The Normans: From Raiders To Kings Part 3

The most fateful visitors, however, arrived in 1016. An una.s.suming group of forty Norman knights on their way back from the Holy Land stopped at the cave to pay their respects. Just after they had entered, a small man dressed in the Greek style of flowing robes approached them and begged for help. He was a Lombard by the name of Melus who had spent his life in the cause of Lombard freedom but had been driven into exile by the Byzantines. All he needed, he claimed, was a few st.u.r.dy mercenaries to force the cowardly Byzantines back and liberate his people. To his delight, the Normans at once agreed to help. They couldn't come to his a.s.sistance immediately of course they had come as pilgrims and it was hardly appropriate to march off to war but they promised to return within a year.

It wasn't the appeal to n.o.bility or brotherhood that inspired the Normans. They had a low opinion of southerners in general and Lombards in particular. A short time before, they had witnessed a Saracen attack on Salerno and been astounded by the cowardice of the locals. As far as they were concerned the Italians were effeminate and soft, and firmly deserved their subservient status. Melus, however, knew his audience well enough to have added the inducements of money and land to his request, and it was this that fired their imaginations. Gazing at the sun-drenched Apulian countryside stretching out before them, they must have relished the chance to gain a foothold in this beautiful land.

The alliance with the Lombards was short lived. Even with Norman arms stiffening their forces, they were crushed by Byzantine forces in the first real clash. The battle was enough to prove the worth of Norman swords to the Byzantines, however, and they immediately hired them to quash the troublesome insurgents. Abandoning the cause of Lombard freedom as easily as they had picked it up, the Normans cheerfully set to work enforcing the imperial will.

The oldest Hauteville son, William, reached Italy around 1035, just as the last Lombard resistance was being mopped up. Within months of his arrival, the Byzantine emperor decided to conquer Sicily and put out a great call for mercenaries. William, along with three hundred of his fellow knights enlisted immediately.

Under the brilliant Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium, the empire had turned the tide against the caliphate and was engaged in a great push to clear the eastern Mediterranean of Muslim pirates. The Macedonian line had ended with the death of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer in 1025, but although the emperors who followed him were weak, the army Basil had created was still formidable and won a string of victories in Syria and along the Anatolian and North African coast. Now the imperial forces turned their attention to Sicily hoping to clear out the main pirate nest and win a rich land of grain, cotton, sugar, and fruit groves for the empire. The timing looked especially good. Civil war had erupted in Sicily, the aristocracy was divided, and central authority was collapsing. Additionally, a large part of the population was still Christian, and could be counted on to act as a fifth column.

To command the invasion, the emperor chose George Maniaces, the rising star of the Byzantine world. Charismatic, headstrong, and larger than life in nearly every respect, Maniaces had a reputation as imposing as his physique. Even the usually unflappable members of the imperial court seemed stunned in his presence. After reporting that the general was ten feet tall and had a roar that could frighten whole armies, the imperial historian Michael Psellus concluded by saying that "those who saw him for the first time discovered that every description was an understatement".

His rise was as meteoric as it was unexpected. A decade before he had been the governor of Teluch, an obscure city in Asia Minor, and if not for an unfortunate imperial humiliation, would probably have remained so indefinitely. The hapless emperor, Roma.n.u.s Argyrus, in an attempt to bolster his military reputation, marched to war against the caliphate, but as he was traveling through a pa.s.s just north of Teluch some Saracen cavalry ambushed him. Thanks to some quick thinking and a change of clothes the emperor managed to escape, but his army scattered in a panic. Loaded down with loot from the imperial baggage, the Saracens rode to Teluch and gleefully informed Maniaces of the debacle, adding for good measure that the emperor was dead and his army destroyed. Since night was falling they sportingly gave him until the next morning to surrender, promising dreadful retribution if he refused.

Maniaces gave every sign of panic, a.s.suring the Saracens that at first light he would appear in their camp with every bit of treasure the city possessed. As a gesture of his good intentions, he sent along a large amount of food and drink for the victors to enjoy. The wine in particular had the intended effect as the Saracens were parched and in the mood to celebrate. Before long they were hopelessly drunk and Maniaces' soldiers slipped into their camp and butchered every last man. When the b.l.o.o.d.y work was done, the governor ordered the ears and nose cut off of each corpse, gathering the grisly trophies in a sack. The next morning he set out on horseback to find his fleeing sovereign, and after reporting his triumph he dumped out the contents of the bag. The delighted emperor promoted him on the spot.

Even brash young knights like William de Hauteville must have found the army Maniaces gathered in Sicily impressive. In addition to the usual mercenary forces of Italian adventurers and grumbling Lombards who had been pressed into service, the general had brought with him a company of fierce Bulgarians and some Varangians under the command of the already semi-legendary Norse hero Harald Hardrada.

At first the great army carried all before it. Messina was the first town to fall, followed by Troina and Rametta. Within the next two years a dozen major fortresses in the east were taken with only Syracuse managing to hold out. There, a spirited defense by the local emir frustrated every attempt to force the city walls, and each unsuccessful effort weakened the morale of the besieging army. After one particularly dismal episode the gates opened and the emir suddenly galloped out at the head of his forces. The sortie caught the Byzantines by surprise and they fell back in a panic. The retreat threatened to turn into a rout until William, seeing the danger from another section of the walls, leapt into action. Making a sudden charge straight for the emir, he struck him with all the force he could muster. The blow nearly split the man in half and sent him crashing lifeless from his saddle. The demoralized Saracens fell back to the city, but they had little more fight left in them, and asked for terms.

