For three days successively did the sultan vainly summon the city to surrender, and for three days did he continue his furious assaults. On the fourth day the Moslems scaled the walls where they touch the side of the mountain; they rushed across the ramparts, sword in hand, into the city, and a hundred thousand Christians are computed to have been slain! About eight thousand soldiers, accompanied by a dense throng of women and children, fled from the scene of carnage to the citadel, and there defended themselves with the energy of despair. Bendocdar granted them their lives, and they surrendered. They were bound with cords, and the long string of mournful captives passed in review before the sultan, who caused the scribes and notaries to take down the names of each of them. After several days of pillage, all the booty was brought together in the plain of Antioch, and equally divided amongst the Moslems; the gold and silver were distributed by measure, and merchandize and property of all kinds, piled up in heaps, were drawn for by lot. The captive women and girls were distributed amongst the soldiery, and they were so numerous that each of the slaves of the conquerors was permitted to have a captive at his disposal. The sultan halted for several weeks in the plain, and permitted his soldiers to hold a large market, or fair, for the sale of their booty. This market was attended by Jews and pedlars from all parts of the East, who greedily bought up the rich property and costly valuables of the poor citizens of Antioch. These last might have borne with fortitude the loss of their worldly possessions, and the luxuries of this life, but when they were themselves put up to auction--when the mother saw her infant child handed over to the avaricious Jew for the paltry sum of five pieces of silver, and sold into irredeemable bondage, the bitter cries that resounded through the plain, touched even the hearts of the Moslems. “It was,” says the cadi Mohieddin, “a fearful and a heart-rending sight. Even the hard stones were softened with grief.” He tells us, that the captives were so numerous, that a fine hearty boy might be purchased for _twelve_ pieces of silver, and a little girl for _five_! When the work of pillage had been completed, when all the ornaments and decorations had been carried away from the churches, and the lead torn from the roofs, Antioch was fired in different places, amid the loud thrilling shouts of ALLAH ACBAR, “GOD _is_ VICTORIOUS!” The great churches of St. Paul and St. Peter burnt with terrific fury for many days, and the vast and venerable city was left without a habitation, and without an inhabitant!