THE CRETAN INSURRECTION OF 1866-7-8. BY WILLIAM J. STILLMAN, Late U. S. Consul in Crete. [Illustration; Owl on book] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1874 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by HENRY HOLT, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. TO THE MEMORY OF LE GRAND LOCKWOOD, _OF NEW YORK_, This Volume IS DEDICATED, IN RECOGNITION OF THE UNOSTENTATIOUS, UNPROMISED, AND UNRESERVED LIBERALITY WHICH RENDERED IT POSSIBLE FOR THE AUTHOR TO REMAIN IN CRETE DURING THE INSURRECTION. PREFACE. In committing to print the subjoined record of the Cretan revolt of 1866-7-8, I am fulfilling a duty in regard to a series of events _quæque ipse vidi et quorum pars magna fui_, and which, if not in themselves of importance, are so as a revelation of the manner in which political influences work in the East, and perhaps still more as a curious exemplification of the weight which personal accidents, private intrigue and pique, and the capacity or incapacity of obscure officials, may have in determining the affairs of great empires. In taking the position I did with reference to the insurrection, I was actuated only by a love of justice, and in no wise by sentimental or religious prejudices; but I hope it may be permitted me to say that, if I learned how fatal are the defects of the Greek race, its bitterness in personal rivalry, want of patriotic subordination, and the extravagance of its political hostilities, I saw also that it possesses admirable qualities, which the interests of civilization demand the development of; high capacity for political organization, for patriotic effort and self-sacrifice; and endurance and equanimity under misfortunes, which few races could endure and retain any character or coherence. Their amiable and refined personal qualities, and their private and domestic morality, have justified in me a feeling towards them for which I was utterly unprepared on going to the Levant, and give me a hope that the manifest lesson of the Cretan revolt may not be lost in their future, either to them or to the friends of the better civilization. I feel that the Hellenes are less responsible for the vices of their body politic than their guardian Powers, who interfere to misguide, control to pervert, and protect to enfeeble, every good impulse and quality of the race, while they foster this spirit of intrigue, themselves enter into the domestic politics of Greece in order to be able to control her foreign, and each in turn, lest Greece should some day be an aid to some other of the contestants about the bed of the sick man, does all it can to prevent her from being able to help herself. No just and right-thinking man can make responsible for its sins or misfortunes, a people which is denied the right to shape its own institutions without a studied reference to the prejudices