From the point of view of its economic status the Empire was in no condition to withstand an invasion. As territory was lost the proceeds of direct taxation fell off; increases in the customs duties were opposed and blocked by the Genoese and Venetians; the government lived from hand to mouth. In 1306 when the Catalan mercenaries had to be paid, Andronicus II put an end to the wheat monopoly exercised by the Italians. Another characteristic expedient of this weak government was the debasement of the coinage. But all the ordinary schemes for raising money must have failed by the middle of the century, for we find Anna of Saxony using the treasures of churches to pay for the war against Cantacuzene. Indeed, her court had reached a condition of extreme penury in 1347, when, at a coronation it was found that the imperial jewels had disappeared. The splendid buildings of the city were fast going to pieces. In Santa Sophia there were large cracks, which necessitated the erection of two of the existing great supporting buttresses that have enabled it to survive to our time the frequent earthquakes that disturb the city. In the absence of a centralized government the local administration lost all resemblance to the admirably constructed system of the earlier period of Byzantine rule when, as contrasted with Western Europe, it still preserved the efficiency and smoothness of Roman governmental traditions. The local authorities lived on the country, uncontrolled from Constantinople, except irregularly and ineffectively.
In reality, under the name of empire, all varieties of local organizations existed side by side; some places were ruled by petty tyrants, while others were municipal republics. In the important port of Thessalonika, Italian precedents were closely followed. Here there were four classes of citizens, the notables, the clergy, the bourgeois, and in the lowest class the “populari.” Each class enjoyed complete autonomy. They were organized in trade corporations, had their own system of justice, and finally got supreme control of the town, turning it into a democracy under the presidency of their metropolitan. When Cantacuzene undertook to bring the rebels to reason, the archbishop, in pleading the cause of the city-state, declared that his republic was based on equality and justice, and said that its laws were better than those of the Republic of Plato.
There was another factor in this state of anarchy, to wit, the religious dissensions, due to the willingness of some of the clergy to accept union with the Papacy and to introduce Latin customs, an attitude dating from the time of the Latin Empire. Apart from these questions of ecclesiastical policy, there was much discussion of theological subtilties concerning the existence of a supernatural illumination in the soul, a controversy which divided the Church and the imperial court. This trouble was settled by a synod, which decreed that those espousing the new doctrine should be imprisoned.
In a land so situated and so far fallen from its earlier estate, the rapid conquests of the Osmanlis appear as due not so much to the valor and intelligence of the adherents of Islam as to the inability of the Christians to act or work together. The one security of the Empire was the comparative weakness of the Turkish sea power. The Ottoman ships were good enough for piratical expeditions, but there was no Turkish fleet at all able to cope with the navies of Genoa or Venice.
At the very beginning of Murad’s accession, a consistent plan of attack was inaugurated, designed to cut off Constantinople from its “hinterland”; the objective being the trade road between the capital and Adrianople. Several of the important points on this line were taken, Murad making his residence temporarily near Demotika. According to Turkish custom, each spring brought a new expedition and a further enlargement of the existing boundaries. The siege of Adrianople itself soon began. (1360.) The Greek chronicles speak of its fall being due to a betrayal of a secret path used by peasants inside the walls to get to their fields. But the Turkish annals tell of an engagement between the garrison and the Osmanli soldiers. In the city Murad took up his residence, being attracted to it by its importance as a trading place frequented by Venetians, Genoese, Florentines, and Catalans, as well as by Turks and Greeks.
Following soon the course of the river Maritza, on which Adrianople stands, the Turkish invaders moved farther into the land until they came to Philippopolis, which had been taken by the Bulgars not long before. But the Slavs showed no greater capacity than the Greeks for united action, and the town was taken from them without difficulty. Other places were added, including Berrhœa on the Hæmus, and this whole section of country for some time made up the northermost borders of Ottoman dominion in Europe.
In the south the same kind of successes took place; again a trade route was selected, this time the road to Thessalonika, and a considerable stretch of the territory through which it passed was annexed. In one place the sea coast was reached at a point opposite the Island of Samothrace. Murad returned now to Broussa, interrupting a farther advance towards Trnova and Sofia, places in the hands of the Servians, whose power in war he respected and feared more than that of their allied race, the Bulgars.
The menace caused by the Ottoman conquests was now being appreciated in Western Europe, where, through the preaching of a crusade by Urban V, a league was formed between Louis of Anjou, King of Hungary, and several of the most powerful princes of the Balkan peninsula, both Roumanian and Slav, for the purpose of driving out the Turks from their newly acquired European possessions. With an army of 60,000 men the Christian leaders reached the river Maritza, two days’ journey from Adrianople. Murad was in Asia, besieging a Greek city on the Propontis, but he was not needed, since a small detachment of the army of his general, Lala-Schahin, came in contact with the Christians near Kermianon, and put them to flight in a panic, in which the two Servian leaders lost their lives. (1371.)
This victory is set down in the Servian records as a great national disaster, and deservedly so. It ended their resistance, and it handed over to the Turks the rest of Thrace, Bulgaria, and a part of Servia. Significant of the impression made by the conquest was the action of the people of Ragusa, who signed a treaty of peace, inspired by a desire to gain commercial advantages from the new Turkish conquests. They agreed to pay an annual tribute of 500 golden ducats, and thus they inaugurated a policy imitated by many of their stronger neighbors, who preferred to make a good bargain with the Ottomans rather than try the fortunes of war under the auspices of rival Christian states, whose political aggrandizement, in case a victory were won over the infidel, was dreaded even more than the expansion of an alien race.
Yet the theory of a united Christendom was maintained despite its pitiable outcome in the Balkans. Elsewhere there were brilliant feats of arms, but they were isolated, and being directed by no consistent plan, proved of no lasting advantage. Peter of Cyprus, a representative of the Latin dynasty which had held the island since the days of the earlier Crusades, regarded himself as the guardian of Christian hopes in the Orient because of his titular dignity of King of Jerusalem. He took Alexandria in 1365, and helped by Rhodes, Genoa, and contingents sent by the Pope, he later took Satalieh (Attalia), a place situated in one of the Seldjouk emirates. Some advantages were gained, too, on the coast of Syria.