free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Fall of Candia
The Venetians used 50,370 tons of powder; threw 48,170 bombs of
50 to 500 lb. weight; 100,960 copper and iron grenades; 276,743
cannon balls; and used 18,044,951 lb, of lead and 13,012,500 lb. of
wick.
In the Representation [says Tournefort] presented to the Divan by the High
Treasurer of the Empire, concerning the extraordinary Expenses for the last
three years of the Siege of Candia, there is mention made of 700,000 Crowns,
given as Rewards to such Deserters who turn’d Turks, and to the soldiers who
had distinguished themselves; and to such as had brought in Heads of Christians,
for which they were allow’d a Sequin per head. This Representation sets
forth, that 100,000 Cannon-Ball had been fir’d against the place; that seven
Bashaws had laid their Bones there, as also four score Principal Officers,
10,400 Janissaries, besides other militia.
At the conference to settle the terms of capitulation, Morosini was
represented by two men, one of them the Englishman Colonel Thomas
Anand; and the Grand Vizier by his adviser, the Greek Panagiotes
Nikouses, the first Greek to be Grand Dragoman of the Porte. Later
this post became a Greek preserve, as Greeks began to infiltrate more
and more the Ottoman administration.
The siege had lasted two years three months and twenty-seven days.
After all the inhabitants had left, except for the two priests, some old
and decrepit Greeks, and three Jews, the city was formally handed over.
A citizen offered the Vizier the keys of Candia on a silver salver. In
return Koprili gave sequins and a robe: and wished to give the same to
the gallant Morosini, who politely refused. As the Turks entered
through the shattered walls of the St Andrea bastion, the Venetian
garrison, two and a half thousand sick men, half naked, left the town by
another gate and took to their ships. Eight days later, the Grand
Vizier was saying his prayers in. St Andrew’s Church, now a mosque.
The head of St Titus, most venerated relic of the Christian island, left
for Venice. The educated Cretans, bearers of a culture which had fed
on Italian tolerance and civilization, left for the Seven Islands of the
Ionian Sea, where the dim light of Hellenic art and letters was to keep
on burning, modestly at first, and finally to blaze up when the poet
Solomos from Zante proclaimed free Greece at last. Crete was left to a
dark age.
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