The menace caused by the Ottoman conquests was now being appreciated in Western Europe, where, through the preaching of a crusade by Urban V, a league was formed between Louis of Anjou, King of Hungary, and several of the most powerful princes of the Balkan peninsula, both Roumanian and Slav, for the purpose of driving out the Turks from their newly acquired European possessions. With an army of 60,000 men the Christian leaders reached the river Maritza, two days’ journey from Adrianople. Murad was in Asia, besieging a Greek city on the Propontis, but he was not needed, since a small detachment of the army of his general, Lala-Schahin, came in contact with the Christians near Kermianon, and put them to flight in a panic, in which the two Servian leaders lost their lives. (1371.) This victory is set down in the Servian records as a great national disaster, and deservedly so. It ended their resistance, and it handed over to the Turks the rest of Thrace, Bulgaria, and a part of Servia. Significant of the impression made by the conquest was the action of the people of Ragusa, who signed a treaty of peace, inspired by a desire to gain commercial advantages from the new Turkish conquests. They agreed to pay an annual tribute of 500 golden ducats, and thus they inaugurated a policy imitated by many of their stronger neighbors, who preferred to make a good bargain with the Ottomans rather than try the fortunes of war under the auspices of rival Christian states, whose political aggrandizement, in case a victory were won over the infidel, was dreaded even more than the expansion of an alien race. Yet the theory of a united Christendom was maintained despite its pitiable outcome in the Balkans. Elsewhere there were brilliant feats of arms, but they were isolated, and being directed by no consistent plan, proved of no lasting advantage. Peter of Cyprus, a representative of the Latin dynasty which had held the island since the days of the earlier Crusades, regarded himself as the guardian of Christian hopes in the Orient because of his titular dignity of King of Jerusalem. He took Alexandria in 1365, and helped by Rhodes, Genoa, and contingents sent by the Pope, he later took Satalieh (Attalia), a place situated in one of the Seldjouk emirates. Some advantages were gained, too, on the coast of Syria.