1645 to 1669
As we have seen, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were the high point of Cretan culture in the arts, literature and education. A contributing factor to this Cretan Renaissance and to the prosperity of the island was the long period of peace between 1573 and 1645, perhaps the longest in the recorded history of the eastern Mediterranean. There were several reasons for the peace. On the one hand, the Ottoman Empire was severely weakened by the destruction of its fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, leading to a political crisis and economic and military decline. This, together with a continuing war with Persia, gave the Ottomans little incentive to expand further. On the other hand, Venice itself was going through a phase of economic weakness, and its military capability was substantially reduced. Moreover, in spite of Christian Europe’s victory at Lepanto, the bitter conflicts that resulted from the deep religious divides of the Reformation led to a general war-weariness among the Christian nations. This, while not stopping the interminable fighting in northern Europe, resulted in an unwillingness to get involved any further in the eastern Mediterranean. As far as Crete was concerned, the peace treaty signed between Venice and the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Cyprus was the beginning of about seventy years of uneasy but peaceful coexistence.
However, the Ottomans had not forgotten Crete. It was now the last bastion of the Christian East, determining the boundary between two very different cultures. In the early seventeenth century, various events occurred which caused the Ottomans to look again for an excuse to attack Crete. A dynamic and innovative new sultan, Murat IV, who reigned from 1623 to 1640, reorganised the army and carried out substantial economic reforms, bringing stability to the empire. In 1639, the long war with Persia was brought to an end, leaving the sultan to turn his attention westward, encouraged by the increasing strength of a hawk faction in the government which maintained that, since Crete had been part of the Byzantine Empire, it rightfully belonged now to the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the continuing Thirty Years’ War in central Europe meant that there was little likelihood of help for Venice from other countries.
At the same time, the economy of Venice was deteriorating further, with the result that the garrison for the whole island consisted of only 4,000 mercenaries. Even these were often unpaid and forced to moonlight as barbers, tailors and cobblers, clearly not at full battle readiness. The continuing reluctance of the authorities in Venice to arm the Greeks meant that a potential 14,000-strong civil guard was virtually useless. As for the defences, these were in a poor state and deteriorating, but little was done to improve them. This was largely for financial reasons, but the Ottomans also carried out a highly successful diplomatic bluff which convinced the Venetians that any further aggression would be directed against Apulia in southern Italy rather than Crete.
At this time, the Order of the Knights of Saint John, now settled in Malta, was engaged in protecting Christian ships from Barbary pirates. The knights often exceeded this remit by becoming pirates themselves, attacking and plundering Muslim ships. As early as 1639, a proveditore generale warned that such attacks could give the sultan just the excuse he needed for an attack on Crete; when the Venetians captured a pirate ship near Livorno, they freed all the enslaved Muslims as a gesture of goodwill to Constantinople. Nevertheless, in 1644, near the coast of Crete, Maltese pirates captured an Ottoman ship carrying pilgrims to Mecca. It is not clear what happened next. The sultan claimed that the pirates landed at Chania, where they gave some of their prisoners and loot to the Venetian commander, while the Venetians maintained that they had refused entry to any harbour for the Maltese, who merely landed on the unprotected south coast for water and supplies. Whatever the truth, the outraged Ottomans saw the excuse they needed, accusing Venice of collusion in the raid. In spite of several diplomatic negotiations, the Ottoman Empire now had a pretext for war. One hundred warships and 350 transports carrying 50,000 men, under the command of the sultan’s son-in-law, set out from Constantinople in the early summer of 1645. The fleet anchored at Navarino in the Peloponnese, under the pretext that it was heading for Malta. Again, the bluff succeeded, and the Venetians were largely unprepared when the fleet actually landed at the western end of the Bay of Chania. There was no resistance, and the army moved quickly towards Chania, supported by the fleet, which set up a continuous bombardment from the sea.
