The scheme of partition gave to Venice a vast dominion, insular and continental. She was to be mistress of the Hadriatic and Ionian seas. To her were assigned, not only the islands off the west coast of the Empire, but the whole western coast itself, from the north of Albania to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. She was to have some points in the Ægæan, among them Oreos and Karystos at the two ends of Euboia. She was to have her quarter of the capital, with a Thracian and an Asiatic dominion, including, according to some versions, the strange allotment of Lazia at the east of the Euxine[31]. ♦Her actual possessions.♦ The actual possessions of Venice in the East have a very different look. Much of the territory which was assigned to the republic never became hers, while she obtained large possessions which were not assigned to her. ♦Her dominion primarily Hadriatic.♦ But the main point, the dominion of the Hadriatic, was never forgotten, though some both of her earliest and of her latest conquests lay beyond its necessary range.

Among those possessions of Venice which were not assigned to her in the act of partition was her greatest and most lasting possession of all, the island of Crete. ♦1645-1669.♦ This she won almost at the first moment of the conquest, and she kept it for more than four centuries and a half, till the war of Candia handed over all Crete, save two fortresses, to the Ottoman. ♦Acquisition of Cyprus. 1489.♦ Before this loss, Saint Mark had won and lost another great island which lay altogether beyond the scheme of the Latin conquerors of Constantinople. Late in the fifteenth century the republic succeeded the Latin kings in the possession of Cyprus. ♦Loss of Cyprus, 1571.♦ But this was held for less than a century. Cyprus, like Crete and Sicily, was a special scene of struggle between European and barbarian powers. But it shared the fate, not of Sicily but of Crete, and became the solid prize of the Ottoman, when Christendom won the barren laurels of Lepanto. ♦Occupation of Thessalonikê, 1426-1430.♦ Another possession which lay out of the usual course of Venetian dominion was the short occupation of Thessalonikê. Bought of a Greek despot, it was after four years taken by the Turk. Had Thessalonikê been kept, it might have passed as a late compensation to the republic for the early loss of Hadrianople and her other Thracian territory.

But the true scene of Venetian enterprise in the East is primarily the Hadriatic, and next to that, the coasts and islands of the Ægæan. She remained both a Dalmatian and a Greek power down to the moment of her overthrow, and, at the moment of her overthrow, it was not eighty years since she had ceased to be a Peloponnesian and an Ægæan power. The Greek dominion of Venice was an enlargement of her Dalmatian dominion. ♦Taking of Zara, 1202.♦ It is significant that Zara was taken—not for the first or the last time—on the way to the taking of Constantinople. ♦Hadriatic dominion of Venice.♦ Already mistress, or striving to be mistress, of the northern part of the eastern coast of the Hadriatic, the partition of the Empire opened to Venice the hope of becoming mistress of the southern part. Mistress of the whole coast she never was at any one moment; one point was gained and another lost. But extension in those lands was steadily aimed at for more than seven hundred years, and the greater part of the eastern Hadriatic coast has been, at one time or another, under Venetian rule.

