11 Facts About Leo Sgouros

Leo Sgouros, Latinized as Leo Sgurus, was a Greek independent lord in the northeastern Peloponnese in the early 13th century.

Leo Sgouros's conquests were short-lived, as the Crusaders forced him back into the Peloponnese.

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.

Leo Sgouros himself seized the opportunity to establish himself as an independent ruler, capturing the citadels of Argos and Corinth.

Indeed, Leo Sgouros is generally presented as a violent man: in a letter, Michael Choniates, the bishop of Athens, recounts how Leo 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.

Leo Sgouros returned to find Athens cut off from the provincial capital, Thebes, by Sgouros's troops.

In 1203, as Constantinople was threatened by the Fourth Crusade and despite Michael Choniates's entreaties, Leo Sgouros moved against Athens, claiming that the city's inhabitants harboured a fugitive from justice.

Leo Sgouros's men managed to take the city but the inhabitants, led by Choniates, continued to resist from the Acropolis despite a heavy bombardment with siege engines.

Leo 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.

Leo Sgouros himself withdrew and was blockaded in his stronghold, the well-fortified citadel of the Acrocorinth, in a siege that was to last five years.

Leo Sgouros's resistance was energetic, with sorties that harassed the besiegers.