William's sword stroke had delivered Syracuse to the Byzantines, but more importantly it had provided the foundation of the Hauteville reputation. From that day on he was known as William Bras de fer, 'Iron-arm', and became the undisputed leader of the Normans in the south. When he returned to the Italian peninsula it would be as the most renowned figure of his day, and he would arrive with the first stirrings of a larger Norman destiny. The days of simple mercenaries were pa.s.sing. From now on the Normans would serve themselves.

This dawning consciousness of their worth came at a bad time for the Byzantines, for despite the victories, the campaign was starting to fall apart. The imperial court, as always suspicious of too successful a general, had started to slow the shipment of supplies. Pay for the mercenaries began to lapse and disputes arose over the division of the spoils. Things came to a head when the Normans sent a Lombard emissary to formally lodge a complaint with Maniaces. Characteristically, the hotheaded general saw this as a personal affront and had the man whipped and paraded through the camp. The frustrated Normans left the expedition, bitterly protesting their treatment.

Despite the way it had ended, William's Sicilian expedition had been a great success. He had learned a valuable lesson. Sicily was rich and disunited, and there were plenty of Christian allies to aid any invasion. That bit of information was filed away for a more opportune moment. When the time was right, the Hautevilles would make good use of it.

In the meantime, William began to show his strength. Rekindling his old Lombard sympathies he encouraged a rebellion and invaded Apulia, the richest part of Byzantine Italy, with a mixed Lombard and Norman army. The town of Melfi opened its gates to the 'liberators', giving the Normans their first real foothold in Italy. Within a year William had extended his control to the surrounding territory, a string of prosperous trading and fishing towns that produced so much grain, olives, vegetables and fruit that it was known (then as now) as 'Fat Apulia'. The local Byzantine governor was provoked into instigating a battle, and the two sides met on the site of the ancient fields of Cannae.

For the superst.i.tious in both armies, it was an ominous location. Twelve centuries earlier the Carthaginian general Hannibal had inflicted one of the most humiliating defeats in Roman history on this spot by completely wiping out a consular army. The citizens of Rome had been so terrified that they indulged in their last recorded acts of human sacrifice, burying two people alive in the Forum and throwing an infant into the Adriatic. The Normans, however, had also experienced a disaster here. Just two decades prior to this a Byzantine force had thrashed a combined Norman and Lombard army so thoroughly that only ten Norman knights had survived.

If William had any qualms about fighting in such a fateful locale he didn't show it, giving instead every appearance of confidence. This was mostly due to the fact that although his forces were heavily outnumbered, they no longer had to deal with the terrible Maniaces. The great general had been outmaneuvered by his enemies at court and been recalled in disgrace.

His troubles had started when a wealthy and well-connected Anatolian neighbor named Roma.n.u.s Sclerus accused him of encroaching on his land. Maniaces, who had difficulty controlling his temper in the best of times, had forgotten himself enough to administer a savage beating to the patrician. When Roma.n.u.s recovered he swore revenge and took full advantage of the general's absence to loot his house, burn his fields and, as a final insult, seduce his wife. He spent the next year undermining Maniaces' reputation at court, successfully persuading the emperor to recall him.

With Maniaces gone the Byzantines could field no competent general against the Normans, and William with his usual exquisite timing knew he only needed to provoke a battle. When the Byzantines sent an emissary to his camp, William gave him a terrifying welcome. The poor man launched into a prepared speech when suddenly a Norman knight crept up and struck his horse in the forehead. The stunned animal instantly crumpled to the ground throwing its rider. As one group of soldiers grabbed the diplomat another seized the horse and threw it off a cliff. They then shook the petrified man to his feet, provided him with another mount and told him to stop wasting their time with words. "Go back to your emperor", they said, "and tell him the Normans are ready to fight."

Despite having only three hundred knights and twice that number of foot soldiers, the Normans were considered a serious enough threat to warrant the presence of the Varangian Guard, Byzantium's elite fighters. Despite this, the imperial forces were unable to stand up to the Norman heavy cavalry and most of their forces were drowned trying to cross a river in a bid to escape. Two months later the Byzantines tried again, this time with regiments from Asia and a large number of the returning Sicilian forces, but were again defeated.

The victories against the hated Byzantines gave William a tremendous amount of prestige that he used to spread a revolt throughout the remaining Byzantine territory.

Constantinople at last awoke to the seriousness of the situation and quickly sent the one man capable of turning the tide. That spring Maniaces returned to Italy to crush his former mercenary. He did so with alarming violence, swatting aside a Norman force and engaging in a savage campaign against all the towns that had wavered in their loyalty. Dissidents were crucified, women were raped, and children were buried up to their necks and left to die. The brutal tactics worked. Local support for the rebellion evaporated and the Normans were left dangerously exposed.

But Byzantium was no longer the force it had once been and plagued by its conspiracy-ridden court, it destroyed itself. Maniaces met his end in a suitably grand fashion, nearly bringing the entire empire to its knees in the process. His old enemy Roma.n.u.s Sclerus had arranged another humiliating recall, but this time had overstepped himself. He just couldn't resist the temptation to enjoy his enemy's discomfort at first hand and traveled to Italy to deliver the imperial summons in person. Unfortunately for Sclerus, Maniaces didn't take the news gracefully. Seizing Sclerus, he had the man's ears nose and mouth stuffed with horse dung, and then slowly tortured him to death. Hurling curses at the man on Constantinople's throne, Maniaces declared himself emperor and marched on the capital. There was no general in the empire capable of stopping him, and by the time he reached Thessalonica he had all but taken the crown. Here, however, fate intervened. Riding out to a skirmish with loyal imperial troops he was killed by a chance spear throw and his army disintegrated. The surviving rebels were paraded backwards on mules in the Hippodrome25 and the empire was spared further bloodshed.

With military options no longer viable to restore the situation in Italy, Constantinople turned to the tried and true method of bribery to weaken the rebellion. The main Lombard ringleaders were offered generous pensions to switch sides, which they eagerly accepted, and the Normans were left once again on their own.

