The real agitation began when the Assembly finally adjourned to
Boutzounaria, a tiny village at the edge of the plain of Canéa. Three
thousand men were assembled on a little plateau overlooking the plain,
and about three miles from the city. Here gushes out of the living rock
the stream which supplies the city with water, by an aqueduct which
dates from the Hellenic times. Metellus cut it when he laid siege to
Cydonia, and the Cretans in the war of Greek independence repeated the
offence, and though, in the latter case, the siege was raised by a
fleet and army coming to the assistance of the Turks, the sufferings
produced by cutting off the water were very great.
From here the people had a safe retreat into their fastnesses above,
and had nothing to fear from the Turkish forces. They came unarmed, but
kept patrols at night on all the roads leading from the city to guard
against surprise. By day they could observe the whole plain from Suda
to Platania; and here, looking down on the orange groves of Murnies and
Perivoglia, the wide expanse of olive orchards, and the fields where
thousands of sheep, the property of Mussulmans mainly, feed while the
herbage is green with the spring rains, they passed the time much after
the old Greek fashion, games of agility and strength occupying the
time of the young, while the old discussed the affairs of state; but
no disorder occurred during the session of the Assembly proper. Sheep
were roasted whole, the messengers came and went, deputations from
the further districts came in slowly, others whose affairs demanded
their presence at home went away, there being none of those professed
politicians who live by attending conventions, and making the public
harm their good, so that there could be no vicarious expression of
opinion.
Finally, all was done, the _ne plus ultra_ of democracy had said its
say, and signed its name for the indignant regards of the most despotic
of sovereigns. A solemn deputation of gray-headed captains of villages,
the executive committee, brought to each of the consuls a copy of the
petition, and consigned the original to the Governor for transmission
to Constantinople. This functionary had been growing uneasy about the
apparent unanimity and deliberateness of the Assembly, and, having cast
his lead occasionally and found the water deeper than he thought, began
to be anxious to see the Assembly dispersed. The moral force of the
recognition by the consular corps of the peaceful and legal character
of the meeting had dissuaded him from interrupting its labors; but,
the petition once delivered, he peremptorily ordered the Cretans to
go home and wait the answer, intending to repeat the trick he had so
successfully tried before, namely, arresting the chiefs and calling a
counter-assembly; and, further ordering the committee to disperse, it
refused.
This was the position into which the Pasha had desired to draw the
Cretans. Their Assembly was perfectly legal, they having a firman which
permitted them to meet unarmed, the Porte having long before seen the
impolicy of depriving them of a custom which was of so great antiquity
and reverence; but the Pasha hoped to give an illegal color to their
refusal to obey his order, and, according to his habit of making his
will the supreme law, determined to make use of their persistence in
their rights to precipitate the collision which he knew they were
unprepared for; and, having once excited armed resistance, even against
an illegal use of authority, he confidently counted on the support
not only of his own government, but of the consuls. To this end, he
called a conference of the consular corps, at which, having stated the
measures he had taken, he declared his intention to use the military
force at his disposal to disperse the Assembly. In this conference, a
division was shown as to the advisability of using force. The French
consul (a Levantine[C] of the lowest order, a bastard of one of the De
Lesseps family by a Jewish adventuress, and an intense hater of the
Greeks ever since the society of Syra, where he was once _Chancelier de
Consulat_, refused to recognize his mistress, a retired saltimbanque
from a café chantant of the Champs Elysées) supported the Pasha in
everything, and even urged him to greater arbitrariness. The English
consul, Mr. Dickson, a man of the most humane character and entire
honesty, had an unfortunate weakness before constituted authorities,
and the greatest possible respect for the Turks, coupled with an
Englishman's innate dislike for a Greek. He had his orders, moreover,
to co-operate with his French colleague, and, with his good faith and
unsuspecting nature, he was no match for his intriguing and mendacious
yoke-fellow, who led him wherever he wished. It was like coupling a
faithful mastiff to a dirty bazaar dog. These two supported the Pasha
from very different motives, but with the same result. All the others
opposed any violence as inexpedient and unjustifiable, being entirely
assured of the peaceful intentions of the committee. Ismael opened
the discussion by rehearsing his labors with the Assembly to induce
them to submit and disperse, and declared that, having exhausted
persuasion, he should employ force if the committee did not at once
dissolve. Mr. Dickson said that his Excellency deserved great credit
for his moderation, and hoped that he would continue to show the same
quality, adding that thus far the Assembly had behaved in a strictly
legal manner, being convoked in accordance with their privileges, but
admitted that, if they refused to disperse on order, they rendered
themselves amenable to force. M. Derché, the French consul, urged their
immediate violent dispersal, but the others all declared their opinion
that, the Assembly having met for a legal purpose, and having so far
comported themselves in an entirely unoffensive manner and showed no
intention of going beyond the object for which they had met, the Pasha
had no pretext for the employment of force. Mr. Colucci, the Italian
consul, then stated that he had received information that the committee
had expressed their willingness to disperse on receiving the assurance
that the signers of the petition should not be persecuted by the Pasha,
and that he considered that the Governor owed this assurance, since
he and all others admitted that the Assembly and committee had so far
committed no illegal act. His Excellency dodged the suggestion, and,
rising, was about to dismiss the conference, when, seeing that all
was on the point of being won to the arbitrary course of the Pasha, I
begged to offer my protest against any implied endorsement on my part
of the proposed violence, as, until the assurance of immunity had been
given the Cretans, the peaceful expedients for assuring tranquillity
had not been exhausted, or need for employment of force arisen. The
Italian, Russian, and other consuls followed me in protest. The Pasha,
disconcerted, sat down again, and the discussion was renewed. His
Excellency hesitated, but Derché came to his relief with reasons for
his not according the immunity asked, saying that the Pasha had no
right to compromise the intentions of his government. I replied that
there was no question of Constantinople in the matter. The Cretans had
confidence in the good-will of the Sultan, but not in his Excellency.
