The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II

by William James Stillman

Returned to Canea, I found that the Cretan assembly had begun its deliberations at Omalos. The real agitation began (ten days after my arrival) on its coming down to Boutzounaria, a little village on the edge of the plain of Canea, where it could negotiate with the governor and communicate with the consuls. There was a plateau from which the plain could be overlooked, so that no surprise was possible, and on which was the spring from which Canea got its water, an aqueduct from the pre-Roman times bringing it to the city. It was cut by Metellus when he besieged Canea, and at all the crises of Cretan history had been contested by the two parties in its wars. Long deliberation was required to formulate the petition to the Sultan, but it was finally completed, and a solemn deputation of gray-headed captains of villages brought to each of the consuls a copy, and consigned the original to the governor for transmission to Constantinople. He, in accepting it, ordered the assembly to disperse and wait at home for the answer. He had on a previous occasion tried the same device, and when the assembly had dispersed he had arrested the chiefs, called a counter assemblage of his partisans, and got up a counter petition, which he sent to the Sultan. They, therefore, refused this time to separate. The reverence of the Cretans for their traditional procedure was such that when the assembly had dissolved, its authority, and that of the persons composing it, lapsed, and the deputies had no right to hope for obedience if they called on the population to rise. The assembly would have to be again convened, elected, and organized in order to exercise any authority.

As the plan of the pasha was to provoke a conflict, he ordered the troops out, and called a meeting of the consuls, to whom he communicated his intention of dispersing the assembly by force. As this meant fighting, the consuls opposed it, with the exception of Derché, the French consul, who took the lead in approving the pasha's proposals. The English consul, Dickson, an extremely honest and humane man, but tied by his instructions to act with his French colleague, could only say that the assembly thus far had acted in strict accordance with its firman rights, and he hoped that they would be respected, but he did not join in the opposition with the rest of us. Colucci, the Italian, the youngest of the consular body, said that he had information that the committee of the assembly had expressed their willingness to disperse on receiving assurance that they would not, as in the former case, be molested for the action they had taken; and as they had committed no illegal act, he considered this their due. His excellency dodged the suggestion, and, rising, was about to dismiss the meeting, when, seeing that nothing had been done to avert the collision, I arose and formally protested against the attempt to disperse the assembly by force, and against any implied consent of the consular body to the programme he had announced. The Italian, the Russian, and one or two of the other consuls followed, supporting my protest, and the pasha, disconcerted by the unexpected demonstration against him, sat down again, and we renewed the discussion, when Dickson said that what he had said was implied in the position, and that as the assembly had done nothing to deserve persecution, it could not be supposed that they would be subjected to it, and he regarded the assurance of immunity as uncalled for. And so the conference broke up, leaving me in the position of the defender of Cretan liberties, but the troops were not sent out, and the report spread through the island that the pasha and the consuls were at loggerheads.

The real reason for the insistence on the formal promise being made to the consuls was that a list of the agitators indicated for arrest had been found by the daughter of the Greek secretary of the pasha, in which, amongst the names of the persons to be arrested, was her lover, to whom she gave the list. It was possible even then that the Cretans would have submitted but for the influence of two Greek agents in the camp of the assembly. These were one Dr. Ioannides and a priest called Parthenios Kelaïdes, a patriotic Cretan, but long resident in Greece. These urged the assembly to extreme measures, and promised support from Greece. When, later, hostilities broke out, Parthenios went into the ranks and fought bravely, but Dr. Ioannides disappeared from the scene. The next device of Ismael was to call the Mussulmans of the interior into the fortresses, and when we protested against this as dangerous and utterly uncalled for, the pasha sent a counter order; but the bearers of it met the unfortunate Mussulmans by the way, having abandoned everything, thrown their silkworms to the fowls, and left their crops ungathered, and being ready to vent their hostility on the innocent Christian population, whom they made responsible for the disaster. The call to come in was then renewed, and the entire Mussulman population gathered in the three fortresses of Canea, Candia, and Retimo. A panic on the part of the Christians followed, and all the vessels sailing for the Greek islands were crowded with fugitives. The pasha called for troops from Constantinople, though no violence had been even threatened, and several battalions of Turkish regulars with eight thousand Egyptians arrived and disembarked. With one of the battalions was a dervish fanatic, carrying a green banner, who spread his praying carpet in every public place in Canea, preaching extermination of the infidels. I took a witness and went to the general in chief, Osman Pasha, and protested against this outrage, and the dervish was at once shipped off to Constantinople.