The story of Venetian dominion in these parts cannot be kept apart from the story of the neighbouring Slavonic lands. The states of Servia and Croatia were from the beginning the inland neighbours of the Dalmatian coast cities. ♦Servian districts on the coast.♦ The river Tzettina may pass as the boundary between the Servian and Croatian states. Pagania on the Narenta, Zachloumia between the Narenta and Ragusa, Terbounia, represented by the modern Trebinje, the coast district of the Canali, Dioklea, taking in the modern Montenegro with the coast as far as the Drin—Skodra or Scutari on its lake, the harbours of Spizza, Antivari, and Dulcigno, were all originally Servian. ♦The Dalmatian cities.♦ The Dalmatian coast cities, Dekatera or Cattaro, Raousion or Ragusa, Tragourion or Traü, Diadora, Jadera, or Zara, formed a Roman fringe on what had become a Slavonic body. It was not even a continuous fringe, as the Slaves came down to the sea at more than one point. ♦Pagania.♦ Pagania above all, the land of the heathen Narentines, cut Roman Dalmatia into two marked parts. ♦The Islands.♦ It even took in most of the great islands, Curzola—once Black Korkyra—Meleda, Lesina—once Pharos—and others. At the separation of the two Empires the Croatian power was strongest in those lands. ♦Croatia under Charles the Great, 806-810.♦ The wars of Charles the Great left the coast cities to the Eastern Empire, while inland Dalmatia and Croatia passed under Frankish rule. ♦825-830.♦ Presently Croatia won its independence of the Western Empire, while the coast cities were practically lost by the Eastern. ♦Settlement under Basil the Macedonian, 868-878.♦ Under Basil the Macedonian the Imperial authority was admitted, in name at least, both by the cities and by the Croatian prince. ♦First Venetian Conquest, 995-997.♦ More than a century later came the first Venetian conquest, which was looked on at Venice as a deliverance of the cities from Croatian rule. The pagan power on the Narenta was destroyed, and the Duke of Venice took the title of Duke of Dalmatia. But all this involved no formal separation from the Empire.[32] ♦The cities under Croatia, 1052.
Dalmatian Kingdom, 1062.♦ Such a separation may be held to have taken place in the middle of the next century, when the cities again passed under Croatian rule, and when the taking of the title of King of Dalmatia by Croatian Kresimir may pass for an assertion of complete independence. ♦Magyar Kingdom of Croatia, 1091;
of Dalmatia, 1102.♦ But the kingdoms, first of Croatia, then of Dalmatia, were presently swallowed up by the growing power of the Magyar. Then comes a time in which this city and that passes to and fro between Venice and Hungary. ♦Croatia and Dalmatia restored to the Empire, 1171.
Dalmatia passes to Hungary.♦ Under Manuel Komnênos the whole of Croatia and Dalmatia was fully restored to the Empire; but ten years later the cities again passed to Hungary. This was their final separation from the Empire, and by this time Venice had thrown off all Byzantine allegiance.

From this time the history of Croatia forms part of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of Dalmatia becomes part of the long struggle of Venice for Hadriatic dominion. For five hundred years the cities and islands of the whole Hadriatic coast were lost and won over and over again in the strifes of the powers of the mainland. These were in Dalmatia the Hungarian and Bosnian Kings; more to the south they were the endless powers which rose and fell in Albania and northern Greece. In after times the Ottoman took the place of all. And many of the cities were able, amid the disputes of their stronger neighbours, to make themselves independent commonwealths for a longer or shorter time. ♦Independence of Ragusa;♦ Ragusa, above all, kept her independence during the whole time, modified in later times by a certain external dependence on the Turk. ♦of Polizza.♦ And the almost invisible inland commonwealth of Polizza—a Slavonic San Marino—kept its separate being into the present century.

The crusading conquest of Zara was the beginning of this long struggle. The frontier fluctuated during the whole of the thirteenth century; early in the fourteenth the whole coast was again Venetian. Meanwhile the republic was striving to make good her position further south. The Epeirot despotat long hindered her establishment either on the coasts or the islands of northern Greece. ♦Final conquest of Durazzo and Corfu, 1206.
1216.♦ Durazzo, the central point between the older and the newer Venetian range, was won, along with Corfu, in the earliest days of the conquest; but they were presently lost, to come back again in after times. ♦History of Corfu.♦ The famous island of Korkyra or Corfu has a special history of its own. No part of Greece has been so often cut off from the Greek body. Under Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, no less than under Michael Angelos and Roger, it obeyed an Epeirot or a Sicilian master. It was among the first parts of Greece to pass permanently under Roman dependence. ♦Second Venetian conquest of Corfu, 1386-1797.♦ At last, after yet another turn of Sicilian rule, it passed for four hundred years to the great commonwealth. In our own day Corfu was not added to free Greece till long after the deliverance of Attica and Peloponnêsos. But, under so many changes of foreign masters, the island has always remained part of Europe and of Christendom. Alone among the Greek lands, Corfu has never passed under barbarian rule. ♦1716.
1800.♦ It has seen the Turk only, for one moment as an invader, for another moment as a nominal overlord.

