But this spirit of generosity quickly passed. Whether it was because Bayezid tried to escape or that Timur feared an attempt at rescue as he marched farther into Ottoman territory, Timur’s attitude soon changed. To break Bayezid’s spirit he began to mock him and treat him with contempt. He ordered him to be put in chains at night, and to be carried on the march in a litter with bars, which was nothing less than a cage.[635] At Brusa, Bayezid’s harem was taken from him. It has been recorded that Timur went so far as to use his unfortunate rival as a footstool for mounting his horse and at the table, and that Bayezid was compelled to witness the degradation of his wife, the Serbian princess Despina, who in a state of nudity served the Tartar conqueror with wine at his feasts.[636] This disgraceful treatment, coupled with the fact that his sons made no attempt to bring another army to fight for their father’s freedom or even to ransom him, at last broke the spirit of Bayezid. For nine months he had been held up to ridicule in the Tartar army. He had seen his harem violated. He had seen Timur pass with ease from one portion of the Ottoman possessions in Asia to another. Smyrna, which he had never been able to attack, fell before the Tartars. The Turkish emirs whom he had dispossessed were settled again in their states. When Bayezid learned that he was to be taken to Konia, and then to Samarkand, his mind gave way. He died of apoplexy at Ak Sheïr.[637] Timur allowed Musa to take his father’s body to Brusa for burial.[638] He had by this time lost interest in the Osmanlis and Asia Minor, and was dreaming of new fields of conquest. Bayezid died a victim not ‘to his destiny’, as the Ottoman historians put it, but to his vices, and to his abandonment of the policy of his predecessors, that assimilation should keep pace with territorial aggrandizement. There never need have been an Angora. Timur had no inclination to invade the Ottoman dominions. Bayezid goaded him into it. Even if the test of an Angora had been necessary, Bayezid would have sustained it and weathered the Tartar storm, had he been the same man he was at Nicopolis. In facing a Tartar invasion, the advantage was all on Bayezid’s side. He failed because his mental and physical faculties, which rivalled, if they did not surpass, those of any man of his age, had become impaired by a life of debauchery. XVIII After the victory at Angora, the Tartar hordes swept across Asia Minor. Timur sent his grandson, Mohammed-Sultan, in pursuit of Soleiman, who succeeded in escaping from Brusa just as the Tartar horsemen arrived at the gates of the city. The Tartars stabled their horses in the mosques, while the city was ransacked for its treasures and its young girls. Fire followed pillage.[639] The sons of Alaeddin of Karamania were set free, and Bayezid’s wives and daughters, with one exception, were sent to Timur, who had established his residence at Kutayia.