The leaders of divisions remained, after the departure of the larger assembly, in order to receive their final orders. Hamoud, with his fleet, was to keep near the seaward walls and the archers and fusiliers[388] should be so ready to shoot, that no man dare show his head at the battlements. Zagan was to cross the bridge, and with the ships in the harbour to attack the walls on the Golden Horn. Caraja was to cross the foss--probably between Tekfour Serai and the Adrianople Gate, where was one of the three roads that Mahomet had opened into the city--and to try to capture the wall. Isaac and Mahmoud, at the head of the Asiatic division, were charged to attempt the walls near the Third Military Gate. Halil and Saraja, who were in command of the troops encamped around the sultan, opposite the third and most important breach--that, namely, at the Romanus Gate, defended by Justiniani--were to follow the lead which the sultan would himself give them. Having thus made his final dispositions, Mahomet dismissed his inner council, and each leader went away to his own tent to sleep and await the signal for attack. The speech to his leaders, which I have summarised in the preceding paragraphs from the report given by Critobulus,[389] is also recorded by Phrantzes, though at much less length. He describes it as having been made at sunset of the 28th,[390] and makes the sultan remind his leaders, with the usual voluptuous details, of the glories of paradise promised to the true believer who dies in battle.[391] [Sidenote: Preparations within the city.] Meanwhile, within the city preparation of a different kind had been made. After the meeting of the council of Turkish nobles, the besieged, who seem always to have been well informed of what went on in the enemy’s camp, learned at once that it had been decided to make a general assault forthwith. All day long during the last day of agony the alarm bell was ringing to call men, women, and children to their posts. Each man had his duty allotted to him for the morrow, while even women and children were employed to carry up stones to the walls to be hurled down upon the Turks.[392] The bailey of the Venetian colony issued a final appeal, calling upon all his people to aid in the defence, and urging them to fight and be ready to die for the love of God, the defence of the country, and ‘per honor de tuta la Christianitade.’ All honest men, says the Venetian diarist, obeyed the bailey’s command, and the Venetians, besides aiding in the defence of the walls, took charge of the ships in the harbour and were guardians of the boom. Barbaro and his fellow citizens occupied the day in making mantles for the protection of the soldiers upon the walls.