XI
There is recorded the capture of Thebes by the Turks in 1363,[557] and the surrender of Patras in Thessaly to the Osmanlis in 1381.[558] The first Ottoman army, however, to enter Greece went to the Morea in 1388, upon the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support his waning power as despot against the indigenous Greeks and the Frankish lords. The Osmanlis under Evrenos carried devastation everywhere they went, and did little to help Theodore.[559] They were soon recalled by Murad to co-operate in the Kossova campaign. When Theodore was hard pressed, in 1391, by Amadeo of Savoy and the Venetians, he turned again to the Osmanlis. Once more Evrenos came to the Morea, and helped to destroy the coast towns.[560]
After the famous council of Ottoman vassals at Serres, in 1395, Theodore, who was one of the princes summoned by Bayezid to Serres, was compelled to sign the cession of Argos and Monembasia to the Osmanlis. He was then thrown into prison, and Bayezid contemplated having him assassinated. But before the cities could be delivered to the Ottoman emissaries, Theodore escaped, and declared the cession null and void.[561] The first impulse of Bayezid was to send an army upon the heels of Theodore. This punitive expedition was postponed on account of the activity of Sigismund, and the necessity of defending the northern frontiers against the Hungarians.[562]
In the spring of 1397, while Bayezid was superintending the construction of a mosque at Karaferia in Macedonia, he received a visit from the Greek bishop of Salona, who laid before him a formal accusation of adultery, sorcery, and oppression against Helena Cantacuzenos, who had been ruling the Duchy of Salona with her paramour after the death of her husband, Louis Fadrique. The bishop invited Bayezid to enter Greece, depicting to him the wonderful hunting he would have in a country full of game.[563]
The promise of good sport with the falcon was not needed. It had long been Bayezid’s intention to extend his sovereignty into the Greek peninsula. He had against Theodore not only the old count from Serres, but also the complicity of the Morean despot in the Nicopolis crusade. At the head of his army, he set out upon the first Ottoman invasion of Greece. In Thessaly, Larissa, Pharsala, and other strongholds surrendered without striking a blow. For thirty years the Greeks of Thessaly had felt that the Ottoman conquest was inevitable. When Bayezid crossed the pass of Thermopylae without opposition, Helena hurried to meet him. She offered her principality, her daughter, and herself to the conqueror. Bayezid did not want the duchess. She was set at liberty immediately. But the beautiful grand-daughter of John Cantacuzenos was sent to his harem. The duchy of Salona, in which was the shrine of Apollo, with all of Phocis, Doris, and Locris, was added to Thessaly, and made an Ottoman province.[564]
Bayezid by this time had tired of the campaign. He felt an irresistible call to return to the pleasures of the court. His military interests were beginning more and more to be centred upon an extension of his power in Asia Minor—the policy that was soon to prove his undoing. But there remained Theodore and the Morea to be dealt with. He left Yakub and Evrenos, with an army of fifty thousand, in charge of the invasion of the Peloponnesus.
Yakub struck south to Coron and Modon. The environs of Modon were pillaged and burned. He defeated Theodore at Megalopolis, and forced him to become a tributary of the Osmanlis. In the meantime, Evrenos had held in check the papal mercenaries at Corinth, and had then taken Argos by assault, with a terrible loss of life, and a booty of fourteen thousand male captives. Because the Venetians could so easily reinforce and reprovision it from the sea, the siege of Nauplia was abandoned. The two commanders, when October came, gave their soldiers licence to pillage wherever they could as a reward for their services, and afterwards withdrew to Macedonia.[565]
The population of the historic city of Argos was deported into Anatolia, and Moslem colonies settled in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnesus. This was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes in Asia Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora, Philippopolis, and Sofia.[566]
Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by the Osmanlis. If it were true, one would certainly find this event in the Venetian archives, for Venice was particularly interested in Athens at this time.[567] Had the Osmanlis entered Athens, would they have restored it to the Acciajoli family? The fate of Argos in the same campaign makes this unlikely. Athens remained in Christian hands until after the fall of Constantinople.[568]
As for Salonika, one finds authority for its capture by the Osmanlis after the attempt of Manuel to retake Serres,[569] after a four years’ siege, in 1387,[570] and in 1391 by Bayezid himself.[571] But since there is neither record nor explanation of how the city returned to the Byzantines, even the temporary occupation of so rich and important a maritime city, and so strongly defended,[572] during the reigns of Murad and of Bayezid, is hardly possible. For in 1403 Salonika was sold by the Byzantines to the Venetians,[573] and was not captured by the Osmanlis until 1430.
Even if we cannot give to Bayezid the honour of the acquisition of Athens and Salonika, or of the conquest of the Morea, his campaign of 1397 was the beginning of the subjugation of Greece. Important districts had been added to the empire, and a permanent foothold gained in the Morea. The maritime character of the peninsula, however, made impracticable its complete conquest, until the Osmanlis were able to hold their own against the Italians and Greeks upon the sea.