Candia's twenty-one-year siege

The focus turns from fleet actions to the siege of Candia, where Ottoman and Venetian forces dug trenches, mines, and countermines while artillery crept toward the walls. Neither side was able to impose a complete blockade across the wider Aegean, so troops and material continued to arrive. About half the war's casualties were inflicted in the fighting around Candia, including costly sallies by French and Venetian forces. The result was a prolonged industrial-scale siege in which the city itself was progressively ruined.