All Epirus awaited the denoument with anxiety.
Had he been less avaricious, Ali might have enlisted all the adventurers with whom the East was swarming, and made the sultan tremble in his capital.

But the aged pacha clung passionately to his treasures.

He feared also, perhaps not unreasonably, that those by whose aid he might triumph would some day become his master.

He long deceived himself with the idea that the English, who had sold Parga to him, would never allow a Turkish fleet to enter the Ionian Sea.

Mistaken on this point, his foresight was equally at fault with regard to the cowardice of his sons.
The defection of his troops was not less fatal, and he only understood the bearing of the Greek insurrection which he himself had provoked, so far as to see that in this struggle he was merely an instrument in procuring the freedom of a country which he had too cruelly oppressed to be able to hold even an inferior rank in it.