e, would engage to pay him a sum of forty
thousand ducats. At the same time he invited him to an interview to meet
Suleiman on the Gulf of Nicomedia. But the Sultan pretending to be ill,
the Emperor returned to Byzantium, without having obtained anything.

Orkhan now found himself in one of the happiest of political situations.
The division of sovereign authority between Cantacuzenus and his pupil
John Palaeologus, and their continual wars, allowed him to address one or
the other according as his interests and the circumstances demanded. It
was thus that John Palaeeologus, ally of the Genoese, undertook to
deliver from captivity to Phoceus, the son of Orkhan, Khalil or Kasim,
whom the governor Calothes surrendered for a ransom of one hundred
thousand pieces of gold and the concession of the glorious title of
Panhypersebastos ("very venerable"). The service that John had rendered
did not prevent Orkhan from sending to Abydos a body of troops to rescue
the son of Cantacuzenus, Mathias, then at war with the Bulgarians.

From the epoch when the Ottomans made durable conquests in the Greek
empire, Asia each spring threw new hordes into Europe, until the time
when the successors of Orkhan had extended their domination from the
shores of the Sea of Marmora to those of the Danube.

The conquest of Gallipoli, which had opened the gate of the Greek empire
and the whole of the European continent to the Ottomans, was announced
by "letters of victory" to the neighboring princes of Orkhan, whose
father had divided with Osman the heritage of the Seljukian sultans. The
use of these "letters of victory" has been preserved to this day in
Turkey, and their style, already so pompous in the days of Orkhan, has
become so proudly emphatic that this kind of document to-day is not the
least curious of those which belong to the annals of the Turkish nation.

Orkhan left to his son, Suleiman Pacha, and Hadji-Ilbeki the charge of
preserving the conquests made in Europe; Suleiman established his
residence at Gallipoli, and Ilbeki at Konour. The first overran the
country as far as Demitoka; the second as far as Tschorli and Hireboli.
Adjebeg received in fief the valley which still bears his name.

But Suleiman enjoyed for only a few years the fruits of his conquests.
One day while hunting wild geese between Boulair and Sidi-Kawak, that is
to say near the palatine of the Cid, and following at a gallop the
flight of his falcon, he fell so violently