Leo Sgouros

Leon Sgouros († 1208 Akrokorinth ) was an autonomous Byzantine rulers in Greece at the beginning of the 13th century. He inherited before the year 1200 his father Theodore Sgouros in the office of archon of Nauplia.

In 1201, Leon Sgouros revolted against the rule of Emperor Alexios III. and made ​​himself the independent ruler. He proceeded to a principality of his own in Greece to build; the local Greek Orthodox clergy as a representative of the central government introduced here its main competitors dar. The unfettered rule in Nauplia he assured by the imprisonment of the bishop of the city. Then he seized the strategically important city of Argos and Corinth, by blinding the archbishop of the city during a banquet and then let fall from the Akrokorinth. Then Sgouros intended the conquest of Athens, whose lower town he could take even under great desolations. The bishop of the city, Michael Choniates, but was able to successfully defend on the Acropolis. 1202 Sgouros unbolted the city from the sea and from interrupted so that their contact with Konstantin Opel. During the subsequent siege of Athens, he undertook a successful campaign of conquest to Thebes. By the year 1203 Leon Sgouros had conquered a principality, which included Attica, Boeotia and the Isthmus of Corinth.

The political situation in the Byzantine Empire changed fundamentally in the summer of 1203, when the army of the Fourth Crusade landed outside the walls of Constantinople. In April 1204 conquered the " Latins " the capital of the empire and established a Latin Empire. For Leon Sgouros, the situation became increasingly threatening because the Latins were militarily much stronger than the deposed Byzantine emperor and institutions made ​​to move to Greece. Well in late 1204, he met in Larissa with the fleeing Emperor Alexios III. , Whose daughter he married Eudocia. He took the title at despotes. Following the historical model of the Spartan King Leonidas I, Sgouros intended the approaching Latins under the leadership of Boniface of Montferrat to the bottleneck of Thermopylae unstoppable. Since, however, denied him the local Greek population the following, who instead turned to because of his previous tyranny of the Latins. Examples of Sgouros tyrannical management style was, among other things, the treatment of the put by the Bishop of Athens hostages, in which it was a young boy. Sgouros had castrate him to let him then serve as cupbearer for themselves. When the boy broke a wine glass, hit him Sgouros into a rage with a rod of iron the skull one.

With a few followers to Sgouros moved back to the strong castle Akrokorinth and entrenched here against the Latins. They could therefore take Boeotia and Attica without a fight in the summer of 1205. These provinces were given by Boniface of Montferrat at the henchman Otto de la Roche as a fief. While Montferrat even turned against Nauplia, whose lieutenants Jacques d' Avesnes took on the siege of Akrokorinth. The next few years Sgouros defended successfully on this castle after but waned over the years, the prospect of a relief and the Byzantine Despot of Epirus, Michael I Komnenos Doukas Angelos, an alliance turned down, he lost the hope of salvation. In the autumn of 1208 rushed Sgouros riding a horse down the rocks of Akrokorinth. Akrokorinth did not surrender until 1209 and Nauplia 1210/11 the Latin conquerors.