nsuing summer, and carried on
with such vigour, that the garrison, weakened by the loss of half its
numbers, including the valiant governor, Colloredo, was reduced to the
last extremity; when the arrival of the Maltese squadron, under
Balbiani, baulked the Turks of their expected prize; and the
janissaries, breaking out into furious mutiny, compelled Delhi-Hussein
once more to abandon the hopeless enterprise. All the remainder of the
island, however, had now peaceably submitted to the Ottoman rule, and
had been organized into sandjaks and districts; so that the garrison of
Candia were rather the occupants of a solitary post in a hostile
country, than defenders of the soil against the invasion; and the
Turkish commanders, ill supplied from Constantinople, during the
troubled minority of Mohammed, with siege equipage and munitions of war,
contented themselves with blockading the town by the erection of
redoubts, and guarding the open country with their cavalry. While the
war thus languished in Crete, the events of the maritime contest
continued to justify the proverbial saying of the Turks, that "Allah had
given the land to the true believers; but the sea to the infidels!" Not
only was the blockade of the Dardanelles so strictly kept up, that it
was only in winter, when the Venetian fleet was unable to remain on its
station, that the Turks could convey reinforcements to their brethren
who were waging the _holy war_ in Crete, but repeated and disastrous
defeats were sustained by the Ottoman navy, whenever it attempted to
dispute the sovereignty of the sea with the Lion of St Mark. In July
1651, a formidable armament with supplies and troops for Crete was
almost entirely destroyed off Naxos by Mocenigo: and on July 6, 1656,
the same commander inflicted on the Turkish fleet, off the mouth of the
Straits, the most decisive overthrow which it had sustained since the
fatal day of Lepanto. Seventy sail of ships and galleys were sunk or
taken; the Capitan-pasha escaped into the Bosphorus with only fourteen
vessels; and the inhabitants of Constantinople, in the first access of
consternation, expected the apparition of the Christian ensigns in the
Golden Horn; but the victors contented themselves with the occupation of
Tenedos and Lemnos, which they held till dislodged in the following year
by Kiuprili.

The serdar, Delhi-Hussein, who had for eleven years gallantly upheld the
renown of the Ottoman arms in Crete, withstanding with e