They were still technically fighting for Lombard freedom but they no longer trusted their allies and decided to elect their own leader. The trouble was that they all saw themselves as equals and found it hard to accept a superior authority. They did recognize the need for a united command in battle, but the same independent and ambitious streak that had led them to seek their fortunes in Italy made them virtually ungovernable. William was the military hero of the rebellions and was dutifully given the t.i.tle 'Count of Apulia', but this was mostly wishful thinking as the Normans only controlled a small part of it, and William had little real authority over his fellow knights. He was the first among equals, able to rally them against common enemies, but little else.

This, however, was enough for William to establish himself as a powerful figure in the region. Marrying the niece of the Prince of Salerno, he gained entry into the Lombard n.o.bility and accepted the prince as his feudal overlord. In response, the prince officially invested him with Apulia which was divided among the twelve most powerful Normans. The town of Melfi, which they had first conquered, was to be held in common by all twelve as a sign of equality.

William had come a long way from the landless son of a poor knight. Under his loose leadership the Normans had been transformed from simple Byzantine and Lombard mercenaries to landed barons. As a sign of the changing fortunes, he made it clear that he intended to push his old Byzantine employers out of Italy. In 1045 he invaded Calabria but was sharply checked near the southern Italian port city of Taranto. It proved to be the last campaign of his career. The following year as he was readying yet another expedition, he caught a fever and died.

His death left the Normans of the south at a crossroads. There was clearly great opportunity, but also the beginnings of a dangerous backlash. The Lombards, Byzantines, and even the pope were by now concerned by the growing power of the Normans, and threatened by the change in the status quo. Even the native populations of Apulia, who had welcomed the Normans as liberators, now began to see them as oppressors. All it would take was a single spark to ignite this growing anti-Norman storm.

The former mercenaries seemed oblivious to the danger. Eager for individual gain they were disunited and busy trying to squeeze every bit of plunder from their conquests. What they needed was a leader who was strong enough to enforce discipline and direct Norman energy into productive channels. Unknown to them, that leader arrived in Italy just months after William's death.

Chapter 9.

Guiscard Following William's death his younger brother Drogo was elected to his position of Count of Apulia while a third brother, Humphrey, was given some of William's former estates. Back in Normandy the seven sons who had stayed behind were watching these developments with considerable interest. These were the children of Tancred's second marriage and in 1047 the eldest of them, Robert, decided to join his half-brothers in Italy.

He arrived to a cool reception. Drogo didn't particularly like his father's second wife and detested her children, so he sent Robert off with a small band of followers to cut his teeth in a frontier fortress deep inside Byzantine Calabria, the heel of the Italian peninsula. The castle overlooked a coastal plain which held the picturesque ruins of the ancient city of Sybaris,26 but if Robert expected anything approaching luxury he was quickly disillusioned. The small, dank fortress was malaria-ridden and dark, languishing in a particularly spa.r.s.e region of Italy. Calabria was much poorer than Apulia, with a heavily forested, mountainous interior and little land suitable for agriculture. The coastal regions had been desolated by centuries of malaria and Saracen raids, and since the local populations were thoroughly h.e.l.lenized they were more loyal to the Byzantines and less likely to welcome the Normans as deliverers.

To survive, Robert was forced to live off the land, which he managed to do with a combination of cunning and brutality. A favorite tactic was to set crops on fire and then charge money to extinguish it, a scheme which did not improve his popularity with the local populations. Before long he was being called 'Guiscard', 'the crafty', and had acquired a reputation among the other Normans as someone to watch. He was shrewd enough to understand that a good leader should be feared by his enemies and loved by his allies. To this end he shared every hardship with his men, eating at the same campfire and sleeping on the same hard ground, but was also remarkably generous. Wealth for him was always a means, and almost never an end to itself. When a visiting Norman bishop mentioned that he was building a cathedral back home, Robert, whose own resources were stretched, loaded him down with every bit of treasure he owned. The financial loss was more than compensated by the public relations gain. The cleric returned to Normandy and brought with him stories of the wealthy, generous knight of Calabria, and Robert, who was chronically short of men, was inundated with fresh recruits.

Before he had had a chance to expand his power, however, he was swept up into a larger conflict. When the Normans had first arrived in Italy they had been greeted as liberators by a Lombard population that was eager to escape the imperial tax collectors. As time when on, however, they had discovered that the rapacious Normans were a good deal worse than the Byzantines that they had replaced, brutally suppressing any sign of independence and squeezing their provinces for every drop of money. When Byzantine agents entered Apulia looking for a way to destabilize Norman control to neutralize the threat in Calabria, they found a very receptive audience. A ma.s.sive conspiracy was hatched to a.s.sa.s.sinate every major Norman in Italy and in 1051 it was carried out. Drogo was cut down as he entered his private chapel, and by nightfall all of Apulia was in uproar.

The surviving Normans, still not fully understanding how much public opinion had turned against them, responded by brutally ravaging the lands of anyone who was involved, thinking that they could restore the status quo with a display of strength. This was the final straw, and it provoked a response from the most powerful figure in Italy, Pope Leo IX.

The papal palace in Rome had been deluged for years with woeful tales of rape, murder, and robbery along the major routes of southern Italy, all begging for a.s.sistance against the footloose bands of Norman mercenaries who respected no law but that of the sword. Such concerns might normally have been better directed towards the local secular authority, but Leo was uniquely suited to lead the charge. Already renowned for holiness in an age of worldly pontiffs, he alone had the charisma and standing to pull together the scattered powers of Italy into a cohesive force. The blood and death of battle didn't shock him as a bishop he had led the field armies of the German emperor, Conrad II, in a raid on northern Italy and saw no reason why his new position should bar another outing.

