The last fifty years of Constantinople under Byzantine rule constitute a critical period during which the city's inhabitants survived two Ottoman sieges (in 1411 and 1422) and, before finally succumbing to a third one in 1453, faced the union of their Church with the Church of Rome at the Council of Florence in 1439. The Union of Florence became the source of much controversy in the city and led to divisions among the population. That dissensions persisted among the citizens to the very last moment is indicated by Doukas, who reports that when Mehmed II's forces appeared before the Byzantine capital in 1453 a group of Constantinopolitans exclaimed in despair, “Would that the City were delivered into the hands of the Latins, who call upon Christ and the Mother of God, and not be thrown into the clutches of the infidel,” while others contradicted them by declaring, “It would be better to fall into the hands of the Turks than into those of the Franks.” Although the union of the Churches was essentially a religious matter, reactions to it were not determined solely by people's religious views. Rather they were expressions of overall attitudes towards the Latins and the Ottomans, which in turn had been shaped by a set of political, social, and economic factors predating the Council of Florence.