The Ottoman historians place the first invasion of European territory by the Osmanlis in the year of the Hegira 758 (1356), and state that Soleiman crossed the Hellespont one moonlight night with three hundred warriors, and seized the castle of Tzympe, between Gallipoli and the Aegaean Sea end of the strait.[221] It is represented as a romantic adventure, prompted by a dream in which Soleiman saw the moonbeams make a tempting path for him from Asia into Europe.[222] The earlier western historians give a variety of dates. Some ascribe the first crossing to Murad.[223] Several claim that the Osmanlis were transported by two small Genoese merchant ships, and that there were sixty thousand of them! The Genoese received a ducat per head. All the calamities of the ‘Turks’ were brought upon Europe by the avarice of the Genoese.[224]
We can reject these stories without hesitation, just as we can reject the date which the Ottoman historians give.[225] The Osmanlis had been fighting in Europe since 1345. They had come over in large numbers on different occasions. There is nothing mysterious or romantic about their first foothold in Europe. In 1352 Cantacuzenos had promised to Orkhan a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese. Tzympe may have been given to Soleiman, or it was taken by him when the promise of Cantacuzenos was not fulfilled. He did not have to cross secretly from Asia. The Ottoman soldiers were already at home in Europe, and Soleiman had been their leader in several expeditions.
Shortly after the occupation of Tzympe, one of those earthquakes which occur so often in the Thracian Chersonese destroyed a portion of the walls of Gallipoli. This was Soleiman’s opportunity. He occupied the city, repaired the breaches, and called over from Bithynia the first colony of Osmanlis. Other colonies followed rapidly, as the soldiers of Soleiman took Malgara, Bulaïr (the key of the peninsula),[226] and the European littoral of the Sea of Marmora as far as Rodosto. The advance-guard of the Osmanlis appeared within a few miles of Constantinople; and ‘conducted themselves as masters’.[227] This colonization was so quickly and easily effected that one is led to believe that these colonists were for the most part renegade Greeks returning to their former homes.
Cantacuzenos now reaped the full harvest of his policy. The patriarch Callixtus refused to consecrate Matthew. He reproached Cantacuzenos for having delivered Christians into the hands of the infidels, and accused him of having given to Orkhan the money sent by a Russian prince for the restoration of St. Sophia.[228] Compelled to flee for his life to the Genoese in Galata, the patriarch decided to declare for Palaeologos. When Cantacuzenos chose a new patriarch, Philotheus, who consented as price of office to consecrate Matthew, Callixtus excommunicated him. Philotheus returned the compliment. Then Callixtus sailed for Tenedos to join John Palaeologos.[229]
Cantacuzenos, feeling the precariousness of his position at Constantinople just at the moment when he thought he had triumphed over every obstacle to his ambition, bitterly reproached Orkhan for not having kept faith with him. He offered to buy back Tzympe for ten thousand ducats, and asked Orkhan to order the Osmanlis to leave Gallipoli. Orkhan accepted the ransom for Tzympe, knowing well that he could reoccupy this fortress when he wanted to.[230] As for Gallipoli, he declared that he could not give back what God had given him. Was it not the will of God rather than force of arms that had opened the gates of Gallipoli to him? Cantacuzenos sought an interview with his son-in-law, for he thought that gold might induce the Osmanlis to withdraw. A meeting was arranged in the Gulf of Nicomedia. When the emperor arrived at the rendezvous, a messenger from Orkhan reported that his master was ill and could not come.[231] No way was left open for further negotiations. The rupture was complete.
After his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzenos sent envoys to the Serbians and to the Bulgarians to urge a defensive alliance of the Balkan Christians. They answered, ‘Defend yourself as best you can.’ A second embassy met with the response from Czar Alexander: ‘Three years ago I remonstrated with you for your unholy alliances with the Turks. Now that the storm has broken, let the Byzantines weather it. If the Turks come against us, we shall know how to defend ourselves.’[232]
The indignation of the Greeks against the man who had sacrificed them to his inordinate ambition reached the breaking-point in November 1354. The inhabitants of Constantinople declared for John Palaeologos. Cantacuzenos was forced to barricade himself in his palace. Protected by Catalans and other mercenaries, he tried to temporize. He offered to abdicate if Matthew were allowed to retain the title of emperor with the governorship of Adrianople and the Rhodope district. Encouraged by a lull in the storm of popular feeling, he had the audacity to make an ‘appeal to patriotism’, as he himself put it. He urged the people to support him in an expedition to retake the provinces conquered by the Serbians and the Osmanlis. This exhibition of effrontery was greeted with cries of scorn. Cantacuzenos was publicly accused of wishing to deliver Constantinople to Orkhan. A second revolution forced his abdication. He became a monk. Irene took the veil.[233]
John Palaeologos returned from exile, and restored Callixtus to the patriarchal throne. It took several years of fighting and negotiating to compel Matthew’s abdication. Not until 1358 did John V become undisputed ruler of the remnant of the empire in Macedonia and Thrace.[234] But the mischief was done. The Osmanlis had put their foot as settlers on European soil.
Cantacuzenos lived for thirty years in the monastery of Mistra, near old Sparta. It was long enough for him to see the irreparable injury that his ambition had caused to his country, and to realize how he had destroyed the people to rule over whom he had sacrificed every higher and nobler instinct. Cantacuzenos has had a fair trial before the bar of posterity. For many long years, far removed from the turmoil of the world, were spent in the building up of his brief of justification. He left a history of his life and times. So he pleads for himself. But even if we did not have the testimony of Gregoras, and of the archives of the Italian cities and of the Vatican, to supplement the story of Cantacuzenos, he would stand condemned by his own record of facts.
Cantacuzenos had far more natural ability than Andronicus II and Andronicus III. During the long and arduous struggle to satisfy his personal ambition, he showed himself a keen, courageous, resourceful leader. At the beginning of his career he was in a position of commanding influence. His country was facing a crisis which would have called forth the best and noblest in one who loved his race, his religion, and his fatherland. But John Cantacuzenos loved only himself. The legacy of the widow and helpless child of the friend who had trusted and honoured him gave to Cantacuzenos the opportunity for developing true greatness in the fulfilment of that highest of missions—a sacred trust. But Cantacuzenos saw only the opportunity for taking advantage of a dead man’s faith.