I went to pay my respects and renew my offers of good services if conciliation were to be attempted, expecting to see a civilized general, but I found only a conceited and bombastic old man who had not the least idea of what he had undertaken.  He pooh-poohed conciliation, and assured me that his plans were so perfect that within two weeks after his setting out for the conquest of the island all would be over and the insurrection at his mercy.  I ventured to suggest that he would find the country more difficult than he supposed, and that the total want of roads would be a grave obstacle to such rapid success.  He replied that it could not be more difficult than Montenegro, and he had conquered that, etc., and I left him greatly relieved as to the probability of success in his operations.

He employed two weeks in his preparations, and then set out for the conquest of Sphakia, moving in two columns, with a total force of 15,000 men, his own division taking the pass of Kallikrati, giving access to Sphakia from the east, and held by Coroneos, and that of Mehmet Pasha moving against Krapi, the pass on the north held by Zimbrakaki and the Greek bands.  Both divisions were driven back to the plains.  The savage excesses which followed this double defeat far surpassed anything we had known.  Villages which had long been at peace and within the Turkish lines were put to sack, and the last outrages of war inflicted on the unfortunate inhabitants.  The cruelties which, under Mustapha, were the occasional deeds of subordinate commanders or the consequence of partial defeats, became, under Omar, the rule by order to all the detachments, and Omar himself took his share of the booty and the pick of the captive girls for his own harem.

As I had the testimony of European officers in the Turkish service given me freely, in disgust at the proceedings of the sirdar, I did not depend on insurgent reports of these things.  While the Egyptian troops remained I had constant and detailed information from their European officers.  A German officer, by the name of Geissler,—­Omar’s chief of artillery,—­died of dysentery at Canea during the campaign, and, his effects being sent in to the consulate of France for transmission to his family, I had the chance to see his diary, in which were noted the incidents of the campaign.  One entry which I copied was this:  “O.  Pasha ordered the division to ravage and rape,” the village being one where the inhabitants had never taken part in the insurrection.  “All villages were burned,” wrote Geissler, and all prisoners murdered or worse.  The chiefs of four villages, who came in voluntarily to make their submission, were beheaded on the spot, and the population soon abandoned all villages in the route of the army, which, not being able to make any impression on the insurgent force, avenged itself on the inoffensive Christians whenever any fell into their hands.  Nothing more savage and needlessly cruel has taken place in the history of the Ottoman empire than the deeds of the Sirdar Croat.