The new city was covered with corpses. In the old city there was a stubborn defense and great slaughter. Savage fighting went on outside the walls as well. The Mongols killed every man who tried to escape. Then began the sack of Vladimir. Wherever Mongols entered, they seized what they found; they stripped the churches, taking everything of value; wherever they met with resistance, they brought piles of wood and burned all before them. When the enemy sprang in over the walls every person in Vladimir who could carry a weapon rushed “to drink the cup of death” promptly, knowing well that resistance was fruitless. The young princes, who thought to break through the enemy, were cut to pieces. The voevoda, Pyotr Oslyadukovitch, pressed heavily on the Mongols with his “children,” that is, the whole population of Vladimir, who did not desert him. They fought fiercely on the walls, and at the walls outside the city, and on all streets within it. Blood flowed till midday, and not to win victory, for that, as they knew, was impossible, but to kill as many infidels as they could, and die fighting for the holy Orthodox faith and for their country. The Mongol multitude crushed all before it; numbers conquered everywhere. The new and the old city were taken by assault, and the capital was burning from side to side in one vast conflagration. Yuri’s princess, with her relatives, daughters-in-law and grandchildren, all the wives and daughters of boyars, many of the people and clergy with wives and children, and the bishop himself had taken refuge in the Vladimir cathedral. The smoke and flame of the city’s burning had reached the walls of this edifice, while round about were heard the shouts of the oncoming Mongols. Those inside the building sought safety in the galleries. Suffocating from smoke, they would have gone down again, but there was a dense crowd below pressing upward. The Mongols forced open the door of the cathedral and, rushing in, seized gold and silver, and all the church vessels. They cut and hewed down those persons who had not hidden, and those who were trying to get to the galleries. Then they brought sticks and brushwood, filled the place well with fuel, and set fire to it. Smoke rose in columns within the cathedral. The roar of the burning building and the cries of victory from the wild conquerors were heard in one dull groaning thunder, mingling with the wails, shrieks and prayers of the dying. The bishop blessed all at their parting, crying: “O Lord, stretch thy unseen hands to us, and receive the souls of thy people.” The massive walls of the cathedral did not fall; they withstood the fire and have remained in integrity to our time.