traveldk.com

Crete is the centre of the Minoan civilization, which is marked by the building of Knosos and other palaces. Mycenaeans take over Knosos in 1450 BC.

The first Roman invasion of Crete in 71 BC is repulsed by the Dorian Greeks, but a second attack in 69 BC succeeds. Some Cretan cities side with the invaders, and by 67 BC Crete is firmly in Roman hands.

The Byzantine Empire loses Crete to Arab invaders in AD 824. The Emperor Nikiforas Fokas reconquers the island in 961.

Crete falls into Venetian hands after 1204, when the Fourth Crusade goes awry and the Byzantine Emperor is deposed by an army of Frankish crusaders in alliance with Venice. Cretans rebel against the Venetians, but without success.

Chania and Rethymno quickly fall to an attack by Turks in 1645. Venetian seapower enables the Venetian capital of Candia (modern Irakleio) to resist a 21-year siege, but Venice finally surrenders in 1669. The Cretans rise too against the Turks. The first major rebellion begins in 1770 in mountainous Sfakia and is led by Ioannis Daskalogiannis. It ends badly, however, with Sfakia conquered.

In 1821 a nationwide rising in mainland Greece flares into a full-scale and eventually successful War of Independence. In Crete, Chatzimichalis Dalianis and fewer than 400 rebels raise the Greek banner at Frangokastello, where they are besieged and slaughtered. Crete remains under the Turkish yoke.

Undaunted by these heroic failures, Crete rises again in 1866, with a self-appointed Cretan Assembly declaring independence and union with Greece. The Turks bring in Egyptian troops to quell the rebels, but in Europe there is growing sympathy for the Cretan cause.

Several risings in the last decades of the 19th century culminate in the landing of Greek troops in 1897 and international intervention.

In 1905 Eleftherios Venizelos – a minister in Prince George’s governorship of Crete – calls for a nationalist revolution and in 1908 the Cretan Assembly declares union (enosis ) with Greece.

German forces drive the Allies out of Crete in May 1941, but Cretan guerrillas continue to resist. Most German troops flee Greece in autumn 1944 as Allied troops land, but the garrison at Chania holds out until the end of the war in May 1945.