Norman progress in Sicily during Robert’s expeditions to the Balkans: Capua, Apulia and Calabria, and the County of Sicily are Norman. The Emirate of Sicily, the Duchy of Naples and lands in the Abruzzo (in the southern Duchy of Spoleto) are not yet conquered.
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, but if Robert expected anything approaching luxury he was quickly
disillusioned. The small, dank fortress was malaria-ridden and dark,
languishing in a particularly sparse 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
Hellenized 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 massive
conspiracy was hatched to assassinate 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 assistance 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, 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. 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 assassinated 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 circumstances 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 nobles 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 massive
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 ambassador 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 title ‘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 assistance 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. 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.
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 title ‘dux imperator’ in his public
decrees. This was equal parts vanity and shrewdness. Most of his subjects were
thoroughly hellenized 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 title. He
could now call himself nobelissimus – 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 pawn 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 Durrës, 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
Fire 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 Durrës sensed the
mood and began an ominous new chant. The emperor Alexius was on his way, they
said, at the head of a massive 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. Durrës 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 nobles 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, 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 massive 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 masse 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…”