The pope had had experience with the Normans before. They were uncomfortably close to the Papal States,27 were notorious for their simony a practice he was doing his best to stamp out and had already proved so irritating that he had refused William the Conqueror's request for a marriage in order to humble them.28 If something wasn't done to stop these lawless and uncontrollable Normans, they would begin to encroach on Vatican territory. If the pope couldn't find some way to bring them to heel, his reputation would suffer accordingly and he would face the real danger of being surrounded by a sea of Normans.

His first thought had been to awe the Normans into submission. He had traveled to southern Italy where he summoned Drogo de Hauteville before him. Dressed in the full robes of his office, the Holy Father had coolly ordered him to rein in his men. Drogo had seemed appropriately chastened, but a few months later he had been a.s.sa.s.sinated and southern Italy was plunged into chaos.

For Pope Leo, now was the perfect time for him to strike. The Normans were leaderless and frustrated, flailing in all directions, and nearly every non-Norman baron of southern Italy, from Abruzzo to Calabria, had risen up against them. But he had to act fast before tempers cooled. Writing to the Byzantine emperor, Constantine IX, Leo offered a joint alliance and then traveled to Germany to discuss matters with his cousin the western emperor. Having shorn up imperial support for the anti-Norman coalition, he raised an Italian army as quickly as possible and marched into Apulia, proclaiming that he would put an end to the 'Norman menace'.

News that an invading army was on the way led by the Vicar of Christ himself finally woke the Normans to the danger. A desperate call went out for every able-bodied man and Robert hurried back from Calabria. Under the circ.u.mstances everyone was willing to put aside their past differences, and the united Normans elected the blunt, soldierly Humphrey, the oldest surviving Hauteville, as their leader. His first action was to send a message to Leo asking for terms, but Leo was in no mood to hear an appeal. He had his enemies right where he wanted and didn't intend to let them escape.

Humphrey and Robert held a hasty conference to decide what to do. They were heavily outnumbered, and the fact that the pope was there in person unnerved them. But as bad as the situation was it would only grow worse if they delayed. A Byzantine army was heading down the coast and if it were allowed to link up with Leo, the odds would become too great. There was a serious food shortage; the local population had gathered up the harvest despite the fact that it was still green, and there was simply nothing to eat. If they didn't attack now they faced the threat of starvation.

With no realistic alternative, the Normans drew up by the Fortore River near the little town of Civitate and sent another emissary to the pope. This time, however, it was only a ruse, and in the middle of the negotiations they attacked. Leo's Lombard allies were caught by surprise and fled in a panic, and were soon joined by the bulk of the army. Only the pope's German regiment stood their ground against the Norman charge, but they were now outnumbered and were slaughtered to a man. The pope, dressed in distinctive flowing white robes, watched the entire debacle from a nearby hilltop with growing horror. When it became apparent that his forces were beaten he rode to a neighboring town and anxiously demanded sanctuary. The townsmen, however, were aware of what had just taken place and had no intention of offending the victors. The moment a Norman soldier rode up to the gates Leo was unceremoniously tossed out.

The pope suffered his defeat graciously, walking proudly out to meet his enemies, and those watching from the walls might have wondered just who had won the recent struggle. The Normans fell down before him, begging for forgiveness and swearing that they were faithful Christians. Some knelt to kiss his ring, and still others ran to fetch him a horse, and some refreshment. When he had dined they escorted him to the town of Benevento maintaining a respectful distance and installed him in its finest apartments. Their courtesy never slipped an inch, but not all the deference in the world could hide the fact that Leo was now a captive, and the news quickly spread throughout Europe: the Vicar of Christ was a prisoner of the Normans.

Their victory was more complete than they knew. The pope was humiliated and broken, but even if he had wanted to mount another challenge he would have found it impossible. Just a few months after the battle, the churches of Rome and Constantinople suffered a serious break and the threat of a vast anti-Norman alliance vanished along with any hope of cooperation between the eastern and western halves of Christendom.

The only thing that threatened the Norman position now was tension between the brothers, which was rapidly mounting. Humphrey tolerated his younger sibling better than Drogo had, but his patience was wearing thin. Robert was enjoying himself in Apulia and had no intention of hurrying back to impoverished Calabria. Things came to a head at a banquet hosted by the elder brother. He accused Guiscard of dragging his feet, and the furious Robert was offended enough to draw his sword before being restrained by his friends. Feeling bitter and humiliated, he made his way back to Calabria, and began the work of expanding his influence.

Happily for him, he found the situation had greatly improved in his absence. Byzantine power in Italy was in the middle of a spectacular collapse; shrinking budgets and dithering rulers in Constantinople had left much of the local population feeling abandoned, and the garrisons left behind were demoralized and easily convinced to surrender. One town after another submitted to Guiscard, and those that resisted were either overwhelmed or fell prey to one of his famous ruses. In Otranto he managed to talk his way through the gates, and by the fall had seized Calabria's one productive agricultural region. Each success gave him a greater reputation, which in turn brought in more recruits that allowed more fortresses and more victories. By 1057 even Humphrey had to admit Robert's ability.

The elder Hauteville was dying of malaria and exhaustion, and was well aware that the Normans were in desperate need of a new type of leader. Their stubborn independence made their conquests unstable, and their harsh rule fueled the anti-Norman feeling among the populations they dominated. It was no longer enough to be a good soldier; leadership of the fractious Normans now required diplomacy, statesmanship and vision if they were ever to become more than petty barons. Humphrey was determined to leave his people in the hands of someone who saw a greater destiny for them, and there was only one serious candidate. Swallowing his pride, he summoned Robert and the two had a public reconciliation.

