Against these extemporized defences assault after assault dashed in all its strength and fury, only to be hurled back and broken. Meanwhile, more and more of the Inner and Outer Walls fell under the Turkish fire, and the Sultan decided to make a general attack at daybreak on the 29th of May. The onset upon the Mesoteichion, directed by the Sultan in person, was, however, repeatedly repelled, and the day threatened to go against the assailants, when a Turkish missile struck Giustiniani and forced him to leave the field. His soldiers refused to continue the struggle, abandoned their post, and disheartened their Greek comrades. The Sultan, perceiving the change in the situation, roused his janissaries to make a supreme effort. They swept forward, carried the barricade, filled the trench behind it with corpses of the defenders, and passing over, poured into the doomed city through every available opening. Some made their way through the breach in the great wall, others entered by the postern which Giustiniani had opened,[378] while others cut a path through the heap of dead bodies which blocked the Gate of Charisius. The heroic emperor refused to survive his empire, and found death near the Gate of St. Romanus.[379] And through that gate, about midday, the Sultan entered, the master of the city of Constantine. It was the close of an epoch. The next Theodosian gate stands between the last tower in the Outer Wall to the north of the Gate of Charisius and the old Byzantine Palace now called Tekfour Serai. In its present condition the entrance pierces only the Outer Wall; for the Inner Wall terminates abruptly a little to the south of the palace, having been broken away, probably when that edifice was erected. By way of compensation the Outer Wall was then raised higher and built thicker, and flanked by a large tower. According to its place in the order of the gates, this entrance should be the Sixth Military Gate; and the smallness of its dimensions is in keeping with this view. But as it led to a Circus built of timber beside the Church of St. Mamas without the walls, it was styled Porta Xylokerkou (Ξυλοκέρκου),[380] Gate of the Wooden Circus, or more briefly, Kerko Porta (Κερκόπορτα),[381] the Gate of the Circus. In support of this identification there is first the fact that the Gate of the Xylokerkus, like the gate before us, was an entrance in the Walls of Theodosius, for it bore an inscription, which has unfortunately disappeared, in honour of that emperor and the Prefect Constantine, similar to the legend on the Porta Rhegiou.[382] In the next place, the Gate of the Xylokerkus, like the entrance before us, was in the vicinity of the Gate of Charisius, and below a palace[383] (Tekfour Serai). [Illustration: The (So-Called) Kerko Porta.]