The Osmanlis do not possess written records of the reign of Murad. There is no source to which we can go to read what Murad thought or what others of his day thought or said that he thought. But we know his mind from his actions. There is no cause for doubt on this point. After the first campaign in Thrace, Murad had returned to Brusa, and dated his letters from there. He began to plan an aggressive campaign against his neighbours. But after the battle of the Maritza, he abandoned Brusa for Demotika, and three years later, in 1366, Adrianople became the first real capital of the Ottoman Empire. In spite of all that has been written about the unique position of Brusa in Ottoman history, it is no more to the Osmanlis than is Saint-Denis to the French or Winchester to the English. The Osmanlis have never really been at home in Constantinople. Historically and architecturally speaking, they have been under the shadow of a greater past. Adrianople, although always a city of importance since the days of Hadrian, reached its greatest splendour and glory under the Ottoman sultans. Here were planned, and from here started, the expeditions westward and eastward, which increased in strength, in efficiency, and in inspiring terror as the circle gradually widened, until the star and crescent appeared under the walls of Vienna and Cairo, on the shores of Italy and in the heart of Persia. No student of Ottoman annals can fail to support the contention of the Sublime Porte after the last Balkan war, that Adrianople is to the Osmanlis their sacred city. From Lalashahin to Shukri pasha, the proudest and most precious memories of the Osmanlis are in Adrianople, whose great mosque, still awe-inspiring and altogether admirable in its decay, is typical both of what has been and what is. The decision of Murad was accepted by his successors. Even after the capture of Constantinople, many an Ottoman sultan felt more at home in Adrianople than in the imperial city. For more than a century the Osmanlis directed their energies almost exclusively to European conquests. Whatever they accomplished in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. From first to last, the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over the Moslems of Asia was by means of a soldiery gathered and war-hardened in Europe, themselves Christian or of Christian ancestry, in whose veins ran the blood of Greek and Roman, of Goth and Hun, of Albanian and Slav. V