Not everyone was pleased with the selection, however, and Robert had to spend several months putting down various Norman barons who contested his election. For good measure he forced even the loyal n.o.bles to re-swear allegiance to him, then returned to the toe of Italy to complete the conquest of Calabria. Here his youngest brother Roger joined him. Barely twenty-five, Roger had the same broad Hauteville shoulders and large frame, but was more easy-going than Robert. Where Guiscard was calculating, Roger was convivial, but that merely masked an iron-willed determination.

At first the two of them worked together well. They made a stab at Reggio which commanded the straits between Italy and Sicily and Robert felt comfortable enough to leave the campaign in Roger's hands as he returned north to put down yet another rebellion. They were too similar, however, for the partnership to work for long. Perhaps recognizing the family ambition in his brother, Robert refused to grant him land or an independent source of income. Roger was eager to build up his wealth so he could marry, and his frustration turned to anger when Robert started slowing down the payments for his garrisons. When he formally complained, Guiscard dismissed his concerns, suggesting that his brother would benefit from the same rough conditions that he had had to suffer in his early days.

This kind of response only made things worse, and before long the animosity escalated into a full-blown war. Roger went on a rampage through his brother's Calabrian lands, burning crops, pillaging the countryside and kidnapping merchants for ransom. Not one to back down, Robert responded in kind, and the resulting devastation caused a famine that provoked a ma.s.sive popular revolt. The scale of the rebellion caught the Normans completely by surprise and soon threatened to spread into Apulia. The alarmed brothers hastily patched up a truce, agreeing to share all further conquests equally.

Peace was restored just in time for Robert to receive a papal amba.s.sador summoning him to Melfi for a personal meeting. When he asked what the pope wanted, the answer must have seemed too incredible to be true. It had been barely five years since a pontiff had led an army to crush the Normans, and now one of his successors was asking for an alliance.

The reason for the about-face in Vatican policy was the election of Nicholas II, a reforming cleric who wanted to end simony, the practice of buying church offices, and free the papacy from external control. The German emperor had traditionally been the pope's protector, but in practice that had usually meant that the pontiff was a German puppet. The only way for the pope to break free was to find a counterbalancing power and the closest one available was the Normans.

Nicholas called a synod to meet at Melfi, and there made the alliance official. Robert pledged his loyalty and promised to defend him against the emperor. In return the pope confirmed his right to hold the land he had already seized and gave him the suggestive t.i.tle 'Duke of Apulia and Calabria as well as Sicily yet to be conquered'. The fact that he didn't actually control all of Calabria - or any of Sicily for that matter - hardly bothered Guiscard. The pope had given him the legitimacy to conquer everything he could and he didn't intend to waste the opportunity.

He spent the next year evicting the Byzantines from Italy, reducing the imperial holdings to the single city of Bari in the heel of the Italian peninsula. There they stubbornly resisted, clinging on to their ancestral homeland, and Guiscard was willing to let them be for the moment. He already had a more tempting target in mind the rich fields of Sicily and could wait for the rest of Italy to fall into his grasp. It must have been a heady feeling as he looked across the straits to the island just off the coast. The son of a minor lord of France had raised himself to the same level as his contemporary, Duke William of Normandy. There were now two Norman duchies at opposite ends of Europe, both planning to invade an island kingdom. Sicily was ripe for conquest and exerted an irresistible pull on Robert. Things had only become more chaotic since his eldest sibling, William Iron-Arm, had left, and the island was now divided between warring Arab and Berber factions. Even more promising, one of the Berber emirs had actually invited Robert to come, asking for his a.s.sistance in fending off his rivals. The two brothers crossed to Sicily in 1060 and immediately seized Messina, then plunged deep into the interior. By the end of that year they controlled most of the east coast and were making inroads towards Palermo.

In the second year, however, the advance abruptly halted. Besieging fortresses took time and Robert was impatient to bring the Muslims to battle. The stress of a long campaign was also beginning to show as the brothers started arguing about the division of spoils. Neither could completely agree about who was actually in charge, so they settled on an awkward joint rule. This was a particularly bad idea as Robert had no patience for consolidation and was easily bored. His attention in any case was needed on the mainland; long absences invited revolts and his restless barons hardly needed the encouragement. For the next ten years he put in sporadic appearances, leaving the conquest of Sicily largely in Roger's capable hands.

In the meantime Robert continued to put pressure on the southern Italian city of Bari and in the spring of 1071 it finally fell, extinguishing the last vestiges of the Roman Empire in Italy.29 Guiscard entered the city in triumph, dressed in the Greek style, and surrounded by his closest supporters. He was the sole master of southern Italy, and had at last made his dukedom a reality. For another man this might have been enough. His enemies at home were cowed and peaceful, the pope had turned from being a rival into an ally, and there was no one left to challenge his authority throughout the south. But Guiscard was already dreaming of greater things. Something in the pageantry of Bari had caught his imagination. He had seen it in the palaces and churches of Sicily and in the luxury of captured imperial baggage. The landless knight who had made himself a duke turned his eyes thoughtfully to the East. There, glittering Byzantium, the biggest prize of all, was waiting.

Chapter 10.

The Imperial Crown At sixty-five-years-old (elderly by medieval standards), Robert Guiscard deserved a rest. Most men his age were settling down to enjoy the fruits of their labours, which in Robert's case were plentiful. There were always the pleasures of hunting in the Apulian countryside or relaxing in one of his many palaces to distract him. But Guiscard had no intention of retiring. He was far too easily bored; he infinitely preferred fighting to governing and in any case he had become obsessed with the Byzantine Empire.

The past two decades of fighting Byzantium had left their mark. He had started by copying parts of the imperial seals into his own, and had then graduated to using the Byzantine t.i.tle 'dux imperator' in his public decrees. This was equal parts vanity and shrewdness. Most of his subjects were thoroughly h.e.l.lenized and posing as a Byzantine successor added a bit of legitimacy to his rule. Just in case anyone missed the point, he had a copy made of the imperial robes of state that he was careful to don at every opportunity.

