text:  The dominions of the Venetian Signory in the Levant which had at one time comprehended besides the scattered isles of the Cyclades the three subject _kingdoms_ (as they were proudly called) of Candia [11] Cyprus and the Morea were confined in the middle of the seventeenth century to the first-named island--the last relics of the Morea having been wrested from the republic by the arms of Soliman the Magnificent in 1540 and Cyprus having been subdued by the lieutenants of his son Selim a few months before the destruction of the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto in 1571