As the day went on it became known that some of the most notable of the defenders had escaped. Tedardi the Florentine, whose record of the siege is one of the most valuable we possess, when at last he saw that the fight was hopeless, fled to the harbour and with many others swam out to the Venetian ships some of which put out to sea and escaped. Giustiniani's wound had proved mortal. Cardinal Isidore, in disguise, was taken captive, but a Genoese of Galata bought his freedom. Many escaped to Galata. Some paid large ransoms: some were slaughtered, whether Latins or Greeks, in spite of the money they gave. Most of the Greeks were made captive. The duke Notaras and his family were at first spared, but when Mohammed demanded that the duke's son, a boy of fourteen, should be sent to him in the palace, he refused, and he and all his sons were put to death. The usual fate of the Greek nobles however was that the fathers were slain, the boys taken to the barracks of the Janissaries, and the women and girls to the harems of the sultan and his chief favourites. Some forty thousand Greeks perished during the siege, fifty thousand it is supposed became captives, ten thousand, it is possible, some few rich, most the very poor, retained their freedom if not their homes.[33] The body of Constantine, recognised by the purple buskins, was found in a heap of dead. His head was cut off and borne to the Sultan. It was exposed on a column in front of the palace. The body was buried with respect, and over its grave, not far from where the mosque of Suleiman now stands, a lamp has always been kept burning, but the Ottoman government has sternly repressed the attempt of the faithful Greeks to turn it into a place of pilgrimage and prayer. So ended the Roman empire of the East. Its fall was an undying disgrace to Christendom, which stood by and would not help. But it fell chiefly through its own weakness. Military power and religion had been the strength of the Empire; corruption had eaten away the first, and the luxury and vice of the imperial court had shown that the Christian faith had failed to hold its own. In the hour of their despair the Emperors turned again to Christ, but it was too late to save the Empire which their defiance of His laws had brought to desolation. The Church of Constantinople must pass through the fires of persecution, and recover in its isolation, if it might be, the strength of the first days. When Mohammed passed from the great church, he rode along the Hippodrome, and when he came to the serpent column from Delphi he struck off one of the three heads. He had done, he might have said, with the old world. It was the day of the new peoples: a day which began with the destruction of the old. As he walked through the deserted halls of the great palace he repeated the words of Firdusi: Now the spider draws the curtain in the Cæsar's palace hall, And the owl is made the sentinel on Afrasiab's tower of watch. FOOTNOTES: