And now the bey himself hastened to Lepanto, arrived at night in the neighborhood of the town, and perceived already from afar that the citadel in which he had concealed his darlings was in flames.
What if he had arrived too late!
With the fury of a savage wild tiger he flung himself upon the besieging Pehlivan, and in a midnight battle routed him beneath the walls of Lepanto, the Albanians fighting desperately by the side of their leader. But what was the use of it? The fortress was saved, indeed, but it was already in flames. Vely, roaring with grief and pain, flung himself on the gate, scarcely recognizing again the place he had quitted so short a time ago.
He reached the pavilion where he had concealed his wife and child. It was built entirely of wood, except the roof, which was of copper. A curious ma.s.s of molten dark-red metal gleamed among the fire-brands.
Vely rushed bellowing to the spot, and his soldiers, tearing aside the charred beams and rafters, came upon two skeletons burned to cinders.
A coral necklace lying there, which the fire had been unable to calcine, told him that these were the remains of his wife and son.
Not a word did Vely say to a living soul; but he plunged his sword into its sheath, and that same night he rode unarmed into the camp of the discomfited Pehlivan Pasha and surrendered himself to the enemy.
His army, utterly demoralized, immediately fled back to Janina, bringing the tidings to his father that Vely Bey, immediately after his victory, had surrendered of his own accord to the Sultan.
So every one abandoned Ali. His cities opened their gates to his enemies, his best friends betrayed, his two sons forsook, him. Still the third son remained. And Mukhtar Bay was the best man of the three.
He was the bravest, and he loved his father the best.
Two days later came the tidings that Mukhtar Bey with his whole fleet had surrendered before Durazzo to the Kapudan Pasha.
"The soothsayer foretold it all to me," said Ali, calmly, when the news was brought to him. "So it was written beforehand in heaven.
Nevertheless, at the last, I shall stand at the gates of the Seraglio on a silver pedestal!"
CHAPTER VI
THE LION IN THE FOX"S SKIN
Blow upon blow rain down upon thee, thou veteran warrior! Thine armies go over to the enemy, thy friends leave thee desolate, thy sons betray thee, they capture thy cities without unsheathing their swords, thine allies turn their arms against thee, and with thine own artillery, of the best French manufacture, the Suliotes from the walls of Janina shoot down thine Albanian guards!
Ah, those Suliotes! How they can fight! If only now they would raise their swords on thy behalf, how thine enemies would fall in rows! But now it is thy soldiers that fall before _them_! A brother and a sister lead them on--a youth and a girl; the youth"s name is Kleon, the girl"s name is Artemis. Every time thou dost hear their names, it is as if a sword were being plunged into thy heart, for the girl is she whom thou wouldst have sacrificed to thy l.u.s.t, and with whom thy wife didst escape; and thou never dost hear that name without hearing at the same time of the loss of thy bravest warriors!
Like the destroying angel Azrael, she fares through the din of battle, waving her white banner amidst the showers of bullets, and not one of them touches her. Before thy very eyes she plants the triumphant banner on thy bastions, and thou hast not strength of mind enough left to wish her to fall; nay, rather, when thou dost see her appear before thee, thou dost forbid thy gunners to fire upon her!
Danger approaches Janina from all sides. Thou must drain the cup, Tepelenti, to the very last drop, to the last bitter drop; and what then? Why, then thou wilt stand before the Seraglio on a silver pedestal!
One night there was a rolling of drums before the seven gates of Janina, and a bomb flying down from the heights of Lithanizza exploded in the market-place of the town. Up, up, ye Albanians! up, up, ye who have any martial blood in your veins, the enemy has seized the guns on the seven gates! Ali throws himself on his prancing steed, and in his hand is the good battle-sword which has befriended him in so many a danger. How many times has it not been the lot of Ali to lose everything but this one sword, and then to win back everything by means of it?
In a moment the army of the besieged stood in battle-array. Ali contemplated the ranks of the enemy, and a smile pa.s.sed across his face. That worthy captain, Gaskho Bey, was leading his troops to the shambles. In an hour"s time Ali will so completely have annihilated them that not even the rumor of them will remain behind. It will be a battle-field worthy of the veteran general. Every one who sees it will say--there is no escaping from him! Only let them advance, that is all! And again he was disappointed. At the first shot, before a sword had been drawn, his army surrendered to the enemy. If only they had fired once, the victory would have been his; but no, the army laid down its arms and the cunningly concealed gunners turned his own artillery against him.
