The Mussulmans were anxious for the fighting to begin. The Governor had distributed rifles and ammunition _ad libitum_ to his Cretan co-religionaries. The Russian and Italian consuls and myself urged at Constantinople concessions and the removal of the Governor, and all except the English and French begged for the despatch of a man-of-war for the protection of European residents. M. Derché and Mr. Dickson, considering that the presence of any European flag would be an encouragement to the insurrection, refused to unite in this request. Several times the gates of the city had been closed to prevent a sortie of the Mussulmans in the city to attack the consulates. We doubled the number of our cavasses, got revolvers and rifles in order, prepared mattresses for barricading the houses, and organized a strong patrol from the Cretans who had taken refuge in the consulates, to watch the roads by which the Turks would come from Canéa. At this juncture news arrived of the appointment of the former Governor-General of the island, Mustapha Kiritli Pasha, to supersede Ismael. The Imperial Commissioner, for this was the title by which he was to be known, had great personal influence over the Cretans of both religions, and, if he had come immediately on his appointment, would probably have succeeded in averting the insurrection. I find in my correspondence of this date, August 28, 1866: "As to the insurrection itself, it waits to draw first blood. The Greeks to the number of thirty to thirty-five thousand [an enormously exaggerated estimate, I afterward found] are concentrated in the mountains, and determined to fight it out to the bitter end. The delays of diplomacy to right a wrong that was too patent even for your [English] consul to blind himself to, have permitted a trouble to grow that might have been rooted up with reasonable concessions on the part of the government, and now nothing but death and desolation will bring back Crete to Turkish rule. They will now insist on independence where they only demanded common justice. We shall doubtless have another sanguinary, desperate struggle, and a depopulated island, unless Europe intervenes to right the wrong it did in 1830."