The garrison at Chania was small, with only 800 mercenaries and 1,000 armed civil guards, mostly Greek. There were attempts to send help, but these were unsuccessful. A diversionary attack by Cretans from Selino and Sfakia, traditional centres of rebellion, was crushed, while Venice was unsuccessful in its attempt to mobilise a large force from Mani on the Peloponnese. The main Venetian fleet in the Ionian Sea was not strong enough to attempt an attack on the large Ottoman fleet, so the people of Chania were left to their own resources. Nevertheless, their morale was strong and they were determined in their resistance. There are many reports of the heroism of the defenders, including monks, while the women not only kept the soldiers fed and supplied with arms but also fought alongside them on the battlements. The city held out till August but, with the walls badly damaged, defeat was only a matter of time. A final attack led to the loss of 600 defenders, killed and wounded, and the city surrendered almost exactly two months after the siege began. The few remaining soldiers and most of the civilians evacuated the city and fled to the Souda Bay fortress. Those who remained were sold into slavery, while the victorious Ottomans went on a rampage, looting monasteries and churches.
Soon the Ottoman army had subjugated most of western Crete, although they bypassed the Souda Bay fortress, since it was isolated and no longer of strategic significance. Reinforced by a further 40,000 troops that landed at Souda Bay in July, the invaders now turned their attention to Rethymnon. The army moved east, plundering and burning villages as they went, although their activities were a little curtailed by orders forbidding acts of violence against Greek Cretans and their property. The aim was to try to get the support of the Cretan peasantry against the Venetians, and this policy met with some success. The invaders also attempted to woo the Orthodox Cretans by offering freedom of religion and, although the restrictions imposed by the Venetians had largely disappeared, this too struck a chord. The Ottomans did in fact appoint a monk from the Arkadi monastery as the Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Crete, the first such appointment since the thirteenth century.
By late September 1646, the tiny garrison of Rethymnon was under siege. The commander arranged for a large number of women and children to escape to Candia, but they were refused entry to the city, partly due to fear of the plague, which was again raging. The refugees wandered the countryside unable to find shelter and, starving and disillusioned, many sought the protection of the invading army, giving further propaganda points to the Ottoman government. The “stick and carrot” policy was also apparent in the siege of the city itself. The attackers tried to intimidate the inhabitants by firing arrows with leaflets attached over the walls. The leaflets promised good treatment to the inhabitants if they surrendered, but threatened savage reprisals if they fought on. In spite of a spirited defence and an attempt at help from a small French fleet off the coast, the starving and dispirited citizens surrendered in November. Most of the survivors fled to Candia or the Ionian Islands.
The Ottoman strategy was now to subdue the rest of the island, isolating the formidable fortress of Candia which it could then attack in force. In the spring of 1647, reinforcements arrived to attack and plunder the villages of central and eastern Crete. Venetian forces landed at Mylopotamos and Mirabello to try to hold up the Ottoman advance but, after a few successes, the army was defeated. By the spring of 1648, almost all the Cretan countryside was in the hands of the invaders, with only the fortresses of Gramvousa, Souda and Spinalonga being held by Venetian garrisons. Candia was completely cut off by land, although it still had limited access to the sea. It was time to begin the siege. The sultan had predicted that the conquest of Crete would be easy, and up to this point things had gone smoothly for the Ottoman army. However, the attack on Candia was to prove a very different affair. Over the years, the fortifications had been extended and strengthened to such an extent that the city was often referred to as To Kastro (The Castle).
The Ottomans began a long process of intimidation with daily attacks and continuous bombardment from their cannons. They cut off the main water supply by destroying the aqueduct from the outlying springs. In spite of all this, the defences held and, unbelievably, there was pretty much a stalemate for sixteen years, from 1650 to 1666. Attacks and counter-attacks seemed to resolve nothing, and the siege dragged on and on. If the Ottomans had been able to send massive reinforcements and gain control of the harbour at Candia, no doubt there would have been a different result. However, ongoing wars in the north Balkans kept many of their troops tied up, while the main Venetian fleet still had superiority in the Aegean. Under the command of the talented admiral Francisco Morosini, the Venetian fleet closely monitored the Ottoman fleet and inflicted severe damage on it in 1658. As Europe began to take an interest in the Cretan War, help began to trickle in to Candia, with varying results. In 1650 and 1651, Spain sent a consignment of much-needed grain and eight warships, but a 4,000-strong French force which attempted to recapture Chania in 1660 was defeated and destroyed. A force sent from Venice under a French general also seems to have had little impact.
