W.H. SEWARD.

Meanwhile the Wizard gunboat had been relieved by the Assurance,—a larger vessel,—the commander of which (Pym) had an American wife, and perhaps had been influenced by her, and certainly shared her sympathy with the Cretans. I showed him Seward's dispatch and fired him with the desire of distinguishing himself by taking the initiative in the work of humanity. I then made the strongest possible appeal to Dickson, who had by this time come through his own informants to recognize the atrocity of Mustapha's plan of campaign, to order Pym to obey his good impulse; and Pym at the same time informed me that he intended to go, with Dickson's order if possible, but in any case to go. Meanwhile he ran down to Candia to watch events there and protect the Christians. Dickson in the end obtained the consent of Mustapha to the deportation of the families, and sent the order to Candia, on which the Assurance went to Selinos and took on board three hundred and fifteen women and children and twenty-five wounded men, menaced by the approach of Mustapha's army, and carried them to Peiraeus. Mustapha Pasha had given his permission for the ship to take the refugees, and Dickson had given the order, so that Pym's action was regularized; but he was, nevertheless, punished by his government, being ordered to the coast of Africa, and shortly after retired. I saw him on his return from the trip, and there was not a man or officer who would not have given a month's pay to repeat the expedition, but it was peremptorily disapproved by the English government.

There were at Suda at the time two Italian corvettes, an Austrian frigate and gunboat; the Russian General Admiral, and a French gunboat; all of which, with the exception of the Frenchman, were anxious to follow the example of Pym. But the prompt disapproval of Pym's expedition by the English government, and the withdrawal of the permission given by Mustapha, prevented any of them from repeating the feat. Ignatieff had, on hearing of Pym's exploit, obtained from the grand vizier the permission that other ships might follow him, and dispatched at once the embassy dispatch boat with orders to Boutakoff to follow. But a violent storm coming on, the boat had taken refuge at Milos, where she lay four days, and by the time she arrived another post was due from Constantinople. Both Boutakoff and Dendrinos hesitated to execute the order, having learned of the disapproval of Pym and the revocation of his permission. Dendrinos was a timid, irresolute man, always afraid of assuming responsibility, and Boutakoff's orders were to go only on the requisition of the consul. I was very much afraid that under the circumstances the order would be revoked, and had in vain urged the two Russian officials to move.

At this moment came another act of the Turkish brutality, which carried me through. A Turkish man-of-war ran in to the shore where Pym had taken his refugees, flying the English flag, and, when the refugees poured out from their rocky shelter, opened its broadsides on them. One of my runners came in with the news of this atrocity, in the morning of the day the post should arrive, and I went at once to Dendrinos and insisted on his sending the order to Boutakoff to go to the relief of the Cretan families at Selinos. The frigate lay at Suda, and I dictated the letter to Boutakoff, saw it consigned to the messenger, and never left Dendrinos alone till time had elapsed sufficient for the delivery of the message on the frigate, being certain that if I left the timid man to himself he would send a counter order. Boutakoff, nothing loath, got up his anchor, and came round to the roadstead of Canea to await the post and the last advices, but I hurried him off without delay, apprehensive of the counter order from Ignatieff. This did in fact arrive by the post, but three hours too late. The General Admiral carried 1200 women and children to the Greek ports, but the repetition was forbidden.

The insurrection flamed up anew, however, and negotiations were broken off, though the deportations were stopped. Mustapha, finding it impossible to force his way into Sphakia from the west, ordered the fleet round, and transported the army entire to Franco Castelli on the southern shore, and bribed the chief of the district to allow him to pass to Askyphó without resistance. In this great plain, which is the stronghold of eastern Sphakia, as Omalos of western, he encamped to negotiate and try a last effort at conciliation. The next day one of the captains of the section bordering on Askyphó came to me for advice as to accepting Mustapha's propositions. I told him I could not advise him to fight or make peace, but I translated Mr. Seward's dispatch, and assured him that when the ship arrived I would send it at once to the relief of the families. On his return, resistance was decided on, and all the men of the vicinity gathered to attack the Turks. The pass of Askyphó could have been easily blocked, and the army compelled to surrender, being scantily provisioned, but some spy in the Cretan councils warned the pasha, and he broke up his camp at midnight and crowned the heights at the head of the ravine, so that his army was able to pass, though with terrible losses.

