outwitted the imperial ministers, and became master of some fortresses in Thrace, and of the commanding position of Gallipoli. Cantacuzenus saw that a stronger power was rapidly pushing aside the decrepit empire, and in his last counsels advised his Greek subjects to bow to inevitable fate. His advice may have been prudent, but it is some satisfaction to find that it was not followed. The Greeks or some of them still clung to the hope of saving the poor remains of their empire. But Orchan's son and successor, Amurath I., by whom the famous force of the janissaries was at least regularly organised, if not actually created, won a series of easy triumphs, and his arms in Europe and in Asia left Constantinople utterly isolated, and, as we may suppose, quite at his mercy. John Palæologus was emperor only in name. He was Amurath's vassal, and he and his sons had to dance attendance, in court and camp, on the mighty barbarian. If he was to be saved from this degradation, he must appeal to the pope or the Western powers, and even from this quarter deliverance would be by no means certain.
His predecessor, Cantacuzenus, who, like the elder Andronicus, had ended his days in the retirement of the cloister, attempted through Pope Clement VI. to arrange a reconciliation between the East and the West, with a view to the strengthening of the Greek empire. He had, as we have said, almost betrayed its interests by his friendship with Orchan, to whom he had married his daughter, and now his endeavours to undo the mischief of having let the Turkish power establish itself in Europe were all in vain. John Palæologus, whose long reign of
