any remaining acquiescence among them for continued Ottoman rule. When a small insurgency began in September 1895, it quickly spiralled out of control and by the summer of 1896, the Ottoman forces had lost military control over most of the island. A new insurrection that began in 1897 led to a war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The Great Powers dispatched a multinational naval force, the International Squadron, to Crete in February 1897, and by late March 1897 it brought Cretan insurgent and Greek Army operations against the Ottomans in Crete to a halt by forcing the Greek Army to abandon the island, bombarding insurgent forces, placing sailors and marines ashore, and instituting a blockade of Crete and key ports in Greece. Meanwhile, the International Squadron's senior admirals formed an "Admirals Council" that temporarily governed Crete pending a resolution of the Cretan uprising, and the Admirals Council eventually decided that Crete should become an autonomous state within the Ottoman Empire. After a violent riot by Cretan Muslims against Cretan Christians and British occupation forces on 6 September 1898 (25 August according to the Julian calendar then in use on Crete, which was 12 days behind the modern Gregorian calendar during the 19th century), the Admirals Council ordered all Ottoman forces to leave Crete, and the last of them were evacuated on 6 November 1898. The 21 December 1898 (9 December according to the Julian calendar) arrival of Prince George of Greece and Denmark as the first High commissioner of an autonomous Cretan State, although still under the suzerainty of the Sultan, effectively detached Crete from the Ottoman Empire. The island's Muslim population dropped dramatically because of these changes, with many emigrating to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. From the summer of 1896 until the end of hostilities in 1898, Cretan Muslims remained under siege in the four coastal cities, where massacres against them took place. Subsequent waves of emigration followed as the island was united by stages with Greece. In 1908, the Cretan deputies declared union with Greece, which was internationally recognized after the Balkan Wars in 1913. Under the Treaty of London, Sultan Mehmed V relinquished his formal rights to the island. The Cretan Muslims still remaining were forced to leave Crete under the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. In Turkey, some descendants of this population continued to speak a form of Cretan Greek