XLIII. rious achievements. Of the fashionable supersti- CHAP. tions, they embraced with ardour the pilgrimages to Rome, Italy, and the Holy Land. In this active devotion their minds and bodies were invigorated by exercise; danger was the incentive, novelty the recompense; and the prospect of the world was decorated by wonder, credulity, and ambitious hope. They confederated for their mutual defence; and the robbers of the Alps, who had been allured by the garb of a pilgrim, were often chastised by the arm of a warrior. In one of these pious visits to the cavern of Mount Garganus, in Apulia, they were accosted by a stranger in the Greek habit, but who soon revealed himself as a rebel, a fugitive, and a mortal foe of the Greek empire. His name was Melo, a noble citizen of Bari, who, after an unsuccessful revolt, was compelled to seek new allies and avengers of his country. The bold appearance of the Normans revived his hopes and solicited his confidence: they listened to the complaints, and still more to the promises of the patriot. The assurance of wealth demonstrated the justice of his cause; and they viewed as the inheritance of the brave, the fruitful land which was oppressed by effeminate tyrants. On their return to Normandy, they kindled a spark of enterprise and a small but intrepid band was freely associated for the deliverance of Apulia. They passed the Alps by separate roads, and in the disguise of pilgrims; but in the neighbourhood of Rome they were saluted by the chief of Bari, who supplied the more indigent with arms and horses, and instantly led them to the field of action. In the first conflict their valour prevailed; but in the second engagement they were overwhelmed by the numbers and military engines of the Greeks, and indignantly retreated with their faces to the enemy. The unfortunate Melo CHAP. ended his life a suppliant at the court of Germany: XLIII. his Norman followers, excluded from their native A.D. 1029. and their promised land, wandered among the hills and valleys of Italy, and earned their daily subsistence by the sword. To that formidable sword the princes of Capua, Beneventum, Salerno, and Naples, alternately appealed in their domestic quarrels; the superior spirit and discipline of the Normans gave victory to the side which they espoused; and their cautious policy observed the balance of power, lest the preponderance of any rival state should render their aid less important, and their service less profitable. Their first asylum was a strong camp in the depth of the marshes of Campania; but they were soon endowed by the liberality of the Duke of Naples with a Foundation more plentiful and permanent seat. Eight miles from of Aversa, his residence, as a bulwark against Capua, the town of Aversa was built and fortified for their use; and they enjoyed as their own the corn and fruits, the meadows and groves, of that fertile district. The report of their success attracted every year new swarms of pilgrims and soldiers; the poor were urged by necessity; the rich were excited by hope; and the brave and active spirits of Normandy were impatient of ease and ambitious of renown. The independent standard of Aversa afforded shelter and encouragement to the outlaws of the province, to every fugitive who had escaped from the injustice or justice of his superiors; and these foreign associates were quickly assimilated in manners and language to the Gallic colony. The first leader of the Normans was Count Rainulf; and in the origin of society pre-eminence of rank is the reward and the proof of superior merit. The Nor mans serve Since the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the in Sicily. Grecian emperors had been anxious to regain that A.D. 1038. valuable possession; but their efforts, however strenuous, had been opposed by the distance and the sea. Their costly armaments, after a gleam of success, added new pages of calamity and disgrace to the Byzantine annals; 20,000 of their best troops were lost in a single expedition; and the victorious Moslems derided the policy of a nation which intrusted eunuchs not only with the custody of their women, but with the command of their men*. After a reign of two hundred years, the Saracens were ruined by their divisions t. The emir disclaimed the authority of the king of Tunis; the people rose against the emir; the cities were usurped by the chiefs; each meaner rebel was independent in his village or castle; and the weaker of two rival brothers implored the friendship of the Christians. In every service of danger the Normans were prompt and useful; and five hundred knights or warriors on horseback were enrolled by Arduin, the agent and interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces, governor of Lombardy. Before their landing, the brothers were reconciled; the union of Sicily and Africa was restored, and the island was guarded to the water's edge. The Normans led the van, and the Arabs of Messina felt the valour of an untried foe. In a second action, the emir of Syracuse was unhorsed, and transpierced by the iron arm of William of Hauteville. In a third engagement, his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty thousand Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labour of the pursuit: a splendid victory; but of which the pen of the historian may divide the merit with the lance of the Normans. It is, however, true that they essentially promoted the success of Maniaces, who reduced thirteen cities, and the greater part of Sicily, under the obedience of the emperor. But his * Liutprand in Legatione, p. 485. Pagi has illustrated this event from the MS. history of the Deacon Leo (tom. iv. A. D. 965, No. 17-19). † See the Arabian Chronicle of Sicily, apud Muratori Scrip. Rerum Ital. tom. i. CHAP. XLIII. XLIII. Their con quest of Apulia. --1043. CHAP. military fame was sullied by ingratitude and tyranny. In the division of the spoil, the deserts of his brave auxiliaries were forgotten and neither their avarice nor their pride could brook this injurious treatment. They complained by the mouth of their interpreter: their complaint was disregarded; their interpreter was scourged: the sufferings were his; the insult and resentment belonged to those whose sentiments he had delivered; yet they dissembled till they had obtained, or stolen, a safe passage to the Italian continent. Their brethren of Aversa sympathised in their indignation, and the province of Apulia was invaded as the forfeit of the debt*. Above twenty years after the first emigration, the Normans took the field with no more than seven hundred horse and five hundred foot; and after the recall of the Byzantine legions from the Sicilian war, their numbers are magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men. Their herald proposed the option of battle or retreat; "Of battle," was the unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their stoutest warriors, with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the Greek messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult was concealed from the Imperial troops; but in two successive battles they were more fatally instructed of the prowess of their adversaries. In the plains of Cannæ the Asiatics fled before the adventurers of France; the Duke of Lombardy was made prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion; and the four places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum, were alone saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes. From this æra we may date the establishment of the Norman power, which soon eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa. *Jeffrey Malaterra, who relates the Sicilian war and the conquest of Apulia, (1. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 19). The same events are described by Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 741743, 755, 756), and Zonaras (tom. ii. p. 237, 238). war. An attempt was made, during the reign of Constantine Monomachus, to overturn this The power. emperors of Greece and Germany, together with the pope, Leo the Ninth, attacked the Normans. A small army of those intrepid warriors defeated a numerous host. The pope was made a prisoner at Civitella on the 18th of June, 1053, and soon afterwards became the friend of those against whom he had excited the The provinces of Apulia and Calabria, which were a part of the donation falsely asserted to have been made by Constantine to the successors of Saint Peter, were granted by the pope to the Normans. The new allies, on the payment of a trifling quitrent, promised to support each other with spiritual and temporal arms; and during 700 years from this memorable transaction, the kingdom of Naples has continued a fief of the holy see. In the battle of Civitella the centre of the Normans was commanded by Robert Guiscard, who acted such a conspicuous part in the history of the eleventh century, and whose actions were so much connected with the concerns of the Greek empire, that he is entitled to particular notice. He was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville in the Lower Normandy. He passed the Alps as a pilgrim, with five followers on horseback and thirty on foot. His elder brother and his countrymen were settled in Apulia, where his genius and exertions soon distinguished him above his equals; and after the death of his brother Humphrey, during the tender age of his children, Guiscard was saluted general of the republic. The pope not long afterwards invested him with the title of Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands in Italy and Sicily which he could conquer from the Saracens and Greeks. This title was afterwards confirmed by the troops; but a period of twenty years had elapsed before he had completed the conquest of that part of CHAP. XLIII. |