The battle of Pelecanon is passed over in silence by the Ottoman historians as too insignificant to mention. But it is of the utmost importance in showing why the Nicaeans surrendered their city to Orkhan. Cantacuzenos, who took part in this battle, gives a long story in which the result of the battle he is compelled to record belies all that goes before it. The Byzantines, according to Cantacuzenos, were eminently successful in repelling the attacks of the Osmanlis. On all sides the Greeks won, and killed hundreds of their opponents, while their own losses were slight. After inflicting this defeat upon Orkhan, Andronicus proposed, at nightfall, that the army withdraw to Constantinople! Some of his ardent warriors continued, however, to engage the enemy. Andronicus, surprised with only a few followers around him, was wounded, and escaped capture only by a hasty retreat. He was carried in a litter to Scutari, where he did not wait for news of his army. A caïque conveyed him safely home. Thus the successors of the Caesars abandoned Asia for ever. Old Andronicus, in his hour of humiliation, did not hesitate to strike one more blow against his country. Spies of his in the army spread the rumour that the young emperor was dead. The imperial troops fled. They abandoned all their baggage, and were massacred by the Osmanlis, who hunted them down in the hills from which the fugitives could see the dome of St. Sophia.[107] When we contrast the long story of the civil war between Andronicus and his grandfather, the armies gathered, the money expended, the energy displayed with this one pitiful attempt to aid the three great cities of Bithynia, there is no need for further speculation as to why these cities fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. No wearers of the imperial purple had ever made a more dismal showing: old Andronicus plotting to demoralize the army of his country by false rumours, and young Andronicus making such rumours possible by being the first to flee from the field after receiving a slight wound. It is no wonder that Cantacuzenos records that after this battle Nicaea fell into the hands of the Osmanlis.[108] It is altogether natural, too, that the inhabitants of Nicaea should refuse, as those of Brusa had done, to profit by the terms of the capitulation, and leave for Constantinople.[109] Their trades, silk-weaving and pottery, were dependent upon local materials, which they could not get elsewhere. There had been nothing to inspire in them that devotion to a faith which made the Huguenots long afterwards leave all without hesitation after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.