Serene and Christian Republic enforced its authority, and which are related, not only without reprehension, but with manifest complacency and approval, by the chroniclers of the state.[13] [11] The name of Candia, which is the Italianized form of Kandax, (now Megalo-Kastro,) is unknown at the present day to the Greek inhabitants of the island, which they call by its classic name of [Greek: Kraetae].--See PASHLEY'S _Travels in Crete_, i. chap. 11. [12] A notable retort is on record from the vizir to the Venetian envoy, who, on repairing to Constantinople after the battle, expressed his astonishment at the progress already made in the equipment of a new fleet. "Know," (said the haughty Osmanli,) "that the loss of a fleet to the Padishah is as the shaving of his beard, which will grow again all the thicker; whereas the loss of Cyprus is to Venice as the amputation of an arm from the body, which will never be reproduced." [13] "Thus were they annihilated, and all men who were faithful and devoted to God and their prince, were solaced and consoled."--_MS. Chronicle by the notary Trivan, quoted by_ PASHLEY, chap. 33. These atrocities were perpetrated in the early part of the 16th century. Though the coasts had often been ravaged in former wars by the Turkish fleet, particularly under Barbarossa in 1538, no attempt appears ever to have been made to effect the conquest of the island by the reduction of the fortified cities of the coast, in which the main strength of the Venetians lay: and since the treaty of 1573, Venice had remained more than seventy years at peace with the Porte. In 1645, however, a fresh rupture arose from the capture of a richly-laden Turkish vessel by the Maltese cruisers,[14] who were allowed, contrary to the existing conventions between the Porte and the Republic, to sell the horses which were on board their prize in one of the remote havens of Crete, beyond the surveillance of the Venetian authorities. Slight as was the ground of offence, it produced an instantaneous ferment at Constantinople: the janissaries, calling to mind similar omens said to have preceded the conquest of Rhodes and of Cyprus, exclaimed that the land whose soil had once been trodden by Moslem horse hoofs, was the predestined inheritance of the Faithful: and the flame was fanned by the capitan-pasha Yusuf, a Dalmatian renegade, who, independent of the hatred which from early associations he bore Venice, dreaded being sent on a bootless expedition against the impregnable defences of Malta--an enterprise which, since the memorable failure in the last years of Soliman, had never been attempted by the Osmanlis. Preparations for war, meanwhile, were carried on with unexampled activity, though the destination of the armament was kept profoundly secret; till, on April 30, 1545, the most formidable expedition which had ever been equipped in the Turkish ports, set sail from the Bosphorus.