CHAP. Italy which has continued during seven centuries to XLIII. form the present kingdom of Naples. Robert invades the Eastern empire, Roger, the youngest of the sons of Tancred, had remained in Normandy, on account of his youth and his father's age. He at length joined the Norman camp in Apulia, and by his conduct acquired first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of Guiscard. His spirit excited him to the invasion of Sicily, and the attempt was seconded by the policy of his brother. With a small band of Normans he passed the straits of Messina, and gained such victories over the numerous armies of the Saracens, as appeared to be the subject of romance rather than history. The Arabs of Sicily derived frequent and powerful succours from their countrymen in Africa, by whose aid the war was prolonged during thirty years; but the exertions of the Normans at length triumphed over their enemies and Roger, with the title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and, by a singular bull of the pope, the princes of Sicily were declared hereditary and perpetual legates of the holy see, in the year 1090. ; To Robert Guiscard the conquest of Sicily was more glorious than beneficial: the possession of A. D. 1081. Apulia and Calabria was inadequate to his ambition; and he resolved to embrace or create the first occasion of invading, perhaps of subduing, the Roman empire of the East*. From his first wife, the partner of his humble fortunes, he had been divorced under the pretence of consanguinity; and her son Bohemond was destined to imitate, rather than to succeed, his illustrious father. The second wife of * In the first expedition of Robert against the Greeks, I follow Anna Comnena (the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 5th books of the Alexiad), William Apulus (lib. 4th and 5th, p. 270-275), and Jeffrey Malaterra (1. iii. c. 13, 14, 24, 29, 39). Their information is contemporary and authentic, but none of them were eye-witnesses of the war. XLIII. Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of Salerno; CHAP. the Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger; their five daughters were given in honourable nuptials, and one of them was betrothed, in a tender age, to Constantine, a beautiful youth, the son and heir of the emperor Michael. But the throne of Constantinople was shaken by a revolution: the Imperial family of Ducas was confined to the palace or the cloister; and Robert deplored, and resented, the disgrace of his daughter and the expulsion of his ally, A Greek, who styled himself the father of Constantine, soon appeared at Salerno, and related the adventures of his fall and flight. That unfortunate friend was acknowledged by the duke, and adorned with the pomp and titles of Imperial dignity in his triumphal progress through Apulia and Calabria, Michael was saluted with the tears and acclamations of the people; and Pope Gregory the Seventh exhorted the bishops to preach, and the catholics to fight, in the pious work of his restoration. His conversations with Robert were frequent and familiar; and their mutual promises were justified by the valour of the Normans and the treasures of the East. Yet this Michael, by the confession of the Greeks and Latins, was a pageant and an impostor, a monk who had fled from his convent, or a domestic who had served in the palace. The fraud had been contrived by the subtle Guiscard; and he trusted that, after this pretender had given a decent colour to his arms, he would sink at the nod of the conqueror into his primitive obscurity. But victory was the only argument that could determine the belief of the Greeks; and the ardour of the Latins was much inferior to their credulity: the Norman veterans wished to enjoy the harvest of their toils, and the unwarlike Italians trembled at the known and unknown dangers of a transmarine expedition. In his new levies, Ro XLIII. CHAP. bert exerted the influence of gifts and promises, the terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some acts of violence might justify the reproach, that age and infancy were pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting prince. After two years' incessant preparations, the land and naval forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel or extreme promontory of Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of the emperor Michael. Thirteen hundred knights, of Norman race or discipline, formed the sinews of the army, which might be swelled to thirty thousand followers of every denomination. The men, the horses, the arms, the engines, the wooden towers covered with raw hides, were embarked on board one hundred and fifty vessels: the transports had been built in the ports of Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the republic of Ragusa. Siege of June 17. At the mouth of the Adriatic Gulf, the shores of A. D. 1081, Italy and Epirus incline towards each other. The space between Brundusium and Durazzo, the Roman passage, is no more than one hundred miles; at the last station of Otranto it is contracted to fifty; and this narrow distance had suggested to Pyrrhus and Pompey the sublime or extravagant idea of a bridge. Before the general embarkation, the Norman duke despatched Bohemond with fifteen galleys, to seize or threaten the isle of Corfu, to survey the opposite coast, and to secure a harbour in the neighbourhood of Vallona for the landing of the troops. They passed and landed without perceiving an enemy; and this successful experiment displayed the neglect and decay of the naval power of the Greeks. The islands of Epirus, and the maritime towns, were subdued by the arms or the name of Robert, who led his fleet and army from Corfu (I use the modern appellation) XLIII. to the siege of Durazzo. That city, the western key CHAP. of the empire, was guarded by ancient renown, and recent fortifications by George Palæologus, a patrician, victorious in the oriental wars, and a numerous garrison of Albanians and Macedonians, who in every age have maintained the character of soldiers. In the prosecution of his enterprise the courage of Guiscard was assailed by every form of danger and mischance. In the most propitious season of the year, as his fleet passed along the coast, a storm of wind and snow unexpectedly arose the Adriatic was swelled by the raging blast of the south, and a new shipwreck confirmed the old infamy of the Acroceraunian rocks. The sails, the masts, and the oars, were shattered or torn away; the sea and shore were covered with the fragments of vessels, with arms and dead bodies; and the greatest part of the provisions were either drowned or damaged. The ducal galley was laboriously rescued from the waves, and Robert halted seven days on the adjacent cape, to collect the relics of his loss, and revive the drooping spirits of his soldiers. The Normans were no longer the bold and experienced mariners who had explored the ocean from Greenland to Mount Atlas, and who smiled at the petty dangers of the Mediterranean. They had wept during the tempest; they were alarmed by the hostile approach of the Venetians, who had been solicited by the prayers and promises of the Byzantine court. The first day's action was not disadvantageous to Bohemond, a beardless youth, who led the naval powers of his father. All night the galleys of the republic lay on their anchors in the form of a crescent; and the victory of the second day was decided by the dexterity of their evolutions, the station of their archers, the weight of their javelins, and the borrowed aid of the Greek fire. The Apulian and Ragusian vessels fled to the shore; several were cut from CHAP. their cables, and dragged away by the conqueror; XLIII. and a sally from the town carried slaughter and dis The army and march of tember. may to the tents of the Norman duke. A seasonable relief was poured into Durazzo; and as soon as the besiegers had lost the command of the sea, the islands and maritime towns withdrew from the camp the supply of tribute and provision. That camp was soon afflicted with a pestilential disease; five hundred knights perished by an inglorious death; and the list of burials (if all could obtain a decent burial) amounted to ten thousand persons. Under these calamities, the mind of Guiscard alone was firm and invincible; and while he collected new forces from Apulia and Sicily, he battered, or scaled, or sapped, the walls of Durazzo. But his industry and valour were encountered by equal valour and more perfect industry. A moveable turret, of a size and capacity to contain five hundred soldiers, had been rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart; but the descent of the door or drawbridge was checked by an enormous beam, and the wooden structure was instantly consumed by artificial flames. While the Roman empire was attacked by the the emperor Turks in the east and the Normans in the west, the Alexius, April-Sep- aged successor of Michael surrendered the sceptre to the hands of Alexius, an illustrious captain, and the founder of the Comnenian dynasty. The princess Anne, his daughter and historian, observes in her affected style, that even Hercules was unequal to a double combat; and on this principle she approves a hasty peace with the Turks, which allowed her father to undertake in person the relief of Durazzo. On his accession, Alexius found the camp without soldiers, and the treasury without money; yet such were the vigour and activity of his measures, that in six months he assembled an army of seventy thousand men, and performed a march of five hundred |