Battle of the Acheloos

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Battle of the Acheloos
Dominions in Epirus after the Battle of Acheloos
Dominions in Epirus after the Battle of Acheloos
date Spring / summer 1359
place on the Acheloos river , Aetolia-Acarnania
output Victory of the Albanian princes
consequences Division of Epirus, establishment of the despotates of Arta and Angelokastron
Parties to the conflict

Albanian troops

Despotate Epirus

Commander

Peter Losha , Gjin Bua Shpata

Nikephorus II. Dukas

Troop strength
unknown unknown
losses

low

very difficult

The Battle of Acheloos took place in late spring or early summer 1359 on the Acheloos River in Aetolia-Acarnania . Albanian troops led by Peter Losha and Gjin Bua Shpata defeated the despot of Epirus , Nikephorus II. Dukas .

background

After the death of the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan (1346-1355), rival Serbian , Greek and Albanian feudal lords and warlords broke out in the area of ​​the former despotate of Epirus . In 1356 Nikephorus II. Dukas returned from Byzantine exile to Epirus with the tolerance of his brother-in-law Simeon Uroš Palaiologos and attempted a restoration in Ioannina . In contrast, the Albanian magnates, striving for independence, rose up .

Nikephoros provided the official pretext for their uprising with the repudiation of his previous wife Maria Kantakuzena , a daughter of the Byzantine emperor John VI. He divorced her in 1357 in order to be able to marry Dušan's sister-in-law Theodora , a sister of the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander . Maria was also to be extradited to the Serbs, but was able to secure the support of Albanian nobles and was brought to Morea to see her brother Manuel Kantakuzenos , who ruled there . Nikephorus was finally forced to call Maria back, but at the same time decided to take military action against the increasingly powerful Albanians.

The battle

Nikephorus II. Dukas gathered his troops in the late spring of 1359 and moved south from Ioannina to Aetolia, which was populated by Albanians . On the Acheloos River, there was a meeting with an Albanian force led by Peter Losha and Gjin Bua Shpata. Nikephorus fell in battle and his army was destroyed.

consequences

To avert a crew by Albanian troops, the Epirus cities submitted to the Emperor Simeon Uroš, of the remaining area of the Despotate between itself and the province governor Hlapen aufteilte; in Ioannina he installed his son-in-law Thomas Preljubović as governor. Peter Losha and Gjin Bua Shpata established their own principalities in Arta and Angelokastron (since 2011 a district of Agrinio ). Since Uroš could not expel the two Albanian feudal lords militarily, he tried to maintain control over Southern Epirus and Aetolia-Acarnania, at least indirectly, by recognizing Losha and Shpata as despots and thus formally subordinating them to his suzerainty . By 1367, almost all of Epirus (with the exception of Ioannina) came under the rule of the Albanians, who due to their clan structure, however, could not establish a centralized state.

swell

literature

  • John Van Antwerp Fine: The Late Medieval Balkans: A critical Survey from the late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor MI 1994, ISBN 0-472-08260-4 .
  • Donald M. Nicol : The Byzantine family of Kantakouzenos (Cantacuzenus) approx. 1100-1460. A genealogical and prosopographical study (= Dumbarton Oaks Studies. Vol. 11). Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington DC 1968.
  • Donald M. Nicol: The Despotate of Epiros 1267-1479. A contribution to the history of Greece in the middle ages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 0-521-26190-2 .
  • Brendan Osswald: The Ethnic Composition of Medieval Epirus. In: Steven G. Ellis, Lud'a Klusáková (Ed.): Imagining Frontiers, Contesting Identities (= Creating links and innovative overviews for a New History Research Agenda for the citizens of a growing Europe. Vol. 2). Edizioni Plus, Pisa 2007, ISBN 978-88-8492-466-7 , pp. 125-154.
  • George Christos Soulis: The Serbs and Byzantium during the reign of Tsar Stephen Dušan (1331-1355) and his successors. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington DC 1984, ISBN 0-88402-137-8 , OCLC 59251762 , pp. 113-114.

Remarks

  1. See Fine, Late Medieval Balkans , p. 348.
  2. See Nicol, Despotate , p. 136.
  3. See Nicol, Kantakuzenos , p. 132; Fine, Late Medieval Balkans , p. 348 f.
  4. See Nicol, Despotate , p. 142.
  5. See Osswald, Ethnic Composition , p. 151.