In judging of such acts as the intervention of Russia, we have no standard but success, and the greater or less fitness of one of the participants to rule; but from the point of view from which I must look at it, the conduct of Russia seems to me as the most base, cruel, and politically dishonorable which I have ever known, being, as it was, practised on a wretched people, co-religionary, whose sufferings had been extreme, and which, being offered a tangible and not inconsiderable concession in return for its efforts, was only induced to refuse it from faith in Russian promises of better things.

A'ali Pasha landed on the 4th of October, and on the 13th Captain Murray reported to his Government: "The insurgents have thrown away a golden opportunity in the advent of A'ali Pasha, for I believe, short of annexation, they might have anything they asked for. Whether the concessions would be temporary or not, is a matter of opinion; but his mission has completely failed." This was clear to all, and in December following, the highest Christian functionary of the Turkish Government in the island said to me: "We have got to come to the principality with a Christian prince, and that before it is too late to gain even that—we have nothing to hope for from arms."

Yet in a desultory way fighting went on. Omar Pasha went home in disgrace on the 11th of November, but left for his successor, Hussein Avni, a plan for paralyzing the insurrection, by lines of block-houses running across the island and cutting it into three principal parts, each of which was then to be subdued in turn. But if the Cretans had been weakened by the withdrawal of the most of the volunteers, the Turks were enfeebled by sickness and extreme dejection, and the war was languidly carried on, the Turks maintaining themselves within their fortified lines and now and then making a sortie on some bold party of insurgents, the principal affair of the winter being an attack on Zurba, on the 13th of December, which was, like all the previous ones on the village, repulsed with disaster. And under such auspices—the insurrection, less disputed on its ground than at any previous period, holding posts within sight of CanÉa; the hospitals of the island filled with sick troops (at and about CanÉa alone were an average of 3,000 in the hospital, with unexampled mortality from hospital gangrene and fevers, and the funerals ranging from ten to twenty per day); supplies very low, and the troops only paid three months' pay for the last twenty—the year 1867 went out and the third year of the insurrection came in. And all through the spring and summer this state of things continued, neither the Government nor the insurrection capable of making the feeble effort necessary to extinguish the forces of the other. We in the Turkish lines suffered almost as much as if we were in a besieged town, for supplies from the interior were cut off, and they came not by sea; meat was very dear and poor, vegetables rare and sometimes unattainable, so that I was shut up in my house for three months with a scorbutic malady. What the unfavored must have suffered may be conceived. Despondency and gloom were dominant in all official circles. Building of block-houses went on slowly, but there were not troops enough left in the island to garrison all that were planned, while on the other hand the Hellenic Government gave only assistance enough to keep the insurgents from surrendering, and the Greeks from revolution, which would have been the most probable result of the open abandonment of the insurrection. In August of this year, I had unmistakable proof of the reality of the insurrection, having witnessed a skirmish between Zurba and Lakus, and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner near Theriso, with some of my colleagues and several officers of the men-of-war in port, Mr. Dickson and a portion of our excursion party having been actually captured by Hadji Mikhalis' forces within an hour's walk of CanÉa.

This season brought no change in the military position, there being a gradual weakening of the army until only about 5,000 regulars were disposable for field operation, and a total of less than 17,000 were reported to me by Turkish officers as the effective remaining from 82 battalions of Turkish troops, which with 22,000 Egyptians were the regular forces employed since the commencement of the insurrection, and of which only 10,000 of the latter had been since sent home otherwise than as sick or wounded.

In September of 1868 I left Crete under medical orders, and with the impression, generally felt in Crete, that the Hellenic Government was about abandoning the insurrection. On arriving at Athens, where I determined to wait the result, I found the Cretan committee so far convinced of the bad faith of the Bulgaris government that they meditated resignation en masse as an appeal to the people, and to discharge themselves of all responsibility for the impending collapse of the revolt. The Minister of Foreign Affairs soon after waited on me at my house to beg me to use my influence with the committee to persuade them to hold on, assuring me in the most earnest manner that the Government had no intention of withdrawing its support from the Cretans, and that it intended organizing an expedition on a most effective scale to reassure and reanimate the movement; and that it had the intention of directing this organization officially to ensure its efficiency.

Meanwhile the Provisional Government of the island had made an earnest appeal to Coroneos to return and assume the command-in-chief of the insurrection, and he had prepared a plan by which he was confident of keeping up the war through another winter by a judicious employment of Cretan forces. His plan was accepted by the committee, but, on being laid before the Government, was rejected under the pretence that the sum demanded (£10,000) was beyond its means, and it proceeded without reference to the committee to organize at more than double the expense an expedition under the old Mainote palikari, Petropoulaki, in so open and undisguised a manner that, with most other friends of the Cretans, I was convinced that it was meant to give Turkey an opportunity to brusquer les choses by (what Greece had hitherto avoided) open violation of international law.

Every subsequent movement of the Government confirmed me in this opinion. The bands paraded the streets openly with the Cretan flag; were furnished with artillery from the national arsenal; and embarked in two detachments for Crete, unmolested by any of the Turkish ships, though all the world knew when and where they were going; on landing they sent back the artillery, and not only made no offensive movement, but did not even defend themselves; the smaller detachment being cut to pieces in a few days, the other, fleeing in disorder to the plain of AskyfÓ, made overtures at once for surrender, carrying with them in their defection most of the Cretans of the western provinces. There still remained in the eastern provinces a strong nucleus of insurrection undismayed even by this apparent disaster, and capable of rallying 5,000 men. In compliance, however, with what has always seemed to me a preconcerted plan between the Porte and Bulgaris, Hobart Pasha, the new English commander of the Turkish fleet, waylaid the Ennosis blockade-runner in Greek waters on her return from Crete, and pursued her into the port of Syra, where he blockaded her with the whole squadron, leaving the coast of Crete utterly unguarded, though there were still three good steamers at the disposal of the committee. But in the new excitement of this patent outrage on international law the Bulgaris government found its opportunity to withdraw all support from Crete, and, while public opinion was diverted to the not slight chances of war with Turkey, further supplies to the insurrection were cut off and it collapsed almost without notice.

In all this shaping of events there was no disguising the control of the Russian Government. The insurrection became a menace to bring on the Eastern question, for which Russia was not yet ready, and which she could not permit to be brought on under Hellenic auspices. The moment could not have been more auspiciously chosen for Greece to carry on a war with the Ottoman empire, and public opinion in Greece was unanimous in favor of this emergency rather than abandoning Crete, be the risks and event what they might. The Turkish army was already fully occupied—a further levy of troops would have been perilous, and Joseph Karam waited at Athens the signal to arouse the Lebanon. The Greeks had little money, but the Turks had comparatively less, for their army and navy had not been paid, were discouraged and mutinous, and the treasury was empty. Egypt was hostile, the Principalities ready to revolt. My own opinion then was, and is still, that if Greece had gone to war she had a reasonable chance of victory—not without disasters or great sacrifices, but her history has shown that she is capable of enduring both the one and the other; and if Russia had been friendly to her in this crisis, success would have been most probable. The Bulgaris administration, its object gained in the suppression of the insurrection, was in its turn overthrown by the popular indignation at the discovered trick, but when the diplomatic flurry had passed, and tranquillity had returned to the Ægean, we had only to see drift over to the shores of their kindred land the dÉbris of one of the best justified and best deserving revolts against misgoverning tyranny which modern history has recorded. All was quiet in Crete.