In 1664, the Balkan wars were ended by a treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor, releasing substantial Turkish forces to be sent to Crete. The sultan decided it was time to bring the war to a conclusion. The current commander-in-chief was recalled to Constantinople and beheaded (the invariable fate of failed military figures in the Ottoman Empire). He was replaced by the experienced and courageous Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazil Ahmed Pasha. At the same time, the Venetians appointed Admiral Morosini as the new commander of Candia, in an attempt to bring new inspiration to the defence. In the spring of 1667, Köprülü landed with sixty-four galleys and 40,000 soldiers from the Peloponnese, and the siege became even more violent. The aforementioned poem The Cretan War describes the horrors of the continuous bombardment in the later stages of the siege:
Stones rain down on me, and cannonballs like hail,
Thunder and lightning leave nothing unscathed.
Destroyed my churches, and towers all felled,
As if a whirlwind would snatch me up.
No man went to sleep in his home,
No man could walk the streets without fear.
I am sorely grieved, for I, Candia, am adorned
With the bodies of dead Christians and am bloodstained;
Mute bodies lying in pieces,
Heads, hands and legs scattered all over.1
There were even stories of cannibalism among the starving defenders. When one of the commanders deserted and revealed weaknesses in the fortifications to the Ottomans, it seemed that the end must come soon. More desertions followed, mainly from the galleys, encouraged by bribes from the Ottomans; it is recorded that Köprülü spent 700,000 gold pieces for this purpose. Unpaid mercenaries, quarrelling officers, poor food and disease combined to put morale at its lowest level ever, in spite of all Morosini’s efforts.
And yet, still they held. In November 1668, 600 French mercenaries arrived, but were wiped out a month later. Finally, between early February and late June 1669, it seemed that things might be looking up. A total of nearly 17,000 reinforcements arrived, having been sent by the Holy Roman Emperor, Venice, France and various European princes and dukes. The fundamental weakness of many military coalitions came to light when there were continuous disagreements between the foreign commanders over tactics. As a result, such attacks against the Ottomans as occurred led to alarming losses. Eventually, the French commander withdrew his remaining forces from the island, and very little hope remained.
Morosini negotiated for the surrender of the city, and a treaty was signed on 16th September 1669. Under the circumstances, the treaty was fairer than many others at the time, since the victors were conscious of the fact that they would now have to rule the island. Nevertheless, the victory celebrations were spectacular, as described by an eyewitness:
That night, there were so many thousands of torches and lanterns among the soldiers who lined all the walls of the city, so much pitch and naphtha, tar, oil and wax burning in the arsenals, so many candles, that there was not a single spot on the walls where a light was not burning. Candia glowed like a torch in the night.2
The Christian population of Candia were allowed to leave the town unharmed and with whatever possessions they could carry. Morosini led them to the island of Dia, and from there to the Ionian Islands. It is believed that only two priests, three Jews and a few soldiers who converted to Islam remained in Candia. The losses suffered by the Ottomans during the twenty-year siege were appalling. According to their own records, 137,116 Ottoman troops were killed, including 25,000 janissaries (crack troops) and 215 senior officers.
The treaty left the coastal fortresses of Gramvousa, Souda and Spinalonga in Venetian hands, giving Venice protection for its commercial shipping and possible bases for a future return. This forlorn hope also had important ramifications for historians. Morosini included in the treaty a provision that he could take all state archives with him to Italy. Thus, if Venice ever recovered her colony, the archives could be used to quickly re-establish a new administration. In the event, five ships were fully loaded with documents, and although only three reached Venice, the archives have been of enormous value to historians.