The military chiefs were reasonable, and the Christian population totally unprepared and averse to hostilities, but the plan at Constantinople was, as we soon found, to provoke an insurrection in order to justify a transfer of the island to Egypt. Later we had from Constantinople all the details, but for the moment we could only conjecture the Egyptian collusion in the plan by the presence of Schahin Pasha, the general-in-chief of the Egyptian army, and minister of war of the viceroy, and the very important part taken by him in the ensuing negotiations. He came in great state and pomp, and immediately assumed the lead in the negotiations with the islanders, which were carried on in secret and through Derché. Ismael Pasha, who was probably not in the Egyptian secret, had another plan of his own, equally secret, and the two conflicted. Ismael, as we later learned, intended to raise and subdue an insurrection, which he hoped to do easily, and then, on the strength of his Greek blood and the protection he had at Stamboul, to be named the Prince of Crete. The Egyptian plan was, on the contrary, conciliatory, and depended mainly on direct bribery and the promise of concessions to the Cretans. It had been, as I learned from Constantinople, concocted between the Turkish government, the Marquis de Moustier, the French ambassador, and the viceroy, and proposed to coax or hire the Cretans to ask for the Egyptian protection, when, on the application of the plebiscite, the island was to be transferred to the viceroy on the payment of £400,000 down and a tribute of £80,000. The French diplomatic agent in Egypt had arranged the details in consultation with Derché, but none would fit. Derché thought that all the Cretan chiefs could be bought, and the Egyptian pasha began by distributing £16,000 amongst the churches, mosques, and schools, without forgetting handsome baksheesh to the leading chiefs, who accepted the money, but promised nothing, and made no responsive move. Ismael, meanwhile, was doing his best to provoke hostilities, and finally succeeded in getting up a collision between Cretan Christians and Mussulmans at Candanos, in the southwestern part of the island.

As the Egyptian overtures did not seem to succeed, Schahin Pasha consulted some of the principal merchants of Canea, and was informed that Derché was of no weight or influence, and that if he wanted to move the Cretans he must do so through the American or Russian consuls; whereupon he came to me and frankly told me the whole plan, and that the viceroy proposed to build a great arsenal and naval station at Suda, and fortify the bay, the work being already planned by French engineers. He promised me whatever compensation I should ask if I could help him out. I sent the details to our minister at Constantinople, who laid them before Lord Lyons, the English ambassador, who, I presume, put his foot on the whole affair, as it was never heard of more in the island; but the condition of active hostilities which had supervened at Candanos continued.

An Egyptian division of 4000 men had been posted at Vrysis,—a very important point in the Apokorona, near the position to which the committee of the assembly had retreated,—under a pretext of Schahin Pasha that it would facilitate negotiations and protect the committee. The agitation increased, and isolated murders began to take place at various points. The exodus of the Christians to Greece went on, and of the poorer class, who had not the means of emigrating, great numbers took refuge at the friendly consulates, chiefly the Italian, as my premises were very small and offered little shelter. Multitudes also fled to the mountain, pursued by the Mussulman rabble, and many were killed on the plain in their flight. I had taken a little house in Kalepa (a suburb of Canea where most of the consuls lived) adjoining that of the Greek and near that of the Italian consul, whose wife, being an American, strengthened the alliance which held good between us to the end. The Mussulman populace, already supplied with arms and ammunition ad libitum, chafed at being confined within the cities, for the pasha, aware of the danger of an open outbreak at the capital, had several times shut the gates to prevent a sortie en masse of the rabble intent on attacking the consulates, for we were now known as divided into two parties; the Russian, the Italian, the Greek, and myself friendly to the Cretans, and Derché and Dickson to the pasha; the Austrian and Swedish completing the corps,—both old men, the latter having witnessed the insurrection of 1827-30,—taking little part in the discussions. The Russian, Dendrinos, a Greek by race and also an old man, was of a timidity which prevented him from taking any initiative even in discussion, while he was intensely active in the intrigues which kept up a running accompaniment to the fight between the pashas.

