Their advances led to the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, where a western crusade met with disaster.
Over the next two years the Company was so successful against the Turks, and so rapacious in its treatment of Byzantine civilians, that the Byzantines became alarmed and had the Company’s leaders treacherously murdered. This brought them into conflict with the other Balkan Christian states, including Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Wallachia, Moldavia and Albania. Osman's tiny state would gradually expand over the next two hundred years to become one of the world's great empires, known to posterity as the Ottoman (Osmanli) Empire, after their first leader.