His successor was his son Orchan. Nicaea is only distant four or five hours from Brousa, and had hitherto been able to resist all attacks by the Turks. Its population was fairly secure within its extensive and strong walls; the beautiful lake of Ascanius adjoins one side of it, and furnished a constant supply of water and of fish. Once, indeed, an emperor had sent up a fleet to assist a great army of Western Crusaders, and to receive from their hands the city which they were about to capture from the Seljuks.[85] Orchan laid siege to it, and its citizens defended themselves with courage until relief came. Cantacuzenus and his sovereign hastily gathered together an army, and acting upon the advice of the imperial Grand Huntsman Godfrey, the bearer of the illustrious name which had won its first renown in the Crusade before this very place, successfully drove back the Turks. Unfortunately, on the evening of the same day, a panic seized the imperial troops, and the enemy, taking advantage of it, struck hard, captured the baggage, changed the panic into a rout, and captured the great and important city in the very hour of its triumph.
Master of the two cities, Brousa, a natural stronghold which had been strengthened by successive emperors, and Nicaea, whose ancient reputation and importance as the City of the Creed had been increased by its having served during two generations as the rallying place of the exiles from Constantinople during the Latin occupation, Orchan now assumed the title of sultan, made Brousa his capital, and struck the first Ottoman coins to replace those of the Seljukian sultans.
During his reign of thirty-two years he enlarged the territory occupied by the Ottomans, and greatly improved their national organisation. While constantly engaged in war, and though not less bent on conquest than his father, he neglected no opportunity of inducing the Christian subjects of the empire to come under his rule. He took care that the taxes levied were less than those paid in the empire. Although by this time Turkish armies were probably almost exclusively Moslem, Orchan formed one of his best regiments out of Christians who had voluntarily entered his service.
Orchan was far from obtaining uniform successes against the empire. He was often and bravely opposed by the imperial troops. In 1329, a large army, which had been transported into Thrace in a fleet of seventy ships, was destroyed near Trajanopolis, and most of the Turks were either killed or reduced to slavery. In 1330, a new invasion into Thrace of Turkish cavalry was defeated, and fifteen thousand Turks were slain. Orchan’s attempt in the following year to capture Ismidt failed, and he was obliged to sue for peace. In spite of these disasters, he was always able within a few months to assemble new armies, and to renew the struggle. Already he had succeeded in exacting tribute from nearly the whole of Bithynia. His troops, within two years, invaded Macedonia, Euboea, and Athens, and while Cantacuzenus was with difficulty holding his own against them, another army met Andronicus the Third in Thrace, and took possession of Rodosto—an army, however, which the emperor shortly afterwards destroyed.
New recruits were continually making their way across the Dardanelles or the Marmora into Thrace, until, in 1336, the Turkish army in that province met with disaster in an unexpected manner. A band of Tartars from the north made a descent upon them when they heard that they had been successful in a raid upon the Christian population and were carrying off an enormous mass of booty.[86] Three months after the departure of the Tartars a new descent into Thrace was attempted by the Turks. Once again the Greeks were successful, and, in the same year, an army which ravaged the environs of Constantinople was destroyed and the Turkish fleet which brought them captured.
The efforts of Orchan were more successful in Asia Minor. A division of his army had laid siege again to Ismidt, and the inhabitants, in order to avoid imminent Nicomedia taken (1337).starvation, surrendered. The acquisition, in 1337, of this city, the most important seaport on the Asiatic side of the Marmora, and the head, then as now, of all the roads leading from the capital to every part of Asia Minor, Persia, and Syria, was of the utmost importance.
During the stormy joint reigns of John and Cantacuzenus (1342 to 1355), the empire was attacked both by Tartars on the north, and by the Turks in Asia Minor. The Bulgarian and Serbian kingdoms had both gained strength during the Latin occupation at the expense of the empire, and were ready to avail themselves of the aid alike of Turks and Tartars in their endeavours to capture territory from the empire. When, in 1342, Cantacuzenus was attacked by the Bulgarians, a division of the Turks, whose emir had taken the title of sultan of Lydia, was induced to come to his aid. Twenty-nine thousand arrived at the mouth of the Maritza, the ancient Hebrus, and with their aid a temporary relief was afforded; but for some reason, possibly a severe winter, they withdrew to Asia Minor. The Bulgarians on this occasion were not aided by the Tartars, probably because the latter were occupied in the Crimea, and throughout what is now southern Russia, in fighting the Genoese, who had blockaded the northern coast of the Black Sea. Apocaukus, the rival of Cantacuzenus, succeeded in the following year in hiring a Turkish fleet and army. Both sides, indeed, in the civil war then going on, as well as the Bulgarians and Serbians, never hesitated to increase their armies by employing Turks or Tartars as auxiliaries.
When, in 1344, Cantacuzenus promised his daughter Theodora in marriage to Orchan, he received at once the aid of a body of five thousand Ottoman Turks, and this number was increased when the marriage took place, two years later. But the young emperor John met him with another body of Turkish auxiliaries. Orchan would have made short work of John; for in an interview which took place with much ceremony and cordiality at Scutari to congratulate his father-in-law on his second coronation, he appears to have decided upon following the Turkish method of getting rid of a rival to the throne of his father-in-law. Cantacuzenus, however, would not sanction assassination. Orchan apparently could not understand any such scruples, and shortly afterwards sent a number of Turks to the capital on a pretended political mission, but really with the object of aiding Cantacuzenus by murdering John. The elder emperor, as soon as he learned the design, at once put his foot down, and declared that he would not permit John to go outside the palace except accompanied by him.[87]
In the attacks by Stephen, the kral of Serbia, who had taken the title of emperor of the Serbians and the Greeks, or emperor of Serbia and Romania—for both forms are used—Orchan once more sent troops to aid his father-in-law. In the struggles which took place at this time between the Genoese and the Venetians, Orchan aided the first. When the emperor wished to employ both, he was obliged to concede to the Turks a stronghold on the Thracian Chersonese. They, however, always proved to be dangerous allies, and the inhabitants of the whole northern coast of the Marmora were so harassed by them that great numbers deserted their farms and fled to the capital or elsewhere.
It was in 1355 that Cantacuzenus left the government in the hands of John. His policy and his influence had been directed towards coming to an agreement with the leading group of Turks—that, namely, ruled over by his son-in-law. Almost the last act before his withdrawal was to persuade Orchan and his son, Suliman, to give up the cities in Thrace which the Turks had occupied, on his behalf, during the struggle with John.[88] Orchan, on his part, was to all appearances disposed, on the retirement of Cantacuzenus, to be on friendly terms with John, and, in consequence, each party assumed the attitude of an ally. It may be suggested that if a policy of friendliness had been continued, the Turks might have been content with their territory in Asia Minor. But such a solution was not possible. The Turkish nomad warriors, to whom the cultivation of the soil was distasteful, required new lands to roam over, and wanted new territories to plunder. The arable lands, which had supported large populations, were too small for nomad shepherds, and the latter were always being pressed forward to the north and west by a constant stream of immigrants behind them. Indeed, in the year when Cantacuzenus abdicated, Suliman, the son of Orchan, had to lead his armies and defend his territories against a newly arrived horde of Tartars in the north-east of Asia Minor. His successful defence was, at the same time, one more blow against the empire, for in this campaign he succeeded in Angora taken (1354).capturing the important stronghold of Angora, which commanded the great highroad to Persia.