Andronicus II, the son and successor of Michael, was equally cruel and false, and still more of a personal coward. He saw the danger of Mahometan invasion that his father had ignored, and, in terror both of the Turks and of his own subjects, arranged to hire a band of Catalan mercenaries who had been fighting for the Aragonese against the Angevins in Sicily, in the war introduced by the Sicilian Vespers.[49] This war over, the captain of the Catalans, Roger de Flor, a Templar who had been expelled from his Order for his wild deeds, was quite willing to unsheathe his sword on a new field of glory and pillage; so that on receiving dazzling promises of reward and friendship he and his ‘merry men’ sailed for the East. Once established in Greece, however, the Catalans proved so arrogant and lawless that the Greeks complained that they were a far worse infliction than the Mahometans. Quarrels ensued, and finally, in the course of a bitter dispute between Roger de Flor and Andronicus, the Spanish general was murdered as he stood talking to his master. This act of treachery, added to growing indignation at the limited supplies of money the Emperor had grudgingly disbursed for his foreign army, turned the Catalans from pretence allies into a horde of raging enemies. From the walls of Constantinople itself they were driven back, but elsewhere they burned and slew and laid waste the country, until at last, reaching Athens, they stormed the walls of that city, killed its Latin Duke, and established themselves as an independent republic. By the time they had ceased to rove the Catalans had also ceased to be dangerous, but in their savage wanderings they had inflicted incalculable harm upon the Byzantine Empire. The Andronicus who could barely hold them at bay before the gates of his capital was an Andronicus who could not hope to withstand invasion in Asia Minor; and over his Eastern boundaries, left weakly garrisoned since the days of Michael Paleologus, poured the Turks in irresistible numbers. Soon there remained to the Greek Empire, of all their provinces across the Bosporus, merely a strip of coast-line to the north of the Dardanelles, and finally this also was whittled away, and the Turks crossed the Straits and captured Gallipoli as a base for future operations in Europe. The chief Mahometan Emir during this period of conquest was a certain Orkhan, the son of Othman, whose name in the form ‘Ottoman’ is still borne by his branch of the Turkish race. This Orkhan was quite as cruel and unscrupulous as the Paleologi, but far more statesmanlike; for as he conquered the territory of Greek Emperors and rival Emirs in Asia Minor he consolidated his rule over them by a just and careful government that gradually welded them into a compact state.