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Updated: May 13, 2025
Ali Pacha invited the Lord High Commissioner of Great Britain, Sir Thomas Maitland, to a conference at Prevesa, and complained of the exorbitant price of 1,500,000, at which the commissioners had estimated Parga and its territory, including private property and church furniture. It had been hoped that Ali's avarice would hesitate at this high price, but he was not so easily discouraged.
It is strange that in this, the supreme victory of the Cross over the Crescent on the sea, a Doria should have tarnished his reputation so foully, even as his great-uncle Andrea had tarnished his in the battle of Prevesa. It seems as if in both, as Genoese, the hatred of Venice extinguished every other consideration of loyalty to Christendom.
The stage was set for another decisive battle on the scene of Actium. The town of Prevesa stood on the site of Octavius's camp, and again East and West faced each other for the mastery of the sea. With the vastly greater strength of the Christian fleet, and the known skill of its leader, everything pointed to an overwhelming victory for the Cross.
Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that ill-fated city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place with his overwhelming cavalry, before they could agree upon the mode of defence, and long before any mode could have been tolerably matured.
He had fortified and supplied with munitions of war Ochrida, Avlone, Cannia, Berat, Cleisoura, Premiti, the port of Panormus, Santi-Quaranta, Buthrotum, Delvino, Argyro-Castron, Tepelen, Parga, Prevesa, Sderli, Paramythia, Arta, the post of the Five Wells, Janina and its castles.
As a set-off to this proposal, which involved the loss of Jannina and Prevesa for Greece, they awarded to the Hellenes some districts north of the Salammaria which helped partially to screen the town of Larissa from the danger of Turkish inroads . To this arrangement Moslems and Christians sullenly assented.
After much conversation, V. Fitzgerald agreeing with me and the others saying nothing, it was determined to insist upon the freedom of communication with Candia under the protocol, to insist upon the Greeks withdrawing from their advanced position near Prevesa under the protocol, and to insist likewise upon the withdrawing of the French troops from the Morea, according to the engagement.
It is true that treachery had given him his opportunity, but once that was obtained the rest he had done for himself: the stealthy advance by sea, the midnight march to the exact spot on the walls where he was awaited by Ibrahim Amburac, the marshalling of his five hundred for the conflict, and the actual conduct of the fight itself, were all to the credit of this apt pupil of the great Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, As warriors his followers were worthy of their leader: defeated the corsairs frequently were, but, in the combats in which they engaged, they were frequently, as we have seen in the course of this story, largely dependent upon auxiliaries in whom no trust could be placed; and at Prevesa, at the siege of Malta, and later on at the battle of Lepanto, the spot on which they fought, were it on the land or on the sea, was ever the one which formed the nucleus of resistance.
Great as was the one, it cannot be said that he was greater than the other; but when the supreme arbitrament was within the grasp of both, as it was at the naval battle of Prevesa, neither the Christian admiral nor the Moslem corsair would reach out his hand and grasp the nettle of his fate.
The way in which this catastrophe operated upon Ali's final views was obvious to everybody in that neighborhood. Parga, on the sea-coast, was an indispensable ally to Suli; now, Prevesa stood in the same relation to Parga, as an almost indispensable ally, that Parga occupied towards Suli.
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