The Empire soon fell into a civil war between John V Palaiologos and John VI Kantakouzenos, and Epirus was conquered by the Serbian tsar Stefan Dušan in 1348, who appointed his brother, despot Simeon Nemanjić-Palailogos as governor of the province. Nikephoros II took advantage of the Byzantine civil war and the death of Dušan (1355) to escape and to reestablish himself in Epirus in 1356, to which he also added Thessaly. Nikephoros was killed in battle putting down an Albanian revolt in 1359, and the territory of the former despotate became a component part of the personal Empire of Dušan's brother Simeon Nemanjić-Palailogos. Simeon was also governing Thessaly at the time, and, as the "Chronicle of Ioannina" shows, he left much of the territory under the control of Albanian clans establishing short-lived entities: the clan of Peter Liosha held Arta, and the clan of Muriq Shpata held Aetoloacarnania, with Angelokastron as its capital.