From 1770 to 1821, the condition of Crete was that of a man on the rack. The conquests and the advantages of apostasy had induced many Christians to become Mussulmans; others followed from the bitter persecutions which began soon after the insurrection of 1770, and made the life of the Christian in the plains utterly intolerable. The former class generally became, ipso facto, fanatical persecutors of their late fellow-Christians, and the children or grandchildren of the converts became oblivious of their ancestors' creed and relations, and as, under the Koran, they lapsed into a more complete ignorance than the Christians, they soon became as fanatic as any. The influx of Turks was never considerable, but the Cretan Mussulmans, becoming the governing class, disposed of the lives and properties of their Christian fellow-countrymen entirely at their will. Their agas, or chiefs, by force of character became captains of bands of these Janissaries, as they were called, and established a sway beside which the Venetian was a bed of feathers. The Venetian was inhuman; the Janissary was devilish. I have known several men who lived in the island while the Janissary government was in full force, and who have testified to me of the occurrence of such horrors as no system of slavery known since the establishment of Christianity can show. Every rayah (beast or domesticated animal) was utterly at the mercy of his aga, who could kill, rob, or torture him at will, without responsibility before any law, or any obligation towards him. If the aga wanted money, he went to any rayah he suspected of being possessed of any, and ordered him to hand it over. If he wanted work done, he ordered the rayah to do it. If he fancied the rayah's wife or daughter, he went to his house, and ordered the man out of it until his lust was satisfied, and if any resisted he was killed like a dog. If a Christian celebrated his nuptials with a girl of great beauty, he received from the aga a handkerchief with a bullet tied in the corner of it, and if he did not at once send his bride to the aga he paid the penalty with his life. The only resource was to fly to the mountains before the aga had time to send his men to seize him. Most of the beautiful girls and women were sent to the mountains as a precaution, which is probably one reason why the women of the higher mountain districts are so much more beautiful than those of the lowlands.
The Janissaries even ruled the governors sent by the Sultan, and deposed or assassinated them when they did not please. Needless to say that the poor islanders had no hope of justice as against their tyrants. It was forbidden to any Christian except the archbishop to enter the city gates on horseback, and, the Bishop of Canéa having transgressed this law, the Janissaries took him prisoner, and determined to burn him and all his priests. About to carry out this decision, the Pasha intervened, and to pacify them issued an order that no Christian man should sleep in the walls of Canéa, and accordingly the whole adult male population was mustered out every night, leaving their wives and children in the city. There is hardly room to wonder that the Cretan is still a liar, rather wonder that he is still a man, with courage to revolt and die, considering that only one generation has intervened between him and a slavery more abject than any domestic servitude the civilized world knows of.
The oppression became more and more brutal and blind, and the Cretans, crushed and stupefied, thought of nothing but saving life by the most abject submission. Even when the agitation which led to the Greek war of independence began, the Cretans were not moved; but in June of 1821, the Mussulmans massacred a large number of Christians, some thousands, in the three principal cities. This was followed up by a demand that all the Christians should give up their arms, a demand which was followed by the revolt of Sphakia, the mountaineers having never consented to this degradation. The rising of the district about Ida followed, and the war was so vigorously carried on that in a month the open country was almost entirely cleared of Mussulmans.
This stage of the war developed a man whose name has become one of the historical in Crete, Antoni Melidoni. Collecting a small band of bold men, he swept from one end of the island to the other, falling on the negligently guarded posts, and taking them by storm in rapid succession. His hardihood knew no impossibilities, disparity of numbers made no difference in his calculations, he measured moral forces alone, and flung his sword and name into the scale against any opposing numerical force. Surrounded at night by superior forces, he led a charge sword in hand on the hostile circle, broke it, and drove the Pasha's army from the field, not permitting its disordered masses to re-form until the walls of Candia sheltered them. A detachment that made a sortie to attack him was destroyed, and another victory following this, the Pasha of Candia, expressing admiration of his prowess, begged to be favored with an interview. The Cretan hero, trusting himself to no temptation, treachery, or delay, replied that the Pasha would soon be his prisoner, and that then he might look at him as much as he liked. And the prophet fulfilled the prediction to the letter.