The second Venetian occupation of Corfu was the beginning of a great advance among the neighbouring islands. But, during the hundred and eighty years between the two occupations, the main fields of Venetian action lay more to the north and more to the south. The Greek acquisitions of the republic at this time were in Peloponnêsos and the Ægæan islands. ♦Modon and Coron, 1206.♦ On the mainland she won, at the very beginning of Latin settlement in the East, the south-western peninsula of Peloponnêsos, with the towns of Methônê and Kôrônê—otherwise Modon and Coron—which she held for nearly three hundred years. ♦History of Euboia.♦ Among the Ægæan islands Venice began very early to win an influence in the greatest of their number, that of Euboia, often disguised under the specially barbarous name of Negropont.[33] The history of that island, the endless shiftings between its Latin lords and the neighbouring powers of all kinds, is the most perplexed part of the perplexed Greek history of the time. ♦Complete occupation of Euboia, 1390.♦ Venice, mixed up in its affairs throughout, obtained in the end complete possession, but not till after the second occupation of Corfu. ♦Turkish conquest of Euboia, 1470.♦ The island was kept till the Turkish conquest eighty years later. Several other islands were held by the republic at different times. ♦Loss of the Ægæan islands, 1718.♦ Of these Tênos and Mykonos were not finally lost till Venice was in the eighteenth century confined to the western seas.

Between the first and the second occupation of Corfu, the Venetian power in Dalmatia had risen and fallen again. ♦Peace of Zara, 1358.
Dalmatia Hungarian.♦ By the peace of Zara, Lewis the Great of Hungary shut out Venice altogether from the Dalmatian coasts, and, as Dalmatian King, he required the Venetian Duke to give up his Dalmatian title. ♦New advance of Venice.♦ Later in the century Venice again gained ground, and her Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek possessions began to draw near together, and to form one whole, though never a continuous whole. ♦1378-1455.
Recovery of Dalmatia.♦ In the space of about eighty years, amid many fluctuations towards Hungary, Bosnia, and Genoa—a new claimant called into rivalry by the war of Chioggia—Venice again became mistress of the greater part of Dalmatia. Some districts however formed part of the Duchy of Saint Sava, and Hungary kept part of the inland territory, with the fortress of Clissa. The point where the Hadriatic coast turns nearly due south may be taken as the boundary of the lasting and nearly continuous dominion of the Republic; but for the present the Venetian power went on spreading far south of that point. ♦Advance in Albania and Greece, 1392.♦ On the second occupation of Corfu followed the acquisition of Durazzo, Alessio, and of the Albanian Skodra or Scutari. ♦1401.
1407.♦ Butrinto and the ever memorable Parga put themselves under Venetian protection, and Lepanto was ceded by a Prince of Achaia. ♦1388.♦ In Peloponnêsos the Messenian towns were still held, and to them were now added Argos and its port of Nauplia, known in Italian as Napoli di Romania. ♦1408-1415.
1419.
1423.♦ Patras was held for a few years, Monembasia was won, and the isle of Aigina, which might almost pass for part of Peloponnêsos. On the other side of Greece, the possession of Corfu led to the acquisition of the other so-called Ionian Islands. ♦The Western Islands. 1449.♦ The prince of Kephallênia, of Zakynthos or Zante, and of Leukadia or Santa Maura, found it to his interest, for fear of the advancing Ottoman, to put his dominions under the overlordship of Saint Mark.

