"I am sorry to tell you that the troops have again gone out--one division to Kissamos, the other to Apokorona. The people are again flying to the hills before the advent of the troops, and I greatly fear more atrocities." CHAPTER X. By this time, the Powers had learned how utterly mendacious all the Turkish official reports were, and that the insurrection was further than ever from being suppressed; and the Porte, dreading the effect of the knowledge of the utter failure of the Imperial Commission from which it had promised itself such immense results, developed a new plan, in which the _douceurs_ of a _plébiscite_ were to be administered by its armies, and a new assembly constituted, who were to sit at Constantinople, and represent both the Mussulman and Christian populations as an advisory council on the new measures of reform which were to pacify the _conquered_ islanders. The most curious of all the strange characteristics of this affair were the persistence of the Turkish Government in misinforming Europe of the position of the struggle, and the willingness of official Europe to be misinformed. Now, at a moment when every corps of the Turkish army had been defeated, the Porte, with a ludicrous gravity which would have been comical in the extreme if one could have forgotten the misery of starvation, of barbarism, death by cold and fire and sword, with atrocities without name which were momentarily being perpetrated by its authority on the helpless victims of its paternal tenderness, sent to Crete its ablest diplomatic agent, Server Effendi, with the following proclamation, nominally addressed to the Commissioner, but really to the Powers, Server Effendi being actually the plenipotentiary, Mustapha being in disgrace, but openly honored by an honor as delusive as the victories by which he had secured it: "It is needless to tell thee that we are deeply grieved at the insurrection which has been fomented in Crete by ill-intentioned people, at the evils which have resulted from it to the inhabitants, and at the blood which a cruel necessity has forced to flow. If, notwithstanding all their efforts, our Government have not been able to prevent these misfortunes, if the paternal advice which they gave to the misguided inhabitants, in order to bring them back to the line of duty, have remained fruitless, the responsibility must wholly fall, before God and the tribunal of public opinion, upon the instigators of these calamities.