pen battle with a warlike
population, and preferring a slower and safer way to a short and
dangerous one, began by pillaging the villages and farms belonging to his
most powerful opponents. His tactics succeeded, and the very persons who
had been foremost in vowing hatred to the son of Kamco and who had sworn
most loudly that they would die rather than submit to the tyrant, seeing
their property daily ravaged, and impending ruin if hostilities
continued, applied themselves to procure peace. Messengers were sent
secretly to Ali, offering to admit him into Janina if he would undertake
to respect the lives and property of his new allies. Ali promised
whatever they asked, and entered the town by night. His first proceeding
was to appear before the cadi, whom he compelled to register and proclaim
his firmans of investiture.

In the same year in which he arrived at this dignity, really the desire
and object of Ali's whole life, occurred also the death of the Sultan
Abdul Hamid, whose two sons, Mustapha and Mahmoud, were confined in the
Old Seraglio. This change of rulers, however, made no difference to Ali;
the peaceful Selim, exchanging the prison to which his nephews were now
relegated, for the throne of their father, confirmed the Pacha of Janina
in the titles, offices, and privileges which had been conferred on him.

Established in his position by this double investiture, Ali applied
himself to the definite settlement of his claims. He was now fifty years
of age, and was at the height of his intellectual development: experience
had been his teacher, and the lesson of no single event had been lost
upon him. An uncultivated but just and penetrating mind enabled him to
comprehend facts, analyse causes, and anticipate results; and as his
heart never interfered with the deductions of his rough intelligence, he
had by a sort of logical sequence formulated an inflexible plan of
action. This man, wholly ignorant, not only of the ideas of history but
also of the great names of Europe, had succeeded in divining, and as a
natural consequence of his active and practical character, in also
realising Macchiavelli, as is amply shown in the expansion of his
greatness and the exercise of his power. Without faith in God, despising
men, loving and thinking only of himself, distrusting all around him,
audacious in design, immovable in resolution, inexorable in execution,
merciless in vengeance, by turns insolent, humble, violent, or