Following his victory at the Battle of Pelagonia in 1259, the Nicaean emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos, was left free to pursue the reconquest of Constantinople and the revival of the Byzantine Empire: the rump Latin Empire was now cut off from any aid, from either the Latin states of Greece or from the Nicaeans' Greek rival, the Despotate of Epirus.[1] Already in 1260, Michael Palaiologos attacked Constantinople, as one of the Latin knights taken prisoner in Pelagonia, and whose house was in the city walls, had promised to open a gate for the emperor's troops.