This marks an epoch in the history of Venice and of Europe. The championship of Christendom against the Turk now passes from the New Rome to the hardly less Byzantine city in the Lagoons. The short occupation of Thessalonikê may pass for the beginning of the struggle. Later in the fifteenth century, Venice and the Turk were meeting at every point. ♦Loss of Argos, 1463.♦ In Peloponnêsos, Argos was first lost to the Turk; at the same moment he appeared far to the north, and gradually occupied the Bosnian and Hungarian districts of Dalmatia. ♦1505-1699.♦ Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the inland districts and the smaller towns were lost over and over again, but the Republic always kept the chief coast cities, Zara, Sebenico, and Spalato. ♦Losses of Venice.♦ Meanwhile, to the south of Dalmatia, the Venetian power went back everywhere, except in the western islands. ♦1474-1478.♦ On the mainland Croja, the city of Scanderbeg, was held for a while. ♦1479.♦ But both Croja and Skodra were won by Mahomet the Conqueror, and the treaty which ended this war left to the Republic nothing on the coast of Albania and Northern Greece, save Durazzo, Antivari, and Butrinto. ♦1500.♦ The treaty which followed the next war took away Durazzo, Butrinto, and Lepanto. ♦The Western Islands, 1481-1483.♦ A series of revolutions in the islands of which the Republic already held the overlordship placed them under her immediate dominion, to be struggled for against the Turk. ♦1485.
1502.♦ By the next peace Zakynthos was kept, on payment of a tribute to the Sultan; Kephallênia passed to the Turk, to be won back seventeen years later, and then to be permanently kept. ♦1502-1504.♦ Leukadia was at the same time won for a moment and lost again. ♦Loss of the Peloponnesian fortresses, 1502.
1540.♦ In Peloponnêsos Modon and Koron were lost along with Durazzo and Lepanto, and the great naval war with Suleiman cost the Republic her last Peloponnesian possessions, Nauplia and Monembasia, together with all her Ægæan islands, except Tênos and Mykonos. The strictly Greek dominion of Venice was now for a hundred and forty years confined to the islands, and, after the loss of Cyprus and Crete, almost wholly to the Western islands. But after the loss of Crete came a revival of the Venetian power, like one of the old revivals of the Empire. ♦Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos, 1685-1699.♦ The great campaigns of Francesco Morosini, confirmed by the peace of Carlowitz, freed all Peloponnêsos from the Turk, and added it to the dominion of Saint Mark.

The same treaty confirmed Venice in the possession of the greater part of Dalmatia. ♦Loss of Peloponnêsos, 1715-1718.♦ The next war cost her the whole of Peloponnêsos, her two Cretan fortresses, and her two remaining Ægæan islands. She now withdrew wholly to the western side of Greece, where she had again won Leukadia and Butrinto, and had enlarged her dominion by the acquisition of Prevesa. ♦Extent of Venetian dominion in Greece in the last century.♦ During the last century the Venetian possessions in Greece consisted of the seven so-called Ionian islands, with the continental posts of Butrinto, Prevesa, and Parga.

The Dalmatian territory of the Republic during the same time consisted of a considerable inland district in the north-east, and of the whole coast down to Budua, except where the territory of independent Ragusa broke the continuity of her rule. ♦Ragusan frontier.♦ Ragusa was so jealous of the mightier commonwealth that she preferred the Turk as a neighbour. At two points of the coast, at Klek at the bottom of the gulf formed by the long peninsula of Sabbioncello, and again at Sutorina on the Bocche, the Ottoman territory came down to the sea, so as to isolate the dominion of Ragusa from the Venetian possessions on either side. Such was the frontier of the two Hadriatic commonwealths down to the days when, first Venice and then Ragusa, passed away.

Meanwhile, besides the direct possessions of the Venetian commonwealth, there were other lands within the former dominions of the Eastern Empire which were held by Venetian lords, as vassals either of the republic or of the Empire of Romania. It would be endless to trace out the revolutions of every Ægæan island; but one among the few which claim our notice became the seat of a dynasty which proved, next to the Venetian commonwealth itself, the most long-lived Latin power in the Greek world. ♦The Duchy of Naxos.♦ This is the duchy variously known as that of Naxos, of the Dôdekannêsos, and of the Archipelago, the barbarous name given to the Ægæan or White Sea.[34] ♦1207.
1566.♦ Founded in the early years of Latin settlement by the Venetian Marco Sanudo, the island duchy lived on as a Latin state, commonly as a vassal or tributary state of some greater power, till the last half of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexed by the Turk, 1579.
1617.♦ Shorn of many of its islands by its Ottoman overlord, granted afresh to a Jewish duke, it passed thirteen years later under the immediate dominion of the Sultan. Most of the Kyklades were either parts of this duchy or fiefs held of it by other Venetian families. All came into the hands of the Turk; but some of the very smallest remained merely tributary, and not fully annexed, into the seventeenth century.

