Siege of Candia (1648-1669): Crete's 21-Year Ottoman Siege

The siege of Candia was the Ottoman blockade and assault on the Venetian city of Candia, today’s Heraklion on the island of Crete. It began in May 1648 and ended with the city’s surrender in September 1669, after some twenty-one years. The siege was the centre of the Cretan War between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice and decided that Crete would pass from Venetian to Ottoman rule.

Background: Venetian Crete

Venice had ruled Crete since the early thirteenth century, after the Fourth Crusade. The island was its most valuable overseas colony, producing wine, oil and grain, and its capital Candia was protected by massive modern bastions designed in the sixteenth century.

By the seventeenth century Crete was surrounded by Ottoman territory. Cyprus had fallen in 1571, despite the Christian naval victory at Lepanto that same year. Ottoman leaders saw Crete as a natural target, but the long peace with Venice held until an incident at sea.

In 1644 galleys of the Knights of Malta captured an Ottoman ship carrying pilgrims to Mecca, including members of the imperial household, and then anchored briefly in Crete. Sultan Ibrahim treated this as Venetian complicity, and in 1645 an Ottoman fleet landed on the island.

The Cretan War and the long blockade

The Ottomans advanced quickly. They took Chania in August 1645 and Rethymno in 1646, gaining control of most of the island’s countryside. Only Candia and a few island fortresses remained in Venetian hands.

In May 1648 Ottoman forces under Gazi Hüseyin Pasha began the siege of Candia. Yet the same year brought political crisis in Istanbul: Sultan Ibrahim was deposed in August 1648, and his young son Mehmed IV came to the throne under the regency of Kösem Sultan. Supply and reinforcements for Crete became irregular, and the troops on the island at times mutinied over unpaid wages and shortages. Without steady support from Istanbul, the besiegers could not mount a sustained assault on the city’s powerful bastions.

For much of the 1650s the siege of Candia was more a blockade than a continuous assault. The Ottomans entrenched outside the walls but could not force a breach, and the defenders could be supplied by sea.

Venice tried to strike at the source of the Ottoman war effort by blockading the Dardanelles, the strait leading to Istanbul. In 1656 a Venetian fleet won a major victory there, causing panic in the capital. The Venetians also seized the islands of Tenedos and Lemnos near the strait, but could not hold them. The Ottomans recovered the next year, retaking both islands in 1657, and a new grand vizier, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, restored order and finances in what became the Köprülü era.

The final assault, 1667–1669

Late in 1666 the grand vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, son of Köprülü Mehmed, arrived on Crete to take personal command, and from the spring of 1667 he pressed the siege in person. He brought fresh troops, engineers and heavy artillery, and the siege entered its most intense phase.

The fighting focused on the western bastions, especially Sant’Andrea and Panigra. Both sides dug elaborate systems of trenches, mines and countermines; explosions under the walls and underground fighting were constant. Contemporary engineers, including veterans like Johann Bernhard Scheither, later published detailed plans of the works.

Venice appealed to Catholic Europe, and volunteers came from France, the German states, the Papal States, Malta and elsewhere. In 1669 Louis XIV allowed a French expedition under the Duke of Beaufort and the Duke of Navailles to sail to Crete under the papal flag. Beaufort was killed during a sortie in June 1669, and after heavy losses the French withdrew in August.

By then the garrison was exhausted. The Venetian captain-general Francesco Morosini decided, without waiting for orders from Venice, to negotiate. On 6 September 1669 he agreed terms, and on 27 September the last defenders and many inhabitants left the city.

Life inside the besieged city

For the people of Candia the siege became a way of life lasting a generation. The city was never completely cut off, because Venetian ships could usually reach the harbour, but bombardment, disease and shortages were constant. Many civilians left over the years, and the garrison relied increasingly on soldiers and volunteers from abroad.

The Ottomans, for their part, built a fortified camp outside the walls that grew into a small town, with mosques, markets, baths and houses. Soldiers served long rotations there, and the rest of Crete was gradually organised as an Ottoman province, with land granted to soldiers and local Cretans brought into the new administration.

Key people

• Francesco Morosini (1619–1694): Venetian captain-general who directed the final defence and negotiated the surrender. He later conquered the Peloponnese and became doge.
• Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha (1635–1676): grand vizier from 1661, who personally led the final Ottoman effort from 1667 to 1669.
• Gazi Hüseyin Pasha: Ottoman commander who conquered much of Crete and began the siege in 1648; he was executed in 1659 after falling out of favour.
• François de Vendôme, Duke of Beaufort: commander of the French relief force, killed outside the walls in June 1669.
• Sultan Ibrahim and Mehmed IV: the Ottoman rulers under whom the war was begun and finished.

Peace terms

The surrender was followed by a peace treaty between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Venice gave up Crete but kept three small island fortresses off its coast: Gramvousa, Souda and Spinalonga. The garrison was allowed to leave with its arms, and those inhabitants who wished could depart.

Morosini was accused in Venice of exceeding his authority, but he was acquitted. He later became famous for his campaigns in the Peloponnese in the 1680s and was elected doge in 1688.

By the numbers

The casualty figures come from contemporary reports and are uncertain; many deaths were caused by disease rather than combat.

Timeline

• 1644: Knights of Malta capture an Ottoman ship and stop in Crete.
• 1645, June–August: Ottoman forces land on Crete and take Chania.
• 1646: Rethymno falls to the Ottomans.
• 1648, May: The siege of Candia begins.
• 1656: Venice wins a major naval battle at the Dardanelles.
• 1666–67: Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha takes command at Candia.
• 1669, June: A French relief expedition arrives; the Duke of Beaufort is killed.
• 1669, 6 September: Morosini agrees to surrender Candia.
• 1669, 27 September: The Venetians evacuate the city.

Legacy

Ottoman rule over Crete lasted until the late nineteenth century, and the island joined Greece in 1913. Candia, renamed Kandiye by the Ottomans, recovered slowly, and its Venetian walls still surround the old city of Heraklion.

The war drained Venice’s finances and confirmed its decline as a great power, although it fought the Ottomans again in the 1680s. For the Ottomans the conquest of Crete was a last major territorial gain in the Mediterranean, achieved only a few years before the failure at Vienna in 1683.

Why it matters

The siege of Candia shows how early modern warfare between great powers could become a struggle of endurance, engineering and finance. Its outcome ended four and a half centuries of Venetian rule on Crete and shaped the island’s history until modern times.