The Turks thereupon evacuated Thessaly, and with them departed the last of the Moslem beys or landowners. Though Greece had at the time a navy superior in strength to that of the Porte, it effected nothing in the war by sea. Turkish troops had been able to invade Crete, and were in practical occupation of it. The four Powers, not including Germany, whose Kaiser was already coquetting with the Sultan, with a view to a future military alliance, then blockaded the island, occupied ports on its coast, and ultimately compelled the Turkish troops to evacuate it. In 1898 Prince George of Greece, a son of the King of Greece, was appointed governor of the island at the suggestion of the Powers, and the native assembly was recalled into existence. This arrangement was obviously of a temporary nature. It lasted with growing friction till the revolution in Turkey in 1908. When Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Cretan Assembly proclaimed annexation to Greece, and thenceforth the union of the island to the present kingdom was complete and was fully recognized by the Powers. The Great Powers were less successful in securing performance of the promises of the Sultan under the treaty of Berlin in the case of the Armenians. The Porte had undertaken by the treaty to carry out, without delay, “the amelioration and reforms demanded for provinces inhabited by Armenians and to guarantee their security against Kurds and Circassians.” Periodic reports showing what reforms were effected were to be laid before the Powers, who were also to superintend their application. These provisions were the more important as they were practically the conditions on which the provinces of Erzerum and Bayezid, which had been occupied by the Russians in their invasion of the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1877, were restored to the Porte. It may be taken that, if the Powers had conceived it possible that these promises would not be carried out, they would not have been so cruel as to restore these two provinces, inhabited so largely by Armenians, to Turkish rule. Lord Salisbury in 1888 did, in fact, use strong language to the Porte on the subject of Armenia, and threatened armed force if reforms were not carried out. In spite of this threat, no reforms were effected. Mr. Gladstone, when he came into power again in 1892, endeavoured to bring pressure on the Porte in favour of the Armenians, but he met with no support from other Powers. Bismarck at last intimated to him that the subject had better be allowed to drop. Russia, it seems, was at that time engaged in the effort to induce the Armenians inhabiting the districts round Kars, which had been ceded to it under the treaty of Berlin, to give up their national Church and to join the Greek Church. It was little disposed to give support to the Armenians who remained subjects of the Porte.