In 1305, by a swift march to the relief of Philadelphia, which was being besieged by Alisur, prince of Karamania, Roger and his Catalans showed what they could do, if they would. The Turks were compelled to raise the siege. Roger pursued them to the source of the Sangarius.[55] But, on the way, the Catalans deprived their Greek allies of any portion of the rich spoils, and massacred the Slavic mercenaries who dared to argue with them.[56] Gregoras says, probably with reason, that Roger could have reconquered the whole of Asia Minor for the Byzantines.[57] But that country seemed to attract him as little as it had attracted the Mongols. He was no Crusader, glad and eager to undergo the terrible hardships which military operations among mountains and on arid plateaus demanded. There was no motive to make the effort worth while. So he left the Turks to themselves and went to Gallipoli, where he let it be known that the Catalans were preparing an expedition to repeat the Fourth Crusade. In fear for his life as well as for his throne, Andronicus sent an envoy to offer Roger the ‘government of the Orient’, general command of all the troops in Asia, and twenty thousand pieces of gold. For full measure he added enough wheat to nourish the Catalans for a year. The ‘government of the Orient’ was as empty and meaningless a gift as the supposed ‘grants’ of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin to the Turkish nomad chieftains. The only troops who could go into Asia and accomplish anything were already under Roger’s command. But the gold, which might have worked a charm, was left behind, as the envoy was afraid to bring it. Roger scorned the emperor’s offer. Ten days later he repented, and accepted from Emperor Andronicus thirty thousand pieces of gold, one hundred thousand measures of wheat, and the title of Caesar. In return for these princely gifts he had only to promise to lead three thousand men against the Turks. But a host of Spaniards, long before the discovery of America, were already in search of ‘El Dorado’. They poured into Gallipoli on every merchant ship from the West, and made the Byzantines begin to fear Roger more than they feared the Turks. The remedy was getting to be worse than the evil! Before leaving for his campaign, Roger rashly went to Adrianople to pay his respects to the young Emperor Michael IX, who was holding his court there. On the threshold of Michael’s bedchamber, like the Duke of Guise at Blois, he was stabbed to death. A massacre of his attendants followed.