The violent end of the first Gattilusio who reigned in Lesbos was long
remembered in the island. On August 6, 1384, a terrible earthquake
buried him beneath the ruins of the castle which he had built, as an
inscription proudly informs us[541], some eleven years before. After a
long and painful search, his mutilated body was found and laid to rest
in a coffin, which he had already prepared, in the church of St John
Baptist, which he had founded. By his side were laid the mangled bodies
of two of his sons, Andronico and Domenico, who, with his wife, had also
perished in the disaster. A third son, named Jacopo, escaped, however, by
a miracle. At the time of the shock, he was sleeping by the side of his
brothers in a tower of the castle; next day, however, he was discovered
by a good woman in a vineyard near the Windmills at the foot of the
fortress. The woman hastened to tell the good news to the chief men of
the town, who came and fetched the young survivor. The boy took the oath
on the Gospels as lord of Lesbos before the people and the nobles, and,
as he was still a minor, his uncle, Nicolò Gattilusio, lord of Ænos, who
hastened over to Lesbos on the news of the catastrophe, shared authority
with him. In order to perpetuate the name of the popular founder of the
dynasty, Jacopo on his accession took the name of Francesco II[542].
The joint government of uncle and nephew lasted for three years, when a
dispute arose between them, and Nicolò returned to the direction of his
Thracian barony. In November, 1388, Francesco II joined the league of the
Knights of Rhodes, Jacques I of Cyprus, the Genoese Chartered Company
of Chios, and the Commune of Pera against the designs of the Sultan
Murad I. His popularity with his Perote compatriots was such, that,
on the occasion of a visit to Constantinople in 1392, they gave him a
banquet; but four years later they complained that he had not performed
his treaty obligations, made in 1388, against the Turks. In the summer
of 1396, Pera was besieged by the forces of Bayezid I, and although
Francesco was actually in the port of Constantinople at the time, and
his galley was stationed in the Golden Horn near “the Huntsman’s Gate”
in the modern district of Aivan Serai the Commune thought it necessary
to draw up a formal protest against his inaction and execute it on the
stem of his ship. He replied by offering to aid his fellow-Genoese,
if they would make a sortie, and his galley subsequently assisted the
Venetians in relieving the capital[543]. After the disastrous defeat of
the Christians at the battle of Nikopolis later in the same year, both
he and Nicolò of Ænos rendered signal services to the Sultan’s noble
French prisoners, and Lesbos emerged into prominence throughout the
French-speaking world. Thither came the Duke of Burgundy’s chamberlain,
Guillaume de l’Aigle, on his preliminary mission to mollify the heart
of Bayezid, with whom Francesco had such influence that he was able to