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.
[CHAPTER VII.]
Mustapha immediately retraced his steps to Canéa, and, housing himself outside the walls, having sworn not to re-enter his capital until the insurgents had been subdued, called a council to plan measures to strike a quick blow at the insurrection before the effect of Arkadi should be felt in the public opinion of Europe. Up to that time the struggle had seemed to me a hopeless and insane one, and though my warmest sympathies had been, of course, with the Cretans, as victims of a monstrous injustice—a sequence of crimes—I had not dared utter a word of hope or encouragement in reply to all the earnest appeals to me by the friends of the insurrection. Now, seeing the enthusiasm that Arkadi excited amongst the insurgents and even the mutis (submitted Christians), I felt that there was a hope that Christendom would be compelled to listen to the history being enacted before it on this sea-girt mountain ridge. That the Pasha also felt this was evident both from his words and acts. He made new and more tempting offers to the Sphakiote chiefs, and employed the well-known appliances of Eastern politics to make friends amongst the insurgents, but with only partial success. At the same time, he made preparations for another attack on Sphakia, but this time from the west via Selinos. He, therefore, leaving Mehmet Pasha to guard Krapi with four or five battalions, concentrated all his available forces besides, at Alikianu, his point de départ for the first Theriso campaign. All this country had been abandoned, and had to be reconquered, particularly Theriso, which, if unoccupied, would be a menace to his communications with Canéa. At the same time, a concentration of the volunteers and insurgents took place in the plain of Omalos, by which alone access is had to Sphakia from this side. A force of volunteers recently landed were engaged in a foolish siege of Kissamos, a worthless position to either side, as it was commanded by the men-of-war, and could not be held if taken; and the different chiefs of the volunteers were kept ineffective by dissensions and jealousies amongst themselves, each refusing to obey any other. Coroneos and Zimbrakakis, however, united their forces to resist the attack on Omalos. The volunteers, under the command of Soliotis, a Hellenic officer, made a gallant defence of the position of Lakus, but were compelled to retreat to the upper ridges which border Omalos, while Theriso was abandoned before a flank movement of Mehmet Pasha, obliged temporarily to leave the Apokorona undefended. Omalos, however, resisted direct attack, and the Pasha moved round by the passes of Kissamos to the west of the mountains, devastating as he went, and driving before him all the non-combatants of the country he passed through. By this time the snow had fallen with unusual severity of cold for that climate, and the insurgents, although ill-provided against an inclemency they usually escaped from in the plains below, were in many respects better off than the troops, who were compelled to march through ravines which were often mountain torrents in this rainy season; and as they did not carry tents, that they might move with greater rapidity, and were often cut off from all communication with the base of supplies for days together by the rain filling the roads, at best only bad mule-paths, they suffered prodigiously without fighting or even the encouragement of the sack of villages. The Egyptians, clad only in linen which their climate required, perished by cold and wet in hundreds; pneumonia became an endemic in the army; and, to add to the misery, the beasts of burden perished under the hardships, and lined the paths with their corpses.
Mustapha was as merciless a commander as enemy, and, though the army was suffering extreme misery, he kept a vigilant watch for his opportunity, and when, after two weeks of fatiguing outpost duty, waiting in hunger, rain, snow, and frost, the Hellenes who guarded the difficult pass of St. Irene were frozen and starved into negligence, he made a dash, one foggy morning, surprised the post, and, taking possession of the heights crowning the ravine, his army defiled leisurely over into the valleys of Selinos. The Greeks moved over to the pass of Krustogherako, which admits to the plain of Omalos from the Selinos side, and the Pasha, believing a defence ready, encamped in the still undevastated valleys, and passed some days in burning and ravaging, destroying vineyards and mulberry-trees wherever they could be reached. The olive-trees, as the reliance of the future income of the island, were mostly spared.
Meanwhile, a "moral intervention" was being prepared, which brought respite to the insurrection and deranged all the plans of the Pasha. The atrocities of Arkadi had finally impressed public opinion with the conviction that the old barbarities of the Greek and Turkish wars were being perpetrated anew; and even the English consul at Canéa became convinced that barbaric massacre and ravage were being employed as the means of subduing the spirit of the islanders, and had reported to his Government certain of these atrocities, remonstrating, at the same time, to the Commissioner. The reports of those consuls who had by this time become characterized as the "friends of the insurrection"—viz., Colucci (Italian), Dendrinos (Russian), Sacopoulos (Greek), and myself—had spread through the European journals the news of these barbarities and excesses to such a degree that remonstrances were made by the ambassadors at Constantinople, while the clear-headed and true-hearted Murray had from the beginning, with great justice and discrimination, measured the facts and manifested the warmest sympathy with the Cretans. At this juncture came H.B.M.'s sloop Assurance, Commander Pym, relieving the Wizard, ordered to Malta. We parted from our gallant protector with an emotion not easily comprehended by those who do not know the nature and nearness of the dangers of the previous four months, or how the resolute and outspoken manhood of the young officer in his one-gun steamer had stood so long between us and death, as the representative of a power in civilization which subsequent years made me honor more and more—the English navy. Fortunately, Pym had learned from Murray, in the few days which elapsed between the arrival of the Assurance and the departure of the Wizard, what was the real position of affairs, and followed the traditions of his predecessor. He had, moreover, a certain defiance of red-tape and a feverishness to distinguish himself which did not always measure carefully the purport of general orders, and which, perhaps, in battle would have made him turn a blind eye to a signal of recall, and now disposed him to abandon on any pretext the cold-blooded neutrality of his government.