The year which saw the Naxian duchy pass from Latin to Hebrew hands saw the fall of the most remarkable of the Genoese settlements in the Greek lands. These settlements, like those of Venice, formed two classes, those which were possessions of the Genoese commonwealth itself and those which came into the hands of Genoese citizens. ♦1304.♦ Genoa had no share in the fourth Crusade; she had therefore no share in the division of the Empire, though, after the restoration of Byzantine rule, her colony of Galata made her almost a sharer in the capital of the Empire. ♦Possessions of Genoa on the Euxine, 1461.♦ But the seat of direct Genoese dominion in the East was not the Ægæan but the Euxine. On the southern coast of that sea the republic held Amastris and Amisos, and in the Tauric Chersonêsos was her great colony of Kaffa. ♦1475.♦ The Euxine dominion of Genoa came to an end during the later half of the fifteenth century; but it outlived the Empires both of Constantinople and of Trebizond.

The Ægæan dominion of the citizens of Genoa was longer lived than the Euxine dominion of Genoa herself. ♦Lesbos. 1354-1462.♦ The family of Gattilusio received Lesbos as an Imperial fief in the fourteenth century, and kept it till after the fall of Constantinople. But the most remarkable Genoese settlement in the Ægæan was that of Chios. ♦The Zaccaria at Chios. 1304-1346.
The Maona. 1346-1566.♦ First held by princes of the Genoese house of Zaccaria, the island, with some of its neighbours, passed into the hands of a Genoese commercial company or Maona, a body somewhat like our own East India Company. ♦1566.♦ Samos, Kôs, and Phôkaia on the mainland, came at different times under their power, and Chios did not fall under the Ottoman yoke till the same year as the duchy of Naxos.

One more insular dominion remains, chiefly famous as the possession, not indeed of a commonwealth, but of an order. ♦Revolutions of Rhodes.♦ In a few years of the thirteenth century the island of Rhodes passed through all possible revolutions. ♦1233.♦ In the first moment of the Latin conquest, it became an independent Greek principality, like Epeiros and Trebizond. ♦1246.♦ Then it admitted the overlordship of the Nicene Emperors. ♦1249.♦ Seized by Genoa, it was presently won back to the Empire, till seventy years later it was again seized by the Knights of Saint John. ♦Establishment of the Knights, 1310.
1315.♦ From Rhodes as a centre, the order established its dominion over Kôs and some other islands, and on some points of the Asiatic coast, especially their famous fortress of Halikarnassos. ♦1480.
1522.♦ They beat back Mahomet the Conqueror, but they yielded to Suleiman the Lawgiver forty years later. ♦Their removal to Malta, 1530.♦ Banished from Rhodes, the order received Malta from Charles the Fifth as a fief of his Sicilian kingdom. We are thus brought back to the island which had been lost to the Eastern Empire for seven hundred years. ♦1566.♦ The knights in their new home beat back their former conqueror Suleiman, and kept their island till the times of confusion. ♦Revolutions of Malta.
1814.♦ Held by France, held by England, held, nominally at least, by its own Sicilian overlord, this fragment of the Empire of Leo and of the kingdom of Roger finally passed at the peace under the acknowledged rule of England.

§ 5. The Principalities of the Greek Mainland.

The Greek possessions of Venice, of Genoa, and of the Knights of Saint John, consisted mainly of islands and detached points of coast. The Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos was the only exception on a great scale. In this they are distinguished from the several powers, Greek and Frank, which arose on the Greek mainland. We have already heard, and we shall hear again, of the Greek despotat of Epeiros, which for a moment grew into an Empire of Thessalonikê. Among the Latin powers two rose to European importance. ♦Duchy of Athens.
Principality of Achaia.♦ These are the duchy of Athens in central Greece—in Hellas, according to the Byzantine nomenclature—and the principality of Achaia or Môraia in Peloponnêsos. ♦Use of the name Môraia.♦ This last name, of uncertain origin,[35] has come, in its Italian shape, to be a modern name of the peninsula itself. But the name of Môraia seems strictly to belong to the domain lands of the principality, and never to go beyond the bounds of the principality, which at no time took in the whole of Peloponnêsos.

