OMAR PASHA

OMAR PASHA (1806-1871), general in the Turkish army, was born an Austrian, his proper name Michael Lattas, and educated at the military school of Thurn; guilty of a breach of discipline, he ran away to Bosnia, turned Mohammedan, and henceforth threw in his lot with the Turks; he became writing-master to the Ottoman heir, Abdul-Medjid, and on the succession of the latter in 1839 was made a colonel; he was military governor of Lebanon in 1842, won distinction in suppressing rebellions in Albania, Bosnia, and Kurdistan, but his chief services were rendered in the Russian War; he successfully defended Kalafat in 1853, entered Bucharest in 1854, and defeated 40,000 Russians next year at Eupatoria in the Crimea; his capture of Cetinje, Montenegro, in 1862 was a difficult feat.