The Latins in Greece: A Brief Introduction 3
Crete, along with the Peloponnesian harbour-towns of Modon and Coron, were
instrumental in ensuring her mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean through-
out the Late Middle Ages.
Other Latin polities in Greece were created as an indirect result of the
crusade. Genoa, who had been excluded from the whole enterprise, man-
aged to re-establish a presence by allying herself with the Greeks of Nicaea in
1261 and being rewarded with trade privileges and quarters in the capital and
other coastal areas after Michael viii’s reconquest of Constantinople. In 1304
the Genoese Benedetto Zaccaria managed to take the island of Chios, which
was thereafter controlled by Genoese agents until 1566 (except for the period
1329–46, during which it reverted to Byzantine control). At the start of the
14th century the Knights Hospitaller, now expelled from the Holy Land, also
embarked on the conquest of an island base in the Aegean. By 1309, they had
conquered Rhodes, where they moved their headquarters, and proceeded to
establish their authority over the rest of the Dodecanese. The islands of the
Ionian Sea had known Latin rule even before the Fourth Crusade, having been
captured by William ii of Sicily in 1185. At the time of the crusade, Cephalonia,
Zakynthos (Zante) and Lefkada (Santa Maura) were ruled by the Orsini family,
under the title of Counts Palatine. Corfu, which was awarded by the Partition
Treaty to Venice, was leased to ten Venetian nobles, who only managed to hold
on to it until 1214, at which time it was taken over by the Greeks of Epirus.
The newly established polities had to contend with the indigenous popu-
lations and with the remnants of the previous regime. Indigenous resistance
was haphazard at best, but certain local magnates, such as Leo Sgouros
(d. 1208) managed to at least put up a fight. The town of Monemvasia, in the
Peloponnese, was exceptional in managing to withstand the Franks until 1248.
Much more formidable, during the years of the conquest was the opposition of
the Bulgarians under their leader Kalojan. His resistance to Latin expansion in
the Balkans led not only to the capture and death of Emperor Baldwin in 1205
and to the death of Boniface of Montferrat in 1207, but also to the relinquish-
ing of substantial crusader gains in Thrace. Kalojan’s own death in October
1208 was a blessing for the nascent Latin Empire. Though resistance at a local
level remained limited among the Greeks, three rival Greek states emerged as
successors of the Byzantine Empire, the so-called Empire of Trebizond, the
Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epirus. The first of these remained
peripheral to the political developments of Latin Greece, but the other two
posed enormous threats to the emergent Latin states. Throughout the first
half of the 13th century the rulers of Epirus put the Latin rulers of northern
and central Greece under incessant pressure culminating in the capture of
Thessalonica in 1224. The threat from Epirus subsided in subsequent decades