Both these powers were founded in the first days of the Latin conquest, and the Turk did not finally annex the territories of either till after the fall of Constantinople. But while the Athenian duchy lived on to become itself the prize of Mahomet the Conqueror, the lands of the Achaian principality had already gone back into Greek hands. ♦Lordship of Athens. 1204-1205.♦ The lordship of Athens, founded by Otho de la Roche, was first a fief of the kingdom of Thessalonikê, then of the Empire of Romania. ♦The Duchy.♦ But it was by the grant of Saint Lewis of France that the title of Great Lord[36] was exchanged for that of Duke. ♦1260.
The Catalan Conquest, 1311.♦ The duchy fell into the hands of the Catalan Great Company, who in central Greece grew from mere ravagers into territorial occupiers. ♦The Sicilian Dukes.♦ They brought with them the Thessalian land of Neopatra, and transferred the nominal title of Duke of Athens and Neopatra to princes of the Sicilian branch of the House of Aragon. Thus the two claimants of the Sicilian crown were brought face to face on old Greek ground. ♦Dukes of the house of Acciauoli.♦ The duchy next passed to the Florentine house of Acciauoli, which already held Corinth, Megara, Sikyôn, and the greater part of Argolis. But their Peloponnesian dominion passed to the Byzantine lords of the peninsula, and Neopatra fell into the hands of the Turk. ♦1390.♦ The Athenian duchy itself, taking in Attica and Boiôtia, lived on, the vassal in turn of the Angevin king at Naples, of the Greek despot of Peloponnêsos, and of the Ottoman Sultan. ♦Ottoman conquest. 1456-1460.
1466.
1687.♦ Annexed at last to the Ottoman dominions, Athens remained in bondage till our own day, save only two momentary occupations by Venice, one soon after the first conquest, the other in the great war of Morosini.

The smaller principalities of Salôna and Bodonitza play their part in the history of the Athenian duchy; but we turn to the chief Latin power of Peloponnêsos, the principality of Achaia. The shiftings of its dynasties and feudal relations are endless; its geographical history is simpler. The peninsula was, at the time of the Latin conquest, already beginning to fall away from the Empire. ♦1205.♦ King Boniface of Thessalonikê had to win the land from its Greek lord Leôn Sgouros. The princes of the house of Champlitte and Villehardouin were his vassals. They had to struggle with the Venetian settlement in Messênia, and with the Greek despot of Epeiros, who, oddly enough, held Corinth, Argos, and Nauplia. ♦1210-1212.♦ These last towns were won by the Latins, and became an Achaian fief in the hands of Otho of Athens. ♦Its greatest extent. 1248.♦ Before the end of half a century, the conquest of the whole peninsula, save the Venetian possessions, was completed by the taking of Monembasia. Things looked as if, now that the Latin power was waning at Constantinople, a stronger Latin power had arisen in Peloponnêsos. A crowd of Greek lands, Zakynthos, Naxos, Euboia, Athens, even Epeiros and Thessalonikê, acknowledged at one time or another the supremacy of Achaia. But Latin Achaia, like Latin Constantinople, had to yield to revived Greek energy. ♦Recovery of lands in Peloponnêsos by the Empire 1262.♦ The Empire won back the three Lacedæmonian fortresses,[37] and presently made Kalabryta in northern Arkadia a Greek outpost. ♦1263.♦ Here the Greek advance stopped for a while.

