The Ottomans were less bent on peaceful assimilation than on forcible subjection and extermination. In their character as masters they sought to make the conquered as harmless as possible, and they used to this end a means that they had learned from the Byzantine emperors; they transplanted, from the conquered cities that had a large Greek population, large numbers of these Greeks to other cities where the Greeks were less numerous, so that everywhere the Greeks were forced into a minority. Furthermore, the Greeks were no longer permitted to live in the large cities that were at that time still strongly walled, but were compelled to settle outside in the suburbs. From these suburbs there gradually developed later, as the Greek population increased, entirely new towns, which crowded the old city-center from its predominating position and established itself in its place. This system, as we shall see, resulted in strengthening rather than weakening the Greek element. And yet, in this Turkish conquest, a great part of the Greeks in the towns were constantly being forced to leave Asia Minor and to take refuge in the European part of the Empire, for the Byzantine historians of that time (the 14th century) tell of mass emigrations to Europe, of homeless refugees crowded in and around Constantinople, and of growing insecurity in the neighborhood of the capital. This exodus from the towns betokens a second essential difference as compared with what had happened in the Balkan Peninsula. While, in the Balkans, the cities appear as the supporting centers, the bulwarks, of the Greeks against the Slav inundation, forming a base of operations for winning back the open country that had become Slav, in Asia Minor not only the country regions but the towns as well fell into the hands of the conquerors, evidently because the Turks were better trained soldiers and more familiar with the art of besieging towns than were the Slavs, who were accustomed only to campaigns in the open. The degree to which the Greek communities of Asia Minor suffered under the Turkish conquest is shown by the old Church Acts which are still preserved in the Patriarchate in Constantinople.[18] While Asia Minor before the Turkish invasion counted no less than fifty seats of Metropolitans (the highest church dignitaries) it has today only twenty.[19] Of these, twelve alone are distributed in the western provinces, while the other provinces have only eight. Even of these the greater part are maintained only for the sake of the names. These numbers show better than anything else how seriously the Greek town-population in the interior of Asia Minor melted away as a result of the Turkish conquest, for every withdrawal of the seat of a Metropolitan, and every uniting of several such seats in one, presupposes a decided decrease in the population of a district.