easily supervise the carrying out of the imperial edict which ordered
the people beyond Nicaea to bring food from everywhere to his army.
Duke Godfrey had gone ahead, together with Tancred, to Nicomedia, a
city founded by Nicomedes, who, according to a poem, won a battle
against Caesar, but did not triumph.[122] Each of them remained
there with his troops for three days. The duke, considering that the
roads were filled with obstacles, and that an army as large as theirs
could not make its way along them, since the road that Peter the
Hermit's men had used could not accommodate so many men, sent three
thousand men ahead of him, with axes and hoes to widen the roads and
make them passable as far as Nicea. The road was incredibly
difficult, filled with sharp stones, and moving over steep mountains.
Those who were in the lead widened the road by cutting up the rocks,
and they placed crosses of iron and wood on tall stakes, so that our
men, when they saw these signs aloft, would not wander from the road.
Finally they came to Nicea, the central city of Armenia, and the
chief city of Bythinia, famous for the synod of 318 fathers, but even
more famous for the declaration of Omousion, and the condemnation of
Arius. The next day was the sixth of May, and they pitched their
camps in the area around the city, on the third day after they had
left Nicomedia. Before the army of Bohemund arrived, they say that
there was such shortage of bread that one loaf of bread cost twenty
or thirty pennies. But when Bohemund appeared, he brought great
quantity of food by land and by sea, and suddenly plentiful supply of
everything necessary flowed.

On the day of the Ascension of Our Lord, they began to attack the
city from all sides, to draw up machines, to erect ladders, prepare
fire-bombs, and to fire at the ramparts of the walls and towers with
their crossbows.[123] The siege of the city was undertaken with such