, it featured the initials of the motto "Crete,
Enosis, Freedom or Death", and the cross with the inscription "Jesus Christ Wins."|left As tensions ran high in the island, and several petitions to the Sultan went unanswered, armed bands were formed, and the uprising was officially proclaimed on 21 August 1866. The revolt caused immediate sympathy in Greece, but also elsewhere in Europe. The rebels initially managed to gain control of most of the hinterland although as always the four fortified towns of the north coast and the southern town of
Ierapetra remained in Ottoman hands. By the mid-19th century, the Ottomans had ruled Crete for more than 220 years since Crete had been captured from Venetians, despite frequent bloody uprisings by Cretan rebels. While the Cretans rose against the Ottoman occupation during the
War of Greek Independence, the
London Protocol of 1830 dictated that the island could not be a part of the new Greek state. On 30 March 1856, the Treaty of Paris obligated the Sultan to apply the
Hatti-Houmayoun, which guaranteed civil and religious equality to Christians and Muslims. The Ottoman authorities in Crete were reluctant to implement any reform. Before the majority of Muslim conversions (the majority of the former Christians had converted to Islam and then recanted), the Empire tried to recant on liberty of conscience. Gabriel A second cause of the insurrection of 1866 was the interference of
Hekim Ismail Pasha,
wāli of Crete, in an internal quarrel about the organization of the Cretan monasteries. Several laymen recommended that the goods of the monasteries come under the control of a council of elders and that they be used to create schools, but they were opposed by the bishops. Ismail Pasha intervened and designated several people to decide the subject and annulled the election of "undesirable" members, imprisoning the members of the committee that had been charged with going to Constantinople for presenting the subject to the
Patriarch. This intervention provoked violent reactions from the Christian population of Crete. At the time of the first meetings of the revolutionary committees, the representatives were elected by province and the representative of the
Rethymno region was the
hegumen of Arkadi,
Gabriel Marinakis. At the announcement of these nominations Ismail Pasha sent a message to the
hegumen via the Bishop of
Rethymno, Kallinikos Nikoletakis. The letter demanded that the higumen dissemble the revolutionary assembly or the monastery would be destroyed by Ottoman troops. In the month of July 1866, Ismail Pasha sent his army to capture the insurgents, but the members of the committee fled before his troops arrived. The Ottomans left again after destroying
icons and other sacred objects that they found in the monastery. In September, Ismail Pasha sent the
hegumen a new threat of destroying the monastery if the assembly did not yield. The assembly decided to implement a system of defense for the monastery. On 24 September,
Panos Koronaios arrived in Crete and landed at
Bali. He marched to Arkadi, where he was made commander-in-chief of the revolt for the
Rethymno region. A career military man, Koronaios believed that the monastery was not defensible. The
hegumen and the monks disagreed and Koronaios conceded to them, but advised the destruction of the stables so that they could not be used by the Ottomans. This plan was ignored. After having named
Ioannis Dimakopoulos to the post of commander of the garrison of the monastery, Koronaios left. At his departure, numerous local residents, mostly women and children, took refuge in the monastery, bringing their valuables in hopes of saving them from the Ottomans. By 7 November 1866, the monastery sheltered 964 people: 325 men, of which 259 were armed, the rest women and children.
Arrival of the Ottomans Since the mid-October victory of
Mustafa Pasha's troops at
Vafes, the majority of the Ottoman army was stationed in
Apokoronas and were particularly concentrated in the fortresses around the bay of
Souda. The monastery refused to surrender, so Mustafa Pasha marched his troops on
Arkadi. First, he stopped and sacked the village of
Episkopi. From Episkopi, Mustafa sent a new letter to the revolutionary committee at Arkadi, ordering them to surrender and informing them that he would arrive at the monastery in the following days. The Ottoman army then turned toward
Roustika, where Mustafa spent the night in the monastery of the prophet Elie, while his army camped in the villages of Roustika and
Aghios Konstantinos. Mustafa arrived in
Rethymno on 5 November, where he met Ottoman and Egyptian reinforcements. The Ottoman troops reached the monastery during the night of 7–8 November. Mustafa, although he had accompanied his troops to a site relatively close, camped with his staff in the village of Messi.
Egyptian Intervention In late 1866
Isma'il Pasha (Egypt's Khedive) sent an Egyptian military contingent to aid the Ottoman Empire in putting down the rebellion. The contingent was made up of 16,000 infantry troops under the command of Emirliva (major-general) Ismail Shaheen Pasha and was transported by the
Egyptian Navy. Due to the ineffectiveness of the
Ottoman Navy's siege of the island, guns and equipment were smuggled by sea from Greece to the Cretan rebels, which lengthened the siege of the Cretan capital and raised casualties on the Egyptian side. In mid-1867, Khedive
Isma'il Pasha removed Shaheen Pasha from command of the Egyptian forces and replaced him by a more experienced officer, Emirliva Ismail Sadiq Pasha, who on 6 October 1867 successfully defeated the Cretan rebels in their capital.
