January 1459 – July 1461
The end of the Morea, 1459–1461
In January 1459 Thomas rises against the treaty to win back the fortresses that he gave up. With 300 Italian foot soldiers paid by Pope Pius II and the Duchess of Milan he takes the lower town of Patras, but the citadel holds, and he withdraws when an Ottoman relief force approaches. He also takes Kalamata and the Mani from Demetrios’s commanders. Mehmed sends Hamza Zenevisi, who relieves Patras and routs Thomas’s army at Leontari, and the brothers make peace at Kastritza near Sparta, but they soon fight again.
Mehmed sets out from Edirne in April or early May 1460 and reaches Corinth 27 days later. Demetrios sends Matthew Asen in his place, and Mehmed has Asen arrested and sends Mahmud Pasha ahead to Mistra, which Demetrios hands over on 30 May 1460, or 29 May by some accounts, seven years after the fall of Constantinople. Mehmed arrives on 31 May, receives Demetrios with honour and promises him lands in Thrace, and then he marches west. At Gardiki, where the people of Leontari have taken refuge, 6,000 people are said to be massacred after the castle surrenders, and the other castles then surrender and about 10,000 of their people are sent to Constantinople.
Mistra in a view by Vincenzo Coronelli, 1686Wikimedia Commons, Vincenzo Coronelli, Public domain (MistraCoronelli1686.jpg)
Thomas leaves Kalamata for Venetian Navarino, sails with his family to Corfu in July and goes on to Italy, taking the relics of Saint Andrew with him. Monemvasia refuses to surrender and on 12 September 1460 places itself under Pope Pius II, and Venice keeps Modon, Coron, Nauplia and Argos. Zaganos Pasha takes Kalavryta and Chlemoutsi in the north-west, and Mehmed attacks Salmeniko in person: the town surrenders when the janissaries cut its water, but Graitzas Palaiologos holds out in the citadel. In July 1461 he breaks out with his men to Venetian Lepanto, and the Morea becomes an Ottoman province.
The rock and lower town of MonemvasiaWikimedia Commons, Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Monemvasia - Rock and Old Town.jpg)
Sources
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Histories (c. 1464).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- George Sphrantzes, Chronicon minus (about 1477).
- Dionysios Zakythinos, Le Despotat grec de Morée, vol. 1 (1932).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- Steven Runciman, Lost Capital of Byzantium: The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese (1980).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos (1992).
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