Cretan Courage: The Milatos Cave and Beyond

By K. L. Karavatos

Cretan Courage: The Milatos Cave and Beyond is a dramatic family history, beginning in Crete, Greece, which comes alive through the fascinating, multi-generational journey of Greek Cretans.

The lively narrative includes eyewitness descriptions of Crete’s history, including massacres and attempted genocide by Turkish soldiers, death marches to slave markets, child kidnappings, mass murders, and systemic abuse of innocent women. Despite enduring unimaginable brutality, the actual events paint a vivid picture of Cretan courage and fortitude. After rebellions, revolution, and the ultimate liberation their island, the Cretans emerge with their extraordinary vitality, like a phoenix from the ashes.

The family members’ paths diverge as some gamble their lives to emigrate to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. As immigrants in the U.S., they endure punishing factory work and frontline injuries in wars they fight for their new country. Despite hardships, many joys and accomplishments dominate their lives. As the third generation of Greek Americans come of age in the U.S., they learn their ancestral roots, and bond with prior generations that struggled to provide them with a better life.

On the cusp of the 200-year anniversary of the historic Milatos Cave massacre, in which the author’s great-great-great-great grandfather was murdered, this book is a powerful account of the actual events and people that shaped history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jun 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662929298

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Lord and Lady Makrakis

As the winter rain pelted the small village in Crete called Latsida, six children sat around the fireplace with their mother, Aristea⁴, with eyes wide and mouths open, eager to hear her tell their family stories.

Tonight, Aristea began, I will tell you, my children, the drama of a lord, lady, and their little daughter that resided here in our house, when it was called the Makrakis Manor. The Lady Makrakis was my great-grandmother, Arxonta Makrakis was my great-grandfather, and the little girl—little Maria Makrakis—was my grandmother. All is true, as witnesses have told the events to me and I am telling them to you children. It is all factual, as I learned from my own grandmother and grandfather. I want you all to remember these stories, so you can tell them to your children, because these stories are our family history which should not be forgotten. Will you all promise me that you will remember these stories and tell them to your children and your grandchildren when you grow up? Aristea paused and looked at the circle of children around her. The children, all with serious expressions, nodded their little heads. Aristea nodded and began narrating the epic, her words painting vivid pictures that transported her children back in time.

Lord Makrakis, also known as Arxonta Makrakis, lived heartily at Makrakis Manor with his wife, Lady Makrakis, and his precious daughter, little Maria Makrakis. The Makrakis Manor’s backyard had several fruit trees, including huge lemon trees that always seemed full of blossoms and lemons. The family used the lemons to make cleaning solutions, lotions, and oils. The smell of fresh lemons permeated their home.

Arxonta Makrakis was a big a man with a jovial, booming voice. He filled up the room when he walked in. He often said, I can’t help it, I like to live large! He had dark curly hair that he wore long, and tied it in the back with a leather string. He always wore the same outfit—felt breeches, a gold knit vest, and a white silk shirt with wide sleeves. He carried a walking stick even though he was a young man not in need of a cane. Arxonta always rode a large red horse when he traveled outside of his village. He made sure the reins and saddle were always shiny. A little prideful, Arxonta was a stylish man.

Arxonta worked hard to acquire much property, and his lands were productive. He had four vineyards and owned almost half of the land around the Latsida village in Crete. He employed many villagers in Latsida. Most of the locals respected him because he treated his workers with respect and fairness.

Arxonta Makrakis designed and built the Makrakis Manor in Latsida so he could have a large family. For as long as he could remember, Arxonta had wanted to have many children. He wanted to be the father of a large Cretan family. He often referred to the Makrakis Manor as the Makrakis Mansion⁵ because it was, at the time, one of the largest structures in the village.

