e seventeenth century were mainly
carried out in alliance with the Venetians, who were the one Power
who continued to resist the Turk at sea. They were still lords of
the great island of Crete, which lay athwart the trade routes of the
Levant, and only by its conquest would the Ottoman control of the
Eastern Mediterranean be complete. In 1645 Ibrahim I. declared war on
Venice and besieged Candia; but the attack was so remiss that success
seemed impossible. The Knights of Malta threw themselves into the
struggle on the side of the Venetians, feeling bound in honour to
do so, as the refuge of Maltese galleys in Venetian harbours was the
Turkish pretext for war. In 1656 Mocenigo, the Venetian Admiral, with
the aid of the Knights, won a brilliant victory off the Dardanelles,
capturing Lemnos and Tenedos. This imminent peril brought Mohammed
Kiuprili to power as Grand Vizier, and the war was thenceforward
conducted with great energy by the Turks. Year after year volunteers
flocked to Candia to save the last Christian outpost in the Levant,
but it was all fruitless, and in 1669 the island, with the exception
of three ports, was surrendered to the Turks--their last important
conquest in Europe, and the final term of their advance.

The seventeenth century saw the gradual displacement of galleys in
favour of sailing ships. The long voyages across the Atlantic and to
the East had given great impetus to the development of the sailing
vessel; its increasing use, and the entrance of England and Holland
into the Mediterranean, had shown the Powers of that sea its
superiority over the galley; finally, slaves were becoming more
difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities, while criminals had
never been a satisfactory source of supply. The Knights were slow in
changing the oar for the sail, and to the end kept a small squadron of
galleys as well as men-of-war. When Napoleon captured the island, in
1798, he found there two men-of-war, one frigate, and four galleys.

The pride and the renown of the Order had always demanded a salute
from the warships of other nations, and even the mighty Louis XIV.
yielded this privilege to the little squadron. There is extant an
interesting correspondence between Charles II. and the Grand Master,
Nicholas Cottoner, on the subject of salutes. A squadron of the
British Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Narborough, had refused to
salute Valetta unless assured of a response from the guns of the
fortress--a m