No resistance was after this offered until Vafé was reached. Here about
two hundred Greek volunteers and a thousand Cretans, under the command
of Hadji Mikhali, of Lakus, and Costa Veloudaki, of Sphakia, were
concentrated. The Cretan chiefs were opposed to any regular fighting,
and counselled a retreat into the ravines, where they could entangle
the troops and attack them without serious risk to themselves, while
a pitched fight was not only not in the way of the islanders, but, if
lost, as they considered it must be in view of the overpowering Turkish
forces, it would discourage the movement greatly. Zimbrakaki, the
commander of the volunteers, with the most of his men, wished not to
abandon so strong a position, at which they had, moreover, constructed
a strong redoubt, without fighting, and it was decided to make a stand.
The majority of the Cretans, however, recognizing no authority but that
of their captains, withdrew before the fight, which, had Mustapha been
a commander careful of the lives of his troops, might have been decided
by flanking movements without firing a shot, as his army was composed
of ten thousand regulars and fully three thousand irregulars, Albanian
and Cretan, while the Christians were hardly five hundred. No forces
the committee could have assembled would have made the stand a prudent
or justifiable one under the circumstances, and its result was what the
Cretan chiefs had foreseen. Mustapha, as usual, opened with a direct
assault of Egyptians, which was repulsed with heavy loss; but, in the
meantime, a body of Albanians were engaged in climbing the heights
which protected the flanks of the position, and so nearly succeeded in
surprising the Greeks that they only saved themselves by precipitate
flight. A few gallant fellows, indifferent to the odds or the certainty
of defeat, were killed, taken prisoners, or escaped by suicide. The
committee, with the Hellenes, retreated to Askyfó, and made the best
preparations to defend the ravine which their demoralized forces
permitted; and so formidable was the position that Mustapha decided not
to attack it, but to be content with the moral advantage of the victory
at Vafé, which was nearly fatal to the insurrection, in spite of the
triviality of the losses of the Christians, which did not surpass
thirty killed of both Hellenes and Cretans. The latter had attributed
invincibility to their allies, and to find them defeated so utterly at
the first encounter paralyzed the insurrection for the moment; and,
if the Turkish commander had moved energetically on Askyfó, it is not
probable that any serious defence would have been made, and, as there
was then no other centre of resistance, the taking of Askyfó would have
left the movement without any power of forming another nucleus of moral
force. The committee must have dispersed, and the thousands of families
assembled in Sphakia must have surrendered.
But Mustapha, remembering his former disaster in the defile of Krapi,
hesitated, waited at Prosnero and in the Apokorona, while the Sphakiote
chieftains craftily negotiated, and made their calculations on the
amount of assistance they could get from Greece, the measure of
concessions or personal advantages they could hope for as the price
of submission, and prolonged the practical truce until the reaction
from the effects of the late defeat began. Hadji Mikhali, with his
Lakiotes, went back to Lakus and Theriso, entirely abandoned by the
troops, and resumed his old policy of little and incessant raids to
harass the Turkish commander and keep his own men from the despondency
of inaction.
The immediate salvation of the insurrection was, however, the arrival
of Col. Coroneos, the ablest by far of the Greek chiefs, and the only
one, it would seem, who was capable of adapting his plans to the
kind of material he had to work with. He arrived too late either to
prevent or assist in the battle of Vafé, and, seeing the danger the
insurrection was in of dying of despondency and the dissidence of its
chiefs, moved at once into the central provinces, and, collecting
together such Cretans as he could find, surprised and cut off two small
Turkish detachments, and with unimportant advantages reawakened the
enthusiasm of the fickle and excitable islanders, gained for himself
the prestige of victory, and rapidly recruited a considerable force.
At the same time, slight advantages were won by Hadji Mikhali near
Canéa, and by other chiefs in the eastern provinces, where an Ottoman
detachment had been disastrously repulsed in an attempt to penetrate
into the Lasithri district. Coroneos, with a small body of volunteers,
established his headquarters at the old fortified convent of Arkadi,
a building of Venetian construction of such size and strength as to
be a fit depot of supplies and place of refuge as against anything
less than a regular siege. From here he harassed the detachments
which issued from Retimo, and kept alive the movement in the district
between Sphakia and Mount Ida, and on several occasions menaced the
city of Retimo, which is fortified by a low wall, almost unprovided
with artillery. Mustapha, after nearly a month of indecision and
negotiation, in which the Cretans showed a diplomatic ability and
duplicity quite worthy the antique reputation of the race, found
himself compelled to act against the new dangers which Coroneos had
conjured for him. He moved with great rapidity from Episkopi, where
he had made his headquarters in order that he might watch both the
great passes into Sphakia, Krapi and Kallikrati, to Retimo, and thence
to the attack of Arkadi, which had been left with a small detachment
of volunteers and about one hundred and fifty Cretan combatants,
including the priests. Besides these, there were about one thousand
women and children, whom Coroneos had made every attempt to dissuade
from remaining, but, on account of the opposition of the Hegumenos,
who would not consent to the expulsion of his own relatives, the rest
could not be induced to leave a place of traditional security, well
provisioned and adequately defended against any attack they could
conceive of. Coroneos only persuaded about four hundred to return to
their villages. The Greek commander, with the main body of his forces,
had been watching Mustapha after his taking position at Episkopi, and
followed his movements to prevent, if possible, his investment of
Arkadi. Taking the circuit of the hills, he only reached the convent
after Mustapha's vanguard, which he engaged until nightfall, when
his men mostly withdrew to the mountains, and Arkadi was necessarily
abandoned to its fate.
