e city at the gate of the Circus, which had been left almost without
defence, for the besieged were not sufficiently numerous to guard the
whole line of the fortifications, and their best troops were drawn to the
points where the attacks were fiercest. The corps that forced the gate of
the Circus took the defenders of the gate of Charsias in the rear, and
overpowered all resistance in the quarter of Blachern.

Several gates were now thrown open, and the army entered Constantinople
at several points. The cry that the enemy had stormed the walls preceded
their march. Senators, priests, monks, and nuns, men, women, and
children, all rushed to seek safety in St. Sophia's. A prediction current
among the Greeks flattered them with the vain hope that an angel would
descend from heaven and destroy the Mahometans, in order to reveal the
extent of God's love for the orthodox. St. Sophia's, which for some time
they had forsaken as a spot profaned by the Emperor's attempt at a union
of the Christian world, was again revered as the sanctuary of orthodoxy,
and was crowded with the flower of the Greek nation, confident of
a miraculous interposition in favor of their national pride and
ecclesiastical prejudices.

The besiegers, when they first entered the city, fearing lest they might
encounter serious resistance in the narrow streets, put every soul they
encountered to the sword. But as soon as they were fully aware of the
small number of the garrison, and the impossibility of any further
opposition, they began to make prisoners. At length they reached St.
Sophia's, and, rushing into that magnificent temple, which could with
ease contain twenty thousand persons, they performed deeds of plunder and
violence not unlike the scenes which the crusaders had enacted in the
same spot in 1204. The men, women, and children who had sought safety
in the building were divided among the soldiers as slaves, without any
reference to their rank or respect for their ties of blood, and hurried
off to the camp, or placed under the guard of comrades, who formed a
joint alliance for the security of their plunder. The ecclesiastical
ornaments and church plate were poor indeed when compared with the
immense riches of the Byzantine cathedral in the time of the crusaders;
but whatever was movable was immediately divided among the soldiers with
such celerity that the mighty temple soon presented few traces of having
been a Christian church.

While one divisio