Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (20 page)

The good news was that the Norman barons in Apulia were once again on the point of open revolt. They had always resented the house of Hauteville, whose origins were after all no more distinguished than their own and who had established their supremacy as much by intrigue and low cunning as by any conspicuous courage in the field; and they had rebelled more than once in the past, not only against King Roger but against Robert Guiscard before him. Roger's death, and the comparative weakness of Will
iam as his successor, had encou
aged them to make yet another effort to shake off their Sicilian shackles; as always, however, they needed support. They had first put their trust in Frederick, and had been much disappointed by his hasty departure; but they felt no special ties of loyalty to him. Now that he had let them down, they were perfectly ready to accept help from Manuel instead.

And Manuel was ready to give it. He could not offer a full-scale expedition: the war with Hungary had flared up again and he needed his army along the Danube. But in the summer of
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, as a first step, he sent two of his senior generals, Michael Palaeologus - a former Governor of Thessalonica - and John Ducas, across to Italy. Their brief was, essentially, to make contact with the principal centres of resistance among the Norman barons and to coordinate a general rising throughout the province, which would be supported by a small Byzantine army and any other mercenary forces that could be recruited locally; if, however, Frederick was still in Italy and there was any chance of intercepting him on his way back from Rome, they were to make one last effort to persuade him to join forces. As an eventuality, it seemed improbable enough; but on their arrival in Italy a few inquiries soon revealed the Emperor to be in the imperial city of Ancona, where he willingly received them.

Frederick had marched northward with a heavy heart. The Pope had already implored him to keep to his original plan and lead his army without further delay against King William of Sicily, and for his own part he would have been delighted to do so. But his ailing German barons would not hear of it. They had had enough of the remorseless sun, the unaccustomed food and the clouds of insects that whined incessantly round their heads; and they longed only for the day when they would see a firm mountain barrier rising between themselves and the scene of their sufferings. After this second approach by Palaeologus and Ducas, Frederick tried once again to inject a little of his own spirit into his followers, but with no better success. Sadly, he had to confess to the envoys that there was nothing more he could do; they would have to launch their campaign alone. Manuel was not unduly worried by the news. Strategically, it might have been useful to have the German army fighting his battles for him; diplomatically, on the other hand, the situation would be very much simpler without, and it was plain from the reports he was receiving that there would be no shortage of allies. The revolt was now spreading all over South Italy under a new leader -the King's own first cousin, Count Robert of Loritello. In the late summer of
1155,
Robert met Michael Palaeologus at Viesti. Each was able to provide just what the other lacked. Palaeologus had a fleet of ten ships, seemingly limitless funds and the power to call when necessary on further reinforcements from across the Adriatic. Robert could claim the support of the majority of the local barons, together with the effective control of a considerable length of coast - a vital requirement if the Byzantine lines of communication were to be adequately maintained. Agreement was quickly reached; then the two allies struck.

Their first objective was Bari. Until its capture by Robert Guiscard in
1071,
this city had been the capital of Byzantine Italy and the last Greek stronghold in the peninsula. The majority of its citizens, being themselves Greek, resented the government of Palermo and looked gratefully towards any opportunity of breaking free from it. A group of them opened the gates to the attackers; and though the Sicilian garrison fought bravely from the old citadel and the church of St Nicholas, they were soon obliged to surrender and to watch while the Bariots themselves fell on the citadel — by now the symbol of Sicilian domination - and, despite Palaeologus's efforts to stop them, razed it flat.

