At the councils of Ferrara and Florence, the deputies of the Armenians, the Maronites, the Jacobites of Syria and Egypt, the Nestorians, and the Ethiopians submitted, as well as the Greeks, to the pontifical authority, and without doubt also, in the same hope of being succoured by the Latins, and delivered from the tyranny of the Mussulmans. This solemn proceeding was less a submission to the Holy See than a homage rendered to the bravery of the Franks, in whom all the Christians of Asia and Africa beheld liberators. Pope Eugenius, however, on receiving the submission of the Greeks, had promised to send succours to Constantinople and to the Christians of the East. The pontiff hoped that the union of the two churches and the preaching of a crusade would fix upon him the eyes of the Christian world, and restore to the pontifical authority the confidence and power of which the schisms of the West and the seditious decrees of the council of Bâle had deprived it. He wrote to all the princes of Christendom, exhorting them to unite to put a stop to the invasions of the Mussulmans. Eugenius, in his letter, described all the evils which the faithful suffered in the countries under the domination of the barbarians. “The Turks tied troops of men and women together, and dragged them along in their train. All the Christians whom they condemned to slavery, were confounded with the vilest booty, and sold like beasts of burden. In their barbarity, they separated the son from the father, the brother from the sister, and the husband from the wife. Those whom age or infirmities prevented from walking were killed upon the high roads or in the middle of cities. Even infancy could not excite their pity; they put to death innocent victims that had scarcely begun to exist, and who, being yet ignorant of fear, smiled upon their executioners whilst receiving the mortal blow. Every Christian family was compelled to give up its own sons to the Ottoman empire, in the same manner as the people of Athens had been formerly forced to send as a tribute the flower of their youth to the monster of Crete. Wherever the Turks had penetrated, the fields were cursed with barrenness, and the cities were without laws or industry; the Christian religion had no longer either priests or altars; humanity no longer either support or asylum.” In fact, the father of the faithful forgot none of the cruelties committed by the enemies of Christ; he could not restrain the sadness which so many painful images caused him, and conjured princes and nations to send assistance to the kingdom of Cyprus, the isle of Rhodes, and particularly to Constantinople, as these were the last bulwarks of the West.