their Christian allies) were demoralized and divided amongst themselves. Responding to a request for help from the Byzantine Emperor, the Sfakian leader Manousos Kallikratis gathered 300 Sfakian warriors and another 760 Cretan fighters from other parts of the island. The leader then sailed in five ships (three of which were Sfakian) and went to help the besieged Emperor. The Sfakian/Cretan forces fought valiantly by breaking through the Ottoman blockade and by defending the city itself. Many Cretans died alongside the Byzantines, as well as alongside the few Genoese and Venetian co-defenders. When the city fell, the only 170 surviving Cretans had been surrounded by Ottoman troops in one of the city's towers and were refusing to surrender. The sultan was so impressed by their courage and fierce fighting skills that he agreed to let them walk out of the city with their flags, arms, and wounded and sail away to Crete in one of their ships. A poet of the time has the Byzantine Emperor saying as he was surrounded by the Ottomans, "Christians, Greeks, cut off my head, take it, good Cretans, and carry it to Crete, for the Cretans to see it and be sad at heart." Just a few words from an anonymous poet described the deep impact of the fall of Constantinople had on the Cretans. They were to become the next home of the refugees from Byzantium and responsible for nurturing the rich heritage left to them by the collapsing Byzantine Empire. Against the Ottomans with the help of the Imperial Russia During the Ottoman occupation of Crete (1669–1898), and especially from the 18th century onwards, the Greeks looked towards Christian Russia as its savior. Peter the Great, as part of his plan to expand southward to the Black Sea, promoted himself as a champion of the Christians residing in the Balkans. His overall policy, with some variations, was continued by Catherine the Great (1762–1796) in her wars against the Ottoman Turks. She dreamed of resurrecting the Byzantine Empire and placing her grandson as its emperor. Before the first Russo-Turkish War, she sent Russian agents to Morea and the islands in order to stir up the Greeks to fight against the Turks. One of the Russian agents reached a man named Daskaloyiannis and told the Sfakian from Anopoli to lead a revolt. This was ill advice since the Sfakians, let alone the Cretans in general,