The rescue happily concluded, the Pasha organized a movement against
Lakus, Theriso, Keramia, strong points where the Christians had
assembled in considerable numbers and from whence they might harry the
plains of Canéa, carrying off flocks and occasionally prisoners. This
expedition consisted of twelve thousand men. While the organization was
going on, the Christians came down to the number of several hundred,
and took possession of the direct road to Theriso, and attacked the
block-house on the hill of Malaxa overlooking the plain, and three
miles from Canéa. The attack on the block-house necessarily failed from
the want of artillery, and the Commissioner succeeded in reinforcing
the garrison strongly after a sharp repulse in which the reinforcements
were driven back nearly to the plain country, as I myself was able to
perceive, watching the skirmish through a telescope. The day after,
two battalions were ordered to clear the road to Theriso, held by
the insurgents, and were assisted by a battery of artillery, taking
the Cretans in flank from the block-house of Malaxa, firing across
an impassable ravine. The attack lasted the whole afternoon, and,
watching the affair through my glass, I could perceive that neither
the direct nor the flank movement produced the least impression on the
insurgents, who maintained their position till nightfall, when the
troops were withdrawn to the plain. The next day the attack was renewed
with five thousand men and a considerable force of irregulars. The
Cretans fell back from their position of the day before to the ridges
and ravines which cut up the plateau of Keramia, where they received
the attack of the troops, and, always retreating but contesting every
inequality of ground, they fell back to the precipitous spurs of the
White or Sphakian Mountains on the further side of the plain, where
they made good their position during the remainder of the day. The
losses on either side we were never able to ascertain, though the
Cretans admitted a loss of seven killed and thirty or forty wounded,
among the former being a son of Manosouyanaki, the chief captain of
the district, who commanded the defence. The troops returned at night,
having occupied the whole day in making an advance of about three
miles, but the official report the next day declared that the movement
had been perfectly successful, without the loss of a man killed or
wounded. The expedition against Lakus, proceeding westward, turned that
position, which the Cretans abandoned without contest, and retreated
across the almost impassable ravine which separates the hill of Lakus
from the central chain of mountains, to Zurba, a village situated on a
bold bastion, which could only be attacked successfully from the higher
mountains, and which they had fortified in a rude manner as depot and
hospital. The number of Cretans at Zurba amounted to six hundred, the
attacking force as many thousand, with two batteries of artillery; but
after two days' bombardment, during part of which time I counted (Zurba
being only nine miles in a straight line from my house) thirty shots
per minute, and three assaults, the Turks were obliged to abandon the
attack and move on to Theriso. This village, an ancient stronghold of
Crete, which, with the ravine leading to it, has been the scene of many
disasters to the Turkish troops in the different insurrections, is
situated in a valley surrounded on all sides but one by abrupt hills,
and could easily have been held by five hundred well-disciplined and
resolute men against the whole Turkish army. The Cretans lacked not
resolution, but unfortunately for their discipline the news arrived
at this moment that the Panhellenion blockade-runner had landed her
first cargo of arms and supplies on the north side of the island, on
learning which nearly the whole force stationed for the protection
of Theriso went to assist in the debarkation of the cargo. Mustapha
took this moment for the attack on Theriso, which he occupied without
opposition, and evacuated with equal celerity on receiving warning of
the return of the Cretans, armed with the rifles of the Greek national
guard and reinforced by a body of Hellenic volunteers. The Cretans,
following their usual policy, however, gathered on his flanks and
harassed his retreat, for it virtually became such, until he reached
the positions attained in the previous attack by Keramia, where he
encamped to reorganize the movement onward through the Rhizo[F] against
the Apokorona.
[F] The Rhizo or "root" of the mountains is the hilly district
intervening between the higher mountains and the plains which border
the sea. Malaxa it the "root" nearest the sea.
