So far Eugenius had met with little but failure and disappointment. He gained an apparent victory over the Council of Basel when he induced the Greeks to conduct the negotiations for a union of eastern and western churches at a rival council which met first at Ferrara, [Sidenote: Later years of Eugenius IV.] and later in Florence. But the treaty which was settled at the Council was repudiated by public opinion in Greece, and the Pope gained little real advantage from the parade of negotiations which proved abortive. Yet the later years of his pontificate were more successful than seemed likely from the beginning. Rome did not long enjoy the republican liberty which the citizens claimed to have recovered on the Pope’s departure. The warlike Cardinal Vitelleschi succeeded by 1435 in reducing the capital to submission. So successful were the rigorous and cruel measures of the legate that Eugenius suspected him of a design to establish his own power in the papal states. In 1440 Vitelleschi was imprisoned and died, either from poison or from the wounds he received in the struggle with his captors. Scarampo, who took his place, maintained his authority by the same means as his predecessor had employed. In 1443 Eugenius was able to quit Florence and to return to Rome in perfect security. He gained the alliance of Naples by recognising the title of Alfonso V. But his greatest triumph was the inauguration of the negotiations with Germany, through the medium of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, which led to the failure and humiliation of the Council of Basel. The final treaty was practically concluded, though still unsigned, when Eugenius died, on February 23, 1447.