The Greek Empire, under John Palæologus V, the most unfortunate and incompetent of men, on the accession of Murad, was in a perilous and decadent condition. We have already shown how small were its remaining possessions in Europe. It had no friends on whom it could rely to stem the advance of the Moslems. The old spirit of the early Crusaders in Europe was almost extinct. There was a bitter feud between the Latin and Greek Churches. They hated one another more than they feared the Turks. It was a condition of any assistance of the Latin Christians that the Greeks should come into the fold of the Pope of Rome. The Greeks, on their part, flatly refused this, even for the purpose of saving their Empire from extinction by the Moslem Turks. It was under these conditions that Murad, in the first year of his reign, determined to follow up the designs of his father by conquests in Europe. Leaving Brusa, the then capital of his State, he crossed the Dardanelles, and at the head of a great army marched into Thrace. His generals, Evrenos and Lalashahin, commanded the two wings of it. Evrenos advanced on the left, recaptured the fortress of Tchorlu, five miles from Constantinople, massacred its garrison, and razed its walls. Lalashahin, on the right, captured Kirk Kilisse, and thus protected the army from a possible landing of the enemy from the Black Sea. Murad then advanced with the centre of his army, formed a junction with the two wings, and fought a great battle at Eski Baba, in 1363, in which he completely defeated the Byzantine army opposed to him, with the result that Adrianople surrendered without a struggle and almost the whole of Thrace fell into Murad’s hands. Lalashahin then advanced up the Maritza Valley into Bulgaria and captured Philippopolis, a Byzantine possession south of the Balkans.