June 1366 – 1371
The Savoyard crusade, 1366
Pope Urban V calls for a crusade against the Turks, and Count Amadeus VI of Savoy, a cousin of Emperor John V, leaves Venice around 21 June 1366 with about 15 ships and 1,700 men. In the Dardanelles Francesco I Gattilusio, lord of Lesbos, joins him with his galleys, and on 22 August the crusaders attack Gallipoli. The Turks leave the town in the night, and the next morning the townspeople open the gates.
Count Amadeus VI of Savoy, the Green Count, in a portrait of the 16th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown painter, Public domain (Ritratto di Amedeo VI di Savoia.png)
John V has meanwhile travelled to Buda to ask King Louis I of Hungary for help, and on his way home he is stranded at Vidin, as the Bulgarians refuse him passage. In October Amadeus sails up the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea, storms Mesembria (Nesebar) on 20 October, lays siege to Varna and negotiates with the Bulgarian court at Tarnovo, which in December lets the emperor go. John V joins Amadeus at Sozopol in January 1367, and in June, on his way home, Amadeus hands Gallipoli to the Byzantines.
The walls of Nesebar, the medieval Mesembria, which Amadeus stormed in October 1366Wikimedia Commons, B0rder, Public domain (Nessebar Festungsmauern.jpg)
In 1369 John V travels by way of Naples to Rome, where in October he becomes a Catholic before Pope Urban V in St Peter’s, without the Byzantine clergy. On his way back Venice holds him for his debts, and he reaches Constantinople only in 1371.
Sources
- Eugene L. Cox, The Green Count of Savoy: Amadeus VI and Transalpine Savoy in the Fourteenth Century (1967).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 1 (1976).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
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