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 Derché. Ismael Pasha, who was
probably not in the Egyptian secret, had another plan of his own,
equally secret, and the two conflicted. Ismael, as we later learned,
intended to raise and subdue an insurrection, which he hoped to
do easily, and then, on the strength of his Greek blood and the
protection he had at Stamboul, to be named the Prince of Crete. The
Egyptian plan was, on the contrary, conciliatory, and depended mainly
on direct bribery and the promise of concessions to the Cretans. It
had been, as I learned from Constantinople, concocted between the
Turkish government, the Marquis de Moustier, the French ambassador,
and the viceroy, and proposed to coax or hire the Cretans to ask for
the Egyptian protection, when, on the application of the plebiscite,
the island was to be transferred to the viceroy on the payment of
£400,000 down and a tribute of £80,000. The French diplomatic agent in
Egypt had arranged the details in consultation with Derché, but none
would fit. Derché thought that all the Cretan chiefs could be bought,
and the Egyptian pasha began by distributing £16,000 amongst the
churches, mosques, and schools, without forgetting handsome baksheesh