Yakub struck south to Coron and Modon. The environs of Modon were pillaged and burned. He defeated Theodore at Megalopolis, and forced him to become a tributary of the Osmanlis. In the meantime, Evrenos had held in check the papal mercenaries at Corinth, and had then taken Argos by assault, with a terrible loss of life, and a booty of fourteen thousand male captives. Because the Venetians could so easily reinforce and reprovision it from the sea, the siege of Nauplia was abandoned. The two commanders, when October came, gave their soldiers licence to pillage wherever they could as a reward for their services, and afterwards withdrew to Macedonia.[565] The population of the historic city of Argos was deported into Anatolia, and Moslem colonies settled in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnesus. This was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes in Asia Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora, Philippopolis, and Sofia.[566] Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by the Osmanlis. If it were true, one would certainly find this event in the Venetian archives, for Venice was particularly interested in Athens at this time.[567] Had the Osmanlis entered Athens, would they have restored it to the Acciajoli family? The fate of Argos in the same campaign makes this unlikely. Athens remained in Christian hands until after the fall of Constantinople.[568] As for Salonika, one finds authority for its capture by the Osmanlis after the attempt of Manuel to retake Serres,[569] after a four years’ siege, in 1387,[570] and in 1391 by Bayezid himself.[571] But since there is neither record nor explanation of how the city returned to the Byzantines, even the temporary occupation of so rich and important a maritime city, and so strongly defended,[572] during the reigns of Murad and of Bayezid, is hardly possible. For in 1403 Salonika was sold by the Byzantines to the Venetians,[573] and was not captured by the Osmanlis until 1430. Even if we cannot give to Bayezid the honour of the acquisition of Athens and Salonika, or of the conquest of the Morea, his campaign of 1397 was the beginning of the subjugation of Greece. Important districts had been added to the empire, and a permanent foothold gained in the Morea. The maritime character of the peninsula, however, made impracticable its complete conquest, until the Osmanlis were able to hold their own against the Italians and Greeks upon the sea. XII