshi prevented a civil war that would have done much injury to the cause of the Committee, for it would have divided public opinion, the unanimity of which it was of such importance to secure. From the date of Shemshi’s death the impotence of the Government and the disorganisation of the army made it difficult for the Palace to plunge the country into the horrors of internecine conflict. CHAPTER XII _THE PALACE AND THE GREEKS_