On the Cretan Character.

 

May 18th, 2020

Professor Julia Elizabeth Adams

A Siege of the Mind

Most of the people in America have surely dealt with a Cretan at least once. They are a proud people, a rich people, and one of the few in the whole world that, when the United States speaks, offer only a thumb of their noses as response. 

They recluse themselves from most of the international organizations, and yet, they still affect the talks regardless. Their armed forces have left their home only once in more than a thousand years, and yet it is not uncommon to hear them put on the same pedestal as those of our British or French allies. 

Yes, most of us have met, or at least heard of, the Cretans. 

And to those of us with just a little knowledge of geopolitics, or military matters, the Cretan view of the world is fit only to leave us perplexed. 

The island of Crete has been turned into nothing short of an impregnable fortress, one that has abandoned the walls of stone of old in favor of the missile barrages of the present. Their army is equipped with nothing except the most advanced technology that money can buy. 

And it does nothing but pale in comparison to their navy. The Cretans match England, once the preeminent naval power of the globe, in aircraft carriers deployed. They have the most advanced and numerous fleet of Destroyers in the whole of Europe. They are second in number of frigates only to China, one of the world's two superpowers. 

Which leads to only one conclusion: Crete is strong. Absurdly strong. So strong, in truth, that it does not even need to fight, for England, Italy, France, and even a competently-led Turkey would throw themselves against any that dared attack the island, as the trade that passes through it is that crucial to them all. 

And yet, the most common tell-tale sign of the Cretan citizens is their sense of militarism, their distrust of their neighbors, and a belief that Crete must continue to amass strength and power, no matter the cost. 

Why? 

Because, despite what history may tell us about the more than a dozen failed invasions, Crete has spent the whole of the last millennium feeling not alone, but surrounded by enemies. 

The First Years

The Cretan Republic, or the Kingdom of Crete, as it was known back in 961, is a nation founded despite and against both the best efforts and wishes of its neighbors. The Abbasid Caliphate saw it as a vassal state, one from which to claim tribute and through it raid the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, on the other side, saw it as a lost province, a piece of land that had belonged to Rome for centuries, and was now turned into a dagger by their enemies. 

These two nations often came to battle over control of the island, as they both considered it a perfect meeting point for trade, an excellent naval base, and the perfect forward shield for a possible attack from its enemies. 

This was a major source of contention for most of the Emirate of Crete's existence. The Emir would often raid Byzantium for slaves and loot, and the Byzantines would interdict its trade and invade it again and again, in attempts to regain control of the island. 

Thus, for 125 years, Crete was a battlefield between two empires, and its people considered secondary to the land itself. 

This changed in 961, as Cretans often puff their chest and say when asked. The Byzantines, tired of the repeated humiliations at the hands of the Emirate, prepared a massive force of 80,000 men to reclaim the island and finally be rid of the pirates. Among those recruited were the two figures who we now know as the 'Broken King' and the 'Blitz Queen', often touted as the 'Hero-Monarchs'. 

The following events are well-documented. Nikephoros Phokas, leader of the Byzantine forces, landed his army on the island, defeated the first enemy that stood in his way, and then made a brutal showing of both the captured and the fallen, not allowing the latter even the peace of death. He then besieged the capital, Chandax, stormed it, and after killing the Emir, planned to massacre the citizenry, to then declare himself the victor. 

Now, the people of Crete were no longer just caught between two empires. They were going to be the victims of one. 

Thanks to the intervention of the Broken King and the Blitz Queen, this did not come to pass. Phokas, intending to commit a massacre, had his army massacred instead, and was forced to retreat. The people were spared the horrors of a sack, and the show of force left the Byzantines with no recourse but to acknolewdge the island could not be conquered, and to salute its new leaders.

From thereon, Crete knew a semblance of peace. Their King and Queen were too terrifying to attack, and they were resolutely against waging war. Crete could feed itself, it could focus on commerce and trade, and they could count on the figures of their Monarchs to keep them safe.

But then the Queen died. And then the King left. 

And it is there that the Cretan mentality truly begins to take shape.

Small. Weak. Alone.

The disappearance of the King, as respected and honored a figure as he might be to the modern Cretans, made one reality clear to those who were alive back then: There was no longer a shield to stop the machinations of the Byzantines, the Fatimids, or the Abbasids. It was only a matter of time until one of the three once more started the battle for control of the island, and cast the nascent country to the fire. 

