Even, however, in these last days of the siege the sultan appears to have seriously hesitated whether to make the attack or abandon the attempt to capture the city. Many of the Turks really appear to have lost heart. They had been seven weeks before the city and had accomplished nothing. The pashas themselves were divided in opinion. Various rumours were current in the camp which increased their hesitation. Western Europe would not allow Constantinople to be captured. The princes of the West were leagued together to drive the Turks out of Europe. John Hunyadi, with a large force of infantry and cavalry, was on his way to relieve the city.[370] A great fleet prepared at the request and with the aid of the pope, the head of Christendom, was on its way out, and its van had already been heard of at Chios.[371] There were not wanting many in Mahomet’s camp who were opposed to a continuation of the siege and who urged him to abandon it. The sultan, according to Phrantzes, was influenced and depressed by the rumours of the interference of Western Europe, especially by the news of the arrival of a fleet at Chios,[372] by the want of success which had so far attended his efforts to enter the city, by the stubbornness of the defence and the strength of the walls, and, lastly, by omens deduced from flashes of lightning which had played over the city, or from some atmospheric effect which had lighted up the dome of St. Sophia--omens which, at first interpreted as a sign of God’s vengeance on the Constantinopolitans, were a little later construed by some of the Turks to be a token that it was taken under Divine protection.[373] [Sidenote: Sends Ismail to inquire as to possibility of surrender.] It was probably in consequence of this depression that even at this late stage Mahomet made one more effort to induce the Greeks to surrender the city. A certain Ismail, the son of Alexander who had obtained the rule over Sinope by accepting the suzerainty of the Turks, came into the city at the request of the sultan and endeavoured to persuade the Greeks to make terms. He spoke of his own influence with Mahomet and promised, if they would appoint a messenger, to use it to procure for him a favourable hearing. He declared that unless terms were made the city would certainly be captured, the men killed, and their wives and daughters sold as slaves.