It was all over! Only seven hundred Albanian hors.e.m.e.n remained with Ali, the rest either went over to the enemy or allowed themselves to be taken.
The old lion waved his sword above his head, and turning to his handful of heroes exclaimed, with a voice that rang out like a brazen trumpet, "Will ye behold Ali die?"
And with that he galloped towards the market-place of Janina, the faithful seven hundred following closely upon his heels.
The enemy poured into the town through every gate, but the market-place cut off one part of the town from the others, and the triumphant hordes came upon some very evil-looking trenches bristling with _chevaux de frise_, and the long narrow streets were swept by Ali"s last twelve cannons, ably handled by the pasha"s dumb eunuchs, who stood at their posts like the symbols of constancy on a tomb.
Ali Pasha put down his foot in the middle of Janina. Of his ten thousand hors.e.m.e.n only seven hundred remained with him. The enemy had twenty thousand men and two hundred guns, and yet all the skill of Gaskho Bey was incapable of dislodging Ali from the market-place of Janina, and although the enemy held one portion of the city, it was unable to take the other portion. If only they could have come to close quarters with him, they would have crushed him with one hand; but get at him they could not--that required skill, not strength.
At last the besiegers set the town on fire all around him, but still Ali did not budge from his place, and the wind blew the flames in the face of Gaskho Bey, who began to look about him uncomfortably when the two Suliote kinsfolk, Kleon and Artemis, at the head of their squadrons, urged him to boldly a.s.sault the market-place.
Tepelenti saw the girl with her white banner, and as her troops filled the broad s.p.a.ce at the head of the square, he himself, at first, drew near to her. Four cannons were pointed at the Suliotes, loaded with chain-shot and broken gla.s.s. Ali looked towards them with a gloomy countenance, then stuck his sword in its sheath, bade his gunners turn the guns round, harness the horses to them, and take refuge in the citadel. He would not let a single shot be fired at the Suliotes.
The moment Ali turned his back, the besieging host captured the field of battle. They followed hard upon the heels of the retreating band all the way, and when Ali reached the bridge, the Spahis and Timariots, like two swarms of bees mingled together, gained the head of the bridge at the same time, and swarmed after him with a shout of triumph. The real struggle began on the bridge itself. Man to man they fought at close quarters with their shorter weapons (they could use no other), and clubs and dirks did b.l.o.o.d.y work in the throng which poured from two different quarters, along and over the overcrowded bridge like ants coming out of a slender reed. Six hundred of the Albanians succeeded in escaping into the citadel, and then, at Ali"s command, the iron gates were clapped to, leaving the remaining hundred to perish on the bridge, where the overwhelming crowd swallowed them up.
Each single Albanian fought against ten to twenty Timariots. The bridge rang with the din of combat, and trembled beneath the weight of the heavy crowd. Then suddenly the guns on both sides of the bastions which were attached to the bridge began to roar, the supports of the captured bridge collapsed, and the bridge itself, with its load of fighting Turks and Albanians, plunged down into the deep trenches below.
Down there were sharp-pointed stakes beneath the deep waters, and those of the besiegers who remained on the bank were horrified to perceive that not one of the fallen crowd reappeared on the surface of the water, while the water itself gradually grew redder and redder, till at last it was a bright crimson, painted by the blood of the corpses below.
And opposite to them stood the fast-barred gate.
Ah--ha! "Tis not so easy to capture Tepelenti as ye thought.
Everywhere else ye have triumphed; ye have triumphed up to the very last point. And now ye _have_ come to the last point, and your victories are worth nothing, for the last point is still to be won.
The fortress is unapproachable. The bastions are built in the middle of the lake, and from their dark quadrangular cavities rows of guns (each one of them a sixty-pounder) sweep the surface of the water, so that it is impossible to draw near in boats. On the land side one hundred cannons defend the bastions, and who can surmount the triple ditch?
Ye will never capture Ali there. He has sufficient muniments of war to last him for an indefinite period, and to show them how determined he was, he caused the solitary gate of the fortress to be filled with masonry and walled up. So the fortress has no longer a gate. Even desertion is now an impossibility.
