On a number of occasions the European fleet opened fire on Cretan Christian insurgents. On one occasion, on 21st February 1897, shells from a Russian warship hit a Greek church, Profitis Ilias, which was near the base Cretan Christians had been using for a threatened bombardment of Canea.
Although the Russian government later paid for the rebuilding of the church, the Cretan Christian propaganda machine wasn’t slow to make the link between the ‘desecration’ of a Christian church and the, purely accidental, explosion on board the Russian battleship ‘Sissoi Veliky‘ on 15th March that year.
Greek/Cretan Christian postcard – the divine consequences of the European bombardment.
The caption on the postcard reads; The bombardment of Cretans on Akrotiri: The Crime and the Divine Punishment.
The British in Crete, 1896 to 1913. 