William Miller described in 1908 as either excessively "patriotic" or "impolitic", Leonardo joined the Albanian lord Skanderbeg in throwing off Ottoman suzerainty in 1460. The results were catastrophic, as Leonardo lost two out of his three fortresses on the mainland, only retaining Vonitza, and, according to one account, resulting in his imprisonment in Corinth, from which he supposedly undertook a daring escape with the aid of a corsair. Despite having lost control of virtually the entire mainland, Leonardo still had the support of the Latin populace of his former lands, and actively sought to regain them. In 1463, he heard that Venice was preparing an expedition to conquer the Morea, which had been a Byzantine rump state until its fall to the Ottomans in 1460. Upon learning this, Leonardo appealed to Venice to aid him in retaking his mainland possessions, though that scheme eventually amounted to nothing. By the time of the First Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–1479), Leonardo was one of the last independent Latin rulers in Greece. The drawn-out process of Ottoman conquest in Greece and the rest of the Balkans, as well as the ongoing fighting, had made Leonardo's island realm the refuge of thousands of Christian refugees, who were allowed to live in their own somewhat autonomous communities. Leonardo also participated in the ongoing war to an extent, acting as an intermediary between Venice and the Ottomans and sending occasional military aid to the Venetian forces. The enthusiastic reception of refugees and lack of attention from the Ottomans ensured that even while the mainland was devastated by war, Leonardo's islands flourished in peace. When the Byzantine historian George Sphrantzes visited the islands during this time he found them enjoying the period of peace, with Leonardo having become lord in his own right after having put his four regents to death. The 16th-century Spanish historian Jerónimo Zurita y Castro, who visited Leonardo's former islands some decades after the fall of the despotate, noted that the prosperity of the islands entitled Leonardo to rightfully be called a king, rather than a mere despot or count palatine. Zurita's account of Leonardo as an independent and prosperous ruler, which is corroborated in parts by some other contemporary records, led to many scholars characterizing Leonardo's entire reign as one of prosperity and peace, but this is far from a nuanced picture, given that other records testify to the period being a catastrophe that