Shemsi Pasha was the Ottoman General chosen to pacify the uprising in Albania led by the Young Turk revolutionary leader Ahmed Niyazi Bey. Currently, he and his men were passing through the Macedonian city of Monastir.
In an effort to discourage recruitment for the Union and its forces. Shemsi Pasha had begun to tell Albanian Muslims that the Young Turk movement was massacring them, and on his journey to the region had picked up a small number of Albanian volunteers to aid with the two battalions of Ottoman Troops he had brought into the region.
Though the Ottoman General did not realize it, his personal bodyguard, the Albanian volunteers, and even the two battalions beneath his command were more or less in league with the Young Turks. Frankly speaking, Shemsi Pasha was a dead man walking. He just didn't know it yet.
