_Espionage_ has ever been the favourite weapon of Abdul Hamid; so spies were now poured into Macedonia to worm out the secrets of the movement and discover the leaders, and of these spies many never returned to tell their tale. The Sultan also gave orders to the senior officers in Macedonia to find out all they could about the movement, to arrest suspected officers, and send them to Constantinople, and to address the men solemnly concerning their duties, and especially impress it upon them that to withdraw their fidelity and obedience from the Caliph, “the Shadow of God,” “the Commander of the Faithful,” was regarded by the Moslem religion as the most heinous of sins. In March a special Commission, under Mahir Pasha, was sent from Constantinople to Salonica to institute an inquisition, but despite numerous denunciations, perquisitions, arrests, and tortures, it collected little evidence, and entirely failed to get at the heart of the plot, for there were no traitors within that circle of devoted men. But the Commission was able to report to the Palace that there undoubtedly existed in Macedonia a powerful secret society dangerous to the _régime_, and that the Macedonian troops could not be relied upon to support the Government. The work of the Commission alarmed the Committee of Union and Progress, several of whose most useful members had been seized; and the young officers in the army who had been affiliated realised their danger, and came to the conclusion that it would be expedient to start the insurrection as soon as possible, before further arrests had seriously weakened their cause. Thus it happened that, quite a year before the time originally contemplated by the Committee, Major Niazi Bey, at Resna, on July 3, took the momentous step. He openly disavowed his allegiance to his sovereign, fled to the mountains with a band of Moslem civilians and some of the soldiers under his command, and issued his rebel manifesto, in which he called upon all patriots to join in destroying the Government. I will tell later the story of the doings of Niazi Bey, Enver Bey, and the other insurgent leaders in the mountains; how officers and men rallied round them; how they persuaded the Bulgarian bands to join forces with them; how at last the entire Macedonian army had become the army of the Committee; and how, within three weeks of that historic event—the raising of the banner of revolt at Resna—the revolution had triumphed and the Despotism was a thing of the past. At this stage I will describe the series of events that precipitated the final struggle between the Palace and the Committee.