From the first year of his accession Michael the Eighth set himself the task of diverting from the empire the attacks of Western states. It was not to be expected that Baldwin and the statesmen of the West would settle down resignedly to the loss of a Latin empire. During many years their attempts to regain the city constituted the most pressing danger to the empire and contributed more than any other cause during Michael’s reign to render it unable to hold its own against the encroachments of the Turks. To Michael, as to all other statesmen in Europe, the representative of the West was the pope. To satisfy the pope was to appease Western Europe, to divert attacks from the empire, and to cause aid to be sent against the Moslems. But the pope, on the accession of Michael, was doubly offended: first, because the Latin empire had been overthrown, and second, because the prospect of union between the two Churches was put back. Several years had to pass and many struggles had to be borne before the pontiffs reconciled themselves to the final disappearance of that Latin empire the foundation of which the great statesman Pope Innocent the Third had dreaded. [Sidenote: Attempts at reconciliation with Roman Church.] Michael, while resisting all attacks made or favoured by the pope, saw the desirability of being reconciled with him so as, if possible, to induce him not to lend his support to the efforts of Baldwin to recover the city. With this object he never lost an opportunity, even at the cost of alienating the sympathies of his own people and being denounced by his own ecclesiastics, of endeavouring to gain the pontifical favour by attempting to bring about the Union of the Churches.