His wife, Lady Makrakis, always wore her Cretan costume: shiny shoes, white socks, white silk undergarments, a wide red skirt that was shorter than the silk undergarment, and pinned high on the left side at the waistline. Her vest was made of black silk with gold stitching and red strings, pulled tight so it squeezed her waist and breasts. The long silk sleeves of the shirt covered her pretty hands down to the fingers. She wore a red fez with a long black tassel that covered her wavy light hair. Little Maria, a six-year-old girl, wore a little outfit similar to her mother’s costume and had the same wavy light hair. When the two went about the village together, little Maria looked like an adorable little mini version of Lady Maria.

Lady Maria and her daughter, little Maria, were inseparable. Lady Maria gave little Maria math and language lessons every morning after a small breakfast.⁶ Little Maria would much rather be outside riding horses or visiting neighbors with her mother, but she tolerated the reading and writing practice her mother said was necessary for her to become a reasonable person.

After her lessons, little Maria and Lady Maria visited the elderly people in the village and brought them baked treats. The villagers loved their little sweet cheese pies called kalitsounia. The little pies, made with soft cheese, honey, herbs, and just a little salt, were baked in little crown-shaped bread buns. After eating Lady Maria’s kalitsounia, the villagers often exclaimed, Lady Maria, these treats fill the mouth and belly with warm, fluffy sweetness!

Lady Maria and little Maria often took long walks together in their almond orchards. Little Maria loved these walks because, hidden among the almond trees and away from the eyes of their neighbors, they were free to be as silly as they wanted. There, they made up songs and dances, giggled, and escaped the somberness of the village. Every day, it seemed, news of more killings by the Turks and new injustices against the Cretans dominated the villages. In their orchards, Lady Maria and little Maria felt like they were in another world, insulated from the fear that controlled their lives as a conquered people. In the evenings, with her mother and father as her audience, little Maria sang the songs and performed the dances she created. At the conclusion of little Maria’s performances, Arxonta Makrakis always bellowed in his big daddy voice, My goodness! Little Maria! How did you become so clever and so talented? I am the luckiest man on the island!

On Sundays, Arxonta Makrakis, Lady Makrakis, and little Maria attended the Greek Orthodox Church (as all Cretans were supposed to do). While Lady Maria and her husband attended the church services, little Maria attended the secret Sunday School at the church with the other village children, learning basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and bible verses. After church services, they always stayed to socialize with the other families in their village. Maria played with the other village children while her parents talked with their friends about the latest news, mostly concerning the constant warfare between the Cretans and the Turks around the island.

The Turks conquered Crete in 1669 and subjugated Crete to the Ottoman Empire. Of the early Turkish rule in Crete we know little. Pirates keep no records.… the condition of Crete was that of a man on a rack.⁷ The Cretans had no civil rights under Turkish rule. All laws and legal proceedings were written and conducted solely in the Turkish language. It was illegal for Cretans to publish newspapers in Greek, to be out in public after nightfall, and to attend political meetings or assemblies. In short, they were subjected to arbitrary prohibitions that meant to render the Cretans powerless. Heavy taxes were imposed on the Cretans on most of their goods, including wine made for personal consumption, leather used to make their own shoes, and various other extortions.⁸ The taxes collected by the Turks were not used for any public improvements such as roads or schools. Instead, the taxes were confiscated by the Turkish rulers for their own conspicuous consumption of luxury items.