News of the fall of Bari, coupled with a sudden spate of rumours of King William's death - he was indeed seriously ill - shattered the morale of the Apulian coastal towns. Trani yielded in its turn; then the neighbouring port of Giovinazzo. Further south, resistance was still fierce: William of Tyre reports that when the Patriarch of Jerusalem landed that autumn at Otranto on his way to visit the Pope, he found the entire region in such turmoil that he was forced to re-embark and make his way up the coast by sea as far as Ancona. Only at the beginning of September did King William's army make its appearance, under his Viceroy Asclettin. It consisted of some two thousand knights and a considerable force of infantry, but it was no match for the rebels and was largely destroyed outside the walls of Andria. The loyalist lord of that town, Count Richard of Andria, who had fought heroically for his King, was unhorsed during the battle and finished off by a priest of Trani who, we are told, ripped him open and tore out his entrails. Seeing him lying dead, the local population surrendered on the spot. For those still faithful to King William, the future looked grim.

From Tivoli first and later from Tusculum, Pope Adrian had followed these developments with satisfaction. Though he had no love for the Greeks, he greatly preferred them to the Sicilians; and it delighted him to see the detested William, having escaped the vengeance of Barbarossa, finally receiving his deserts. Whether it was he who now took the initiative to ally himself with the Byzantines, or whether the first approach came from Manuel Comnenus in Constantinople or Michael Palaeologus in Apulia, is not altogether clear. At all events, discussions were held in the late summer, in the course of which Adrian undertook to raise — almost certainly at Byzantine expense — a body of mercenary troops from Campania. On
29
September he marched south.

It may seem surprising, only a century after the great schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, to find an Emperor of Byzantium in military alliance with the Pope of Rome; but Adrian doubtless saw in the South Italian situation an opportunity that might never recur. He was encouraged, too, by the exiled Apulian vassals who, seeing the possibility of regaining their old fiefs, joyfully agreed to recognize him as their suzerain in return for his support. Already on
9
October Prince Robert of Capua and several other high-ranking Norman barons were reinvested with their hereditary possessions, and before the end of the year all Campania and most of Apulia was in Byzantine or papalist hands. Michael Palaeologus, mopping up the few pockets of resistance that remained, could congratulate himself on a success greater than he could have dared to hope. In barely six months he had restored Greek power to a point almost equal to that of a hundred and fifty years before. News had recently come to him that his Emperor, encouraged by such rapid progress, was sending out a full-scale expeditionary force to consolidate his gains. At this rate it might not be long before all South Italy acknowledged the dominion of Constantinople. King William would be annihilated; Pope Adrian, seeing the Greeks succeed where the Germans had failed, would acknowledge the superiority of Byzantine arms and would adjust his policies accordingly; and the great dream of the Comneni — the reunification of the Roman Empire under the aegis of Constantinople - would be realized at last.

King William was a man who found it hard ever to leave his palace; but once he was obliged to go forth, then - however disinclined to action he had been in the past - he would fling himself, not so much with courage as in a headstrong, even foolhardy spirit, in the face of all dangers.

So writes Hugo Falcandus, the most detailed - and by far the most readable - chronicler of Norman Sicily whose work has come down to us. He is also the most destructive and, even when paying tribute to his sovereign as here, nearly always allows his malice to show through. But there is truth in what he says. In this particular case, William's initial inertia was understandable. From September until Christmas he lay in Palermo desperately ill, leaving his Kingdom to be effectively governed by his 'Emir of Emirs', the Lombard Maio of Bari; next, in the opening weeks of
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while still convalescent, he was obliged to deal first with riots in the capital itself and then with a rebellion of Sicilian barons in the south of the island. He was, however, successful in both operations; and his victory over the barons provided him with just the moral encouragement he needed. The spring had come, his health was restored, his blood was up. He was ready to tackle the mainland.

Army and navy met at Messina; this was to be a combined operation, in which the Greeks, the papalists and the rebel barons were to be attacked simultaneously from land and sea. In the last days of April, the army crossed to the mainland and set off through Calabria, while the fleet sailed down through the straits and then turned north-east towards Brindisi. For the Byzantines and the rebel forces alike, it had been a bad winter. First, thanks to the increasing arrogance of Michael Palaeologus, there had been a split between them, Robert of Loritello having ridden off in disgust. Then Palaeologus himself had died, after a short illness, in Bari. For all his overbearing ways he had been a brilliant leader in the field, and his death had been a serious blow to his countrymen. John Ducas had eventually got the army moving again and had even achieved a reconciliation with the Count of Loritello; but the old confidence between the two was never quite restored, the momentum of
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never altogether regained.

