able to the bloody tyranny under which
they had so long groaned:[15] while the Venitian garrisons, shut up in
the fortified towns along the northern shore, depended for supplies on
the Christian fleet, which the Turks did not venture to bring to action.
The campaign of 1646 was marked by the capture of the important city of
Retimo, which surrendered Nov. 15, after a murderous siege of
thirty-nine days, in which both the governor Cornaro and the provveditor
Molino were slain: but though the Turks received reinforcements to the
amount of 30,000 men, including 10,000 janissaries, in the course of the
following year, it was not till May 1648 that the trenches were at
length opened before Candia, the capital of the island, and the only
fortress of importance still in the hands of the Venetians.

[15] Many of them adopted the faith of the invaders--and
Tournefort, who visited Crete in 1700, says that "the greater
part of the Turks on the island were either renegades, or sons
of renegades." The Candiote Turks of the present day are
popularly held to combine the vices of the nation from which
they descend with those of their adopted countrymen.

The leaguer of Candia was pushed during several months by the Turks,
animated by the courage and example of their general, with the same
fanatic zeal which they had displayed before Canea and Retimo; but the
besieged, whose tenure of Crete depended on this last stronghold, held
out with equal pertinacity: and their efforts were aided by the presence
of a large body of Maltese auxiliaries, as well as by the succours which
the naval superiority of the Venetians enabled them continually to
introduce by sea. In one sortie, a detachment of the garrison penetrated
even to the tent of the serdar, who owed his safety to his personal
prowess; while the outworks of the town were ruined by the constant
explosion of mines, and the Ottoman standards were planted on the
bastion of Martinengo, and on several of the redoubts which covered the
interior defences. But in spite of their repeated assaults, the
besiegers failed to make any impression on the body of the place; and
the serdar was compelled to withdraw his diminished army into
winter-quarters. The anarchy at Constantinople which followed the
deposition of Ibrahim, combined with the blockade of the Dardanelles by
the Venetians, prevented any reinforcements from reaching the seat of
war--yet the siege was renewed in the e