All this strutting gained the attention of Constantinople, which was under disastrous attack by the Turks and wanted to make peace with the Normans as quickly as possible. Emperor Michael VII had a young son named Constantine, and Guiscard had a young daughter named Helena; a marriage proposal was arranged and the Norman duke was promised a fancy new t.i.tle. He could now call himself n.o.belissimus only a step below a Caesar could wear the color purple, and could reasonably hope that one day a descendant of his would sit on the imperial throne. Young Helena was shipped off to Constantinople, and Guiscard sat back to congratulate himself on a nice bit of diplomacy.

Unfortunately for him, events in Constantinople moved faster still. Just after Helena arrived, the emperor was overthrown by an old general named Nicephorus III. The Norman princess was dispatched to a convent and her prospective husband, Constantine, was exiled. The news of it all was disappointing for Guiscard, but only momentarily. The Byzantines were weak, overextended against the Turks, and vulnerable. An attack now would almost certainly yield great fruit. In the meantime Helena was a convenient p.a.w.n to provoke a war.

The first step was to make an ultimatum that would be rejected out of hand. Playing the part of aggrieved father, Guiscard demanded that his daughter be instantly restored to favor, married to Constantine and crowned empress. This would have been political suicide for Nicephorus. He could hardly start honoring the son of the man he had displaced, so he sensibly refused. Guiscard immediately declared war and started marshalling a great invading army. To bolster his effort, he found a wandering monk whom he claimed was the deposed emperor Michael somehow escaped from captivity just in time to give an official blessing to the invasion. The ruse didn't fool anyone since the monk wasn't a particularly good actor, but Guiscard hardly cared. He had gotten his war and now he was going to claim his throne.

It took nearly a year to raise an army, but the effort produced a magnificent result. Medieval western armies didn't tend to be particularly diverse, but Robert had recruited soldiers from all over southern Italy: Muslims from Sicily mixed with Lombards and Greeks from Apulia and Calabria, while French and Norman adventurers filled out the rest. Cities all along the Italian coast were conscripted to build ships, and when they couldn't fill the demand, additional ones were bought from the heavily forested Croatian coast. By the spring of 1081 there were one hundred and fifty ships waiting to transport twenty thousand soldiers, horses and besieging equipment across the Aegean. All that was needed was the command from the sixty-four-year-old Guiscard. However, before he could give it, the ground in Constantinople shifted again. Nicephorus III was overthrown by a brilliant young general named Alexius, who sent word that he was prepared to recognize all of Guiscard's demands. The disgraced Constantine was to be restored as co-emperor, Helena was to be rescued from her convent, and the pair would be married.

Guiscard's temper was legendary, and his rage on this occasion was especially fierce. The poor emissary who brought the news expecting that it would be gladly received had to flee from the chamber in fear for his life, and for two days the Norman duke sulked in his tent in a black mood refusing to see visitors. Alexius had neatly cut the ground out from under his feet, but the preparations had come too far to stop. Guiscard's eldest son, Bohemond, was sent with an advance guard to form a bridgehead, and a month later Guiscard followed with the main army.

By June the Normans had reached Durres,30 the second largest imperial city, nestled at the head of the old Roman road that led to Constantinople. It was well defended and seemingly impregnable, situated on a high peninsula and guarded by marshes on the landward side. Guiscard attempted to talk it into submission and nearly succeeded, but the defenders were confident they could hold out and that the emperor wouldn't abandon them to their fate. A few days later, they were given dramatic evidence of the imperial attention. The Venetian fleet, bribed by Alexius, showed up without warning and engaged the Norman ships in battle. Using submerged pipes, they funneled Greek Fire31 underneath the Norman vessels, burning them below the waterline.

Guiscard was now in a difficult position. Without naval support an effective blockade was impossible and there seemed to be little hope of taking the city by storm. Even worse, winter was approaching with the familiar problems of shelter, fuel, and maintaining supply lines in a hostile country. Morale plummeted, and an outbreak of dysentery swept through the ranks, further demoralizing everyone. Soldiers began to talk openly about retreat, but Guiscard wasn't the type of man to back down and burned his remaining ships to prevent desertions. For the common knight it must have seemed as if they were trapped in a nightmare. The defenders of Durres sensed the mood and began an ominous new chant. The emperor Alexius was on his way, they said, at the head of a ma.s.sive relief army.

Alexius Comnenus was a formidable opponent. Claiming descent from one of the patrician families of ancient Rome, he was a rare combination of military and political brilliance. At the age of forty he had never lost a battle and was the empire's most acclaimed general. Byzantium was in desperate need of such a man. Marauding Turks were overrunning the eastern frontiers, Slavs and Bulgars were invading from the west, and incompetent leadership in Constantinople only accelerated the pace of disintegration. By the decade's end there had been frantic appeals to the one general capable of stopping the bleeding, and Alexius obliged, easily expelling the elderly occupant of the palace.

Despite the new emperor's unblemished military record, however, the Norman invasion presented a serious problem. The chaos afflicting the empire had reduced the army to a disorganized mess and it would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. There was still a highly effective core the famous Varangian Guard but the rest was a mix of undisciplined militias, mercenaries, and private bodyguards. It wasn't exactly an inspiring force, but for the moment it would have to do. The empire was under attack and there was no time for training or drills.

Both Alexius and Guiscard had reasons to avoid the battle. While the Norman lines were weakened with disease, they were still frighteningly potent, and the emperor would have liked to let the coming winter soften them up a bit more. He also doubted the loyalty of his mercenaries, and had good reason to suspect that they would desert at the first sign of trouble. Robert, on the other hand, was now caught between the imperial army and a heavily fortified city, and was unenthusiastic about initiating a battle. His normal practice would have been to withdraw to find a more suitable position to attack, but thanks to his rash decision to scuttle the fleet that was no longer an option.

