[10] "The Turk," says Montecuculi, "who is always armed, never finds time bald, but can always seize him by the forelock: the number of his victories, and the extent of territory which he has taken from the Christians, and which they have never been able to recover, sufficiently proves this, and shows the rashness and folly of those who pretend to make light of his power." Notwithstanding the ill success of his arms, the vizir was received by the sultan, on his return with the army in the ensuing spring to Adrianople, with such extraordinary distinction, that those who had hoped to profit by his expected fall, could explain such continued favour only by the supposition that sorcery had been practised on the mind of the monarch by the mother of the all-powerful minister. Solicitous to retrieve his military reputation in the eyes of the soldiery, Kiuprili now determined to assume in person the conduct of the long-continued war in Crete, and to bring the struggle to a close by the capture of Candia, the siege of which had already reached near twice the duration of that of Troy. To supply the deficiencies of the Turkish marine, which had been almost ruined by the repeated naval victories of the Venetians, an overture was made to the English ambassador, Lord Winchilsea, for permission to hire the services of a number of British vessels; but this strange request being evaded, the expedition was postponed for a year, while every nerve was strained in the building and equipment of galleys; and at length, in the autumn of 1666, the fleet set sail from Monembasia in the Morea, under the command of the Capitan-pasha Mustafa, surnamed _Kaplan_, or the Tiger, the brother-in-law of Kiuprili, and anchored off Canea in the beginning of November. But before we proceed to narrate the closing scenes of the Cretan war, we must retrace our steps, to give some account of its origin and progress.