In a campaign of seven days, he had destroyed nearly a score of
villages, most of them undefended; had utterly destroyed all hope of
compromise or conciliation; and, though he had penetrated the strongest
outposts of the insurgents, had attained no other result than the
temporary possession of the position of Lakus, the village being a
mass of ruins, as a base of operations in case of a new attack on
Theriso or an expedition against Omalo, amid the western peaks of
the White Mountains. He had anticipated great moral effects from his
mountain artillery, but the Cretans learned to despise it. With their
old-fashioned firearms, they had managed to harass the Turkish troops
to such an extent that they looked to the days when they should fight
with rifles with enthusiasm and resolution. Then every burned village
left an additional number of men who, having lost all their property,
had no interest in peace; so that every advantage he had gained had
only increased the force opposed to him. I urged this consideration as
strongly as possible on the Commissioner in several visits, which was
all the better reason in his mind to make him insist on his policy. He
had expected that his name would induce immediate submission, or, at
least, that in a single battle he would make so decided an impression
that the favorable terms he was then prepared to offer would be at once
accepted, but, till the military power of the Cretans was completely
broken, the Porte was determined to make no concessions of any kind.
The insurgents, on the other hand, were already under the influence
of Hellenic enthusiasts, and receiving munitions of all kinds by the
blockade-runners, and the drift of their counsels was toward war. It
was clear now that the Porte had made a most disastrous blunder, in
fact an unbroken series of blunders in all its measures. It should
not have entertained the project of transference in the beginning;
in the second place, having decided on the transfer, it should have
carried it out logically, and not by a bastard popular vote enforced
by the presence of an Egyptian army; and finally, having decided to
send the Commissioner, it should have sent him at once, instead of
keeping him and the answer to the petition waiting for three months.
Its whole course was irritating and unjust. It had had no excuse for
the employment of force, and was warned by the consular corps, without
exception, of the previous dishonest, tyrannical, and impolitic conduct
of Ismael Pasha. If it had a consistent policy in the whole matter,
it could only have been to provoke an insurrection in Crete when all
the other provinces were unable to rise, and so disarm by a crushing
suppression the enemy most dreaded of all its subject provinces.
The finale of the Theriso campaign was marked by the appearance of
the great _Deus ex machinâ_ of the insurrection, the Russian frigate
_Grand Admiral_, and the commencement of the real moral intervention
of Russia in the already complicated affair. The Russian commander,
Boutakoff, was too fit a selection for the rôle which events compelled
(or permitted) him to play to have been intentionally chosen by any
government. In the three years subsequent to his arrival, I saw
him often, and knew as much of his opinions and feelings as it is
permitted an outsider to know of a Russian official, and both his acts
and language have always confirmed my impression that the Russian
Government did not influence the turn events took, and anticipated only
a speedy and disastrous end to the insurrection, while entertaining
the most cordial sympathy and good wishes for a more prosperous end
than any sane man would have expected. In fact, with the exception of
the boldest of the insurgents and some harebrained Greeks, no one in
the island anticipated anything but ruin from the movement. Captain
Boutakoff was a devout and liberal Christian, a type of all that is
most chivalric, patriotic, and compassionate in manhood, large-brained,
prudent, and, if zealous enough to merit all the honors then and
since conferred on him by his sovereign, he was never capable of any
patriotic vice worse than the most profound reticence. To know him as I
knew him was to conceive a better opinion of his country. I am morally
certain that Boutakoff never said or did anything to encourage in any
way the hopes of the Cretans, or lead them to indulge in dreams of
European intervention in their favor. His position was that of a humane
observer, and with all the sympathy which existed between him and
myself, and the mutual confidence in our personal intercourse, I could
find in his language and acts no trace of _arrière-pensée_ in favor of
any other interest than the real good of the Cretans. My own strong
sympathy with the unhappy islanders made me the ally and co-operator
with whoever gave them any help, and placed me, I have good reason to
believe, high in the confidence of the Russian authorities in Crete and
Constantinople; and, with no political interest in the matter other
than Cretan, I am free to confess that, while I believed Russian policy
in Crete to be the good of Crete, I was willing to aid in carrying
out any plans that policy might point out. If, then, these plans had
pointed out the secret encouragement of the insurrection as desirable,
I am certain that I should have been influenced in that direction. It
will be seen before I have finished that I am no apologist for the
Russian conduct of this affair when it had become a matter of European
interest and action; but I must do the Russian Government the justice
to declare that it is in no wise responsible for the disaster and
carnage which the war brought on, and that it was not until several
months that it openly gave the revolt moral encouragement (as a means
of weakening the Turkish empire?)
