Palestine, threatened every day with a fresh invasion, could not entertain the smallest hope of being succoured by the other Christian states of the East. The Comans, a barbarous people from the confines of Tartary, and who surpassed the hordes of Carismia in ferocity, ravaged the banks of the Orontes, and submitted everything in the principality of Antioch to fire and sword; the king of Armenia was in dread, at the same time, of the ravages of the Tartars, and of the aggressions of the Turks in Asia Minor; the kingdom of Cyprus, a prey to factions, had recently been the theatre of a civil war, and had reason to fear the incursions of the Mussulman nations of Syria and Egypt. In this deplorable situation, it might be believed that the kingdom of Godfrey was on the eve of perishing entirely, and that all that remained of the Christians in the Holy Land would soon share the fate of the Carismians. But, on turning their eyes towards the West, the Franks of Palestine again felt their hopes and their courage revive; more than once the Christian states of Syria had owed their safety, and even a few days of prosperity and glory, to the excess of their abasement and misery. Their groans and complaints were seldom heard in vain by the warlike nations of Europe, and their extreme distress became almost always the signal for a new crusade, the very report of which was enough to make the Saracens tremble. Valeran, bishop of Berytus, had been sent into the West to solicit the protection of the pope and the assistance of princes and warriors. The pope received the envoy of the Christians with kindness, and promised his succour to the Holy Land. But the West was at that period agitated by troubles: the quarrel that had broken out between the Holy See and the emperor of Germany was carried on with an animosity that disgraced both religion and humanity. Frederick II. exercised all sorts of violences against the court of Rome and the partisans of the sovereign pontiff; the pope, every day more irritated, invoked the arms of the Christians against his enemy, and promised the indulgences of the crusade to all who would minister to his anger.