GREECE

In this period Greece was still much as it had been for the duration of the 13th century (i. e. since the infamous Fourth Crusade), comprising a complex of independent, semi-independent and often mutually hostile lordships, fiefs and petty states which, for the most part, changed masters with remarkable frequency until all and sundry ultimately succumbed to the Ottoman Turks. At the beginning of this period the country could be divided up roughly as follows: the Franks (i. e. Western Europeans) held the principality of Achaea and the duchy of Athens; the Venetians held Negroponte (Euboea) and assorted coastal towns and castles, and they, the Genoese, and other Italians held the islands of the Aegean; and the Byzantines held all the rest, comprising Thrace, Macedonia and Laconia, with independent Byzantine governments in Thessaly and Epiros. The irruption onto the scene of the Catalan Company in the early part of the 14th century resulted in the long term in an overall weakening of the Frankish position, which at the same time opened up considerable opportunities for the Serbs and Byzantines. With the death in 1318 of the lord of Thessaly (John II Doukas, Sebastokrator of Neopatras) the central government annexed part of his lands, conquering the rest (with the exception of the southern portion, held by the Catalans) in 1333. Epiros too was recovered for the Empire by force in 1340 and its last despot deposed8, and gradual absorption of Achaea’s fragmented and strife-torn territory commenced towards the end of the 14th century. In the course of the first half of the 15th century the Byzantine despots of the Morea steadily stripped the declining principality of its possessions until, in 1433, the despot Thomas Palaeologus actually became Prince of Achaea; the whole of the Morea, with the exception of just a handful of Venetian possessions, had by then reverted to Byzantine control. However, the Ottomans too had not been slow to take advantage of the same internal weakness that had benefited the Byzantines, and as early as 1387 Thessalonika had been captured (though it was held for only a few years) and Thessaly was overrun between 1393 and 1394; Neopatras fell in 1394 and Trikkala (capital of a Serbian despotate until the 1380s) fell in 1395, while in 1397 an extended Turkish razzia took the Ottoman commander in Greece, Evrenos Bey, as far south as the Venetian pons of Coron and Modon. Permanent conquest by the Turks followed in the 15th century: Thessalonika and loannina were taken in 1430, Arta (once the capital of Epiros) in 1449, Athens in 1456, Byzantine Morea in 1460, and the islands

Of Lesbos in 1462, Negroponte in 1470, and Cephalonia and Leucadia (Leukas) in 1479. The Venetians managed to retain Naupaktos (Lepanto) until 1499, Modon and Coron until 1500, and the fortress of Monemvasia until as late as 1540, but with these few exceptions, plus Venetian Tenos (held until 1715) and the so-called duchy of Naxos (which, though tributary, remained in Italian hands until 1566), Ottoman rule prevailed unchallenged throughout Greece and the Aegean before the 15th century had drawn to a close. It only remains for us to consider some of the more important of these Frankish and Byzantine states in slightly greater detail.