Another colorful personality of the period is Ali Pasha, the Albanian tyrant who in 1787 rules Epirus for the Ottomans from the town of Ioannina. His dream was to break away from the Ottoman Empire and create his own independent state in Ipirus, with the collaboration of Napoleon. But In 1798 he forms an alliance with the British and takes Preveza from the French. He is given Parga by the British who see in Ali Pashas a thorn in the side of the Ottomans. Even Lord Byron visits, as described in his poem Childe Harold, calling Ali Pasha a generous and cultured man and the 'Muslim Bonaparte'. The Ottomans find him useful too but when he orders the assasination of an opponent in Constantinople, Sultan Mahmud II has had enough and sends troops to depose him. 20,000 Turkish troops are diverted from fighting the rebelious Greeks in the Peloponessos finally forcing him to surrender after agreeing to pardon him. While waiting in the Pantelimon Monastery for his pardon to be read, he is executed, his head displayed for 3 days in Ioanina and then sent to Constantinople where it is displayed there as well. His body is buried in Ioannina, his head in Constantinople. Though a sick and perverted individual who murdered and tortured who he pleased, he was a ruthless and clever leader and played an important part in the independence of Greece from the Ottomans by engaging the Turkish troops when they might have been fighting the Greeks.