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.

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.