After almost 200 years of brutal oppression and periodic rebellions in Crete and mainland Greece, the Greek War of Independence raged against the Turks in mainland Greece in 1821. The rebellions against the Turks in Crete continued. The Turks met these rebellions with fierce military power, reinforced with thousands of Turkish and Egyptian troops. The Turks summarily executed many civilians throughout Crete and mainland Greece. On Easter Sunday in 1821, the Sultan ordered the execution of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Gregory V, an ethnic Greek, blaming him for the Greek rebellions. In Heraklion⁹, Crete, the carnage was so barbaric that few Cretans could speak of the atrocities without emotion. The venerable Metropolitan (similar to an Archbishop), five revered Bishops, four respected Priests, beloved teachers and clerics, as well as more than seventy other civilians, all innocent and unarmed, sought refuge at the altar of the main cathedral in Heraklion. A mob of Turkish civilians and soldiers stormed the cathedral, murdered all of the Cretans inside, and looted all of the valuable ornaments of the church. The Turks then dragged the bodies of the bishops through the streets of Heraklion and then hanged them along the roadsides.¹⁰ As reported in the French Consul’s official communication to his government, titled Khaniate Mohammedans in May, June, and July, 1821, quoted at length by Robert Pashley in his book Travels in Crete, the mobs were encouraged by the Turkish ruler/pasha in Crete, and proceeded to the homes of Cretans in the area, murdered indiscriminately, and dragged their bodies to the public square. The number of innocent Cretans massacred in Heraklion alone on June 28 of 1821 has been estimated at 800. Perhaps the most horrifying was an attack on a convent in which all of the nuns were raped and murdered.¹¹ Despite such barbarity against the Cretans, no doubt meant to terrorize them into submission, rebellion continued across Crete. Some early successes were won in Sfakia and other areas. However, the Turkish armies were well equipped and able to push through to the inland villages. Nevertheless, the Cretan fighters continued fighting against the Turks.

Map of Crete (Kríti in Greek), created with Google Maps, 2022.

Google. (n.d.). [Crete]. Retrieved February 2022, from https://www.google.com/maps.

⁴ Aristea Spatharos-Biskadouros is the great-granddaughter of Lord and Lady Makrakis and granddaughter of little Maria Makrakis who later became Maria Makrakis-Spatharos.

⁵ The home is still sometimes called the Makrakis Mansion. But the term mansion is misleading. The mansion still stands (see photo below) and is currently used for storage in the Latsida village.

⁶ The Turkish authorities in Crete had closed all of the schools and imprisoned the teachers, without trials, based on flimsy accusations of teaching sedition.

⁷ Stillman at p. 27

⁸ Pashley, Robert. Travels in Crete, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 1837, p. 130.

⁹ Heraklion was also called Candia or Megalokastro.

¹⁰ Pashley, Robert. Travels in Crete, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 1837, pp. 186-187.

¹¹ Morely, Chris. A History of Crete. Haus Publishing Ltd. 2019, at p. 237.

CHAPTER 2

The Milatos Cave Massacre

By 1821, Crete had been occupied by the Turks under an oppressive Ottoman regime for almost two-hundred years. The Cretans had no civil rights, were often taxed into destitution, and were regularly subjected to arbitrary and brutal treatment by Turkish soldiers. When the Turkish rulers in Crete gained intelligence of Cretan plans for an uprising, the Turks immediately ordered the metropolitan bishop Pardalis to summon all of the bishops in Crete to Heraklion, its capital. When the bishops arrived, the Turkish rulers massacred them. Bands of Turks laid siege to churches and monasteries, looted priceless artifacts, burned ancient manuscripts, and murdered both nuns and priests. In fact, Turkish manuscripts mention that the pasha had announced that gifts would be given to Turks that brought him the heads or limbs of the Cretans.¹² In response to continued oppression and atrocities by the Turks, the Cretans formed a General Assembly and issued an official proclamation on June 14, 1821, stating The inhabitants of the island of Crete, full of the noble and lofty spirit of freedom, took up arms against the Ottoman tyranny on 14 June 1821…¹³ Thus, the Cretan Uprising of 1821-1830 officially began.

After almost two years of bloody battles and unspeakable atrocities by the Turks against the civilians of Crete, Turkish troops were reinforced with thousands of Egyptian soldiers. In early 1823, Turkish and Egyptian forces broke through all the Cretan fighters’ defenses around the inland villages. The Turks spread their attack through Crete with 16,000 troops against approximately 3,000 Cretan fighters, conquered the hillsides, burned villages, slaughtered civilians, and left only barren land in their wake. Most Cretan civilians, including women, children, and the infirm, pursued by the Turkish armies from all directions, did not expect any mercy from the Turkish soldiers.

