Alexander Ipsilanti was personally brave, but he was wanting in the qualities necessary for playing the part he had with such eager recklessness assumed. He did not know how to manage the people under his command. They had neither respect for him nor confidence.
After the unfortunate battle, when the flower of Greek youth fell, Jordaki Olimbisti advised him to retire, and himself took his place. Ipsilanti escaped to the frontiers of Austria, whence he sent his curse to the people whom he now stigmatised as mutineers, cowards, and blackguards. These cowards and blackguards mostly perished within the walls of the monastery of Seke, or on the banks of the Pruth, defending themselves desperately against a foe ten times their number.
Kirdjali belonged to the detachment commanded by George Cantacuzène, of whom might be repeated what has already been said of Ipsilanti.
On the eve of the battle near Skuliana, Cantacuzène asked permission of the Russian authorities to enter their quarters. The band was left without a commander. But Kirdjali, Sophianos, Cantagoni, and others had no need of a commander.
The battle of Skuliana seems not to have been described by any one in all its pathetic truth. Just imagine seven hundred Arnouts, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and every kind of rabble, with no notion of military art, retreating within sight of fifteen thousand Turkish cavalry. The band kept close to the banks of the Pruth, placing in front two tiny cannons, found at Jassy, in the courtyard of the Hospodar, and which had formerly been used for firing salutes on festive occasions.
The Turks would have been glad to use their cartridges, but dared not without permission from the Russian authorities; for the shots would have been sure to fly over to our banks. The commander of the Russian military post (now dead), though he had been forty years in the army, had never heard the whistle of a bullet; but he was fated to hear it now. Several bullets buzzed passed his ears. The old man got very angry and began to swear at Ohotsky, major of one of the infantry battalions. The major, not knowing what to do, ran towards the river, on the other side of which some insurgent cavalry were capering about. He shook his finger at them, on which they turned round and galloped along, with the whole Turkish army after them. The major who had shaken his finger was called Hortchevsky. I don't know what became of him. The next day, however, the Turks attacked the Arnouts. Hot daring to use cartridges or cannon balls, they resolved, contrary to their custom, to employ cold steel. The battle was fierce. The combatants slashed and stabbed one another.
The Turks were seen with lances, which, hitherto they had never possessed, and these lances were Russian. Our Nekrassoff refugees were fighting in their ranks. The hetairi, thanks to the permission of our Emperor, were allowed to cross the Pruth and seek the protection of our garrison. They began to cross the river, Cantagoni and Sophianos being the last to quit the Turkish bank; Kirdjali, wounded the day before, was already lying in Russian quarters. Sophianos was killed. Cantagoni, a very stout man, was wounded with a spear in his stomach. With one hand he raised his sword, with the other he seized the enemy's spear, pushed it deeper into himself, and by that means was able to reach his murderer with his own sword, when they fell together.
All was over. The Turks remained victorious, Moldavia was cleared of insurgents. About six hundred Arnouts were scattered over Bessarabia. Unable to obtain the means of subsistence, they still felt grateful to Russia for her protection. They led an idle though not a dissolute life. They could be seen in coffee-houses of half Turkish Bessarabia, with long pipes in their mouths sipping thick coffee out of small cups. Their figured Zouave jackets and red slippers with pointed toes were beginning to look shabby. But they still wore their tufted scull-cap on one side of the head; and daggers and pistols still protruded from beneath, their broad girdles. No one complained of them. It was impossible to imagine that these poor, peaceable fellows were the celebrated pikemen of Moldavia, the followers of the ferocious Kirdjali, and that he himself had been one of them.
The Pasha governing Jassy heard of all this, and, on the basis of treaty rights, requested the Russian authorities to deliver up the brigand. The police made inquiries, and found that Kirdjali really was at Kishineff. They captured him in the house of a runaway monk in the evening, while he was at supper, sitting in the twilight with seven comrades.