CHAPTER XIII
A BLOODLESS VICTORY

AND now the hour was drawing near when Niazi was to be called upon to do the deed that would bring the insurrection to a head and send the Despotism tumbling down like a house of cards. Leaving Istarova on July 17, Niazi and his band of fedais set out for Resna. After a fatiguing march across the mountains (in the course of which the provisional administration was introduced into several friendly Moslem and Christian villages, and some détours had to be made in order to avoid collision with a battalion of chasseurs, whose officers and men, being strangers to the country and not members of the Committee, were likely to be dangerous) the band entered Labcha, the first village, it will be remembered, that Niazi had visited and organised on the day of his setting out from Resna. Here, as in Istarova, the fedais were among staunch friends and were enabled to sleep in security; there was no necessity for sending out patrols or for posting sentries, for these duties were performed by the villagers themselves, who were proud to guard the saviours of the nation as they rested. The village was also protected by a detachment of troops which, like many another little garrison in the three Vilayets, had mutinied, its officers and men becoming the sworn associates of the Committee.

On the following day, July 19, there was a great gathering of people in Labcha, wild hillmen, shepherds, deserters from the army, and others, who had come in to see Niazi and his band and to declare their readiness to take up arms for the Committee. Niazi addressed the people, told them how successful had been the mission of his own and of the other bands, and assured them that the sand had all but run out of the glass, and the day was very near when the Despotism would fall and liberty prevail. That glad day was indeed nearer than Niazi himself imagined; for that very evening there came a messenger into the village with a letter for Niazi from the Ochrida Centre of the Committee of Union and Progress. In this letter the Committee informed him that very important and grave intelligence had been received from Monastir, and ordered him to set out at once for Ochrida. He was to leave his band outside that town and come in alone to confer with the Committee and receive his instructions.

So soon as Niazi had read this letter he collected his men and made a forced march throughout the night, for all were eager to learn the nature of the duty which they were to be called upon to perform. Before dawn—July 20—the outskirts of Ochrida were reached, and Niazi, leaving his band, entered the town and went to the house of his brother, where the members of the Committee came to meet him. It was then explained to him that he and Eyoub Bey were to collect two thousand men from Ochrida and Resna, form them into two bands, and march on Monastir without delay. The detailed instructions as to what he was to do would be delivered to him before he reached that town.

As Niazi learnt later, the Committee of Union and Progress had decided that the time had arrived for it to make its great coup. The plan was simultaneously to proclaim the Constitution at Monastir and send an ultimatum to the Sultan, who would have to choose between constitutional government, abdication, and a bloody civil war. In the first place it was necessary for the Committee to secure the possession of Monastir, the head-quarters of the Government’s military strength in Macedonia, where General Osman Pasha, an able man who exercised a greater moral influence over his troops than did his predecessor, Shemshi Pasha, was still in command. The bulk of the troops in Monastir were adherents of the Committee, but there were also many ready to obey the orders of the General. It was realised that if Osman Pasha could be got out of the way the supporters of the Government would be demoralised, and the Committee might then be able to establish its authority without bloodshed. The killing of each other by Turkey’s Moslem soldiers was a calamity to be avoided. It was therefore decided to entrust to Niazi and Eyoub Beys the special duty of removing Osman Pasha from Monastir as suddenly and quietly as possible, so as to allow no time for the organisation of opposition.

To collect the necessary two thousand men was no difficult matter. In the first place it was decided to employ the very troops who had been the first to pursue Niazi and his band after the raising of the standard of revolt at Resna. This was a battalion of redifs of the Ochrida district which had been disbanded after its fruitless chase of the revolutionary leader, because the authorities rightly suspected that most of the men were adherents of the Committee of Union and Progress. So messengers were sent to the neighbouring villages to summon these disbanded soldiers—who had not yet given up their arms to the Government—to assemble at an appointed place outside Ochrida. Niazi with his band marched into his own country to collect the men of Resna, Persepe, and Labcha. Throughout the night of the 20th and throughout the following day he traversed the mountainous countryside, his band being ever increased by the accession of fresh volunteers who came to him generally in threes and fours, but occasionally in bodies of from forty to fifty men. Whenever the band passed through a village it was received with extraordinary enthusiasm, and the villagers brought presents of bread and cheese until each man was provided with two days’ rations, the supply which Niazi deemed to be necessary.

In the morning of July 21 Eyoub Effendi, with his Ochrida band of disbanded redifs and others, a thousand men in all, joined Niazi’s band at Labcha, and now the column formed by the two united bands set off in the direction of Monastir. After dark, as they were approaching their appointed night’s halting place, an incident occurred which is interesting as illustrating the manners and customs of the wild Albanian hillmen. The stillness of the night was suddenly broken by the sound of rifle-fire on the mountainside above the road; so Niazi sent out scouts to ascertain what was happening. It turned out that the Faragas and the Quapris, between which two tribes there had existed for ages a deadly blood feud, had each sent a band of about one hundred men to join Eyoub Bey’s battalion; these two bands met in the mountain, and what happened may be best described in Niazi’s own words: “It was indeed a sight worth witnessing—this meeting of the men of these two tribes, between whom there had been so intense an enmity, but who were now united, as with one heart, ready to die together for the sake of the same ideal. These tribesmen, who for two centuries had hated to see each other’s faces or to hear each other’s voices, and who had ever pursued each other with rifle-shots, had now, on meeting on the hillside, saluted each other with rifle-shots, and were eager, standing together as comrades, to use rifle-shots against the traitors and enemies of the fatherland.”

The column passed the night in the village of Gauchar, where many volunteers from the surrounding country joined the battalions of Niazi and Eyoub, bringing the force up to the strength of over two thousand men. The people gathered from the countryside to crowd the village streets throughout the night to honour and entertain the fedais with simple refreshments. All these people were prepared to risk everything in the civil war, the immediate outbreak of which they considered as inevitable.