ol, with a
gallant band of 600 volunteers, many of them of the best families of
France. But the boiling valour of these fiery youths was equally
difficult to restrain or direct; and, after losing two-thirds of their
number in desperate, but irregular, sallies against the Turkish lines,
the survivors of this piece of knight-errantry re-embarked for
Christendom in January, leaving the heads of their fallen comrades
ranged on pikes before the tent of Kiuprili. A stancher reinforcement
was received in the spring of 1669, by the arrival of 3000
Lunenburghers, whose commander, Count Waldeck, fell a few days after, in
repulsing an assault on the breach of St Andrew, as did also the former
governor, Di Villa, whose thirst for glory had brought him back, as
general of the Papal auxiliaries, to the scene of peril.

[20] The harbour of Candia (now almost choked up) was at all
times so small, and with so little depth of water, as to afford
shelter only to galleys, the station of the larger vessels being
at the isle of Standia, at some leagues' distance.

These repeated reinforcements, joined to the knowledge that the Pope was
exerting himself to unite all the princes of Christendom in a league for
the relief of their hardly-beset brethren, still encouraged the heroic
defenders of Candia, though the Turks had by this time carried their
mines at several points within the bastions and exterior defences, and
compelled the garrison to shelter themselves behind an inner rampart,
constructed during the winter in anticipation of this extremity:--"So
that, in effect," says Rycaut, "this most impregnable fort of the world
was forced and taken by the spade and shovel, and by a crew of unarmed
labourers, who understood nothing more than the plough and harrow." The
promised succours, however, were now at hand. On the 22d of June, a
French fleet appeared off the port, having on board 7000 of the flower
of the French troops and nobility, who were commanded by the Dukes de
Noailles and Beaufort, and comprised in their ranks several princes of
the sovereign houses of Lorrain and Bouillon, the Marshals Colbert and
De la Motte-Fenelon, the Count of St Pol, and many other names of the
noblest and bravest in France, who had crowded to embark as volunteers
in this new and glorious crusade. These gallant auxiliaries landed
amidst the acclamations of the Venetians; and, on the night of the 27th,
a general sortie was made, in order to rais