The Imperial Commissioner having concentrated and reorganized his
troops at Bondapoulo, a village of the plain of Keramia, transferred
his base of operations to Kalyves, on the sea and at the mouth of
the river which drains the Apokorona, and as soon as the change was
effected commenced his march toward Krapi, the main pass of Sphakia.
The troops were first opposed at Stylos, the first of the natural
positions of which the country affords so many, and were repulsed
in a first attack. The vanguard were of Egyptians, who were in this
campaign systematically put foremost and encouraged in every brutality
and ferocity, in the hope apparently of making them good troops, their
natural temper being unfavorable to that end. Though the result of this
treatment certainly did show that nobody is so brutal and devilish
as a coward, and the fellahs eminently distinguished themselves in
devastation and killing of defenceless people, they never succeeded
in exciting any other feeling than hatred and contempt in the Cretan.
At Stylos, as in other places, they were beaten with ease, and it was
only on the following day, when the Cretan positions were flanked and
the irregulars sent forward, that the insurgents evacuated their strong
positions. In this affair the Egyptian general, Ismael Pasha, urging
his troops to retrieve their disgrace at Vrysis, was mortally wounded.
The troops attacked the position of Campos, which was abandoned by
all combatants, the remaining inhabitants being put to death, and
the insurgents relinquished all the country as far as Vafé to the
Turks, who ravaged it in the most thorough manner, with the extreme
of barbarity and atrocity to all the Christian inhabitants who were
unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. In the neighborhood
of Kephalá there are numerous grottoes, partly natural and partly
excavated, as places of refuge from immemorial times, some of them
celebrated in the traditions of the island for the sieges they had
maintained. Into these many of the Christians retreated, taking with
them their effects. In one of these about two hundred villagers,
mostly old men, women, and children, had taken refuge, and, refusing
to surrender, were stifled in the cave.[G] A woman came, one day,
to my house to obtain protection and charity, having been brought a
prisoner to Canéa, and narrated to me the circumstances of her capture.
She was, she told me, on her way from her village to a larger one in
the Apokorona to purchase bread, and was in the company of eleven
men, all Christians and unarmed, going with the same intention. They
were stopped in the road by a party of Seliniote irregulars, who
deliberately beheaded the men and piled their heads in the path,
taking her with them to headquarters to extort from her information
as to the places of concealment of her compatriots. Giving no desired
indications, she was about to be beheaded, when two Egyptians whom she
had sheltered and fed after the defeat of Vrysis recognized her, and,
stating her kindness to the Pasha, she was released and sent to Canéa.
[G] Certain European journals, discrediting this atrocity, and,
strangely enough, on the ground that it had really happened in the
previous great revolution, affected to consider all the atrocities as
fictitious. The incident repeats itself in Cretan history, and I had
information from European officers of the Turkish troops of several
cases in this war committed under their personal observation.
The consequence of this severity was not what Mustapha Pasha expected
it to be, to intimidate the Cretans into submission, but to drive them
into the high mountains, where hundreds perished from hunger and cold.
As children as well as adults of both sexes were welcome game to the
fanaticism called out by the first taste of Christian blood, and no
partial submission was accepted, the cruelty being the means to an end
quite characteristic of Turkish policy and the nature of the Albanian,
who years before had earned the title of the "butcher of Crete"; and
as the submitted had no power to induce the submission of the more
resolute insurgents, there was no possible safety to any portion of
the population except in the mountains, where a large proportion of
the weakest died, leaving the men unencumbered for vengeance. Every
step of the Turkish authorities was a blunder. Submission being useless
unless complete, and complete submission out of the power of any one
to enforce, there remained only complete insurrection, and this the
commissioner succeeded in exciting, with a renewal of all the old
religious animosity, and a desperation natural to men to whom surrender
brought no protection, and submission no guarantee.