The most respected and rational people from all the districts of Mirabellos and Lasithi were chosen as captains. The captains devised a plan to protect the women, children, and elderly by hiding them in the Agori (big cave) at Milatos,¹⁴ known as the Milatos Cave, and sent word out to all of the villages in the Turks’ path. Thousands of innocent people gathered from the entire Mirabellos district, including Neapoli, Latsida, Elouda, Pediada, and other areas, and traveled to Milatos Cave under the direction of the captains. At Milatos Cave, approximately 150 armed Cretan fighters were assigned to defend the civilians that were instructed to hide there. More than 4,000 civilians, including women, children, and elderly¹⁵ from the surrounding villages entered the Milatos Cave for protection from the advancing Turkish army.

The Cretan fighters (also known as palikares¹⁶) were members of irregular troops that fought against the Turks’ occupation of Crete. After the Cretan fighters settled with the captains on the plan to hide thousands of civilians in Milatos Cave, they had to leave to reinforce the palikares at the Potamitika Mountains. There, the rebels fought the Turks, thinking their families were safe and secure in the impassable Milatos Cave.

Milatos Cave was high on a hill, surrounded by steep cliffs on both sides, with a dry riverbed below. The cave had three openings that were known at the time, two small crescent shaped openings and one large opening. Access to the cave through the small crescent openings was possible only by crawling on your belly. Access to the cave through the large opening required knowledge of hidden stair steps in the side of the cliff below the cave. The natural steps in the cliff were very narrow and camouflaged by sage trees and overgrown bushes on all sides. One could not enter the large opening without knowing exactly where to look for the hidden stair steps on the side of the cliff.

Milatos Cave stair steps as they appear today. In 1823, the path was overgrown with vegetation and, of course, there were no hand railings.

Inside the Milatos Cave, huge rooms with natural formed pillars (stalactites) go on for many meters. Deep in the cave, however, there was no natural light and it was easy to get lost inside the pitch-black bowels of Milatos Cave.

Views inside Milatos Cave

The villagers’ sorrow was palpable as they left their homes to travel to Milatos Cave. Mothers, children, and elders cried, unashamed of their strong emotions. No one wanted to leave their homes to become cave-dwellers, even if it was just expected to be for a few days. But the villagers were also afraid of the ferocious Turks, as their soldiers had already destroyed so many villages and murdered so many innocent women and children. So, reluctantly, the Cretan people from the surrounding areas began their mass exodus, as if in a funeral procession, from their homes to Milatos Cave in January of 1823.

Some Cretans had to walk for several hours to reach Milatos Cave. Arxonta Makrakis,¹⁷ Lady Maria Makrakis, and their little daughter, Maria Makrakis, walked the two-hour journey from their home in Latsida to Milatos Cave. Of course, no one could ride their horses to the cave because, if the horses were left near the cave, then it might give the Turks a clue where all the villagers were hiding.

One of Lady Makrakis’s friends lived near Lasithi Mesa and set out late for Milatos Cave with her ten children. The mother was hoping for word that the plan was canceled. After everyone had already left her village on their journey, she corralled her ten children and began the long walk to Milatos Cave to hide from the Turkish army. She had one infant, three children that could not yet walk, and six other children. There was no one left in her village to help her get to the cave. Halfway on their journey to the cave, the poor woman could not take another step with all that she tried to carry. At Ano Amigdali, she was so fatigued that she could not walk any further with all of her burdens. So, she placed her infant under a sage tree along with two of her toddlers, and planned to return for them after placing her other children in the cave. So, she was forced to abandon those children she left at the sage tree, half naked, hungry, and crying. Her youngest child, little Korkidaina, was only a forty-day-old infant at that time.

Lady Makrakis and her husband modified one of their wagons and made a pull cart to help carry supplies to the cave. With much help from the younger villagers, the two made several trips back and forth from the village to the cave to help the elderly villagers with their supplies. By the time Lady Maria’s friend from the Mesa had arrived, sick with worry about the children she left behind, it was too late to go back for them, as the Turks were already on the move toward the village.

