1395 – 1400
Argos and the Morea, 1395–1400
Between September 1395 and January 1396 Theodore I, the despot of the Morea at Mistra, buys Corinth and Megara from Carlo Tocco. After Nicopolis the Ottomans turn to Greece. In 1397 an army under Yakub Pasha and Evrenos plunders the villages of Boeotia and of Attica around Venetian Athens. It crosses the Isthmus and in June takes the Venetian town of Argos. At least 14,000 of its people are enslaved, and many are taken to Anatolia. Raiders plunder the lands of the Venetian ports of Coron and Modon.
The castle of Larissa above ArgosWikimedia Commons, George E. Koronaios, CC0 (On the acropolis of Argos (Larissa Castle) on September 5, 2020.jpg)
Theodore cannot rebuild the walls of Corinth or defend it, and in 1397 he sells the town to the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes. New Ottoman attacks on the Morea follow in 1399 and 1400, and in 1400 Theodore sells the whole despotate to the Knights. When the Knights’ men come to take over Mistra, its people refuse to receive them.
Despot Theodore I Palaiologos as ruler and as monk, in a fresco of the church of the Hodegetria at MistraWikimedia Commons, ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΚΡΑΤΩΡ, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Τοιχογραφία απο τον τάφο του δεσπότη Θεόδωρου Α΄ Παλαιολόγου που τον αναπαριστά ως ηγεμόνα και μοναχό.JPG)
Sources
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987), 431.
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 1 (1976).
- Steven Runciman, Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (1980).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
- Nevra Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins (2009), 235–258.
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