of Antioch captured Corfu again in 1147, and it took a ten-month siege for Manuel I Komnenos to recover the island in 1149. In the third invasion in 1185, the island was again captured by William II of Sicily, but was soon regained by Isaac II Angelos. During the break-up of the Byzantine Empire the island was occupied by Genoese privateers (1197–1207), who in turn were expelled by the Venetians. In 1214 it passed to the Greek despots of Epirus, who gave it to Manfred of Sicily as a dowry in 1259. At his death in 1267 it passed with his other possessions to the house of Anjou. Under the latter, the island suffered considerably from the inroads of various adventurers. The island was one of the first places in Europe in which Romani people ("Gypsies") settled. In about 1360, a fiefdom, called the Feudum Acinganorum was established, with mainly Romani serfs. From 1386, Corfu was controlled by the Republic of Venice, which in 1401 acquired formal sovereignty and retained it until the French Occupation of 1797. Corfu became central for the propagation of the activities of the Filiki Etaireia among the Greek Diaspora and philhellenic societies across Europe, through nobles like Ioannis Kapodistrias and Dionysios Romas. Venetian rule From medieval times and into the 17th century, the island was recognised as a bulwark of the European States against the Ottoman Empire and became one of the most fortified places in Europe. The fortifications of the island were used by the Venetians to defend against Ottoman intrusion into the Adriatic. Corfu repulsed several Ottoman sieges, before passing under British rule following the Napoleonic Wars. Kerkyra, the "Door of Venice" during the centuries when the whole Adriatic was the Gulf of Venice, remained in Venetian hands from 1401 until 1797, though several times assailed by Ottoman naval and land forces and subjected to four notable sieges in 1537, 1571, 1573 and 1716, in which the strength of the city defences asserted itself time after time. The effectiveness of the powerful Venetian fortifications as well as the strength of some old Byzantine castles in Angelokastro, Kassiopi Castle, Gardiki and elsewhere, were additional factors that enabled Corfu to remain free. Will Durant claimed that Corfu owed to the Republic of Venice the fact that it was one of the few parts of Greece never conquered by the Ottomans. A series of attempts by