The only ones actually looking forward to the fight were the Varangians. Fifteen years earlier, William the Conqueror had burst into England, killing the rightful king and subjecting the Anglo-Saxons to an increasingly brutal reign. Many of those who found life intolerable under the Norman boot eventually made their way to Constantinople where they enlisted in the ranks of the Guard. Now at last they were face to face with the hated foreigners who had despoiled their homes, murdered their families, and stolen their possessions. Hastings could finally be avenged.

Guiscard led the first attack against the center of the Byzantine line. The Normans had never yet encountered an enemy that could stand up to a cavalry charge, but against the wall of Varangians, it was the Normans who broke. Repeated charges were no more effective, and the Varangians began to slowly advance, wading into the Norman line with their wicked, double-headed axes. Unfortunately for Alexius, the rest of the Byzantine army failed to follow their lead. His turkish auxiliaries chose this moment to desert, and the hopelessly outnumbered Varangians were left exposed and surrounded. The few that managed to escape fled to a nearby chapel dedicated to the archangel Michael, but there was no sanctuary against the Norman fury. The church and all within were burned to the ground.

The defeat seemed to sap the remaining strength from Byzantine territory. Durres surrendered after another week of symbolic resistance and the rest of northern Greece wasn't far behind. When Guiscard reached Macedonia, the town of Kastoria surrendered without a fight, despite being guarded by three hundred Varangians. If even the elite forces of the empire were not loyal, then Constantinople was as good as won, and Guiscard boasted that he would be in the capital in time for Christmas. For once, however, he had met his match. Alexius couldn't stop the Normans with a sword, but he still had his pen, and where armies had failed, diplomacy would succeed.

Southern Italy was a tinderbox waiting to explode, filled with barons and n.o.bles who resented the Norman yoke and who despised their subservient status. They were held in check only by fear, each of them unwilling to take the first step. Alexius merely had to provide some motivation. Byzantine agents were sent to Italy loaded down with bags of gold whispering that now was the time to strike. Almost overnight the peninsula flared into open revolt. The man Guiscard had left to represent him southern Italy wrote desperately to his master that if he didn't return soon he wouldn't have a home to return to.

Guiscard hesitated as long as he could. The longer he let the rebellion fester, the more difficult it would be to suppress. But he had Byzantium on its heels and the invasion was sure to falter in his absence. Valuable ground would be lost and the wily Alexius would have time to recover. Finally in the early months of 1082 news arrived that forced his hand. The German emperor, Henry IV, was marching on Rome and the frantic pope was calling for Norman protection at once. Taking a public oath to remain unshaven and unwashed until he returned, Guiscard left the army in his son Bohemond's care and left for Italy.

Pope Gregory VII was a strange ally for the rough Norman duke. Idealistic, principled, and inflexible, he was the last person who would be expected to stand by the morally ambivalent Guiscard. Necessity, however, had driven them together. Gregory was involved in a great controversy, which had thrown Christendom into turmoil. He was attempting to break the Church free from secular control and had clashed with the German emperor, Henry IV. The first victory had belonged to the pope. Henry had been excommunicated and had been forced to trek barefoot in the middle of winter to the remote castle of Canossa in northern Italy, and beg Gregory to lift the sentence. That had merely been the opening salvo, however, and as soon as he was strong enough the emperor had threatened to bring his army to Rome and appoint a new pope if Gregory wouldn't back down. Gregory needed a defender, and there was only one figure in Italy capable of being one. Swallowing his pride, he had offered Guiscard legitimacy and papal support in exchange for protection. The deal worked well enough until Guiscard left to invade Byzantium. A letter from Alexius, along with a few bags of gold, had found their way to emperor Henry urging him to descend on defenseless Italy. The emperor, of course, hardly needed to be asked twice.

Henry's army had little problem breaking into Rome. Gregory fled to Hadrian's mausoleum,32 and just managed to hold out. His supporters still controlled the left bank of the Tiber, and disease began to decimate the imperial ranks. Henry withdrew with most of his forces to higher ground and settled in for a siege.

Guiscard meanwhile was busy trying to stamp out the revolt in southern Italy, ignoring the pope's increasingly panicked letters. By the end of 1084 he had crushed the last resistance, and could have come to Gregory's aid but he hesitated. As he had feared, the Byzantine campaign was in serious trouble, and if he didn't return immediately there was the real possibility of a complete collapse. On the other hand, his attention was simultaneously needed in Rome, where a valuable ally was fighting for his life. For one of the only times in his life, Robert Guiscard didn't know what to do.

Once again, however, the decision was made for him by outside forces, this time by the Romans themselves. They were tired of Gregory, blaming his inflexibility for the long siege and severe privation, and they opened the gates and invited Henry to take full possession of Rome. The emperor entered in triumph, declared Gregory deposed, and appointed his own candidate. Guiscard now had no choice but to act. If Gregory was destroyed than so was the Hauteville legitimacy. Byzantium would have to wait. Gathering a ma.s.sive army from every part of his domain, he marched on Rome.

Henry was not foolish enough to be there when Guiscard arrived. His weakened army was no match for the Normans and he knew it. Three days before Guiscard appeared, the emperor advised the Romans to defend themselves as best they could and then slipped away. The panicked inhabitants of the city barred the gates, but they were doomed. The walls of the city had been built 800 years before during the reign of the emperor Aurelian and hadn't been significantly updated since. Within minutes of Guiscard's first attack, his soldiers broke in and fanned out through the city killing and looting as they went. Gregory was escorted from Hadrian's mausoleum to the Lateran in triumph and once again seated on the papal throne.

