About the same time another corps of the Ottomans forced an entrance into the 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 division of the victorious army was engaged in plundering the southern side of the city, from the gate of St. Romanus to the Church of St. Sophia, another, turning to the port, made itself master of the warehouses that were filled with merchandise, and surrounded the Greek troops under the grand duke Notaras.  The Greeks were easily subdued, and Notaras surrendered himself a prisoner.  About midday the Turks were in possession of the whole city,