Part 3 (1/2)
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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+pment 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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, languis.h.i.+ng 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 hards.h.i.+p 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; leaders.h.i.+p of the fractious Normans now required diplomacy, statesmans.h.i.+p 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.