Gentlemen who lunch

Pachides Meeting. 13 November 1989

The text beneath the illustration reads:

“A meeting convened by the British Military Commissioner, Sir Herbert Chermside, was held on Crete on November 13, in a large tent at Pachides, on the outpost line, at which Sir Alfred Biliotti, the British Consul was present. Representatives of Christians of the province of Candia accepted with acclamation the conditions for the disarmament of the population, and urged that British officials and troops should be used to administer and safeguard their districts. Later Sir Herbert Chermside entertained about seventy headmen to a champagne lunch. Some 300 (?) rifles were brought into Candia on the following day.”
The Graphic 20 December 1898.

No details have been found of the quantity or quality of champagne consumed.

 
Cretan Muslims within Candia by the British had been disarmed within days of the Candia massacre of 6th September, a process that produced some 5,356 firearms of which 1,576 were deemed to be the property of the Ottoman Government, and the final Ottoman troops had been thrown off the island by 5th November. The problem remained with the Cretan Christians whose leaders had made it clear to Chermside that infighting within the Christian community could preclude disarmament taking place. The mistrust between the political factions of the Christian community, and the suspicions of the Christian leaders that any Cretan Christian administrators would act in a partisan fashion, was so great that only the presence of ‘neutral’ British troops in the countryside could induce the chieftains to instruct their followers to surrender their arms.

On 6th December 1898, following the Pachides meeting, Chermside was able to report to Rear Admiral Noel, the Senior British military commander in Crete and one of the ruling ‘Council of Admirals’, that British troops and officers previously confined within a ‘cordon’ around Candia within the range of naval guns, had started administering the towns and villages within the British secteur. By that date they had collected 16,000 firearms, ‘exclusive fowling pieces and revolvers’ from the civilian population.*

 
*National Archive. FO78/4969. Page 230. Chermside to Rear Admiral Noel, 6th December 1898. Inclosures 1 & 2 in No. 1.

Know your enemy – part 1

The arrival of British and other troops on Crete in March 1897 was not to defend the downtrodden Cretan population from the ravages of the bestial Ottoman hordes, but rather to attempt to prevent the island falling into a state of anarchy; a state brought about by a Cretan Christian rebellion, the Ottoman reaction to the rebellion and an invasion of the island, still at that stage an integral and legal part of the Ottoman Empire, by the Greek army. The Greek force of some 1500 men and associated artillery, commanded by Col. Timoleon Vassos, aide de camp to the King of Greece, landed on the north coast of Crete to the west of Canea on 14th February 1897, shortly afterwards moving inland to make their headquarters in the village of Alikianos. On landing, Vassos proclaimed the Greek annexation of the island, a move that threatened the stability of the whole region.

Col. Timoleon Vassos

Greek army HQ, Alikianos.

Col. Vassos HQ at Alikianos in 2012

Col. Vassos receiving dispatches

With the Cretan Christian insurgents controlling the interior of the island, the bulk of the Muslim population abandoned the countryside and concentrated in the towns on coast. Lacking the artillery and the discipline and organisation necessary to capture these towns, the insurgents were dependent for further success on the the Greek army. However, fearing that assaults on the towns would result in further Ottoman retaliation, both in Crete and in the Balkans, the initial military objective of the British troops to prevent the insurgent/Greek forces from capturing the towns.

In the end however, no credible threat to either Canea or Candia [Iraklion], the towns in which British troops were based, was offered – the regular Greek forces having proved sufficient in numbers to provoke the Ottoman Empire into declaring war on Greece but insufficient to produce any military result on Crete, and the insurgents too undisciplined.

Following the overwhelming Greek defeat by Ottoman forces in the ‘Thirty Days War’, Vassos and his men were withdrawn from the island; albeit not without some difficulty, Cretan insurgents at one stage threatening to kill Vassos rather than let him depart.

Insurrectionists or Plagiarists ?

On arrival in Crete in March 1897, the ‘enemy’ the British troops faced were the invading Greek forces and Cretan Christian insurrectionists.

The photograph below, ‘A contingent of Cretan insurrectionists’ appeared in the Illustrated London News on 6 March 1897. The attribution is to ‘A Naval Officer On Board one of the Ships off Crete.’

“The Heads of the Insurrection.”

The photograph above, ‘The Heads of the Insurrection’, appeared in the Supplement to ‘Black and White’ Magazine, 20 March 1897, and is attributed to R. G. Kruger. The text on the magazine page suggests the photograph was taken near Canea.

Other than an apparent case of plagiarism, there are several things in particular to note about the photograph.

Third from the left in the back row is a figure dressed in what appears to be a regular military uniform. This is possibly one of the Greek officers or artilleryman who are known to have traveled with a number of the insurgent bands.

The two figures on the extreme left of the front row are both dressed in western European clothes, complete with kepis, as is the figure fifth from the left, but without a hat. These are possibly western journalists, several of whom accompanied insurgent groups. These included The Times Journalist R.A.H. Bickford-Smith who was present at the relief of Kandanos ,

Post script. Within 12 hours of posting I received the following via facebook:

The second from right in the middle row with the white beard and black clothes, is the Cydonia chieftain Dimitris Gelasakis (1853-1912), uncle of my grandfather, and a close friend and associate of Eleftherios Venizelos!

Collecting weapons

Collecting weapons from Cretan Christians. Late 1898 or early 1899.

One of the tasks of the British, and other European, troops on Crete was to disarm the Cretans. The Muslim population were mostly based in the larger towns on the north coast of the island, towns occupied by European forces, and their disarmament was straighforward. In the Christian controlled centre and south of the island European officers went out into the villages and working through the local chietens and political leaders, arranged the ‘voluntary’ disarmament of the local population.

Judging by the flags on the left of the picture, this photograph probably shows a Russian detachment receiving weapons from Cretan Christians. British troops carried out similar exercises in their secteur of control, Candia

The flag on the right hand side of the photograph is almost, but not quite, the flag of the Cretan Autonomous State. The one displayed here, with a cross in the upper left quadrant, was the version that was rejected by the European Powers. The objection to it was that it had two (Christian) crosses on it which was deemed to be politically insensitive since the Cretan Auonomous State had been created upon the expulsion of the Ottoman (Muslim) authorities by the Powers. The official flag had a star in the top left quadrant, representing the minority, Muslim, population of the island.

More information on the significance of Cretan flags can be found here.

1895 – Greek fighters leaving Crete

Greek volunteers leaving Crete c. Oct 1895.

The rebellion in Crete was started in September 1895 by a local group of Cretan Christians calling themselves the Epitropi, the Central Political Committee. They were aided by arms and me from the Greek mainland, some of whom are illustrated here returning home as the winter of 1895 drew in.

August 1896 Cretan fighters

British illustration of Cretan Christian revolutionaries.