That is where it begins. The Cretans, no longer able to rely on the dragons for their safety, were forced to take matters into their own hands. An army of thousands was mustered and drilled near the coasts, so any visitor could see Crete was not unarmed. The independent ship captains, first brought to Crete by a desperate King, now had their ships and services purchased in bulk, to strengthen the navy their Queen had left behind, protect their trade, and serve as a deterrent against any that would come. 

To us, who know the future, this would seem like a needless expense. Crete's first invasion happened nearly 200 years later, during the Third Crusade, and it ended in failure. The second invasion was in 1242, by the Mongols, and it resulted not only in failure, but in half the sent army being held captive for ransom.

But one must remember the conditions of Crete. It was a lone island, dozens, if not hundreds, of times smaller than its neighbors. Its population barely exceeded the two hundred thousand. And the Aegean Cataclysm of 967 meant that its importance skyrocketed, as it was now the only island in the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean capable of supporting a naval fleet. 

And as if that wasn't enough, the Cretans did not celebrate their victories, or believe they owed them to themselves alone. Writings of the time show the generals, admirals, and other officers terrified, well aware that the enemy outnumbered them in every engagement. They almost uniformly insist that their victories were due in part to the weather (which saw storms, typhoons, and in one poorly recorded case a tornado) savaging the enemy. They all agree that though the weather may have saved them this time, it was far too fickle a mistress to rely on, and that next time would be the end. Crete came out of these battles seeing itself not as a master of war, but as a weak, incapable country, saved only by what they saw as divine intervention.

Crete survived all these battles with nary a scratch, true, and the rest of the world saw nothing but an impossible nut to crack, but to the average Cretan, the situation they found themselves in was not at all dissimilar to that they were in before the appearance of their dearly-missed Monarchs.

Time Goes On.

The following centuries served only to exarcebate the issue. The Ottomans conquered Southern Europe, Middle East, and North Africa, while Crete, the lone island to remain out of their grasp, saw an empire that put the Byzantines to shame grow larger by the year wish them nothing but foul, and could only worry that, at some point, they would be next. 

But it was not only the Ottomans. Venice and Genoa, the two largest thassalocracies of the Mediterranean, saw Crete as a rival and upstart. Crete's position, its purported neutrality, and the fact that much of its population was actually Muslim, meant that traders from North Africa and the Middle East came to it first, and offered their wares from there. More than once, Venice and Genoa tried to see the island stamped out, broken either in battle or economically. 

This meant that Crete was not only surrounded by a conquering empire, but even those outside its sphere, which one may hope would be allies, saw Crete only as an enemy whose destruction they would celebrate. 

Modern Era. 

That is how Crete's view of the world was shaped. Despite its riches and its reputation as virtually unconquerable, Crete saw itself, rightly or not, besieged by enemies on all fronts, and ones that had no compuctions on making themselves known. 

Even in the more recent centuries, this situation did not change. The Cretan revolts that saw them take up democracy had nearly all their neighbors enter their waters, ready to impose their own order. Catherine of Russia tried to force them into joining the new Byzantine Empire she sought to create. Britain and France claimed much of the Mediterranean either for themselves or those within their spheres. The Ionian Islands, the archipelago today known as Malta, and even Sicily became either possessions or protectorates of France and Britain. 

The 20th Century was no better. The Balkan Wars saw half a dozen demands to have it reunited with Greece, even though they had been separate for nearly a thousand years. World War One had German U-Boats sink Cretan ships again and again with no care for the harm done. 

World War Two was even worse. Nazi Germany invaded Crete not because they were seen as a threat, but as a preparation measure for their true fight with the Soviet Union. The Allied Powers left Crete to fight Germany alone, only offering some support when Seeker appeared, and even then left the task of driving the Germans out of the cities to the Cretans and the swordsman, who is the only one that Cretans rightly consider their ally. 

The years following the war did little to help. The Suez Crisis threatened their economic prosperity because of the squabbling of two 'has-been powers', and the Six-Day War almost saw the Suez Canal, a vital lifeline for the Cretans, closed for God knows how long.

With all this, then, one does not find it surprising that the average Cretan spits on the idea of relying on others, and thinks foul of any requests to ally with those that their history books tell them would have cheered if they were destroyed.

And now that the whole of the West stares at the Cretan Republic demanding answers for actions in the other side of the world, done by figures that have no ties to it, one can only hope that cooler heads prevail.

Before we end up with the Cretans deciding, much like Spain, Britain, and even the US once did, that their security is foremost.

And that it does not matter at whose expense it is gained.