Assalto dal mare in Arcipelago: Alessandro del Borro nella guerra di Candia, 1654–1656

In the central years of the War of Candia, fought between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire during the period from 1645 to 1669, the troops organized and directed in the service of the Most Serene Republic by the Tuscan Marquis Alessandro del Borro were the protagonists of a series of raids against the islands of the Aegean – the Archipelago in Venetian terminology – under the nominal rule of the Sublime Porte. Inserted in the more general context of naval and amphibious warfare, these incursions were halfway between a more markedly military strategy and another one more closely linked to the war of robbery, which several times marked negatively the events of the “Arcipelagus Turbatus” during the Venetian–Ottoman conflict for Crete. This essay aims to define the nature and the characteristics of use of these units specifically trained for an assault from the sea to the Ottoman positions in the Aegean.