Before the end of the century the Frank principality lost its independence. It passed into vassalage to the Angevin crown, and was held, sometimes by the Neapolitan kings themselves, sometimes by princes of their house—some of them nominal Emperors of Romania—sometimes by princes of Savoy, who carried the Achaian name into Northern Italy.[38] ♦Dismemberment of the principality. 1337.♦ In the course of the fourteenth century the principality crumbled away. ♦1356.♦ Patras became an ecclesiastical principality under the overlordship of the Pope of the Old Rome. Argos and its port became a separate lordship. ♦1358.♦ Both of these passed for a longer or a shorter time under the power of Venice. Corinth and the north-east corner of the peninsula passed to the Acciauoli. ♦Byzantine advance. 1348-1383.♦ Meantime the Byzantine province grew. For some while, under despots of the house of Kantakouzênos, it might almost pass for an independent Greek state. ♦1381.
1387.
1442.♦ Notwithstanding the inroads of the Navarrese, the second Spanish invaders of Greece, and the first appearance of the Ottoman, the Greek power advanced, till it took in all Peloponnêsos save the Venetian towns. ♦Conquests of Constantine Palaiologos.♦ The last Constantine even appeared as a conqueror at Athens and in central Greece. ♦1458-1460.♦ Then came more Ottoman inroads, dismemberment, Albanian colonization, final annexation by the Turk. ♦Successive Turkish conquests of Peloponnêsos.♦ But the last conqueror has been twice driven to conquer Peloponnêsos afresh. The first revolt under Venetian support was crushed a few years after the first conquest. ♦1463-1540.
1670.
1685.♦ Then the Turk gradually gathered in the Venetian ports, and the whole peninsula was his, save so far as Maina kept on a kind of wild independence almost down to the last Venetian conquest. The complete and unbroken possession of all Peloponnêsos by the Ottoman has never filled up the whole of any one century.

We have seen how the despotat of Epeiros parted away from the momentary Empire of Thessalonikê. The despots, like their neighbours, often found it convenient to acknowledge the overlordship of some other power, Venice, Nikaia, Sicily, or Achaia. The boundaries of their dominions were greatly cut short by the advance of the restored Empire and by the cessions to Manfred of Sicily. ♦Dismemberment of the despotat.♦ A state was left which took in old Epeiros, Akarnania, and Aitôlia, save the points on the coast which were held by other powers. Arta, the old Ambrakia, was, as in the days of Pyrrhos, its head. ♦1271-1318.
1309.♦ Another branch reigned in Great Blachia or Thessaly, with its capital at Neopatra, a capital presently lost to the Catalan invaders. ♦1318.
1339.
Servian conquest. 1331-1355.♦ Next the greater part of Thessaly, and then Epeiros itself, were recovered by the Empire, and then all gradually passed under the Servian power. On the break-up of that power came a time of utter confusion and endless shiftings, which has however one marked feature. ♦Advance of the Albanians.♦ The Albanian race now comes fully to the front. Albanian settlers press into all the southern lands, and Albanian principalities stand forth on a level with those held by Greek and Latin lords.

The chief Albanian power which arose within the bounds of the despotat was the house of Thopia in northern Epeiros. ♦1366.♦ They called themselves Kings of Albania; they won Durazzo from the Angevins, and their power lasted till that duchy passed to Venice. ♦Servian dynasty in Epeiros. 1359.♦ To the south of them, in southern Epeiros, Akarnania, and Aitolia, reigned a Servian dynasty, whose prince Stephen Urosh added Thessaly to his dominions, and called himself Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks.[39] ♦1363.♦ His western dominion passed from him. A Servian despot ruled at Jôannina, and an Albanian despot at Arta. ♦Kingdom of Thessaly.
Turkish conquest.
1393.♦ But Thessaly went on as a kingdom, taking in the greater part of the land anciently so called,[40] a kingdom which was the first Hellenic land to pass under the power of the Turk. ♦1396.♦ Neopatra and Salôna followed, and the Ottoman power stretched to the Corinthian gulf, and parted asunder the still independent states of Western Greece from Attica and Peloponnêsos.

