On another side, the Latins established at Constantinople were environed by the greatest perils. The emperor Baldwin II., after having conducted a feeble reinforcement to his capital, had returned into the West, and was, the second time, soliciting the alms and the succours of the faithful to sustain the deplorable remains of his empire, exposed, almost without defence, to the attacks of the Greeks and Bulgarians. At the same time, the Tartars continued to ravage the banks of the Danube, and threaten Germany; their barbarous exploits had carried terror to the very extremities of Europe; everywhere the excited imagination of nations represented these terrible conquerors as monsters vomited up by hell, clothed in hideous forms, and endowed with strength against which no man was able to contend. The deficiency of communication, which did not allow of exact information as to their march, gave birth to the most frightful rumours. Fame declared at one time they were invading Italy, and immediately afterwards, that they were ravaging the banks of the Rhine; every nation dreaded their prompt arrival, every city believed they were at its gates. It was amidst this general disorder and consternation, that Innocent IV., a refugee at Lyons, resolved to convoke an œcumenic council in that city, to remedy the evils that desolated Christendom in both the East and the West.[274] The sovereign pontiff, in his letters addressed to the faithful, exposed the deplorable situation of the Romish Church, and conjured the bishops to come around him, and enlighten him with their counsels. The patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Aquilæa, a great number of prelates and doctors, with several secular princes, responded to the invitation of the head of the Church. Among the crowd of bishops, one alone seemed to attract general attention; this was the bishop of Berytus; his presence, and the grief impressed upon his brow, reminded the assembly of all the misfortunes of the Holy Land. Baldwin II., emperor of Byzantium, created very little less notice; and his suppliant attitude but too plainly showed what the empire founded by the sixth crusade had become.