He effected a breach in the walls and, as the greater part of the foot of the tower had been cut away, it began to settle down and look as if it had fallen on to its knees, and from this circumstance it obtained its name. Such then is the history of this tower Gonates. When Isangeles had built this tower I have mentioned, very scientifically (it was called a ‘tortoise’ by experienced mechanics), he introduced armed men inside it to batter the walls and others who knew how to loosen the tower at its foundations with iron instruments.
His idea was that while the one set fought with the defenders on the walls, the other set below would have leisure to undermine the tower. These men substituted logs for the stones they dug out, and, when they had worked their way through to the inner side of the wall and saw the light coming through from it, they set fire to the logs. These were burnt to ashes and caused Gonates to lean forward still more so that it did not lose its name. The remaining part of the walls they encompassed with battering-rams and ‘tortoises’ ; the deep trench outside the walls they filled with loose earth in no time, until it was brought up to the level of the plains on either side; and they prosecuted the siege with all their might.
The Emperor had crossed the straits
II The Emperor, who had repeatedly and accurately thought out the matter, realized that it would be impossible for the Latins to take Nicaea, even if they had forces without number, so in the meanwhile he had various sorts of siege-engines built, and most of them not according to the usual designs of the mechanics but on other lines he had thought out himself – a thing which amazed people -and these he sent to the Counts. As already stated, the Emperor had crossed the straits with the soldiers he had at hand, and was staying not far from Pelecanus near Mesampela, where a chapel had been built in former years to the memory of the great martyr George.
The Emperor would really have liked to march with the Latins against the impious Turks, but when he pondered over this idea and recognized that no comparison could be made between the countless hosts of the Frankish army and his own Roman army, and as from long experience he knew the Latins’ fickleness, he desisted from the enterprise. Not only for this reason, but also because he realized the unstable and faithless nature of these men who were easily swayed in opposite directions like the Euripus, and were often ready because of their covetousness to sell their wives and children for a penny-piece; for these reasons the Emperor held back from the enterprise at that time. He felt that though he could not join the Franks, he ought to give them as much help as if he were with them.
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