At this same time the emirs whose possessions bordered on the Aegaean Sea began to press hard upon the Greek coast cities and those few cities of the interior, such as Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Sardes, which still acknowledged the authority of Byzantium. In the spring of 1302, Michael IX Palaeologos came to Asia Minor to take command of the Slavic mercenaries. At first the Turks were in consternation, if we can believe Pachymeres, but when they saw the unwillingness of Michael to fight, they grew bold, and compelled the Emperor to take refuge in Magnesia. Michael’s unwillingness was not due to lack of courage, but because he could not rely upon his Slavs. As true mercenaries, they were fighting for pay, and there was no gold to give them. Michael’s father, the old Emperor Andronicus II, had not sent him any money. In Constantinople the Venetians were threatening to depose Andronicus; the almost annual ecclesiastical quarrels, which form so large and wearisome and disastrous a place in the last century and a half of Byzantine history, were embarrassing him; and the treasury was empty. Even if there had been money to send, it would have been a perilous undertaking, for the Turkish pirates were swarming in the Sea of Marmora, and had even seized the Princes’ Islands, which are within sight of the Imperial City. When they saw that neither pay nor booty was forthcoming, and that they were engaged in a hopeless struggle, the mercenaries forced Michael to allow them to return to Europe. This was the last genuine personal effort on the part of a successor of the Caesars to save the Asiatic themes. It ended in ignominious failure. Not one battle had been fought. The withdrawal of the Slavs was followed by an exodus of Greeks to the Aegaean coast, and from there to Europe. Pachymeres claims that this exodus was general. But we cannot accept the testimony of Pachymeres as altogether trustworthy on this point. Many Greeks, for reasons which are set forth later, remained in the coast districts of Asia Minor, and they did not leave, to any noticeable extent, the territory in which Osman was operating. The Turks, however, made a raid into all the islands along the Aegaean littoral, and crossed over into Thrace, where for two years the fields could not be cultivated.[50] At this critical moment, had there been any united action on the part of the Turkish emirs, Constantinople would probably have fallen an easy prey to their armies and to their fleets. But each emir was acting for himself, and was as much an enemy of his Turkish rivals as he was of the Byzantine emperors. There is no instance in which any two of them joined forces, and acted together. Throughout the fourteenth century the armies defending the Byzantine Empire contained almost as many Turks as those attacking it.