ended in Ottoman conquest. Though much of the surviving evidence does point to Leonardo being a wise and energetic ruler, his realm was plagued by exterior threats in the form of the Ottomans and Venice, as well as internal problems, and proved unable to avoid the Ottoman onslaught, a fate no Balkan ruler in the 15th century could escape. During Leonardo's reign, the administration of his islands had been efficiently organized. He had several treasurers, as well as financial officers termed 'procurators'. Civil and judicial administration was headed by vice-regents, or captains, with one appointed for each island. Though Leonardo offered considerably support for the local Catholic church, established since the islands came under the rule of the Italian Orsini family more than a century earlier, he was also careful not to neglect the Orthodox church, as he inferred that if he mistreated the local Greeks, they could conspire with the Ottomans to depose him. In 1452, Leonardo revived the Orthodox Bishopric of Cephalonia, an ancient see that had been rendered vacant after the Orsini takeover, appointing a new Orthodox bishop with jurisdiction over the islands of Zakynthos and Ithaca. Leonardo also began employing a larger number of Greeks in his administration and began issuing charters in Greek. Though Leonardo thus gave several concessions to the Greeks, he was, despite his hopes, nevertheless seen as a tyrant by many of his Orthodox subjects. Leonardo suffered from some problems owing to internal dissent, notably an incident in 1468 when some people from Corfu plundered and raped around a town on Zakynthos, as well as problems caused by natural forces, such as a series of strong earthquakes in 1469, which caused collapsed houses and deaths on all of the islands under his control. Fall of the despotate Leonardo's first wife, whom he had married on 1 May 1463, was Milica Branković, a granddaughter of Thomas Palaiologos, the brother of the final Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. After her death in 1464, Leonardo sought to remarry in order to seal a political alliance, in hopes of saving what remained of his realm. He thus married Francesca Marzano in 1477, a niece of Ferdinand I of Naples. The effect of Leonardo's marriage was the opposite of what he had wanted. Given that the Republic of Venice had no desire to see Neapolitan influence return to Leonardo's islands, the marriage alienated them further. Venetian revenge