Mr. Dickson was of opinion that the assurance was already implied in
the Pasha's promise to support the petition with the Porte, and that,
as the Assembly had committed no act to deserve persecution, it could
not be supposed that they would be subjected to it. He therefore
regarded the assurance as uncalled for. Six consuls were against the
Pasha, and two with him, but he took M. Derché's clue, and stood firm
on the ground which that led him to, and so the conference ended.
[C] Levantine is a term applied to people of foreign ancestry born in
Turkey and brought up there. With few exceptions, they are the most
corrupt, venal, and morally degraded class of the population of the
Turkish empire. They furnish all the legation and consular dragomans,
a class whose corruptibility has passed into a maxim.
The Pasha had, however, failed in getting the moral support of the
consular corps to the blow which he had intended to strike, and dared
not send the troops out. He made a great blunder in calling the
conference, as the consuls had no right of intervention in the affair,
but, like all over-cunning people, he caught himself in the trap he
set for us. Having invited us not really to get our opinion, though he
asked it, but to get our endorsement to his policy, he not only failed
in this, but got a rebuff which made the experiment more hazardous than
if he had said nothing. It had another bad effect for him in making
public the difference between his Excellency and the consular corps,
and, as the latter is believed in Turkish countries to be omnipotent,
the popular feeling was immensely strengthened.[D] The irritation of
the Pasha against the consular corps was unbounded, especially against
Colucci and myself; indeed, I may say, peculiarly against myself as an
old enemy and the spokesman of the opposition.
[D] The real reason for the insistence of the committee on the promise
of immunity was this: A daughter of one of the Pasha's council, his
_âme damnée_, a Cretan, by the name of Petrides, finding one day a
list of persons designated for exile and the bagnio, in which was
the name of her lover, a young Cretan, stole the document and gave
it to him. It contained the names of all the prominent chiefs of the
petition movement, and many in the city who were only known for their
liberal opinions.
Popular rumor magnified the difference, and myths as wild as those
of the day of Minos made the tour of the island; one which I saw in
a Greek newspaper represented me as rising in the conference and
declaring that, if the Pasha sent troops against the committee, I would
go and put myself in front of them, and then we should see if the
troops dared fire!
Meanwhile, all the friendly consuls united in urging the dissolution
of the committee, and leaving the protection of individuals to the
governments of the protecting powers, as the only means of averting
what was seen to be a disastrous affair for the Cretans. That this
was the true policy events have shown. The Cretans were not prepared
to fight at that time, their friends on the Continent were no more
prepared to assist them, and there was no supply of powder or arms in
the island, nothing but old tufeks, trophies of the war of 1821-30;
the whole Turkish empire was at peace, and its available force ready
to be poured on the island. The committee wavered and half-decided to
disperse, they offered to put themselves as a committee into the hands
of the Pasha, and await in his palace, or other quarters assigned
them, the reply to the petition. This was refused, and the critical
question hung by a hair. The influence of two persons prevailed
over the committee against that of the consuls--one a priest called
Parthenius Kelaïdes, there being two Parthenii in the committee; the
other a Greek physician, temporarily in the island, known by the
two names of Joannides and Pappadakis, long resident in England, an
ultra-radical, and one of those who, ultra-demagogical in all their
tendencies, are really honest in their intentions, and, wishing to do
good, only succeed in doing the greater evil. In Crete, Dr. Joannides
is generally considered as the immediate cause of the disastrous turn
events took, and, as soon as the insurrection took active form, he
abandoned it to its manifest destiny, and has never been heard of since
in the island. It has always been a question if the Russian consul was
sincere in his union with his colleagues of the majority, it being
thought by some that in his hostility, mainly personal, to the French
consul, he secretly took ground against the unconditional submission,
that the Pasha and M. Derché might not carry the day. Be this as it
may, I am confident that with regard to fighting he was in accord
with his colleagues, and considered that actual insurrection should
be avoided, and that the instructions of the government were to this
effect. But he was a man of very unsound judgment, and so passionate
and personal in his way of seeing men and matters that I have always
been of the opinion that, from mere personal feeling against Derché, he
secretly strengthened Parthenius, over whom his influence was supreme,
in his obstinacy, and so prevented the dispersal of the committee,
which finally withdrew to the mountains to be secure from a _coup de
main_. Before doing so, however, they offered to allow two or more
battalions of troops to guard them at Boutzounaria, a proposition which
the Pasha refused peremptorily, knowing that, so long as the committee
remained a constituted body, the Cretans would respect its authority,
but that, if they dissolved and dispersed, they would lose all right to
act, or control over the people. So ingrained is the Cretan's regard
for the law of his ancient tradition that, while the whole population
would have risen at once at the call of the committee as long as it was
constituted, not one of the districts would have regarded an appeal
made by the individual members when they had ceased to represent in
due form the original Assembly. The question at issue was not, then, a
trivial one, and in the reply to it lay the decision of peace or war.