In the assault upon Nicæa the Christians numbered upward of a quarter of a million men. Against them Kilidge-Arslan had at least one hundred thousand and the advantage of the city fortifications. The place was encircled with a double line of walls, surmounted by three hundred and seventy towers, and guarded from approach by a deep canal or moat. On the east high mountains obstructed the way; on the west and south the Lake of Ascanius prevented attack, while it gave the besieged an outlet to the sea, through which they could replenish their provisions and ranks in spite of their foes. The Christians were divided into nineteen different camps, representing as many different nations. Their habit of fighting, not on extensive battle lines, but in groups about the standards of their special leaders, gave plausibility to the declaration of Kilidge-Arslan, as he viewed the invaders from his mountain outlook, that “disorder reigned in their army” and that their very numbers insured their defeat. With tremendous vigor, he hurled his forces in two divisions upon the camps of Godfrey and Raymond. The Christians were dislodged from their defences as bowlders from their places by a spring freshet. It seemed that they must be swept away in the impetuous torrent, but quickly the tide of battle turned, and the Turks were driven back to their mountain fortresses. Again they descended, but only to cover the field with their dead, as the exhausted freshet leaves upon the ground it has inundated the débris it brought down from the hills, while the rocks it assailed still lie near the position where they sustained the assault. The brutality that distempered the age was illustrated by the Christian victors, who severed many heads from the bodies of the slain and slung them as trophies from their saddle-bows. With ghoulish pride, they hurled a thousand of them from their catapults into the city. One of these “soldiers of the cross,” Anselme of Ribemont, wrote to the Archbishop of Rheims: “Our men, returning in victory and bearing many heads fixed upon pikes, furnished a joyful spectacle for the people of God.”