The plan of the Palace was to crush the revolt with a great force of troops from Anatolia; but as straightforward methods by themselves never sufficed the Sultan’s advisers, underground devices were also employed. The Greek element in Macedonia on previous occasions had been found willing to join hands with the Turkish Government in the suppression of Bulgarian rebellions, so Munir Pasha, who had for some years been the Turkish Ambassador in Paris, was now sent to Athens to arrange for the organisation of Greek bands to attack the Moslem and Christian supporters of the Committee of Union and Progress. The Palace also attempted, by offers of full pardons, gifts, and promotions, to withdraw army officers from the revolutionary movement, and so leave the disorganised followers of the Committee of Union and Progress an easy prey for the forces that were to be brought against them. The thirty-eight young officers who had been arrested in Salonica and were imprisoned in the capital were released and pardoned. Thousands of officers in the army and navy were astonished to find themselves suddenly promoted, and decorations were distributed wholesale. The Palace entertained the foolish belief that every man has his price; but all this hypocritical benevolence was of no avail and only served to lay bare to the world the incompetence and panic of the Camarilla in the hour of danger. It was decided to despatch no less than forty-eight battalions from Anatolia to overpower the disaffected Macedonian army, and had these Asiatic troops proved staunch there would have been a terrible shedding of blood. Twenty-seven of these battalions were transported by sea from Smyrna to Salonica, where they disembarked on July 16. The efforts of Dr. Nazim Bey and other agents of the Young Turk party had already, to a large extent, inoculated these troops with the revolutionary doctrines before they left Asia Minor, and from the moment of their embarkation at Smyrna the emissaries of the Committee were at work among them, testing the officers to find out who were of the revolutionary party and using persuasive arguments with the rank and file. Some of the regiments on reaching Salonica refused to proceed to Monastir and were isolated from the rest. The remaining regiments were marched to Monastir, and with them went officers who were initiates of the secret society, disguised as sherbet sellers, _mollahs_, and so forth, ever winning over adherents to the cause. It soon became clear that the bulk of the officers and men of this force were in sympathy with the troops whom they had been sent to slaughter, and that they would never fire upon their comrades of the Third Army Corps. These battalions that entered Monastir were soon persuaded to take the oath of allegiance to the Committee of Union and Progress.