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.
[THE YEAR AFTER THE WAR.]
The last year of the war I had left Crete on a leave of absence of two months, which was extended indefinitely by Mr. Washburn, then Secretary of State, on account of the health of my family; but in April my wife, broken by the hardships of our Cretan life and sick-bed watching; and dejected greatly by the loss of a cause in which she had the most passionate sympathy, and by the misery of the unhappy Cretans around us, became insane and ended her life.
Simultaneously, Mr. Fish, now become Secretary of State, removed me from the consulate at the request of the Turkish Government, and in June I went to Crete to hand over the consular effects to my successor, and, on the petition of the Cretan chiefs still remaining in Athens, to obtain, if possible, some mitigation of the measures which prevented them from repatriating themselves. I found the island as I had left it, in peace indeed, but the peace of destruction and paralysis. Roads were being made, and block-houses being constructed, but no houses being rebuilt, and the roads were all military. The new Governor-General seemed amiable, just, and good-willed, but in Turkish disorganization the best will does not go far. The subordinates of the local administration were the spies, the traitors, and "loyal" people of the war, with rancors to vent and revenges to take. There was nothing to rob the people of, but there remained prisons and persecutions.
I found, naturally enough, all my efforts with the Governor useless, and that the condition of things made return unsafe for any one who had taken a prominent part in the war; and so, despairing of finding any opening, I was about to return to Athens without awaiting my successor, but before going decided to make that visit to Omalos and Samaria which the insurrection had stopped and the state of hostilities ever since had rendered impracticable from the Turkish posts.
Even when peace had been restored and not a recusant fugitive remained in the mountain hiding-places, the local authorities could with difficulty reconcile themselves to the idea of my going there; and it was only after the failure of several petty intrigues to prevent my getting away, that they determined to pass to the other extreme and do handsomely what they could not avoid doing. I set out in the dawn of a July day with an officer of the mounted police, a chosen and trusty man, with one private of the same force and my own cavass. The private rode a hundred yards ahead en vidette against any attack on the official dignity by unknowing peasant or unheeding patrol or straggler of the faithful, and discharged his duty on the road to my complete satisfaction, no countermarching troops daring to hold the narrow way to the detriment of the consular dignity. The lawlessness of the Turkish administration in Crete has kept alive, more than in most of the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the power of and respect for foreign officials. Just as much as the unjust Governor dreads the inspecting eye and the exposing blue-book, so much the Rayah hopes from them, and honors the Effendi as the Turk curses the Ghiaour; and so in Crete the extreme of official deference is kept up, corresponding to the degree of official oppression hitherto obtaining.