Stockade captured.
The success of the Janissaries in overcoming the first serious line of defence[436] was followed up instantly by the other Turkish troops. The news of the entry across the stockade seems to have spread like wildfire, and though it is difficult to believe the statement of Barbaro that the Enclosure was filled from one end of the walls to the other with seventy thousand of the hostile army, it is possible that the vigour which follows success enabled the Janissaries and other portions of the army to obtain entry at once into the Enclosure at various other places. Some of the defenders fled in panic and made for the small gate through which Justiniani had retired, the only one behind them which was open. They rushed on in such haste as to trample each other down.
At this moment the emperor, who had been called off to the northern end of the valley to learn the meaning of the display of the Turkish flags and to resist the inrush of the invaders who had entered by the Kerkoporta, returned. Spurring his horse, he galloped down the Enclosure to the stockade where the Turks were crowding in,[437] and tried to rally the remainder of the defenders. Calling upon his men to follow him, he threw off his imperial insignia, drew his sword, sprang into the thick of the fight, and attempted to Death of Constantine. drive the invaders back.[438] With Don Francisco of Toledo on his right, Theophilus Palaeologus and John Dalmata on his left, his own sword broken, he endeavoured to check the advancing crowd. Theophilus shouted that he would rather die than live. The four checked for a moment the inrush of the Turks, slew some of them, and cut their way to the wall where the Turks were pouring in. But they were hopelessly outnumbered. The emperor was lost sight of amid the crowd. He and his companions fell fighting, and the enemy continued to pour through the breaches.[439]
Once the enemy had obtained entrance into the Enclosure the defenders were in a trap. The only exit into the city open to them was by the small gate through which Justiniani had passed. The Military Gate of St. Romanus, the Gate of the Assault, remained locked. A heap of slain, Genoese and Greeks,[440] near it made escape impossible. The defeat of City captured May 29. the survivors of the gallant band which Justiniani had led was forthwith completed by a body of the Janissaries who entered the Enclosure across the broken stockade, formed themselves in regular order, and swept everything before them.[441] Their overwhelming numbers soon enabled them to kill all opponents who had not escaped into the city. The great wall being partly broken down and without defenders, and the Gate of St. Romanus being forced or opened, access to the city was easy. A band made their way to the Adrianople Gate, which they opened from the inside, and the city was from that moment in the power of the enemy.[442]
As the sun rose Mahomet saw that his great effort had succeeded. Where Arabs, with even greater numbers than he commanded, in the first flush of the victorious career of Islam, with the presence of the great Eyoub, the companion of the Prophet, to encourage them and to speak of the wondrous rewards which Paradise had in store for the believers who should enter New Rome or die in the attempt; where Murad thirty years before; and where twenty other besieging armies had been unable to capture the world’s capital, he had succeeded. Seated on horseback beneath his great standard and insignia, he watched with the legitimate pride of a conqueror the entry of his hordes into the city.[443] The morning sun shed its rays upon him and his standard as his soldiers thronged through the Gate of the Assault or hastened towards that of Adrianople. The entry was not long after sunrise and probably between five and six o’clock.[444]
Capture of city due to two accidents.
If credit is to be given to the story of the entry of the Turks at the Kerkoporta as related by Ducas, then it may be said that the capture of the city was due to two accidents: the leaving open of that gate and the wound of Justiniani. It is beyond doubt that the immediate cause of the capture was the withdrawal of John Justiniani, followed by the flight of a considerable number of his men.
In the words of Cambini, a contemporary of the siege, but writing at a sufficiently remote period to look calmly upon the events he narrates, Justiniani had so conducted himself that, until he was wounded, every one looked to him for the salvation of the city, and upon his quitting the battlefield the courage of those whom he led failed them.
Whatever hypothesis as to the character of his wound be accepted, whether when urged by the emperor he could have remained or not, his departure was an irretrievable misfortune. Few as were the defenders when compared with the great host attacking, they had never altogether lost hope. The Podestà of Galata, writing within a month of the capture of the city, declares that he and the Genoese longed for the general attack, because victory for the Christians appeared certain.[445] On the other hand, there is reason to believe that the besiegers were far from confident of being able to capture it. There was, as we have seen, a strong peace party in Mahomet’s camp headed by Halil Pasha. The reports were well founded of a fleet in the Archipelago on its way to the city. Thirty ships sent by the pope had arrived at Chios and were awaiting favourable winds at the time they heard of the success of Mahomet.[446]