Thousands of Turkish soldiers came from Heraklion to decimate the Cretan rebellion and crush the resistance to their barbaric tyranny over the island. The plains turned red from the sea of fezzes bobbing across the land. But the Turks found the villages empty and abandoned. However, from past experiences, the Turks knew that the Cretans must have hidden the women and children somewhere. The Turks were persistent in discovering hideouts, as it was a lucrative business for the Turks to capture Cretan women and children to sell into slavery.

But, early in 1823, the Turks looked everywhere, and found nothing. On their way through Kalaritis, the Turks found a lone Greek boy named Chatzikadis. The boy was the young son of Lady Maria’s friend in Kalaritis, a village near the foothills of Kalaritis Mount near Vrachasi. Chatzikadis, a twelve-year-old boy at the time, volunteered to stay behind in Kalaritis to herd all of the villagers’ sheep. So, he stayed at the village alone, and was told to hide if the Turks came through. But the Turks found him out herding the animals. The Turks interrogated and tortured little Chatzikadis, trying to force him to tell them where the women and children were hiding. But Chatzikadis said nothing. The Turk soldiers tied his elbows behind his back with chains and beat him with a staff in the middle of the threshing field. They beat him until he lost consciousness, black from the blows, and blood flowing from his nose and mouth.

The Turks left Chatzikadis in the field, half dead, and went to the nearest village to eat and drink the villagers’ food and wine. Drunk and satiated, the Turks went back to where they had left Chatzikadis. The Turks easily found Chatzikadis again, as the poor child had just come to his senses and was lying exactly where they had left him.

Tell us where the infidels are hidden! We’ll kill you if you don’t tell us! shouted the Turkish interrogators.

I don’t know...I don’t know... was all that Chatzikadis said.

The Turks continued to beat him with their staffs. They tortured him mercilessly for three days, without getting anything from his mouth except I don’t know. After three days, the Turks left poor Chatzikadis for dead and headed for Latsida.

Deres was a wealthy and arrogant man who owned substantial property, including orchards, in Kamari. Although Deres went to Milatos Cave to hide from the Turkish soldiers, he constantly complained of the conditions. The water supply in Milatos Cave was exhausted quickly by the thousands who took refuge there. Many people brought as much water and wine as they could carry, and the cave had a small spring deep inside the caverns. But supplies did not last long with so many people dwelling in the cave. People became ill from thirst and diseases in the cave. When his water and wine supplies were exhausted, Deres declared that he could not stand staying in the cave another minute with the foul air and lack of water. Arxonta Makrakis warned Deres that he would easily be found and killed by the Turks if he left the cave. But Deres disregarded the warnings, left the cave, and walked back to Kamari for more wine and food.

The Turks found Deres at Kamari and captured him. They questioned Deres and threatened to beat him as they did to poor Chatzikadis. They demanded to know where all of the women and children of the villages were hiding.

Tell us, and we will spare your life! the Turks said.

Deres was so scared that he immediately told the Turks about the entire Milatos Cave plan and the thousands of people hiding there. So, the Turks took Deres with them and Deres led the entire Turkish army right to Milatos Cave and explained how to access the three openings.

The pasha (Turkish official) immediately ordered a siege on the cave. The soldiers all charged toward the main opening of Milatos Cave. But the access way was narrow, so the charging soldiers could not descend on the opening en masse. The topography allowed the Cretan fighters, stationed around the opening to defend the women and children, to shoot many of the Turkish soldiers as they charged.

The pasha’s company of 5,000 soldiers was then increased to 16,000 and reinforced with cannons. The soldiers set up cannons across the ravine at one of the Markakis’s almond orchards, and started firing an onslaught of bombs against the handful of Cretan fighters and thousands of civilians hiding in the cave.

The view looking out from Milatos Cave to the Makrakis property where the Turks’ cannons shot bombs at the Cretans.

Making