So far, however, Christian and Turk fought on equal terms. No discipline entered on either side—the Janissary fought the partisan, and the superior enthusiasm of liberty turned the scale in favor of the Christian. They had yet to meet their strongest foes—internal dissension and disciplined force. The first did its work quickly, and Melidoni was assassinated by Russos, the Sphakiote chief, in jealousy of his dominant influence. A Moreote chieftain, Afendallos, was sent from Greece to replace him, but, incapable and without control of the Cretans, his command was in every way unfortunate, and he was superseded by a French Philhellene of ability, Baleste, who for a moment restored the fortunes of Crete, but, deserted by the wretched Afendallos in the heat of battle, and the Cretans being carried away in panic by the example, Baleste was surrounded by the Turks and killed. At the same time, an Egyptian army coming in to reinforce the exhausted and demoralized Janissaries, the war became for the Christians a series of disasters, relieved for a time by the management of Tombasis, a Hydriote chief, who again cleared the open country of the Turks, and laid siege to Canéa. The arrival of new forces from Constantinople obliged him to retire to the highlands, and an Egyptian fleet arriving debarked a fresh army, which, marching into the interior, surprised a great number of villages, and in a single raid put to the sword nearly 20,000 men, women, and children. Tombasis, watching his opportunity, fell on a small detachment of Egyptians, and cut them to pieces. The Christians rallied, and, swarming down from the mountains, assailed the retiring army with such fury that they killed 7,000 men.
A new Egyptian expedition of 10,000 troops with a large squadron reinforced the Ottoman army, and the commander, Ismail Gibraltar, so-called from having been the first Turk to sail beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, an able, adroit, and comparatively humane man, began to assail the Sphakiotes on their weak side, and induced them by bribery to withdraw from the hostilities. The other districts, many times decimated, had not the force to maintain the struggle, and Tombasis, after making a vain effort to rally the elements of another struggle, abandoned the island, which submitted almost entirely. Thousands of the most devoted and patriotic Cretans went to Greece, where they fought bravely for the common nationality. We see still on the plains of Athens the tomb of the corps that perished there to a man refusing to turn their backs to the Turk.
After the battle of Navarino, the insurrection broke out anew; an expedition from Greece under Kalergis captured Grabusa by stratagem, Kissamos was taken by siege; soon the Cretan Mussulmans (the regular Egyptian forces being engaged in the Morea) were shut up again in the three fortresses of Canéa, Retimo, and Candia, and would soon, in all probability, either have abandoned the island or have perished in it, had not the three allied powers decided that Crete should be united to the government of Mehemet Ali, and notified their decree to the Christian population. (Pashley, "Historical Introduction to Travels in Crete.")
The establishment of the Egyptian régime was at first productive of great relief to the Christian population, as Mehemet Ali had shrewdness enough to comprehend that their oppression would be the disfavor of the Christian powers, now for the first time clearly recognized to be mistresses of the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, and to perceive that for material prosperity the Christian element was far more available than the Mussulman, corrupted and degraded by long unchecked and unmeasured abuse of power, and dependence on servitude of others, the most hopeless of all slavery. Order was re-established, and political organization, which Crete had never known, was introduced, exiles began to return, and all promised a better régime than any Cretan could have hoped for under foreign rule.
The Pasha, in his designs of obtaining complete independence, saw also that he must some day count the Turkish population of Crete as his enemies; all these causes combined gave the Christians an advantage over the Mussulman element. After a time, however, the pirate's instincts took the predominance, and Mehemet Ali, well assured of his possession, began to measure the capacity of the island for extortion of taxes. The promises made at the time of pacification were unheeded, imposts succeeded each other, until the population, alarmed, had recourse to their immemorial expedient of an assembly, and, several thousand strong, Christian and Mussulman alike, they met at Murnies, unarmed and accompanied by their families. This habit of so assembling has from ancient times played an important part in the history of Crete, and was known as Syncretism. To this day, every crisis and every important measure referring to the general welfare is discussed in a full assembly of deputies of the whole population.
The assembly of Murnies was peaceful; no one brought his arms, no violence of any kind was perpetrated on any interest or person. The assembly petitioned the protecting powers for redress and the fulfilment of the promises made at their submission, but the indifference of the soi-disant Christian powers to everything that implied the rights of the subject had already descended on the Greeks, so lately emancipated by the "untoward event;" and the French and English residents at Alexandria, more charmed by Egyptian music than the claims of justice, heard what was agreeable to the Viceroy, and the English agent even advised him to make an example of insubordination which should save him any future trouble. So encouraged, the arbiter of life or death to this brave people sent orders to execute a number of persons, both Christian and Mussulman. The Governor, Mustapha Pasha, now known as Mustapha Kiritli (Cretan), a hard and barbarous Albanian, bred in the brutalities of the long wars with the Christians, readily complied, and seized a number of persons at Canéa indifferently. At the same time, the same orders were sent to other provinces, and a general and simultaneous execution took place. Many of the victims had no connection with the assembly, nor does the number or quality seem to have been fixed. The Albanian butcher caught the spirit of his master's order, and hanged at random. Pashley says that thirty-three were hanged, but perhaps he had a desire to diminish the enormity of the deed for which he declares the English agent at Alexandria to have been largely responsible. Residents at Canéa at that time have assured me that over eighty were hanged at Murnies, and the then Austrian consul at Canéa has repeatedly declared to me that there were several hundred victims, and that he himself had seen the bodies hanging on the trees of Murnies, until the whole air round was infected by them. This was in 1833, and until 1840 the Butcher held the island tranquil under the rod of his menace.