There he will remain, then, walled up as in a tomb, buried alive! The only roads from thence lead to heaven or h.e.l.l; the exit from the land side is guarded by the Suliotes; even if he could fly he could not escape from them.
The campaign is ended. The victorious Gaskho Bey proclaims himself Pasha of Janina. The whole of Epirus does homage to him, and deserts the fallen Vizier. In Stambul thanksgivings are offered up in the Ejub mosque and the church of St. Sophia for the accomplished victory, which is proclaimed, amidst the roaring of the cannons, by heralds in the great market-place; and all the newspapers of Europe amazedly report that the mighty and terrible adventurer, the ever-victorious veteran of seventy-nine, the party-leader who grew to such a height that it was doubtful whether he or the Sultan were the real ruler of Turkey, the man who had been the ally of the great Napoleon, who a few months before had sent as a present to England a precious dinner-service of pure gold worth 30,000 thaler, who had heaped up more treasures than any Eastern nabob--is suddenly crushed, annihilated, shut up in a fortress! It now only remains for him to die.
And not very long afterwards he did die. One night a couple of bold Albanian hors.e.m.e.n descended the bastions by means of a long rope, and, crossing the lake of Acheruz on a pine log, sought out Gaskho Bey in his camp that very night.
Ali Tepelenti was dead. They were the first to bear the joyful tidings to the bey. He died in his grief, in his wretchedness. Perhaps also he had taken poison. On the morrow, at three o"clock, they had arranged to bury him in the fortress! Before his death he had called together his lieutenants, and taken an oath of them that they would defend the fortress to the very last gasp of the very last man. His treasures were piled up in the red tower--more than thirty millions of piastres.
He had left it all to them. But what was the use of all this treasure to them if they could not get out of this eyrie? They would not surrender themselves, for Ali had made them swear by every Turkish saint that they would defend the fortress to the death. But the rank and file were of a different opinion; they would joyfully retire from the fortress if they were a.s.sured of a free forgiveness. Gaskho Bey had only to stretch out his hand and the fortress of Janina, the impregnable fortress with its two hundred cannons and its enormous ma.s.s of treasure, would be his.
Early in the morning the gray moonless flag, the sign of death, was waving on the red tower of Janina, and the guns overlooking the water fired three and thirty volleys, whose echo proclaimed among the mountains that Ali Tepelenti was dead. Within the fortress sounded the roll of the m.u.f.fled drums, and it was also possible to distinguish the dirges of the imams.
Gaskho Bey and his staff, from the top of the Lithanizza hills, watched the burial of the pasha. There was an observatory here from whose balcony they could look down into the court-yard, and the splendid telescopes, which the sultan had got from Vienna, rendered powerful a.s.sistance to the onlookers, who through them could observe the smallest details of what was going on in the court-yard of the fortress; one telescope in particular brought the objects so near that one could read the initial letters of the verses of the Kuran which the imams held in their hands.
In the midst of a simple coffin lay Ali Pasha. It was really he; of that there could be no doubt. Let every one look for himself! There he lay--dead, cold, motionless. His lieutenants and his servants stood around him weeping. Those who walked along by his side stooped down to kiss his hands.
In the town outside the Suliotes knew of Ali"s death, and by way of compliment they fired a bomb into the citadel. But the match of the bomb was too short, and it exploded in the air.
From the observatory they could see very well the fright of the crowd a.s.sembled in the court-yard at the whizzing of the bomb over their heads, and how every one looked anxiously at the little round white cloud there; only he who lay dead in the midst of them remained cold and tranquil. He will never again be disturbed by the roar of an exploding bomb.
The imams raised him on their shoulders, and, amidst the melancholy dirges of the mourners and the m.u.f.fled roll of the drums, they carried him away to his open tomb, for his grave was already dug.
The Moslems do not put their dead in a closed coffin; they only half board the tomb up in order that the angels of death may have room to place the corpse in a sitting posture when they come to take an account of his actions.
They really did lower Ali Tepelenti into his tomb.
The garrison fired a triple salute, the imams thrice sang their sacred verses, and then came the gravediggers and cast the earth upon the corpse. A large marble slab was standing there, and with it they pressed down the earth on the tomb, at the same time placing two turbaned headstones, one at each end of the tomb.