CHAP. Alexius, who bravely struggled with the calamities XLIII. of the times: a reinforcement of seven thousand

The emperor

Henry III.

the Greeks,

Turks replaced and revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience, that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion; his archers were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and snares was scattered over the ground on which he might expect an attack. In the neighbourhood of Larissa the events of war were protracted and balanced. The courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often successful; but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks: the city was impregnable; and the venal or discontented counts deserted his standard, betrayed their trusts, and inlisted in the service of the emperor. Alexius returned to Constantinople with the advantage rather than the honour of victory. After evacuating the conquests which he could no longer defend, the son of Guiscard embarked for Italy, and was embraced by a father, who esteemed his merit, and sympathized in his misfortune.

Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and invited by enemies of Robert, the most prompt and powerful A. D. 1081. was Henry the Third or Fourth, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the West. The epistle of the Greek monarch to his brother is filled with the warmest professions of friendship, and the most lively desire of strengthening their alliance by every public and private tie. He congratulates Henry on his success in a just and pious war, and complains that the prosperity of his own empire is disturbed by the audacious enterprises of the Norman Robert. The list of his presents expresses the manners of the

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age: a radiated crown of gold, a cross set with pearls CHAP. to hang on the breast, a case of relics, with the names and titles of the saints, a vase of crystal, a vase of sardonyx, some balm, most probably of Mecca, and one hundred pieces of purple. To these he added a more solid present of one hundred and forty thousand Byzantines of gold, with a further assurance of two hundred and sixteen thousand, so soon as Henry should have entered in arms the Apulian territories, and confirmed by an oath the league against the common enemy. The German*, who was already in Lombardy at the head of an army and a faction, accepted these liberal offers, and marched towards the south his speed was checked by the sound of the battle of Durazzo; but the influence of his arms or name, in the hasty return of Robert, was a full equivalent for the Grecian bribe. Henry was the severe adversary of the Normans, the allies and vassals of Gregory the Seventh, his implacable foe. The long quarrel of the throne and mitre had been recently kindled by the zeal and ambition of that haughty priest: the king and the pope had degraded each other; and each had seated a rival on the temporal or spiritual throne of his antagonist. After the defeat and death of his Swabian rebel, Henry descended into Italy, to assume the Imperial crown, and to drive from the Vatican the tyrant of the church. But the Roman people adhered to the cause of Gregory their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and money from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged by the king of Germany. Besieges In the fourth year he corrupted, as it is said, with Byzantine gold, the nobles of Rome, whose estates -1084. and castles had been ruined by the war. The gates, the bridges, and fifty hostages, were delivered into

For these general events, I must refer to the general historians, Sigonius, Baronius, Muratori, Mosheim, St. Marc, &c.

Rome,

A. D. 1081

A. D. 1084,

March 21.

31.

CHAP. his hands; the antipope, Clement the Third, was XLIII. consecrated in the Lateran; the grateful pontiff March 24. crowned his protector in the Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the capitol, as the lawful successor of Augustus and Charlemagne. The ruins of the Septizonium were still defended by the nephew of Gregory: the pope himself was invested in the castle of St. Angelo; and his last hope was in the courage and fidelity of his Norman vassal. Their friendship had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints; but, on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation of his oath, by his interest, more potent than oaths, by the love of fame, and his enmity to the two emperors. Unfurling the holy banner, he resolved to fly to the relief of the prince of the apostles: the most numerous of his armies, six thousand horse, and thirty thousand foot, was instantly assembled; and his march from Salerno to Rome was animated by the public applause and the promise of the divine favour. Henry, invincible in sixty-six battles, trembled at his approach; recollected some indispensable affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; exhorted the Romans to persevere in their allegiance; and hastily retreated three days before the entrance of Flies before the Normans. In less than three years, the son of May, 1084. Tancred of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of deliver

Robert,

ing the pope, and of compelling the two emperors of the East and West to fly before his victorious arms. But the triumph of Robert was clouded by the calamities of Rome. By the aid of the friends of Gregory, the walls had been perforated or scaled; but the Imperial faction was still powerful and active : on the third day the people rose in a furious tumult, and a hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and pillage. The Saracens of Sicily, the subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries

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of his brother, embraced this fair occasion of rifling CHAP. and profaning the holy city of the Christians: many thousands of the citizens, in the sight, and by the allies, of their spiritual father, were exposed to violation, captivity, or death; and a spacious quarter of the city, from the Lateran to the Coliseum, was consumed by the flames, and devoted to perpetual solitude. From a city where he was now hated, and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end his days in the palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the vanity of Guiscard, with the hope of a Roman or Imperial crown; but this dangerous measure, which would have inflamed the ambition of the Norman, must for ever have alienated the most faithful princes of Germany.

pedition of

Greece.

A.D. 1084,

The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have Second exindulged himself in a season of repose; but in the Robert into same year of the flight of the German emperor, the Gree indefatigable Robert resumed the design of his eastern October. conquests. The zeal or gratitude of Gregory had promised to his valour the kingdoms of Greece and Asia; his troops were assembled in arms, flushed with success, and eager for action. Their numbers, in the language of Homer, are compared by Anna to a swarm of bees; yet the utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been already defined; they were contained in this second occasion in one hundred and twenty vessels; and as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium was preferred to the open road of Otranto. Alexius, apprehensive of a second attack, had assiduously laboured to restore the naval forces of the empire; and obtained from the republic of Venice an important succour of thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and nine galeots, or ships of extraordinary strength and magnitude. Their services were liberally paid by the licence or monopoly of trade, a profitable

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CHAP. gift of many shops and houses in the port of Constantinople, and a tribute to St. Mark, the more acceptable, as it was the produce of a tax on their rivals of Amalphi. By the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with a hostile fleet; but their own neglect, or the vigilance of Robert, the change of a wind, or the shelter of a mist, opened a free passage; and the Norman troops were safely disembarked on the coast of Epirus. With twenty strong and well appointed galleys, their intrepid duke immediately sought the enemy, and though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his own life, and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of a naval combat. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements, in the sight of the island of Corfu: in the two former, the skill and numbers of the allies were superior; but in the third the Normans obtained a final and complete victory. The light brigantines of the Greeks were scattered in ignominious flight the nine castles of the Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were sunk, two were taken; two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the victor; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been supplied by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening when he had sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects, and to baffle the advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his progress with the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople; but instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms. against Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labour, and where the land and sea