It is hardly a conjecture to affirm that the Nicaeans must have cast their fortunes with that steadily growing band whose firm conviction, forced upon them against their will and in violence to centuries-old traditions and sentiments, was that the old structure of society could not be repaired, and that there must be an entirely new building upon the old foundation. This conviction did not come suddenly or to all at once. It was a gradual dawning and awakening which caused the ranks of the Osmanlis to become greater every year. Before the end of Orkhan’s reign the nucleus of Asiatic adventurers which had gathered around Osman in the little village of Sugut had grown to half a million. It could not have been by natural increase. It could not have been by the flocking in of nomads from the East. Orkhan was cut off from contact with the Asiatic hinterland. His rivals of Karaman, Satalia, Aïdin, and Sarukhan would have attracted adventurers from the outside before himself. Orkhan formed his nation out of the elements on the ground. These were mostly Greek. Nicaea is but an illustration of the way in which the new race was born and the new nation formed. This conviction that no good could come from Constantinople went farther than a transference of allegiance from the Palaeologi to the family of Osman. Mohammed was substituted for Christ. What a momentous significance there is in the records of the Greek Orthodox Church that in 1339 and again in 1340 the Patriarch sent an impassioned appeal to the Nicaeans that they should not abjure the Christian faith![114] At that very moment when the ecclesiastics of Constantinople were espousing the rival claims of unworthy aspirants to the imperial purple and were anathematizing each other in supporting trivial theological arguments, Christians were adopting the new Credo: ‘I believe in one God, and Mohammed is his prophet!’ in the city of the Nicene Creed. We may place the surrender of Nicomedia in 1337 or 1338.[115] This was the last Byzantine possession in the Ottoman corner of Asia Minor. The fall of Aïdos and Semendria on the hills behind Scutari had opened the way to the Bosphorus. Yalova, renowned for its baths, and Hereké, where Constantine the Great died, gave the Osmanlis undisputed control of the entrance to the Gulf of Nicomedia and secure possession of the city where Diocletian had made a new capital for the Roman Empire. IV