“Our Lord raised a wind called Boreas ... and two ships which were lashed together, the one named the _Pilgrim_ and the other the _Paradise_, approached a tower on either side, just as God and the wind brought them, so that the ladder of the _Pilgrim_ was fixed to the tower; and straightway a Venetian and a French knight ... scaled the tower, and others followed them, and those in the lower were discomforted and fled.”[139] From the moment the walls were carried, the battle turned into a massacre. The ramparts were scaled in all directions, the gates were burst open with battering rams, the allies poured into the streets, and one of the most awful sacks of the Middle Ages began. Nothing was so sacred as to escape from pillage. The tombs of the emperors were violated, and the body of Justinian stripped. The altar of the Virgin, the glory of Saint Sophia, was broken in pieces, and the veil of the sanctuary torn to rags. The crusaders played dice on the tables which represented the apostles, and drank themselves drunk in the holy chalices. Horses and mules were driven into the sanctuary, and when they fell under their burdens, the blood from their wounds stained the floor of the cathedral. At last a young prostitute mounted the patriarch’s chair, intoned a lewd chant, and danced before the pilgrims. Thus fell Constantinople, by the arms of the soldiers of Christ, on the twelfth day of April, in the year one thousand two hundred and four. Since the sack of Rome by Alaric no such prize had ever fallen to a victor, and the crusaders were drunk with their success. Ville-Hardouin estimated that the share of the Franks, after deducting some fifty thousand marks which the Venetians collected from them, came to four hundred thousand marks of silver, not to speak of masses of plunder of which no account was taken. The gain was so great there seemed no end to the gold and silver, the precious stones, the silks, the ermines, and whatever was costly in the world. “And Geoffrey de Ville-Hardouin testifies of his own knowledge, that since the beginning of time, there was never so much taken in one town. Every one took what he wanted, and there was enough. Thus were the host of the pilgrims and of the Venetians quartered, and there was great joy and honour for the victory which God had given them, since those who had been poor were rich and happy.”[140]