Albanian Regiment (France) Albanian Regiment (France) The Albanian Regiment () was a military unit of the First French Empire formed in 1807 in Corfu. It was commanded by Colonel and served mainly as defence unit in the Septinsular Republic, then a "de facto" protectorate of the French Empire. It was disbanded in 1814. In 1807 per the treaties of Tilsit the Russian Empire abandoned the Ionian islands, which had been captured by admiral Fyodor Ushakov at the Siege of Corfu (1798–99). During their rule the Russians maintained two units, one composed of about 3,000 Souliot refugees ("Orthodox Greek-Albanian bilingual speakers, classified as Greek)"
Albanian nationalism that came from the Greek side and from Slavic circles. The Greeks claimed that Albanians did not constitute a people, their language was a mixture of different languages and that an Albanian member of the Orthodox church was "really a Greek", while Slav publicists claimed that Kosovar Albanians were "really" Slavs or they were "Turks" who could be "sent back" to Anatolia. Apart from Greek nationalism being viewed as a threat to Albanian nationalism, emphasizing an antiquity of the Albanian nation served new political contexts and functions during the 1880s. It also arose from the Albanian need to counter Slavic