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336 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE Moreover, says Barbara, he preferred that these Christians should be killed rather than his Mussulmans. The Bashi- bazouks advanced bearing all the scaling-ladders within shooting distance of the walls and probably extended them- selves from Tekfour Serai to the stockade and beyond to Top Capou. They began the fight with a general discharge of arrows, of stones from slings, and iron and leaden balls. Then, with a wild disorderly dash, they rushed across the ditch and endeavoured to capture the Outer Wall and especially the stockade. They were armed in ways as numerous and varied as the races and creeds to which they belonged : some with bows, others with slings, with arquebuses or with muskets, 1 but most of them simply with scimitars and shields. Hundreds of ladders were placed against the walls and the bravest hastened to climb them. Others, mounted on the shoulders of their comrades, en- deavoured to reach the summit or to strike at the defenders. In the darkness of this night attack, made by fifty thousand men, there was soon wild confusion everywhere, but especially in the valley to which for the present the action in my story is confined. At every point the invaders met with a brave resistance. While among the attacking party there were many who had no heart for the fight, 2 there were others who were not deficient in courage, but they had to meet the best soldiers in the emperor's army, a band of two thousand Greeks and Italians all under the leadership of Justiniani, ' the incomparable captain, the mighty man and genuine soldier.' The defenders threw the ladders down, discharged their arrows, fired their muskets and culverins, 3 and hurled down a prodigious quantity of stones. The assailants were so numerous and so crowded together that the missiles of the besieged told heavily against them. The bravest who succeeded in climbing within striking distance were struck 1 Crit.liv. 2 Michael Constantinovich, a Servian who was with a contingent of his countrymen in the Turkish army, says, ' As far as our help went, the Turks would never have taken the city ' (quoted by Mijatovieh, p. 234). 3 Tov(f>aKas, Crit. li.