For three weeks already Brindisi had been under siege. The royalist garrison in the citadel was putting up a heroic resistance, and had effectively brought Byzantine progress in the peninsula to a stop. And now, with the news of King William's advance, the Greeks saw their rebel allies begin to fall away. The mercenaries chose, as mercenaries will, the moment of supreme crisis to demand
impossible increases in
their pay; meeting with a refusal, they disappeared
en masse.
Robert of Loritello deserted for the second time, and many of his compatriots followed him. Ducas, left only with th
e few troops that he and Palaeo
logus had brought with them, plus those which had trickled over the Adriatic at various times during the past nine months, found himself hopelessly outnumbered. Of the Sicilian forces, it was the fleet that arrived first, and for another day or two he was able to hold his own. The entrance to Brindisi harbour is by a narrow channel, barely a hundred yards across. Twelve centuries before, Julius Caesar had blocked it to Pompey's ships; and now John Ducas, by drawing up the four vessels under his command in line abreast across its mouth and stationing detachments of infantry along each bank, employed similar tactics. But when William's army appeared on the western horizon, Byzantine hopes were at an end. Attacked simultaneously from the land, the sea and the inner citadel, Ducas could not hope to hold the walls; he and his men were caught, in the words of Cinnamus, as in a net.

The battle that followed was short and bloody, and the Greek defeat was total. The Sicilian navy, having occupied the little islands that circled the harbour entrance, effectively prevented any escape by sea. Ducas himself, the other Byzantine survivors and those Norman rebels who had not already fled, were taken prisoner. The four Greek ships, were seized, together with large sums of gold and silver which had been entrusted by Manuel to Michael Palaeologus, for the payment of mercenaries and for whatever bribes might be necessary. On that one day - it was
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May
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- all that the Byzantines had achieved in Italy over the past year was wiped out as completely as if they had never come.

The King treated his Greek captives according to the recognized canons of war; but to his own rebellious subjects he showed no mercy. For him as for his father before him, treason remained the one crime that could not be forgiven. Of the erstwhile insurgents who fell into his hands, only the luckiest were imprisoned. The rest were hanged, blinded or tied about with heavy weights and thrown into the sea. Brindisi, which had resisted valiantly, was spared; Bari, which had readily capitulated to the invaders, paid the price. William gave the inhabitants two clear days in which to salvage their belongings; on the third day the city was destroyed, including the cathedral. Only the great church of St Nicholas and a few smaller religious buildings were left standing.

It was the same old lesson — a lesson that should by now have been self-evident, but one that the princes of medieval Europe seemed to find almost impossible to learn: that in distant lands, wherever there existed an organized native opposition, a temporary occupying force could never achieve permanent conquest. Whirlwind campaigns were easy, especially when backed by bribes and generous subsidies to the local malcontents; when, however, it became necessary to consolidate and maintain the advantage gained, no amount of gold was of any avail. The Normans had succeeded in establishing themselves in South Italy and Sicily only because they had arrived as mercenaries and remained as settlers; even then, the task had taken them the best part of a century. When they embarked on foreign adventures - such as the two invasions of the Byzantine Empire by Robert Guiscard and Bohemund - even they were doomed to failure. Manuel Comnenus had presumably trusted those communities of Apulia and Calabria who still spoke Greek and maintained, after a fashion, their Greek traditions to declare in his favour - as indeed the people of Bari had done. What he had not taken into account was, first, that such communities represented only a small minority of the total population and, second, that William of Sicily's forces were a good deal better placed than his own to deal with any trouble that might arise. The outcome of the recent campaign - however promisingly it had begun - had not been unlucky. It had been inevitable.