With one of the battalions was a dervish fanatic, carrying a green banner, who spread his praying carpet in every public place in Canea, preaching extermination of the infidels.

I took a witness and went to the general in chief, Osman Pasha, and protested against this outrage, and the dervish was at once shipped off to Constantinople.
The military chiefs were reasonable, and the Christian population totally unprepared and averse to hostilities, but the plan at Constantinople was, as we soon found, to provoke an insurrection in order to justify a transfer of the island to Egypt.

Later we had from Constantinople all the details, but for the moment we could only conjecture the Egyptian collusion in the plan by the presence of Schahin Pasha, the general-in-chief of the Egyptian army, and minister of war of the viceroy, and the very important part taken by him in the ensuing negotiations.

He came in great state and pomp, and immediately assumed the lead in the negotiations with the islanders, which were carried on in secret and through Derch.

Ismael Pasha, who was probably not in the Egyptian secret, had another plan of his own, equally secret, and the two conflicted.