Despotate of Epirus - Collapse of The Despotate

Collapse of The Despotate

Anna succeeded in marrying off Thomas to a daughter of Michael IX, but Thomas was assassinated in 1318 by his cousin Nicholas Orsini, who married his widow and took control of Epirus. He was recognized as legitimate by Andronikos, but was overthrown by his brother John in 1323. John was poisoned around 1335 by his wife Anna, who became regent for their son Nikephoros II. In 1337 the new Emperor, Andronikos III Palaiologos, arrived in northern Epirus with an army partly composed of 2,000 Turks contributed by his ally Umur of Aydın. Andronikos first dealt with unrest due to attacks by Albanians and then turned his interest to the Despotate. Anna tried to negotiate but Andronikos demanded the complete surrender of the Despotate to which she finally agreed. Thus Epirus came peacefully under imperial rule.

A term of the surrender agreement was that Nikephoros would be engaged to one of the daughters of the emperor's right-hand man, John Kantakouzenos. When the time of the engagement came, Nikephoros had vanished. Andronikos learned that Nikephoros had fled to Italy, with the help of members of the Epirote aristocracy who supported an independent Epirus. He stayed in Taranto, Italy, in the court of Catherine II of Valois (Philip of Taranto's widow), the titular empress of Constantinople.

In 1339, there was a revolt supported by Catherine of Valois, who was in the Peloponnese at the time, and by Nikephoros who had returned to Epirus, based in Thomokastron. At the end of 1339 the imperial army returned to the area and next year, 1340, Andronikos III himself arrived together with John Kantakouzenos. Nikephoros was persuaded through diplomacy to recognize the authority of the emperor. He surrendered Thomokastron, married Maria Kantakouzene, the daughter of John Kantakouzenos, and received the title of panhypersebastos.

The Empire soon fell into a civil war between John V Palaiologos and John VI Kantakouzenos, and Epirus was conquered by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan in 1348. Nikephoros II took advantage of the Byzantine civil war and the death of Dušan to escape and to reestablish himself in Epirus in 1356, to which he also added Thessaly. Nikephoros was killed in battle putting down an Albanian revolt in 1359, and the territory of the former despotate became a component part of the personal Empire of Dusan's half-brother, Simeon-Siniša Palailogos. Simeon was also governing Thessaly at the time and, as Chronicle of Ioannina show, left much of the territory under the control of Albanian clans establishing short lived entities: the clan of Peter Liosha held Arta and the clan of Muriq Shpata held Aetoloacarnania, with Angelokastron as capital.

In 1367 the part of the Epirotan Despotate was resurrected under local Serbian nobleman Thomas II Preljubović who kept Ioannina. After Thomas' death in 1384, his widow remarried in 1385 and transferred the Despotate to homage of Italian nobility. The state tradition was carried on by the Serbian and Italian rulers of Ioannina, who solicited aid from the Ottoman Turks against the Albanians. In 1399 the Albanian leader of Principality of Gjirokastër, Gjon Zenebishi captured the Despot Esau de' Buondelmonti and released him after 15 months, when his relatives in Italy offered a huge amount of money as a ransom. By 1416 the Tocco family of Cephalonia, succeeded in reuniting Epirus, or at least in asserting their control over its towns. But internal dissension eased the Ottoman conquest, which proceeded with the capture of Ioannina in 1430, Arta in 1449, Angelokastron in 1460, and finally Vonitsa in 1479. With the exception of several coastal Venetian possessions, this was the end of Frankish rule in mainland Greece.