They demonstrated their confidence by treating those they killed conspicuously badly. One knight from Robert of Normandy’s contingent found himself isolated in an attack and was picked off by the town’s defenders. After he had been killed, a device with sharp, iron claws attached to a chain was lowered over the walls, which clasped the corpse and dragged it back up over the battlements. The cadaver was then hung from a noose and suspended naked over the side of the walls for all to see. The message was clear: it was a waste of men, time and energy trying to take Nicaea.13
The Crusaders matched like with like. A detachment of Turks sent to relieve the garrison at Nicaea was defeated and its men all decapitated, their severed heads fixed to the end of spears that the westerners paraded to the town’s inhabitants. As Anna Komnene noted, this was done ‘so that the barbarians would recognise from a distance what had happened and being frightened by this defeat at their first encounter would not be so eager for battle in the future’.14
The knights stepped up pressure on the town. Siege warfare was an area where western European technology had evolved rapidly in the eleventh century. The Normans of southern Italy in particular had mastered the art of attacking heavily fortified towns and storming them, rather than slowly strangling them into submission. Their rapid conquests of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily in the 1050s and 1060s owed much to the innovation that they brought to siege craft and to the inventiveness they showed when dealing with well-defended fortresses. Thus the construction of siege engines, designed to test Nicaea’s defences, had started as soon as the first knights approached the city.
Attention was focused on one section of the walls in particular, which was protected by the Gonatas tower. The tower had suffered damage during a rebellion a century earlier and was already leaning. The expedition’s leaders immediately recognised it as the weakest point in the town’s defences.15 Raymond of Toulouse oversaw the design of a special siege engine to use against the tower, a circular contraption covered with thick leather hides to protect those working within it. After it was pushed against the wall, sappers with iron tools worked at its foot, digging out stones from the base of the tower and replacing them with wooden beams which were then set on fire. Although the Gonatas tower did not immediately collapse, the Crusaders’ work produced a visible deterioration in the wall. It also provoked panic within Nicaea.16
Alexios sought to take advantage of the growing anxiety among the Turks. The emperor had taken up an advanced position at Pelekanos, from which he could monitor and direct proceedings. As the first assaults on Nicaea began, Manuel Boutoumites secretly entered the town to try to negotiate a settlement, reminding its inhabitants of the generosity the emperor had shown to Turks in the past and warning of the consequences should the Crusaders breach the town’s defences. Manuel produced written guarantees of how they would be treated if the city was surrendered immediately.17
The Turks rejected this overture, confident of the strength of Nicaea’s defences. In addition, they were also receiving reports that an enormous army was on its way to relieve the town. Indeed, in the early stages of the siege, it was the Crusaders who had reason to be anxious. Spies found in the westerners’ camp, pretending to be Christian pilgrims, revealed under torture that the garrison in Nicaea was communicating freely with the outside world and that a large Turkish force was heading for the town.18 The sight of supplies being brought into the town across the Ascanian Lake to the west underlined the need to take decisive action, rather than hope a long siege would bring about surrender.
Controlling operations carefully, Alexios gave the order for ships to be transported overland from the Gulf of Nikomedia to blockade the lake, while ordering the assault on the town to be stepped up. Byzantine archers were deployed close to the walls and ordered to provide such heavy covering fire that the Turks were unable to raise their heads over the battlements. Imperial forces, accompanied by trumpets and drums, launched into war cries, giving the impression that a heavy attack was under way. The sight of a wave of imperial military standards advancing in the distance suggested the imminent arrival of yet more men to attack the town.19
Alexios’ plan was to present a picture of overwhelming military superiority and to seek the surrender of Nicaea on his terms. Once again, Manuel Boutoumites was secretly dispatched into the town, taking with him a chrysobull, a document signed by the emperor in gold letters, setting out terms. These included an amnesty, as well as liberal gifts of money, ‘extended to all the barbarians in Nicaea without exception’.20 This time the emperor’s initiative and cunning convinced the Turks to surrender.
This was a major coup for Alexios – and the vindication of his ambitious policy of seeking help from the west. Nevertheless, the situation had to be handled delicately. Fearing that the western knights would not be satisfied by a brokered truce, the emperor gave the order to stage an ‘attack’ on the walls. The aim was to give the impression that it was the Byzantines who breached the defences and successfully took the town, rather than the Crusaders.
On 19 June 1097, while the western army, still unaware of the deal that had been struck, continued its assaults on the town’s fortifications, Byzantine soldiers scaled the walls on the lake side of Nicaea, climbed on to the battlements, and set up the imperial standards above the town. To the sounds of trumpets and horns, the fall of Nicaea and its capture by the forces of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos was announced from the walls of the city.21
The fall of Nicaea sent shock waves through the Muslim world. As one contemporary writing in Damascus described it: ‘There began to arrive a succession of reports that the armies of the Franks had appeared from the direction of the sea of Constantinople with forces not to be reckoned for multitude ... as reports grew and spread from mouth to mouth far and wide, the people grew anxious and disturbed in mind.’22 The use of Turkish tombstones to rebuild an area of Nicaea’s walls that had suffered damage during the siege cannot have helped calm nerves about what the implications of the massive western expedition might be elsewhere in Asia Minor.23
The town’s capture caused a stir closer to home as well. For the Crusaders, it was proof that the expedition to Jerusalem enjoyed divine blessing. As it became clear that the town had fallen, cries of ‘Glory to Thee, O God!’ went up inside and outside the walls, shouted in both Latin and in Greek.24 Nicaea’s capture revealed that the knights were doing the work of the Lord; it was a success they would refer back to when the odds ran sharply against them at later stages in the expedition. There was no such thing as an impregnable target for a force marching under God’s protection.
For Alexios, the recovery of Nicaea had been one of his primary goals. Yet the ambition, speed and determination shown by the western knights had been remarkable. The town’s capture in June 1097 was therefore a comprehensive vindication of the emperor’s decision to call for military assistance from the west. For Alexios this was an unmitigated triumph.
The fact that Nicaea passed into Byzantine hands with little bloodshed also presented future opportunities for the emperor: he would be able to present himself as friend and protector of the Turks who could save them from slaughter at the hands of the knights. This intention was reinforced by the emperor’s treatment of the Turkish inhabitants of Nicaea: having been offered imperial service and generous gifts, all were allowed to go on their way unharmed.25 The Crusaders were also well rewarded: gold, silver and precious robes were given to the expedition’s leaders, while the lower ranks received copper coins to celebrate the fall of the city.26