Nothing good, not for soldiers anyway! Naturally, the Ottoman soldiers were still fighting the people defending the city after they managed to break through the wall, so soldiers and anyone else joining in the defence were killed. Even Emperor Constantine was among the dead. Soldier and anyone else actively participating in the defence wouldn’t have been granted any mercy, nor would they have expected any.

For everyone else, they may have hoped for some chance of success. The Greeks had successfully defeated the previous siege in 1422, maybe they could win this time too? But in hindsight, writing after the siege was over, people remembered various signs and portents of the end - there was a lunar eclipse the week before on May 22, which the Greeks thought was a bad omen. There was also a strange light above the dome of Hagia Sophia. It may have been St. Elmo’s fire, maybe caused by all the smoke from the Ottoman cannons, or some other strange weather, but however we wish to explain it today, the Greeks thought it was the Holy Spirit or the “light of heaven” abandoning the city. During the siege the defenders also walked around the walls carrying an icon of the Virgin Mary, who was traditionally seen as a protector of the city. But they accidentally dropped the icon on the ground, which was also considered to be a very bad omen.

So the inhabitants of the city were pretty freaked out, and with good reason, because if they were fleeing from the Ottomans they were simply going to be killed indiscriminately. A lot of citizens fled to Hagia Sophia, since it was at the eastern end of the city near the Bosporus and the Ottomans were breaking through the wall in the west, so that put some distance between them. They also clung to one last prophecy, that if any invaders managed to capture they city, they wouldn’t be able to pass the Column of Constantine (which is a few hundred meters in front of Hagia Sophia). But of course that turned out not to be true.

The Ottoman soldiers began pillaging the city immediately and a lot of them headed directly to Hagia Sophia, the biggest and most obvious treasure site. The church was defended from the inside by those who were hiding there, and the Ottoman soldiers weren’t able to take the entire church right away, but they did attack and kill anyone they found wherever they were able to enter. It was probably an exhausting and terrifying few hours for the people inside the church, until Mehmed himself arrived later in the day.

Mehmed stopped the slaughter and the pillaging. The inhabitants of the city who were still alive were taken prisoner and/or enslaved. Some managed to hide out for a few days in the cisterns under Hagia Sophia and elsewhere, but they found and imprisoned/enslaved as well. Some did escape, if they were able to make it onto boats and escape by sea.

Some of the more notable prisoners were also executed over the next few days, if Mehmed thought it was too dangerous to keep them alive. For example the wealthy nobleman Lukas Notaras was initially kept under house arrest but then Mehmed decided to execute him along with one of his sons and his son-in-law, probably because he could have been a focal point for Greek resistance.

So unless you were one of the few people who escaped by boat, you are now either dead or enslaved.

Sources:

Jonathan Harris, The End of Byzantium (Yale University Press, 2012)

Marios Philippides and Walter K. Hanak, The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: Historiography, Topography, and Military Studies (Ashgate, 2011)

Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cambridge University Press, 1965)