and accept the King's offer of six mountain
batteries, in lieu of the ten he had demanded; the Entente Ministers
undertaking to recommend to their Governments the abandonment of his
other demands.

There ensued an exchange of prisoners, and the retreat of the Allies to
their ships during the night, followed next day by the detachment
quartered at the Zappeion, and all the controllers of police, posts,
telegraphs, telephones, and railways. Many of the ruffians in the pay of
the Franco-British Secret Services anticipated this evacuation by
slipping out of the capital which they had terrorized for nearly a year.

And so the pacific demonstration was over, having cost the Greeks 4
officers and 26 men killed, and 4 officers and 51 men wounded. The
Allied casualties were 60 killed, including 6 officers, and 167 wounded.

For the rest, no epithet was less applicable to the affair than that of
"Athenian Vespers," with which the Parisian press christened it. Admiral
Dartige protests indignantly against the grotesque exaggerations of his
imaginative compatriots. Apart from the tragic features natural to a
pacific demonstration, he declares that the whole drama passed off as
pleasantly as a drama could. Not a single Allied subject was
ill-treated. Not one shot was fired on the Legations of the Entente
Powers, whose Ministers and nationals, in the midst of it all, incurred
only such danger as came from their own shells--shells showered upon an
open town. Even the French bluejackets, who had long been a thorn in the
very heart of Athens, were conducted back to their proper place under a
Greek escort, ingloriously {161} but safely. A like spirit, to a still
higher degree, marked the treatment in Greek hospitals of the Allies'
wounded, whose rapid recovery, says the Admiral, testified to the care
which they received. "We assisted in a civil war: the Royalists struck
in our marines the protectors of their political enemies." [18]

It was upon those enemies that Royalist wrath satiated itself. On 2
December, veritable battles took place in many parts of Athens; suspect
houses, hotels, offices, and shops being assailed and defended with
murderous fury. The house of M. Venizelos, as was fitting, formed the
centre of the conflict. Twenty Cretan stalwarts had barricaded
themselves in it and held out until machine-guns persuaded them to
surrender. Within was discovered a small arsenal of rifles, revolvers,
hand-grenades, dyna