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 ensuing 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