Meanwhile, all the friendly consuls united in urging the dissolution of the committee, and leaving the protection of individuals to the governments of the protecting powers, as the only means of averting what was seen to be a disastrous affair for the Cretans. That this was the true policy events have shown. The Cretans were not prepared to fight at that time, their friends on the Continent were no more prepared to assist them, and there was no supply of powder or arms in the island, nothing but old tufeks, trophies of the war of 1821-30; the whole Turkish empire was at peace, and its available force ready to be poured on the island. The committee wavered and half-decided to disperse, they offered to put themselves as a committee into the hands of the Pasha, and await in his palace, or other quarters assigned them, the reply to the petition. This was refused, and the critical question hung by a hair. The influence of two persons prevailed over the committee against that of the consuls--one a priest called Parthenius Kelaïdes, there being two Parthenii in the committee; the other a Greek physician, temporarily in the island, known by the two names of Joannides and Pappadakis, long resident in England, an ultra-radical, and one of those who, ultra-demagogical in all their tendencies, are really honest in their intentions, and, wishing to do good, only succeed in doing the greater evil. In Crete, Dr. Joannides is generally considered as the immediate cause of the disastrous turn events took, and, as soon as the insurrection took active form, he abandoned it to its manifest destiny, and has never been heard of since in the island. It has always been a question if the Russian consul was sincere in his union with his colleagues of the majority, it being thought by some that in his hostility, mainly personal, to the French consul, he secretly took ground against the unconditional submission, that the Pasha and M. Derché might not carry the day. Be this as it may, I am confident that with regard to fighting he was in accord with his colleagues, and considered that actual insurrection should be avoided, and that the instructions of the government were to this effect. But he was a man of very unsound judgment, and so passionate and personal in his way of seeing men and matters that I have always been of the opinion that, from mere personal feeling against Derché, he secretly strengthened Parthenius, over whom his influence was supreme, in his obstinacy, and so prevented the dispersal of the committee, which finally withdrew to the mountains to be secure from a _coup de main_. Before doing so, however, they offered to allow two or more battalions of troops to guard them at Boutzounaria, a proposition which the Pasha refused peremptorily, knowing that, so long as the committee remained a constituted body, the Cretans would respect its authority, but that, if they dissolved and dispersed, they would lose all right to act, or control over the people.