In all this shaping of events there was no disguising the control of the Russian Government. The insurrection became a menace to bring on the Eastern question, for which Russia was not yet ready, and which she could not permit to be brought on under Hellenic auspices. The moment could not have been more auspiciously chosen for Greece to carry on a war with the Ottoman empire, and public opinion in Greece was unanimous in favor of this emergency rather than abandoning Crete, be the risks and event what they might. The Turkish army was already fully occupied--a further levy of troops would have been perilous, and Joseph Karam waited at Athens the signal to arouse the Lebanon. The Greeks had little money, but the Turks had comparatively less, for their army and navy had not been paid, were discouraged and mutinous, and the treasury was empty. Egypt was hostile, the Principalities ready to revolt. My own opinion then was, and is still, that if Greece had gone to war she had a reasonable chance of victory--not without disasters or great sacrifices, but her history has shown that she is capable of enduring both the one and the other; and if Russia had been friendly to her in this crisis, success would have been _most_ probable. The Bulgaris administration, its object gained in the suppression of the insurrection, was in its turn overthrown by the popular indignation at the discovered trick, but when the diplomatic flurry had passed, and tranquillity had returned to the Ægean, we had only to see drift over to the shores of their kindred land the débris of one of the best justified and best deserving revolts against misgoverning tyranny which modern history has recorded. All was quiet in Crete. THE YEAR AFTER THE WAR. The last year of the war I had left Crete on a leave of absence of two months, which was extended indefinitely by Mr. Washburn, then Secretary of State, on account of the health of my family; but in April my wife, broken by the hardships of our Cretan life and sick-bed watching; and dejected greatly by the loss of a cause in which she had the most passionate sympathy, and by the misery of the unhappy Cretans around us, became insane and ended her life.