By this time I had become the recognized official protector of the Cretans, although I had always done my best to discourage hostilities and persuade the Cretans to leave their wrongs to diplomatic treatment; not that I had great faith in that, but because I could see no hope for a success for the insurrection. Around me had spontaneously formed an efficient service for information, the runners of the various sections coming to me at Kalepa with the earliest information on every event of importance, and I communicated with the legations at Athens and our own minister at Constantinople. The exactness of my news was so well recognized that even the grand vizier sent regularly to our minister for information, remarking that he got nothing reliable from his own officials. Now happened one of those curious cases of mysterious transmission of news which have often been known in the East. Arkadi was at least forty miles, as the roads go, from Kalepa,—a long day's journey as travel goes there; but I received news of the fight soon after it began, and information of the progress of the combat during the day, one of my customary informants coming every few hours with the details. This service I subsequently checked by the information given me by Mustapha's Cretan secretary, who lived in the house next to mine at Kalepa, and by the accounts given by some Italian officers of the Turkish and Egyptian regulars engaged in the siege for the final struggle, and found to be correct. I believe the account which I gave the world by the next post, and which was the only complete one ever given, is as near the true history as history is ever told.
The heavy artillery soon breached the great gate, and an assault was ordered, but being met by a murderous fire from the convent walls, it was repulsed with great slaughter; and the succeeding attempts on the part of the Turkish regulars faring no better, a battalion of Egyptians was put in the front and driven in at the point of the bayonet by the Turkish troops behind them. The convent was a hollow square of solidly built buildings, the inner and outer walls alike being of a masonry which yielded only to artillery, and from the windows and doors of these a hail of bullets at close quarters met the entering crowd of regulars and swarms of bloodthirsty Cretan irregulars, all furious at the resistance and wild with fanaticism. The artillery had to be brought in to break down the divisions between the houses and cells, and the fight was one of extermination until all the buildings were taken except the refectory, the strongest of the buildings. At this juncture one of the priests fired the magazine, with an effect far greater on the outside world than on the combatants, for it did not kill over a hundred Turks. The insurgents in the refectory were then summoned to surrender, and, having exhausted their ammunition, they complied, on the solemn promise of Mustapha that their lives should be spared; but, having handed out their rifles, they were all immediately killed.
One of the Egyptian officers—an Italian colonel—told me many incidents of the fight, of a sufficiently horrible nature, but he said that he saw things which were too horrible to be repeated. Thirty-three men and sixty-one women and children were spared, mostly through personal pleas to Mustapha of ancient friendship. The secretary told me of a fanatic of Canea who had volunteered in the hope of being killed in a war with the infidel, and who had been in all the fights of the insurrection, and, escaping from Arkadi unhurt, went home and hung up his sword, saying that Kismet was against him and he was not permitted to die for the faith. He also told me that all the ravines near Arkadi were filled with the dead, while Retimo was filled with the wounded; and from the report of the hospital surgeon at Canea, I learned that four hundred and eighty were brought to our hospital, being unable to find shelter at Retimo.
Mustapha immediately returned to Canea, but having sworn not to enter the city till he had conquered the island, he camped outside. He called a council to devise some means of subduing the insurrection before the effect of the siege of Arkadi should provoke intervention, for he saw that that had been a mistake. The enthusiasm of the insurgents rose, and for the first time it seemed to me that there was a chance of the Powers taking their proper position as to Crete, and I began to hope that the bloodshed would not have been entirely wasted. But no effect was produced on the Powers by the horrible event, except that Russia made some effort to provoke intervention; England and France, who held the solution in their hands, showing the most stolid indifference, and Russia, as afterwards became clear, only looking at the occasion as creating more trouble for the Sultan. Greek influence took entire control of affairs, and the Cretan committee at Athens began to pour in volunteers, rifles, and ammunition, without any attempt at organization or intelligent direction.
The pasha saw that the situation was critical and demanded his greatest energy, and, with one hand offering bribes to the Sphakiot chiefs, with the other he hurried his military preparations. Leaving his second in command, Mehmet Pasha, at Krapi, the ravine which approached Sphakia from the east, he marched all his remaining forces round to the west, hoping, as he said, to sweep all the rebels and their Greek allies into the mountains and either starve or otherwise compel them to submission. The chiefs of the Greek bands refused to submit to a common plan or authority, and wasted their strength in a series of little combats, Coroneos and Zimbrakaki alone, and only for a very brief period, coöperating for the defense of Omalos, which was the depot and refuge of the families, and where the cold of the approaching autumn and the want of supplies would act as Mustapha's best allies. He moved along the coast to the west, relieving Kissamos,—a seacoast walled town to which a band of Greek volunteers had, in an insane effort, laid siege,—and, sweeping families and combatants together before him, drove them all into the high mountains, where the snow had already begun to fall. In the rapidity of his movements he carried no tents or superfluous baggage, and the poor Egyptians, clad still in the linen of their summer uniforms, perished in hundreds by cold alone, and even the beasts of burden left their bodies in quantities by the way, forage and shelter for man and beast alike failing. The volunteers held the pass of St. Irene, by which alone from the west the approach to Omalos was practicable; but, ill provided for the rigor of the season, they grew negligent, and, after two weeks of waiting, Mustapha made a sudden dash and took them by surprise in a fog, and occupied Selinos, the volunteers and Cretans retreating to the pass of Krustogherako, which lies between Omalos and Selinos.
The story of Arkadi had begun to move public opinion all over Europe, but it had no power on the governments, although the consuls friendly to the Cretans had continually appealed to their governments with the report of the barbarities which accompanied the march of the Turkish army. For myself, under the advice of our minister at Constantinople, I had thrown off all reserve within my consular rights and used all my influence with my colleagues, especially the honest, if too pro-Turkish, Dickson, and at the same time disseminated the truth as to the condition of the island in every possible way. The Turkish authorities naturally retaliated to the best of their power, and patrols of zapties watched my house in front and rear, for the idea had entered the mind of the governor that I was the postman of the insurrection. But I held no direct communication with the insurgents, and no letter ever passed through my hands, while the Greek and Russian consuls, unwatched, kept up a regular postal service. Our minister at Constantinople, who, in the beginning, had been in the closest personal relations with his English colleague, the just and humane Lord Lyons, replaced at this juncture by Sir Henry Elliott, finding that nothing was to be expected from England, joined forces with General Ignatieff, and thenceforward my action was directed by the Russian embassy.
In communicating the news of the affair of Arkadi to our government, I had fully explained my actual position and my proposed action on behalf of the insurgents, and begged that a man-of-war might be sent to convey from the island the refugee families who were dying of cold and hunger in the mountains, or being murdered in the plains. In reply I received the following dispatch (December 25, 1866):—
W.J. STILLMAN, ESQ., U.S. Consul, Canea:—
Sir,—Your dispatch No. 32, with regard to the Cretan insurrection and the attitude you have assumed in the matter, has been received.
Your action and proposed course of conduct, as set forth in said dispatch, are approved. Mr. Morris, our minister resident at Constantinople, will be informed of the particulars set forth in your dispatch, and of the approval of your proceedings. Rear-Admiral Goldsborough has been instructed to send a ship-of-war to your port. I am, sir, your most obedient servant,