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232 his men that Gibbon calls the funeral oration of the Roman Empire, and rode out to die. He stood, surrounded by his guard, near the Gate of St. Romanos, defending while he lived the city he could no longer save. Fighting valiantly with his back to the wall, he fell in the tumult of the assault, as the last heir of the Roman name should fall, fighting for Christ and Rome and adorning the Imperial purple with the glory of his heroic blood. Constantine Cæsar Augustus Palaiologos was the 80th Roman Emperor since Constantine the Great, the 112th since Cæsar Octavian. With him the old Empire died.

The barbarians burst into the city, carrying death and havoc, and the day that had begun with the chant of that last sad liturgy ended with the shrieks of a hideous massacre. Then Mohammed the Conqueror rode his white horse up the Hippodrome, and gradually the news spread throughout the distant lands of the Franks that at last the impossible had happened, that Constantinople had fallen; facta est quasi vidua domina gentium.