On 26 July 1402, in the Battle of Ankara, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I was defeated and captured by the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur. This momentous event overturned the balance of power in the region, as the Ottoman domains in Anatolia were divided by Timur, who restored many of the independent Turkish beyliks previously absorbed by Bayezid. Timur did not interfere with the Balkans, where the Ottoman conquest was also far advanced: before Ankara, Constantinople, almost the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire, was cut off and on the verge of falling to Bayezid.[1] As in Anatolia, the sudden collapse of Ottoman power left a power vacuum, in which the various Christian powers of the region—the Byzantines, the Hungarians, the Republic of Venice, and a number of minor rulers—each tried to secure their interests as best possible, while being too weak to actually challenge Ottoman power.[2]