After a war council on 13 June, 15,000 Janissaries under Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha—governor of Diyarbekir Eyalet and nephew of the namesake Grand Vizier who led the Siege of Vienna in 1683— were sent to capture Lepanto, and thence cross into the northwestern Morea to attack the Castle of the Morea and Patras, while the main body of the army under Yusuf Pasha and the Agha of the Janissaries moved onto the Isthmus of Corinth, and thence to the Argolid and southwest, across the central Morea, to Messenia, assisted by supplies from the fleet. At the same time, the Ottoman fleet had captured the last Venetian possessions in the central Aegean, the islands of Tinos (5 June) and Aigina (7 July), and proceeded to blockade the Venetian positions in the Morea. The Ottomans operated with impunity as the Venetian fleet remained in the Venetian Ionian Islands.
