CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

IN EIGHT VOLUMES



ALI PACHA




CHAPTER I

The beginning of the nineteenth century was a time of audacious
enterprises and strange vicissitudes of fortune. Whilst Western Europe
in turn submitted and struggled against a sub-lieutenant who made
himself an emperor, who at his pleasure made kings and destroyed
kingdoms, the ancient eastern part of the Continent, like mummies which
preserve but the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to pieces,
and getting parcelled out amongst bold adventurers who skirmished
over its ruins. Without mentioning local revolts which produced only
short-lived struggles and trifling changes of administration, such as
that of Djezzar Pacha, who refused to pay tribute because he thought
himself impregnable in his citadel of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of
Passevend-Oglou Pacha, who planted himself on the walls of Widdin as
defender of the Janissaries against the institution of the regular
militia decreed by Sultan Selim at Stamboul, there were wider spread
rebellions which attacked the constitution of the Turkish Empire and