No resistance was after this offered until Vafé was reached. Here about two hundred Greek volunteers and a thousand Cretans, under the command of Hadji Mikhali, of Lakus, and Costa Veloudaki, of Sphakia, were concentrated. The Cretan chiefs were opposed to any regular fighting, and counselled a retreat into the ravines, where they could entangle the troops and attack them without serious risk to themselves, while a pitched fight was not only not in the way of the islanders, but, if lost, as they considered it must be in view of the overpowering Turkish forces, it would discourage the movement greatly. Zimbrakaki, the commander of the volunteers, with the most of his men, wished not to abandon so strong a position, at which they had, moreover, constructed a strong redoubt, without fighting, and it was decided to make a stand. The majority of the Cretans, however, recognizing no authority but that of their captains, withdrew before the fight, which, had Mustapha been a commander careful of the lives of his troops, might have been decided by flanking movements without firing a shot, as his army was composed of ten thousand regulars and fully three thousand irregulars, Albanian and Cretan, while the Christians were hardly five hundred. No forces the committee could have assembled would have made the stand a prudent or justifiable one under the circumstances, and its result was what the Cretan chiefs had foreseen. Mustapha, as usual, opened with a direct assault of Egyptians, which was repulsed with heavy loss; but, in the meantime, a body of Albanians were engaged in climbing the heights which protected the flanks of the position, and so nearly succeeded in surprising the Greeks that they only saved themselves by precipitate flight. A few gallant fellows, indifferent to the odds or the certainty of defeat, were killed, taken prisoners, or escaped by suicide. The committee, with the Hellenes, retreated to Askyfó, and made the best preparations to defend the ravine which their demoralized forces permitted; and so formidable was the position that Mustapha decided not to attack it, but to be content with the moral advantage of the victory at Vafé, which was nearly fatal to the insurrection, in spite of the triviality of the losses of the Christians, which did not surpass thirty killed of both Hellenes and Cretans. The latter had attributed invincibility to their allies, and to find them defeated so utterly at the first encounter paralyzed the insurrection for the moment; and, if the Turkish commander had moved energetically on Askyfó, it is not probable that any serious defence would have been made, and, as there was then no other centre of resistance, the taking of Askyfó would have left the movement without any power of forming another nucleus of moral force. The committee must have dispersed, and the thousands of families assembled in Sphakia must have surrendered.