Rise to power Leo Sgouros succeeded his father, Theodore Sgouros, in circa 1198 as governor of the area of
Nauplia and the
Argolid, one of the districts known as
oria, that collected taxes and provided ships for the
Byzantine navy. In circa 1201/1202, when a rebellion in
Thessaly and
Macedonia led by
Manuel Kamytzes and
Dobromir Chrysos cut southern Greece off from
Constantinople, several revolts broke out in the
Peloponnese:
Leo Chamaretos seized control of
Sparta,
Monemvasia was plagued by violent disputes among its leading families. Leo himself seized the opportunity to establish himself as an independent ruler, capturing the citadels of
Argos and
Corinth. His hostility to the church, who by that time were seen as the "defenders of the traditional order" in the words of Michael Angold, was profound: the bishop of Nauplion was imprisoned, while the bishop of Corinth was invited to dinner, blinded and thrown to his death from the
Acrocorinth. Indeed, Sgouros is generally presented as a violent man: in a letter,
Michael Choniates, the bishop of
Athens, recounts how Sgouros beat to death a young relative of his who had been delivered as a hostage, merely because he had dropped a glass while waiting at his table. The imperial government despatched the
megas doux,
Michael Stryphnos, to counter him. Stryphnos spent the winter of 1201–1202 in Athens, but he was apparently unable to check Sgouros's power. Choniates appealed to the Emperor's ministers
Theodore Eirenikos and
Constantine Tornikes, but in vain. In the end, he was forced to travel to Constantinople himself in another fruitless effort to secure aid. He returned to find Athens cut off from the provincial capital,
Thebes, by Sgouros's troops. Sgouros left the Acropolis under blockade and after torching Athens marched into
Boeotia. Thebes was stormed, and Sgouros moved on into
Thessaly. Near
Larissa, he encountered
Alexios III Angelos, who had fled the Crusader attack on Constantinople. In exchange for offering protection to the deposed ruler, he received the hand of Alexios's third daughter,
Eudokia Angelina (her third marriage), and the title of
despotes. Sgouros was well on his way to forming an independent state of his own in southern Greece, which had every chance of becoming, in the words of the medievalist John Van Antwerp Fine, "a lasting affair", until the arrival of the Crusaders. but he eventually retired to the Peloponnese, establishing a defence on the
Isthmus of Corinth. removing one of the last major centers of resistance against the establishment of the
Frankish Principality of Achaea. ==References==