As daylight approached, some of the enemy noticed that the Kerkoporta had been left open. A number of Janissaries (stated by Ducas to be fifty) hastened through and took possession of it. They were soon followed by others, who gained access to the Inner Enclosure first through the Kerkoporta and then through the neighbouring postern already mentioned in the transverse wall, the distance between the two posterns being about thirty yards. They surprised and attacked those who were occupied in resisting the attempts of Caraja’s main division to storm the breach or scale the Outer Wall. Every foot they captured allowed their numbers to be increased by comrades who could now climb the Outer Wall without opposition or who crowded in through the Kerkoporta and the postern in the transverse wall. The besieged, overwhelmed by numbers, and having their retreat into the city through the postern cut off, fled towards the Adrianople Gate, the postern of which was soon blocked by the crowd, the stronger trampling upon the weaker, so that presently all egress from the Enclosure was impossible. A slaughter took place and a few Turks entered the city, while others mounted the walls, pulled down the emperor’s flags and those of St. Mark and replaced them by the Turkish standards. The entry of the Turks by the Kerkoporta is only related by Ducas, but it is incidentally confirmed by the fact mentioned by Phrantzes and other writers, that while the struggle in the Lycus valley was going on, the Turkish standards were raised on the towers to the north of the Adrianople Gate before an entry had been effected elsewhere.[421] Critobulus’s statement that Caraja’s men crossed the foss, made a vigorous assault, and sought to pass within the broken-down (Outer) wall, but were repulsed, probably refers to the same incident.[422] Ducas is careful to state that the emperor and the Romans did not know what had happened, because they were at some distance and were too much occupied in defending themselves in a different place, which he explains to be where the wall had been broken down: that is, at the stockade in the Lycus valley. While they were thus fighting, he says, to resist the entry through the ruined wall, God willed that the enemy should enter the city by this other way. Leonard mentions that the arrangements for sending messengers from one part of the wall to another were defective. The emperor, however, was probably informed of the entry by the Kerkoporta and of the capture of at least part of the enclosure between that postern and the Adrianople Gate, and hastened thither before his army under Justiniani learned that the Turkish standards had been hoisted on the towers near the Adrianople Gate.[423] The few Turks who had entered the city, bent upon plunder, made for the rich monasteries of Choras and St. John in Petra and the Blachern palace; but it would appear that the brothers Bocchiardi were able to regain possession of the Enclosure and to prevent any