Attack On the morning of 8 November, 1866, an army of Ottoman soldiers and 30 cannons, directed by Suleyman, arrived on the hills of the monastery while
Mustafa Pasha waited in the Messi. Suleyman, positioned on the hill of Kore to the north of the monastery sent a last request for surrender. He received only gunfire in response. The Cretans were relatively protected by the walls of the monastery, while the Ottomans, vulnerable to the insurgents' gunfire, suffered numerous losses. Seven Cretans took their position within the windmill of the monastery. This building was quickly captured by the Ottomans, who set it on fire, killing the Cretan warriors inside. The battle stopped with nightfall. The Ottomans received two heavy cannons from
Rethymno, one of which was called
Koutsahila. They placed them in the stables. On the side of the insurgents, a war council decided to ask for help from
Panos Koronaios and other Cretan leaders in
Amari. Two Cretans left by way of the windows by ropes and, disguised as Muslims, crossed the Ottoman lines. The messengers returned later in the night with the news that it was now impossible for reinforcements to arrive in time because all of the access roads had been blocked by the Ottomans.
Destruction Gabriel gathering the besieged near the powder magazine The women and children inside the monastery were hiding in the powder room. The last Cretan fighters were finally defeated and hid within the monastery. Thirty-six insurgents found refuge in the refectory, near the ammunitions. Discovered by the Ottomans, who forced the door, they were massacred. In the powder room, where the majority of the women and children hid, Konstantinos Giaboudakis gathered the people hiding in the neighbouring rooms together. When the Ottomans arrived at the door of the powder room, Giaboudakis set the barrels of powder on fire and the resulting explosion resulted in the deaths of numerous Ottoman soldiers. Ottoman losses were estimated at 1500. Their bodies were buried without memorials and some were thrown in the neighboring gorges. The remains of numerous Cretan Christians were collected and placed in the windmill, which was made into a reliquary in homage to the defenders of Arkadi. Among the Ottoman troops, a group of Coptic Egyptians were found on the hills outside the monastery. These Christians had refused to kill other Christians. They were executed by the Ottoman troops, and their ammunition cases left behind. After one year, the prisoners were released. Image:Arkadi poudriere.jpg|Konstantinos Giaboudakis preparing the powder barrels Image:Arkadi explosion.png|The explosion of the powder room Image:Konstantinos Giaboudakis.JPG|Konstantinos Giaboudakis
International reaction The Ottomans considered taking Arkadi a big victory and celebrated it with cannon fire.
Giuseppe Garibaldi, in his letters, praised the patriotism of the Cretans and their wish to gain their independence. Numerous Garibaldians, moved by an ardent philhellenism, came to Crete and participated in several battles. Letters written by
Victor Hugo were published in the newspaper
Kleio in
Trieste, which contributed to the worldwide reaction. The letters gave encouragement to the Cretans and told them that their cause would succeed. He emphasized that the drama of Arkadi was no different than the
Destruction of Psara and the
Third Siege of Missolonghi. He described the tragedy of Arkadi: Not finding the necessary solution from the big European powers, the Cretans sought aid from the United States. At this time, the Americans tried to establish a presence in the Mediterranean and showed support for Crete. The relationship grew as they looked for a port in the Mediterranean and they thought, among others, to buy the island of
Milo or Port Island. The American public was sympathetic. The American philhellenes arrived to advocate for the idea of Cretan independence, and in 1868, a question of recognition of independent Crete was addressed in the House of Representatives, but it was decided by a vote to follow a policy of non-intervention in Ottoman affairs.
Aftermath of Arkadi Because the loss of Crete might have been the prelude to a much more serious loss of Ottoman territory in the Balkans, the Ottoman Grand Vizier,
Âli Pasha, arrived in the island in October 1867 and remained there for four months. A'ali set in progress a low profile district by district reconquest of the island followed by the construction of blockhouses or local fortresses across the whole of it. These were the basis of continued Ottoman military rule until the
final crisis of 1896–1898. More importantly, he designed an Organic Law which gave the Cretan Christians equal (in practice, because of their superior numbers, majority) control of local administration. He thus gained the minimum of political cooperation needed to retain control of the island by early 1869 and almost all the rebel leaders had submitted to Ottoman rule though some, notably the pro-Russian
Hadjimichaelis, remained in exile in Greece. ==In fiction==