Kilidge-Arslan, despairing to save Nice, retired with the wreck of his army, and hastened to gather together in the provinces new forces, with which to oppose the Christians. The Crusaders, having no longer to dread the neighbourhood of an enemy’s army, pushed on the siege with vigour. Sometimes they made approaches by galleries covered by a double roof of boards and hurdles; sometimes they dragged towards the walls towers mounted on a number of wheels, constructed with several stages, and loaded with arms and soldiers. Here the rams beat against the walls with redoubled shocks; at a short distance balistas vomited, without ceasing, beams of wood and showers of arrows; and catapultas cast into the air combustible matters and enormous stones, which fell with a crash into the city. The Christians employed in this siege all the machines[76] known to the Romans. The Greeks were better acquainted with the construction of them than the Latins, and directed their operations. It is likewise probable that the Greeks who were in Nice, and subject to the power of the Mussulmans, instructed the latter in the means of defending the place. The Christians allowed the besieged no respite, and they defended themselves with obstinate fury. All the inhabitants of Nice had taken arms. Their ramparts were covered with formidable machines, which hurled destruction among the assailants. Fiery darts, beams, enormous pieces of stone, launched from the height of the walls, destroyed, day after day, the labours of the Crusaders. When the Christians had made a breach in the ramparts, another wall arose from the bosom of the ruins, and presented a new barrier to the besiegers. As the Crusaders attacked without order or precaution, their imprudence and their rashness were often very fatal to them. Some were crushed beneath the fragments of their own machines; others fell pierced with poisoned darts; sometimes, even, says an historian, the besiegers sported with their efforts, catching them with _iron hands_,[77] or hooks, which, falling upon them, seized them, and lifted them alive into the city. After having stripped them, the Turks hung them upon their ramparts, and then launched them, by means of their machines, stark naked into the camp of the Christians.