FREAKS OF FRA DIAVOLO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

FREAKS OF FRA DIAVOLO.

The exploits of Chakidji. the Smyrna brigand, are fairly well known. Many travellers have met him and described his romantic figure and character. The most familiar of the stories about this Turkish Robin Hood tells, says the St. James's Gazette, how he captured the lovely daughter of a Pasha and held her to ransom; how her tears and her beauty so won upon his feelings that he restored her to her father with the £500 paid for her ransom, and not only that, but added another £500 from his own purse," and killed some of'his companions who were Irving to extract £1000 from the bereft father.

It is apparently this same Chakidji or Chakirdschali. as'the Journal dos Debats prefers to call him. who has been shot by a Turkish battalion near Smyrna. There was scarcely room for two such "kings of the mountain" in that one district. "This Fra Diavolo of Anatolia." says the journal, "had hitherto issued without a. scar from all" his encounters with the military. Although there was a pile of .charges against him sufficient to have hung a whole regiment of ordinary bandits, he was adored by the humble peasants,, because he shared with them the spoils taken from the wealthy. They worshipped him a, a saint, as an archangel, as a divine protector, whom no mortal weapon could touch. He had never any difficulty in finding a place of refuge, his courage' him an heroic figure in the eves of all Turkish women, and he faced the man "who betrayed his whereabouts; on tl--j morrow his head adorned a staff plante 1 at "the entrance of his village. "Cbarkird halt took to his life prompted by, filial love. The Albanians .killed bis lather, so he killed every Albanian in the district, and then escaped to the mountains. Altogether his victims are said to number 400.

"Thanks to the support of the peasants and the immunity it afforded him, he was able to treat with the Turkish governors on an equal footing concerning the ransom of his prisoners, and sometimes be even ventured, under a disguise, into Smvrna itself.

"In 1903 an amnesty enabled him to return to civilised life, but lie soon got tired of it. and a dispute with a taxgatherer, whom he left for dead, made necessary a speedy return to the wilds. This time the Porte bestired itself, and put a price of £15.000 on his head, and his end came. Though his body was carried uncovered through the villages, it will be long before the peasants give up expecting the return of the kind, terrible, and apparently immortal Chakirdschali."