In Epeiros the Servian and Albanian despots had both to yield to Italian houses. ♦Buondelmonti in Northern Epeiros.♦ Northern Epeiros passed to the Florentine house of Buondelmonte. ♦The house of Tocco.♦ To the south arose a dynasty of greater interest, the Beneventan house of Tocco, the last independent princes in Western Greece. ♦1357.♦ They first, as counts palatine, held Kephallênia and Zakynthos as a fief of the Latin Empire. ♦1362.♦ Then they won Leukadia with the ducal title. ♦1394.♦ They next began a continental dominion, first for a moment in Peloponnêsos, then more lastingly in the lands near their island duchy. ♦1405-1418.♦ Duke Charles of Leukadia gradually won all Epeiros save the Venetian posts; and he, his wife, and his heirs were called Despot of Romania, King of Epeiros, and even Empress of the Romans.[41] ♦Its effects.♦ This dynasty, though not long-lived on the mainland, is of real and abiding importance in the history of the Greek nation. The advance of the Albanians was checked; their settlements were thrust further north and further south, while the Beneventan dominions became and remained purely Greek. ♦Venetian and Turkish occupation. 1430.♦ Soon after the death of Duke Charles, the Turk won Jôannina and the greater part of Epeiros; but his son kept Arta and its neighbourhood for nineteen years as a vassal of Venice. ♦1449.♦ Then the dominions of Duke Charles became the Turkish province of Karlili. ♦1449-1479.
1481-1483.♦ The house of Tocco kept its island possessions for thirty years longer. Then they too passed to the Turk, to be recovered for a moment by their own Duke, and then to be struggled for between Turk and Venetian.

Meanwhile the strictly Albanian lands, from the Akrokeraunian point northwards, were subdued by the Turk, were freed, and subdued again. ♦1414.
Turkish conquest. 1431.♦ Early in the fifteenth century the Turk won all Albania, except the Venetian posts. ♦Revolt. 1448.♦ Seventeen years later came a revolt and a successful defence of the country, whose later stages are ennobled by the name of George Kastriota of Croja, the famous Scanderbeg. ♦Death of Scanderbeg. 1467.♦ His death gave his land back to the Ottoman, while Croja itself was for a while held by Venice. The whole Greek and Albanian mainland was now divided between Turk and Venetian.

Lastly, we must not forget that Greek state which outlived all the rest. Far away, on the furthest bounds of the elder Empire, the Empire of Trebizond had the honour of being the last remaining fragment of the Eastern Roman power. The rule of the Grand Komnênos survived the fall of Constantinople; it survived the conquest of Athens and Peloponnêsos.

We have seen the origin and early history of this power. After its western dominions passed to the Nicene Emperors and Sinôpê to the Turk, the Trapezuntine Empire was confined to the eastern part of the south coast of the Euxine, stretching over part of Iberia, and keeping the Imperial possessions in the Tauric Chersonêsos. Sometimes independent, sometimes tributary to Turks or Mongols, the power of Trebizond lived on for nearly eighty years as a distinct and rival Roman Empire. ♦Agreement between Constantinople and Trebizond, 1281.♦ Then, when Constantinople was again in Greek hands, John Komnênos of Trebizond was content to acknowledge Michael Palaiologos as Emperor of the Romans, and to content himself with the style of ‘Emperor of all the East, of Iberia, and of Perateia.’ This last name means the province beyond the sea, in the Tauric Chersonêsos or Crim. We thus see that the style of ‘Emperor of the East,’ which it is sometimes convenient to give to him of Constantinople, strictly belongs to him of Trebizond. The new Empire of the East suffered many fluctuations of territory, chiefly at the hands of the neighbouring Turkomans. Chalybia, the land of iron, was lost; the coast-line was split asunder; the Empire bowed to Timour. ♦Turkish conquest of Trebizond; 1461.♦ But the capital and a large part of the coast bore up to the last, and did not pass under the Ottoman yoke till eight years after the fall of Constantinople. ♦of Perateia. 1472.♦ The outlying dependency of Perateia or Gothia was not conquered till eleven years later still. As the Tauric Chersonêsos had sheltered the last Greek commonwealth, it sheltered also the last Greek principality.

§ 6. The Slavonic States.

The Greek and Frank states of which we have just been speaking arose, for the most part they directly arose, out of the Latin partition of the Empire. ♦Effects of the partition of the Empire on the Slavonic states.♦ On the Slavonic powers the effect of that partition was only indirect. Servia and Bulgaria had begun their second career of independence before the partition. The partition touched them only so far as the splitting up of the Empire into a number of small states took away all fear of their being again brought under its obedience. In Croatia and Dalmatia all trace of the Imperial power passed away. The Magyar held the inland parts; the question was whether the Magyar or the Venetian should hold the coast.