IV
After the fall of Philippopolis, the Greek commandant had succeeded in escaping, and took refuge with Kral Urosh V of Serbia.[269] He pointed out to Urosh most eloquently the paucity of numbers of the Osmanlis, their insecure position, and the danger that would overwhelm the Serbians if they waited until the Osmanlis were firmly grounded in Thrace. Urged by Pope Urban V, the princes of Wallachia and Bosnia, together with King Louis of Hungary, joined the Serbians in upper Macedonia. Under the guidance of the Greek refugee, they started on a swift march to win back Adrianople. It was an expedition undertaken as a crusade. The allies mustered at least twenty thousand.
Lalashahin had hardly more than twelve thousand men under his command, and a portion of these were scattered in the captured cities. Murad, who had started to return to Thrace as soon as he had heard the news, was detained by the necessity of capturing a fortress on the Sea of Marmora, near Cyzicus, which was in the hands of a turbulent band of second-generation Catalans, whom he feared to leave behind him.[270] They were suspected of plotting with his southern rivals to organize a movement against his Anatolian possessions.
If the Greeks had had the power or the will to co-operate with the crusaders, the Ottoman domination in Thrace would have ended even more suddenly than it had begun. But they made no move. In fact, one of the Byzantine historians charges John Palaeologos with aiding the Osmanlis![271] Lalashahin was able to draw from the garrisons of the recently occupied cities, and to send forward to meet the crusaders some ten thousand men under Hadji Ilbeki. It was the intention of Lalashahin to have this army act wholly on the defensive. If only Hadji Ilbeki could prevent their passing the Maritza, they would be turned southward towards Enos. By that time he felt sure that he could rely upon one of three things happening: dissensions would arise among the crusaders, the Greeks would be alarmed by the Serbian approach to Enos and the sea and attack the crusaders, or Murad would have time to bring his army across the Dardanelles. The one purpose of Lalashahin was to prevent the invasion of Thrace and the investment of Adrianople.
But Hadji Ilbeki did better than keep the crusaders from crossing the river. They had already crossed, and had celebrated the unopposed passage of the Maritza by an evening of feasting. Hadji Ilbeki surprised them as they were sleeping in a drunken stupor.[272] Without hesitation he fell upon them like a Gideon. Seized with panic, the crusaders were driven back into the river. Those who escaped massacre and drowning fled precipitately. There was no attempt to rally. In the little town of Mariazell, on the northern frontier of Styria near the foot of the Semmering Alps, there stands a votive church built by Louis out of gratitude to the Virgin for having saved him from death in this battle.[273]
Lalashahin, instead of rewarding the daring of his lieutenant, which had saved the Osmanlis from an irreparable disaster, was consumed with jealous fury. His only thought when he received the news was that Hadji Ilbeki had robbed him of the glory of so great a victory. He had his too successful subordinate poisoned.[274]
The sudden and complete collapse of the first crusade organized against the Osmanlis did not give to Murad any false sense of security. He saw in the successful meeting of this danger, which had threatened to destroy him, not the opportunity for exultation and for the relaxation of effort, but the spur for straining still further every nerve to learn and profit by the lesson. The battle of the Maritza was a warning to Murad. The danger would be renewed, and renewed soon. It was now for him to make the choice between remaining an Asiatic emir and becoming a European sovereign, between endeavouring to impose first his authority on the other emirs of Asia Minor and the conquest of the Balkan peninsula. Were the Osmanlis to be on the offensive in Europe or in Asia?
Murad decided to build his empire in the Balkan peninsula. It was not that he coveted less the mountains and valleys of Asia Minor. It was not that his ambitions failed to extend to the Taurus. But he had the vision to realize that the Ottoman race could not subjugate the Turkish elements in Asia Minor by a gradual assimilation of those elements alone. The race had to grow, as it began, by the incorporation of the various Christian elements, which alone possessed the finesse, the knowledge of government, the organizing capacity necessary to cope with the problems of facing Europe and inheriting the Byzantine Empire. From Europe, Asia Minor and more could be conquered: from Asia, no portion of Europe could be conquered.
The Osmanlis do not possess written records of the reign of Murad. There is no source to which we can go to read what Murad thought or what others of his day thought or said that he thought. But we know his mind from his actions. There is no cause for doubt on this point. After the first campaign in Thrace, Murad had returned to Brusa, and dated his letters from there. He began to plan an aggressive campaign against his neighbours. But after the battle of the Maritza, he abandoned Brusa for Demotika, and three years later, in 1366, Adrianople became the first real capital of the Ottoman Empire.
In spite of all that has been written about the unique position of Brusa in Ottoman history, it is no more to the Osmanlis than is Saint-Denis to the French or Winchester to the English. The Osmanlis have never really been at home in Constantinople. Historically and architecturally speaking, they have been under the shadow of a greater past. Adrianople, although always a city of importance since the days of Hadrian, reached its greatest splendour and glory under the Ottoman sultans. Here were planned, and from here started, the expeditions westward and eastward, which increased in strength, in efficiency, and in inspiring terror as the circle gradually widened, until the star and crescent appeared under the walls of Vienna and Cairo, on the shores of Italy and in the heart of Persia. No student of Ottoman annals can fail to support the contention of the Sublime Porte after the last Balkan war, that Adrianople is to the Osmanlis their sacred city. From Lalashahin to Shukri pasha, the proudest and most precious memories of the Osmanlis are in Adrianople, whose great mosque, still awe-inspiring and altogether admirable in its decay, is typical both of what has been and what is.
The decision of Murad was accepted by his successors. Even after the capture of Constantinople, many an Ottoman sultan felt more at home in Adrianople than in the imperial city. For more than a century the Osmanlis directed their energies almost exclusively to European conquests. Whatever they accomplished in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. From first to last, the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over the Moslems of Asia was by means of a soldiery gathered and war-hardened in Europe, themselves Christian or of Christian ancestry, in whose veins ran the blood of Greek and Roman, of Goth and Hun, of Albanian and Slav.