I had not long before received a present from my brother of some samples of a new revolver and breech-loading hunting rifles, with ammunition, some of which I had, at his request, given Schahin Pasha, as they were novelties to him. With the rest I provided for the defense of my house, barricaded the windows with mattresses, took another cavass guaranteed as faithful by my old one,—Hadji Houssein,—put a rifle and a box of cartridges at each window, besides organizing, with Colucci, a strong patrol of Cretans from the refugees in the consulate, to watch the roads, and waited events. We had written urgently for the dispatch of a man-of-war of one of the European powers, without the protection of which there was imminent danger that an accident might precipitate a fight, and all the friendly consuls be murdered. In this request Derché and Dickson refused to join, on the ground that the presence of a man-of-war of a Christian power (we had plenty of Turkish at Suda) might encourage the Christian Cretans. These on their side gathered, with such arms as they had, to protect the committee, sitting in the Apokorona, and face to face with the Turkish-Egyptian troops, a movement of whom forward would at once bring on the collision we were working to prevent and Ismael and Derché to bring on, but which was really prevented by the discord between Ismael and Schahin. The irregulars, proud of their new rifles, were firing in every direction, and one heard balls whistling through the air, falling on the roofs. On one occasion, when my wife, with other ladies of the consular circle, was walking between Canea and Kalepa, some of the Mussulmans amused themselves by firing as near their heads as it was safe to do. I begged Laura to take the children and go to Syra until the troubles were over, but she refused, saying that the women gathered around the friendly consulates, seeing her yielding to the panic, would lose all courage and fly to the mountains.

We were then at the end of August, 1866. My vice-consul lived in the city and provided for our communications, and when I had to go to the konak I went armed, and with a cavass also armed cap-à-pie, but I received several warnings not to be out after nightfall, as the Turks had decided to kill me, though my known and often ostentatiously displayed skill with the revolver made them timid in any attempt in broad daylight, lest if their first shot failed I might have the second.

Weeks passed. The nervous strain became very great. I found myself continually going unconsciously to my balcony, which commanded a wide range out to sea, telescope in hand, to see if the sail so long implored was in sight, though five minutes before I had seen nothing. Finally there came a loathing at the sight of the masts of a steamer on the horizon, feeling that it would be only a Turkish man-of-war. My children, for months, did not pass the threshold, though Laura insisted on showing her indifference to the danger by walking out; and one night when some mischievous Mussulmans started a cry of "Death to the Christians," in the streets of Kalepa, and the entire Christian population in a few minutes were at our doors, beating to be admitted, the cavasses refusing to open without orders, she had flown to the door in her night-dress and thrown it open to the crowd, who passed the rest of the night sitting on the floor of the consulate. The sentinel at the city gates, whose duty it was to salute as I passed, turned his face the other way, with a muttered "Dog of a Christian," on which I called back Hadji Houssein, who was marching in front of me, and, ordering him to look the soldier well in the face, so that he might remember him, sent him directly to the governor to repeat what had passed, and demand summary punishment for the insult. I was informed that the man had six weeks of prison. I don't believe he had a day, but the insults were stopped, which was what I wanted. Of those weeks of intense, prolonged anxiety the impression remains indelible to this day.

The relief from the tension, grown almost unendurable, came with the arrival at Suda of the Psyche, with Admiral Lord Clarence Paget, direct from Constantinople, to inform us that the Arethusa frigate had been ordered to Crete. If the Psyche had been a reprieve the Arethusa was a pardon. The hilarious blue-jackets flying over the plains of Crete brought all the Mussulman world to its senses, and we took down our barricades; but for the poor Cretans there was no change,—the Turks were so fully persuaded that England was with them that the severities towards the Christians underwent no amelioration, unless it be that the ostentatious brutality ceased, as the chiefs knew that they must keep up appearances. We attended service on Sunday on board the Arethusa and stayed to luncheon, in the midst of which an orderly came down and whispered to Captain MacDonald, on which he turned to me, saying, "If you would like to see something pleasant, Mr. Stillman, you may go on deck." I reached the deck just in time to see the Ticonderoga round the point of the Suda island, entering Suda Bay. Commodore Steedman, her commander, was an old friend, and, hearing at Trieste of the insurrection, came on his own initiative to give me the support my government had not thought worth its while to accord me. He stayed a few days and sailed direct for Constantinople, which so impressed the authorities that I was no longer annoyed. The Arethusa was followed a few days later by the Wizard,—a small gunboat which could lie in Canea harbor,—where, for the next few months, its commander, Murray, was our sole and sufficient protector. In him and his successors I learned to honor the British navy as a force in civilization whose efficiency few not situated as we were can understand. I have ever since been ready to take off my hat to an English sailor.