When Mahomet succeeded to the empire, his first thought was the conquest of Byzantium. In the negotiations which preceded the rupture of the peace, Constantine did not conceal the weakness of the Greek empire, and displayed all the resignation of a Christian. “My confidence is in God,” said he to the Ottoman prince; “if it should please him to soften your heart, I shall rejoice at that happy change; if it should please him to deliver up Constantinople to you, I shall submit to his will without a murmur.” The siege of Byzantium was fixed to begin in the spring of the year 1453; and the Greeks and the Turks passed the winter in preparation for the defence and the attack. Mahomet entered with ardour upon an enterprise to which, for a length of time, all the wishes of the Turkish nation and all the Ottoman policy has been directed. In the middle of a night, having sent for his vizier: “Thou seest,” said Mahomet, “the disorder of my couch. I have carried to it the trouble which agitates and devours me; henceforth there will be neither repose nor sleep for me but in the capital of the Greeks.” Whilst Mahomet was getting together all his forces to commence the war, Constantine Palæologus implored assistance from the nations of Europe. Cries of alarm had so often been heard from Constantinople, that some regarded the dangers of the Greek empire as imaginary, and others, its ruin as inevitable. In vain Constantine promised, as all his predecessors had done, to unite the Greek Church with the Roman Church; the remembrance of so many promises, made in the hour of peril and forgotten in times of safety, added to the antipathy of the Latins for the people of Greece. The Pope exhorted feebly the warriors of the West to take arms, and satisfied himself with sending to the Greek emperor a legate and some ecclesiastics versed in the art of argumentation and in the study of theology. Although the Cardinal Isidore brought with him a considerable treasure, and had in his suite some Italian soldiers, his arrival at Constantinople must have spread discouragement among the Greeks, who expected other succours, and appeared to have attached a very high value to their submission to the Church of Rome. The princes of the Morea and the Archipelago, with those of Hungary and Bulgaria, some, in dread of being themselves attacked, the others, restrained by indifference or the spirit of jealousy, refused to take any part in a war in which victory would decide their own fate. As Genoa and Venice had counting-houses and commercial establishments at Constantinople, two thousand Genoese soldiers and five or six hundred Venetians presented themselves to assist in defending the city. A troop of Catalans also arrived, an intrepid soldiery, by turns the scourge and hope of Greece, whom a love of war and peril brought to the imperial city. And this was all that was to represent warlike Europe at the siege of Byzantium.