The Cretan Insurrection of 1866-7-8. William James Stillman
distress, and the spring passed without renewal of the disturbances or petitions, but in the autumn of that year, after my arrival in the island, I heard that there would be an assembly the following spring, 1866. The discontent was very great. New taxes on straw, on the sale of wine, on all beasts of burden, oppressive collection of the tithes, together with short crops for two years in succession, had produced very great distress, and the Governor added to these grievances his own extortions, with the most shameful venality in the distribution of justice, and disregard of such laws of procedure and punishment as existed. The councils were absolute mockeries, and the councillors his most servile tools. The summer of my arrival, I was told by the surgeon of the civil hospital of a death that had just occurred under his care, in prison, of an old man, arrested for an offence which his son had committed, and because the son could not be found.
Men accused of offences by Ismael's partisans were thrown into prison, and kept indefinite periods without trial until some friend went to bribe his accuser. Ismael never went out into the island for fear of assassination, so well did he know the hatred borne him. This was the state of the island when I arrived in 1865.
CHAPTER I.
There was an annual fair at Omalo in the month of April, and I had intended to make this the occasion of a journey through Sphakia. The Pasha was very earnest in counselling me not to go, and magnifying difficulties for the passage; but this only made me more disposed to go, if only to cross his humor, as he had been exceedingly annoying to me, and we carried on a polite war, defensive on my side, but on his, part of a systematic course of bullying the consuls in order to diminish their influence with the people. His tactics were to encourage infractions of the consular prerogatives, imprison their employees or protégés, make questions at the custom-house, etc. He had, immediately after my arrival, got up a question with me, a patrol of zapties (Albanian police) having entered the consulate to seize and carry off one of the sons of the vice-consul, who resided in the consulate.
I demanded an apology, which he refused. We then exchanged sharp notes, first in French, and then on his part in Turkish, to which I replied in English—a mutual checkmate. Meeting him at a whist party just after, he complained that I had written in English, and he had been obliged to hunt Canéa for three days in order to find some person in confidence who could translate it for him, to which I replied that after four days' search for a person whom I could admit into the secrets of the consulate, I had been finally obliged to have recourse to the public interpreter. He thereupon promised to write in French, and in this language the diplomatic broil went on. The beginning of the row had been an exchange of words between the patrol and the offending protégé. Whose the fault of the first word was an open question, but one with which mine had nothing to do, as no provocation justified infringement of the consular privilege of exterritoriality. The zapties were put on trial. I had four witnesses, who deposed that they saw them in the house. The four zapties swore that they had not entered the doors, and the Pasha declined to render judgment against them, saying that, as there were four witnesses for and an equal number against, the truth could not be ascertained. I demanded that the testimony should be taken down for transmission to Constantinople, whither I intended to appeal. By this time the affair occupied the whole attention of the population of Canéa, a large majority being on my side, and the declaration of my intention to refer the affair to Constantinople annoyed the Pasha very much, as he saw that he would be compelled to make excuses. He, ingeniously, in taking the testimony of my witnesses, omitted administering the oath, while he administered it to his own. When, therefore, the certified copy of the proceedings was delivered me, I called in the parish priest, and took the evidence anew under oath, affixed it to the record, and sent it all on. This was having a trump too many for him, as he had intended to invalidate the evidence of my witnesses on the ground that they had refused to take the oath.
Judgment was delivered in Constantinople, ordering the apology to be made for violation of domicile, and the minister on my part engaged my protégé to make a declaration that he had not had any intention of insulting the authorities. But, with this positive order communicated to both of us, he denied for several weeks that he had had any orders on the subject; but as I stuck to the affair like a leech, having nothing else to absorb my energies, he finally admitted judgment, and ordered the mulazim to ask my pardon, but cunningly managed to have the amends made in his own audience-room to escape éclat. I said nothing, but waited until he made me a visit, and without any warning introduced my culprit; and before he knew what was passing, the Roland was delivered for his Oliver. He did not attempt to conceal his annoyance, nor I my satisfaction, for he had notified me that he expected our apology chez lui. This was not the end of the Lilliputian diplomatics, for on my next visit to him the Pasha insisted on presenting me with an intaglio, which, he said, he had bought of a peasant some days before. He knew that I was an amateur of gems, and he was a collector, and had several very fine ones. The intaglio was exquisite, but the genuineness doubtful, and, when he insisted on forcing it on me in spite of my repeated refusals, I accepted it, with the intention of sending it to the government if genuine, so as not to be under obligations to him. Reaching home, I drew a file across it, and found it to be a paste copy worth a dime. I immediately wrote him a note, enclosing the file, and telling him that, as he was a buyer of gems, and might not know how well they were counterfeited, I begged to enclose him an instrument I had found very useful.
After this skirmish, the general result of which, enormously magnified in popular report, was a mortifying defeat to the Pasha, merely from the obstinacy with which he had fought the question, we got into a chronic state of pique, and my resolution to go to Omalo and Sphakia put him into a great irritation. He had no right to oppose my going, but tried to make trouble, and began to talk about intrigues, etc. However, the news coming down from the mountains that the fair was to be turned into an Assembly stopped me, for a Cretan imbroglio is something into which no wise man will allow himself to be drawn voluntarily. On the 12th of April, the Assembly began to gather at Omalo, whence it moved to Boutzounaria, then to Nerokouro, nearer to Canéa, where it remained until the gathering was nearly complete, when it moved back to Boutzounaria.
CHAPTER II.
The real agitation began when the Assembly finally adjourned to Boutzounaria, a tiny village at the edge of the plain of Canéa. Three thousand men were assembled on a little plateau overlooking the plain, and about three miles from the city. Here gushes out of the living rock the stream which supplies the city with water, by an aqueduct which dates from the Hellenic times. Metellus cut it when he laid siege to Cydonia, and the Cretans in the war of Greek independence repeated the offence, and though, in the latter case, the siege was raised by a fleet and army coming to the assistance of the Turks, the sufferings produced by cutting off the water were very great.
From here the people had a safe retreat into their fastnesses above, and had nothing to fear from the Turkish forces. They came unarmed, but kept patrols at night on all the roads leading from the city to guard against surprise. By day they could observe the whole plain from Suda to Platania; and here, looking down on the orange groves of Murnies and Perivoglia, the wide expanse of olive orchards, and the fields where thousands of sheep, the property of Mussulmans mainly, feed while the herbage is green with the spring rains, they passed the time much after the old Greek fashion, games of agility and strength occupying the time of the young, while the old discussed the affairs of state; but no disorder occurred during the session of the Assembly proper. Sheep were roasted whole, the messengers came and went, deputations from the further districts came in slowly, others whose affairs demanded their presence at home went away, there being none of those professed politicians who live by attending conventions, and making the public harm their good, so that there could be no vicarious expression of opinion.
Finally, all was