The victory, however, was a pyrrhic one. The Muslim and Greek contingents of Guiscard's army saw the city as their prize to plunder and started a frenzy of rape and murder. After three days of this treatment the cowed citizens were pushed to their limit and took to the streets, waging a desperate guerrilla campaign against the invaders. Any semblance of order vanished in the chaos and the Normans, realizing they had lost control, started setting fires in an attempt to flush out their enemies. The damage was immense. What wasn't burned down was despoiled. From the Lateran to the Coliseum barely a building was left standing. Neither churches, nor palaces, nor ancient pagan temples were spared.

Gregory had been restored, but he was now so universally hated that he had to accompany Guiscard's army when it withdrew. He found a new home in Salerno, where he set up his court in exile, and concentrated on his reform of the Church. He died the following year and was buried, as was fitting, in a Norman tomb. He was defiant until the end, but his last words were bitter: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile".

Robert Guiscard, meanwhile, was finally free to concentrate on Byzantium. The war had not gone well without him. His son, Bohemond, was a superb knight and a good general, but he lacked his father's ability to inspire. Despite demolishing three successive armies that the emperor had sent against him, the mood in the Norman camp was increasingly defeatist. It had been nearly four years since they had sailed from Italy, and yet they were no closer to taking Constantinople than on the day they had arrived. Most of them were exhausted and homesick, beginning to feel as if this long campaign would never end. Bohemond managed to hold them together for a few more months, but at the end of the campaigning season he committed the cardinal sin of underestimating his opponent. As he was crossing a river in northern Greece, Alexius lured him into attacking a decoy force while the main imperial army plundered the Norman baggage. After an afternoon spent chasing shadows, Bohemond returned to his camp to find that four years worth of spoils had vanished. For the weary army it was the last straw. The moment Bohemond's back was turned the men surrendered en ma.s.se to Alexius.

It was a severe setback, but Guiscard was nothing if not persistent. Although he was now seventy, he had lost none of his vigor and he immediately gathered another army. He spent the winter in Corfu, but typhoid fever struck the camp killing thousands. When it finally abated, he gave orders to sail to the Byzantine island of Cephalonia as the first step of the campaign. In the middle of the crossing, however, Guiscard himself was struck by the fever and was barely strong enough to stand when he arrived. He died on July 17, 1085, having never lost a major battle.

The body was taken back to Italy, but just off the coast of Otranto the corpse washed overboard in a storm and was badly damaged. The sailors managed to recover it, but the decision was made to remove the heart and entrails and bury them in a small chapel while the rest was embalmed and completed the journey to the Hauteville mausoleum in Venosa, Italy. There it was interred in the Abbey of the Holy Trinity in a magnificent tomb.

He had lived an extraordinary life, and his accomplishments had earned him a spot as one of the greatest military adventurers. With a mixture of vision, political skill, and force of personality he had taken a small barony and turned it into one of the great powers of Europe. Along the way he had evicted the Byzantines from Italy, the Muslims from Sicily, saved the reformed papacy, and held two emperors at bay. An anonymous stone worker put it best in an inscription above his tomb: "Here lies Guiscard, Terror of the World..."

Chapter 11.

Bohemond I Guiscard's death left the vexing question of who would inherit his possessions unanswered. The trouble was that although his two marriages had produced at least ten children, his most able son wasn't a legitimate one.

The boy had been born sometime before 1058, and was given the Christian name of 'Marc'. A few nights before the birth, Guiscard had been regaled at a banquet with the story of a legendary giant named Buamundas Gigas, and when he saw the large size of the baby he nicknamed him 'Bohemond,' unwittingly inventing one of the more popular names of the Middle Ages.

Almost nothing is known of Bohemond's early years, although he evidently had some schooling since he could read and write Latin along with a smattering of Greek and possibly Arabic. When he was still young, perhaps only four, Guiscard abandoned his mother for political reasons. Although Bohemond was now both illegitimate and disinherited, there didn't seem to be too many hard feelings as he was raised by his step-mother and given an important post in Guiscard's army as soon as he was old enough. Perhaps this was because, regardless of the temporary needs of realpolitik, there was no doubting who his father was. Bohemond looked every inch a Hauteville. With the broad shoulders, thick chest, and blond hair of his Viking ancestors, he was enormously tall, with an easy air of command. Even the restless and reckless streaks of his father were there. As one of his contemporaries put it "He is always seeking the impossible".

Bohemond got his chance for adventure in 1081 when Guiscard decided to invade the Byzantine Empire. The twenty-seven-year-old was sent with an advance guard and instructed to lay waste to the Dalmatian33 countryside, capture the port city of Valona to use as a bridgehead, and besiege the island of Corfu. The only serious resistance he faced was at Corfu, where the defenders openly mocked his small force, but when they saw Guiscard's main fleet on the horizon, the garrison fled in terror.

From there, however, the campaign had unraveled. Guiscard's plan so we are told - was to put Bohemond on the throne of Constantinople, and carve out a larger empire of his own to the east, but he was outwitted by the Byzantine emperor Alexius. Thanks to a large amount of Byzantine gold, Guiscard's Italian lands revolted, forcing him to return. Bohemond was ordered to secure Greece and Macedonia, but was warned not to risk a battle with the emperor.

Bohemond had courage, but he was faced with an opponent who was far more experienced and wily. When Bohemond entered northern Greece and began to systematically reduce some Byzantine fortresses, Alexius suddenly appeared. As the two armies prepared themselves for a battle, the emperor sent light chariots bristling with spears into the Norman line. It would have crippled the main section of the army, but Bohemond had been warned and was expecting the ruse. As the chariots approached, gaps in the line opened up and they pa.s.sed harmlessly through. The Normans then charged the Byzantines and easily routed the half-trained recruits.