The war lasted from 1645 to 1669 and was fought in Crete, especially in the city of Candia, and in numerous naval engagements and raids around the Aegean Sea, with Dalmatia providing a secondary theater of operations.

The Ottomans on the other hand, having managed to sustain their forces on Crete and reinvigorated under the capable leadership of the Köprülü family, sent a final great expedition in 1666 under the direct supervision of the Grand Vizier.

[21] Anxious about Ottoman preparations, the Republic reinforced Crete in late 1644 with 2,500 troops and provisions, and began arming its fleet, while assistance was promised in the event of war by the Pope and Tuscany.

[24] When the Christian forces finally moved to retake Canea on 1 October, with a fleet of about 90 ships, the stout Ottoman defense and the Allies' lack of cooperation doomed the attack.

[27] To lead the effort against the Ottomans, the Senate initially appointed the 80-year-old doge Francesco Erizzo, but after his death in early 1646, he was replaced by the 73-year-old Giovanni Cappello as Captain General of the Sea.

[35] In addition, the overall Ottoman war effort was severely hampered by increased domestic instability caused by Sultan Ibrahim's erratic policies and his summary execution of leading state officials.

[45] The efforts of the Venetian fleet to counter the Ottoman land operations in Crete likewise failed, through a combination of timidity on behalf of their commanders, the delays in payment for the crews, and the effects of a widespread plague.

[47] Despite some successes like a raid in Çeşme, the remainder of the year was a failure for the Venetians, as several attempts to blockade Ottoman harbors failed to stem the flow of supplies and reinforcements to Crete.

Despite losing many ships and admiral Grimani himself in a storm in mid-March,[49] reinforcements under Giacomo da Riva brought the Venetian fleet back up to strength (some 65 vessels), and allowed them to successfully blockade the Straits for a whole year.

[50] This highlighted the weakness of the Venetian position: maintaining long blockades with galleys was an inherently difficult task, and the Republic did not have enough ships to control both the Dardanelles and the passage of Chios at the same time.

[40] In addition, in a major development, 1648 the Ottomans decided, in a meeting chaired by the Sultan himself, to build and employ galleons in their fleet, instead of relying exclusively on oared galleys as hitherto.

He was replaced late in the year by Hozamzade Ali Pasha, governor of Rhodes, who used a clever ploy to get through the blockade: waiting until winter, when the Venetians withdrew their forces, he assembled a small number of ships and embarked several thousand troops with many provisions on them, and sailed unmolested to Crete.

[38] On 10 July 1651, the first significant naval battle of the war was fought south of Naxos, a three-day engagement in which the Venetians with 58 ships under Alvise Mocenigo were victorious over the twice as large Ottoman fleet.

[58] The final months of 1654 were marked by a significant change in the Venetian leadership: Mocenigo died at Candia, and was succeeded as acting Captain General of the Sea by Francesco Morosini, who had distinguished himself in the previous battles.

[59] Morosini initiated a more energetic approach in the Venetian pursuit of the war: in the spring of 1655, he raided the Ottoman supply depot at Aigina and razed the port town of Volos in a night attack on 23 March.

The Ottoman fleet avoided action for the remainder of the year, before it withdrew to winter quarters, leaving Morosini free to undertake an ultimately unsuccessful siege of the strategically important island fortress of Malvasia (Monemvasia) off the south-eastern coast of the Peloponnese.

[63] Although in the previous years the Venetians had generally held the upper hand against the Ottomans, largely controlling the Aegean and able to extract tribute and recruits from its islands,[64] they had been unable to transform this superiority into concrete results.

[68] Although in the aftermath of this victory the Maltese contingent departed, the scale of their success enabled the Venetians under Barbado Doer to seize Tenedos on 8 July and Lemnos on 20 August.

[75] Under the personal direction of the Grand Vizier and strengthened by men and ships from the Barbary states,[76] the Ottoman fleet proceeded to recover Lemnos, on 31 August, and Tenedos, on 12 November, thus removing any hope the Venetians may have had of re-establishing the blockade as firmly as before.

Morosini also resumed his tactic of attacking Ottoman strongholds: a siege of the island of Santa Maura (Lefkada) in August 1658 failed, but in 1659, the Venetians, aided by the Maniots, sacked Kalamata in the Peloponnese, followed by Torone in the Chalcidice, Karystos in Euboea, and Çeşme.

[78][80] With the end of the war between France and Spain however, the Venetians became encouraged, hoping to receive increased assistance in money and men, especially from the French, whose traditionally good relations with the Porte had soured of late.

Although the Ottomans were heavily engaged with the Austrians in Hungary, and that their fleet rarely sallied forth, the Venetians failed to make use of this opportunity, and, except for the intercept of a supply convoy from Alexandria off Kos in 1662, there was little action.

[97] The Ottomans had been making steady progress over the past years, having reached the outer bastions of the fortress; the defenders were in dire straits, while most of the city of Candia lay ruined.

[99] The arrival of the second half of the French expeditionary force revived the defenders' morale, and a combined attack was agreed upon, involving bombardment of the Ottoman siege lines by the powerful allied fleet.

Cooperation was distinctly lacking in the few operations attempted during the next few weeks, while the bad supply situation, the spread of sickness among their troops and the continuous attrition of their forces in the everyday fighting at Candia made the French commanders especially keen to depart.

The conditions there were almost reverse to those in Crete: for the Ottomans, it was too far away and relatively insignificant, while the Venetians operated near their own bases of supply and had undisputed control of the sea, being thus able to easily reinforce their coastal strongholds.

[106] The Ottomans launched a large-scale attack in 1646, and made some significant gains, including the capture of the islands of Krk, Pag and Cres,[107] and most importantly, the supposedly impregnable fortress of Novigrad, which surrendered on 4 July, after only two days of bombardment.

[111] During the spring of 1659, Francesco Morosini departed for Sifnos, where he met the former Patriarch of Constantinople Joannicius II and several other Greek clerics; subsequently they went to the Mani Peninsula in order to encourage a rebellion.

[43] On the other hand, Venice had lost its greatest and most prosperous colony, its pre-eminent trading position in the Mediterranean had diminished,[113] and its treasury was exhausted, having spent some 4,253,000 ducats on the defense of Candia alone.

Fifteen years later, he would lead the Venetian forces in the Morean War, where the Republic attempted, for the last time, to reverse its losses and reestablish itself as one of the major powers of the Eastern Mediterranean.