free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Nineteenth Century
the struggle; but in Crete the church seems to have avoided the mistrust
which attached to its higher dignitaries in other parts. Cretans are
not anti-clerical; probably because the Cretan hierarchs preserved a
greater independence than some of their colleagues on the mainland.
After their initial successes, says Pashley, the Cretans believed themselves
to be under the especial protection of the Deity; their every
banner was accompanied by a brave priest, ‘who celebrated, with an
unheard of frequency, the most solemn ordinances of their religion’.
And for about a year some fanatical Christian husbands avoided intercourse
with their wives as a pollution which would bring them death in
battle. Pashley also found that many Sphakians had become ‘Brothers’
according to a religious ceremony which dated from the time of Justin-
ian and had been forbidden by both ecclesiastical and imperial authority.
This brotherhood, like gossiprede, was a sacred tie; to marry your
‘brother’s’ sister would be incest. ‘Better the brothers of the church
than the brothers of the womb’ went the tag.
Thirdly, the ‘21 revolt was marked by dissension among the Cretans
themselves. The two most prominent leaders, Roussos of Sphakia and
Melidhonis of Central Crete, were bitter rivals; (Melidhonis was in the
end murdered). And apart from these local chieftains, whose small
guerrilla bands carried on the only sort of warfare which could profit
the Greeks, there was one Michael Comnenus Aphendoulief, a Russian-
Greek who claimed descent from the Comnenus dynasty of Byzantine
emperors, sent by Ypsilandis to direct operations - at the Cretans’
request. The Russian eventually retired to Malta; for the Cretans found
they did not want him after all. With such disagreements at the top,
the revolt had no hope of success.
After Navarino the Cretans rose again; a Council of Crete was set up
on the islet Grambousa, which had become a stronghold of patriot
pirates, as it had been before. But this new insurrection collapsed with
the defeat of Hadzimichalis at Frangokastello, in 1828.
Things could never be the same again, however, after Navarino.
Greek independence was now a fact which must be recognized; there
was now a ‘Cretan Question’. Crete had entered the sphere of Great
Power politics. Yet due to the lunatic machinations of the powers,
enosis was to be delayed for another eighty-five years. Britain must bear
a large share of the blame. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom the
Powers chose as a suitable king for the new principality of Greece,
recognized the impossibility of the proposed frontiers. He wrote to
Lord Aberdeen that he could see no way of pacifying Greece without
including Crete in the new state. But Leopold never actually became
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