Fall of Mystras

In May 1460, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II captured Mystras, the capital of the Despotate of the Morea, the last major Byzantine territory on the Greek mainland. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the despotate was ruled jointly by two brothers of the last emperor, Demetrios and Thomas Palaiologos. Instead of uniting against the Ottoman threat, the brothers quarreled and fought each other, and their lands were also shaken by revolts of local nobles and Albanian settlers. Both brothers paid tribute to the sultan, but they failed to keep up payments and invited Western intervention. Mehmed led an army into the Peloponnese in 1460. Demetrios, who had sided with the Ottomans, surrendered Mystras without a fight and was later given lands elsewhere in the empire. Thomas fled to Italy, bringing with him the relic of the head of Saint Andrew. Several castles resisted for a time, and Monemvasia placed itself under papal and then Venetian protection. The fall of Mystras ended Byzantine rule in Greece, and the town slowly declined, leaving its remarkable churches to survive as ruins.