Venizelos forms a provisional government on Crete

On 26 September 1916, or 13 September by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos and Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis went ashore on Crete and formed a Greek provisional government opposed to the government in Athens. The two leaders had left the capital during the night of 24–25 September. According to a dispatch sent from Chania on 26 September by the correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle, the new government was set up that same day, amid the cheers of the troops and the population. The New York monthly Current History gives the same date for the landing and the formation of the government. The new authority’s first proclamation appeared two days later, in issue no. 1 of the Gazette of the Provisional Government, published at Chania and dated 15 September by the Julian calendar, that is 28 September by the Gregorian. Reuters sent a summary of the proclamation from Athens on 28 September, and the London and New York press printed it on 29 September. It is under this date that a British chronology of the war records the formation of the government on Crete.

Welcome at Chania

The steamer Hesperia, with Venizelos on board, anchored in Souda Bay, and the island received its most famous son with enthusiasm. The British journalist Crawfurd Price, a supporter of Venizelos, wrote that Cretan soldiers lined the way from the quay to the barracks, where local leaders addressed a huge, armed crowd. The assembly resolved that the provisional government would be formed by Venizelos and Kountouriotis, with the right to co-opt a third member, and gave it full power to organise the forces of the country to fight at the side of the Allies against the common enemies. Venizelos replied calmly and without threats against the throne. “We hope that the Crown, even at this last moment, will bow to the will of the nation, so that we may enter the struggle together. If, however, our wishes remain unanswered, we promise to devote all our strength to fulfilling the mission you have entrusted to us,” he said, according to Price.

Crete had been prepared for his arrival. According to Price, the rising had broken out there on 23 September. The Daily Chronicle correspondent reported that the only resistance was offered at Heraklion, where about 2,500 soldiers of the 14th Infantry Regiment were stationed. More than half the officers went over to the movement, but 25 officers and 19 soldiers loyal to the King barricaded themselves in their quarters. After two days they asked the French and British consuls for protection and were taken to Souda. The new government gave a reception attended by the consuls of the Allied powers, and the King’s portraits were removed from public offices. Price wrote that the government worked from a modest inn on the quay at Chania. George F. Abbott, a publicist sympathetic to the King, claimed on the other hand that the movement on Crete had been prepared by British agents and naval officers, and that without them there would have been neither mutiny nor rising.

Proclamation to the nation

The proclamation, issued on 28 September, set out the aims of the new government. Its summary, released by Reuters, compared the Greece of 1916 with the Greece of the victorious years 1912–1913. The personal policy of the sovereign, “the victim of evil counsellors”, had allegedly led to rapprochement with the country’s hereditary enemies, violation of the constitution, anarchy and isolation. The army victorious in the Balkan Wars was surrendering lands won with blood, the population was fleeing before the invader, military equipment had fallen into Bulgarian hands, and Greek soldiers had been carried off to Germany. According to the Greek text, the proclamation began with the words: “The cup of bitterness, humiliation and degradation has overflowed.” The only salvation was to stand by the side of the Allies and the Serbs in order to drive out the invaders. The authors wrote that it would be a blessing if the King at the last moment placed himself at the head of the nation’s forces, and that otherwise it would be their duty to do everything to save the country from ruin. The proclamation was signed by Venizelos and Kountouriotis.

The government did not proclaim the King’s deposition and did not come out against the dynasty. Over the following days the movement spread to the other islands gained by Greece in the Balkan Wars, and even to Kountouriotis’s native island of Hydra, where, according to reports from Athens, support was declared as early as 27 September. On 29 September the inhabitants of Mytilene and Chios declared for National Defence at large meetings, and support was also reported on Samos. Several small ships of the Greek fleet went over to the Allies, although according to Abbott the admiral had counted on many more. General Panagiotis Danglis, a former Chief of the General Staff and minister of war in Venizelos’s governments, sailed for Salonika on a Greek destroyer during the night of 26–27 September, according to reports from Athens.

Between Chania and Salonika

Britain remained cautious. The British official history of the war at sea writes that the British government instructed its consuls on Crete to give Venizelos every support, but did not officially recognise the provisional government. London still feared that the split would sharpen the feuds in Greece and deprive the Allies of what remained of their influence in Athens. Chania was only a stopping place for Venizelos. At the beginning of October he sailed by way of the Aegean islands to Salonika, where the Committee of National Defence had already taken power at the end of August. There, together with Kountouriotis and Danglis, he formed the Provisional Government of National Defence, which divided Greece into two states.