When turned out of Constantinople in 1261, the Latin Emperor Baldwin II with the Venetian Podesta had sailed to Negroponte. In Greece he rewarded the homage and sympathy of the French lords of Thebes and Athens by investing them with empty titles. The French Prince of Achaia, William of Villehardouin, could not receive his emperor, for he was a prisoner in Constantinople. From Greece Baldwin sailed on to Italy and landed in Apulia, where he was warmly greeted by King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred persuaded him to go to see the pope at his palace at Viterbo. Pope Urban IV, elected in August 1261, had been stunned by the news from Constantinople. It was a fearful blow to Christendom. He seems first to have heard it from a Venetian delegation that had come to congratulate him on his appointment. His immediate reaction had been to authorise a crusade against the usurper and schismatic Michael Palaiologos ‘who calls himself Emperor of the Greeks’. The Venetians were at first fully in accord with this plan. They promised to provide a fleet. The crusade was preached and funds were collected in France, Castile and England. But the pope's hands were tied by events in Italy. The man who saw himself as leader of a crusade to Constantinople was Manfred of Sicily, who had sent Baldwin to see the pope. Manfred's kingdom was well situated for an invasion of Byzantine territory. He already owned bases on the coast of Albania and northern Greece.