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Chapter VI we left the Eastern Roman Empire, after the Council of Florence, on the eve of destruction. The story of that calamity, the great turning-point of the history of the Orthodox Church, and one of the chief turning-points of European history, is too well known to need a long description here. The Emperor John VIII was succeeded by his brother Constantine XII (Palaiologos, 1448–1453). This most heroic prince, although now without any hope of success, was faithful to his trust to the last. The Turkish Sultan, Mohammed II (the Conqueror, 1451–1481) had now seized everything up to the very walls of Constantinople. Constantine tried desperately to get help from the West, and Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) too did all he could to persuade his Latins to save the city. To their eternal shame no one of them would move. They did not believe that the city would really fall; it had so often come out of the direst straits before; and they really cared very little for the last poor remnant of the old Empire. The days of the Crusades had gone long ago. They reaped their desert afterwards when the Turk poured across Servia, Bosnia, Hungary, and came thundering to the very gates of Vienna.

But there were two honourable exceptions to this selfish policy. We have seen that Pope Eugene IV had sent all the help he could, two ships and three hundred men (p. 217).