It was the most disastrous campaign of the whole war, for the troops were slaughtered almost without resistance, killed by rolling down boulders on them. Bewildered in the intricacies of the defiles, without guides or provisions, and in small parties, they were dispatched, for days after. The army which had set out 17,850 strong, Egyptian and Turkish regulars, according to Dickson's official information, beside several thousand irregulars, was reported by Mustapha, after its return and reorganization, as amounting to 6000 men. We saw them as they defiled past Suda coming in, and the commander of one of the Italian ships took the trouble to count some of the battalions, one of which, consisting of 900 men when it set out, returned with only 300. The losses were certainly not less than 10,000 men, not counting the irregulars.

CHAPTER XXII

DIPLOMACY

What had become evident, even at Constantinople, was that Mustapha and his influence, as well as the policy of repression by cruelty and devastation, had failed. Barbarities continued, and were met by active resistance on a small scale wherever the Turks attempted to penetrate. Small Turkish detachments were beaten here and there, but no general plan of operation appeared to offer a chance of ultimate success to either party. The Porte, therefore, sent its best diplomatic agent, Server Effendi, with a magniloquent and mendacious proclamation and a summons for the election of a deputation of Cretans of both religions, to meet at Constantinople to receive the promises of the well-intentioned Turkish government for their pacification and contentment. Server Effendi was an intelligent and liberal man, and we became very good friends, and if he had been permitted to treat on the basis of accomplished facts he might have attained something. But he was compelled to assume that the island had been subjected by arms to the will of the Porte, and must accept as concession what they had won a right to from an effective resistance, as yet not even partially subdued. He was not himself deceived, but the Sultan had passed into a condition of insane fury, and could not be induced to listen to any concessions or entertain any proposition but complete surrender. He had, Mr. Morris wrote me, had a model of the island made, which he used to bombard with little cannon, to give vent to his rage. All the powers, with the exception of England, now advised the Porte to concede a principality. The English policy in this case has always seemed to me mistaken, and in questionable faith, for by the protocol of February 20, 1830, the signatory powers bound themselves to secure for Crete a principality like that of Samos. For this defection of England from the general accord of the powers, Greece was, probably, mainly responsible, for at that juncture the influence of Greek demagogues prevailed in the island to make a compromise difficult, and the principality would certainly have been refused; still, England was pledged to the offer of it. I find in the record I made at the time the following passage:—

"The tactics of Greece were of a nature to make the chances of Crete more precarious than they need have been. The policy of Crete for Greece, rather than Crete for her own good, made confusion and jealousy in the conduct of the war much greater than they need have been. What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and bread. Greece sent them rival chiefs without subordination, a rabble of volunteers, who quarreled with the islanders, and weakened the cause by deserting it as soon as they felt the strain of danger and hardship; and if, after the first campaign, they were more wise in enrolling men to go to Crete, they still allowed the jealousies and hostilities of the leaders to go unchecked by any of those measures which were in their power. But the radical fault of the Hellenes was that they compromised the question by the introduction of the question of annexation, and forced it into the field of international interests, disguising the real causes and justification of the movement, and making it impossible for England consistently with her declared policy to entertain the complaints of the Cretans without also admitting the pretensions of the Hellenes. If the latter had not intruded their interests into the discussion, the former might have been heard; but from the moment in which annexation to Greece became the alternative of the reconquest of Crete, the English government could clearly not interfere against the Porte without upsetting its own work; and, if in some minor respects, especially the question of the principality, it had been more kind to Crete, no one could have found fault with a policy which was in its general tendency obligatory on it."