Mustapha, arriving the next day, summoned the convent to surrender,
but, having no faith in his observance of the conditions, the
Christians refused, and the attack was ordered. The small rifled pieces
(mountain-guns) were found to produce no effect on the walls or on the
new masonry with which the gateway had been filled up, and, the fire
from the convent being found to be unexpectedly hot and effective, the
investment was made complete, and reinforcements sent for from Retimo,
whence nearly the whole garrison and Mussulman population came to his
aid, making the total force employed about 23,000 men,[H] regulars and
irregulars, being, in fact, by much the greatest part of the Ottoman
force in the island. Heavy artillery was also ordered from Retimo, and
two or three old siege-guns were transported with great difficulty (a
distance of about twelve miles), and placed in battery; and, having
demolished the masonry in the gateway, an assault was made, but the
fire from the monastery was so vigorous that the attacking column was
unable to face it, and after two or three assaults had failed, neither
the Turkish regulars nor their officers being willing to renew it, a
body of Egyptians were placed in front and driven in at the breach by
the bayonets of the Turkish soldiers in their rear.
[H] This estimate, and some of the details I give, I received from the
secretary of Mustapha Pasha after the war was over.
The convent was a hollow square of buildings, with a large court, in
the centre of which stood the church. The inner and outer walls were
equally solid, and the cells and rooms opening into the court were
garrisoned with bodies of the insurgents, who poured a hail of bullets
into the mass of Ottomans entering, but, the entrance once made,
defence and submission were alike fruitless. The troops killed all
who fell into their hands, fighting their way from cell to cell, and
bringing even their artillery into the rooms to penetrate the partition
walls. And so the struggle of extermination was fought out, until one
of the priests, who had previously expressed to his companions the
determination to blow up the magazine if the convent were entered,
finding death inevitable, fulfilled his threat, and changed what was
before but a profitless butchery into a deed of heroism, which again
saved the insurrection from the jaws of failure. The result of the
explosion was very limited so far as the combatants were concerned, and
probably did not kill a hundred Turks.
But even this catastrophe did not stop the carnage. The troops
recoiled, but again returned, and the last of the combatants defending
themselves in the refectory, having exhausted their bullets,
surrendered on the faith of an oath that their lives should be spared,
and were at once put to death. At the end, thirty-three men and
sixty-one women and children were spared.[I] Of the pandemonium that
the walls of Arkadi enclosed, I have heard many and ghastly hints,
and have in vain asked eye-witnesses to tell me what they saw; they
all said it was too horrible to be recalled or spoken of. One of the
most violent of the Mussulman fanatics of Crete, who had performed all
the pilgrimages and holy works required by the Koran, and earnestly
desired as the last grace of this life to die in the holy war against
the infidels, and had fought recklessly in all the battles he had been
able to participate in, went home after Arkadi in despair, declaring
that destiny forbade his dying the holy death. Mustapha was a general
of the old type, and did not care to win bloodless victories or spare
the lives of his troops, and the result, apart from the moral effect,
was far more disastrous to the Porte than to the insurrection. The
losses in killed and wounded were certainly not less than 1,500,
and were estimated at a much higher figure. The army was occupied
thirty-six hours in bringing the wounded into Retimo, and nearly 500,
unable to find place there, were brought on to Canéa (480 was the
number given me by a European surgeon in the Ottoman service). The
Pasha himself saw that he had made a blunder, and everything which the
local administration could effect to disguise and conceal the nature of
the event was done. I had, however, fortunately sent a trusty man to
Retimo on the first intimation of the movement, with orders to get me
the most minute and exact information possible, and his report, with
the confirmation of certain Turkish employees and submitted Christians
residing at Retimo, was in the main accepted by most of my colleagues
of the consular corps as the nearest to the truth which had been
obtained; and, though in these lands of fable and myth no exact history
can well be written, I believe that this is substantially the truth as
to Arkadi.
[I] The few men who were spared from this massacre were those who
were able to appeal to Mustapha Pasha, or some of his suite, on the
ground of ancient personal relations, or who succeeded in obtaining
his clemency by some sufficient plea, after surrender. That all the
butchery was not due to the heat of assault is shown by this and by
several incidents reported to me. One of the latest parties of the
combatants who surrendered on a promise of their lives was passed in
review before the Pasha himself, and all who wore European clothing
passed under the sword at once, as volunteers, though amongst them
were several Cretans from the adjacent villages, whose relatives
attested their nativity. When the refectory surrendered, the Pasha
swore on the head of the Sultan to spare its inmates, who were
required to hand out all their arms, and were afterwards butchered,
even to the women. Mr. Skinner, in his "Roughing it in Crete," gives
an account of his visit to Arkadi some months later, when he found the
bodies still unburied, and describes the scene in the refectory with
ghastly verity. After the fighting was all over, a party of irregulars
went round with lighted candles, and, holding them to the noses of the
corpses, gave the _coup de grace_ to all who breathed. Two Cretans
had managed to hide on the roof of one of the buildings, where they
remained till the next day, when, as the Albanians were leaving, one
of them shot a pigeon which fell on the roof where the Cretans had
hid, and, going up to secure his game, discovered the unfortunates,
who were put to death in cold blood. On the march back to Retimo, all
who could not keep up were at once killed, and those who reached the
city were kept for months in prison and in extreme misery.