Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (5 page)

1
Valona, or Vlon, in what is now Albania.

2
The classical Dyrrachium, now Durres, in Albania.

sooner had the battered remainder hove to in the roadstead off Durazzo than they saw a Venetian fleet on the north-western horizon.

The moment he heard of the Guiscard's landing on imperial territory, Alexius had sent Doge Domenico Selvo an urgent appeal for assistance. It was probably unnecessary; the threat to Venice implied by Norman control of the straits of Otranto was every bit as serious as that to the Empire. In any case Selvo had not hesitated. Taking personal command of the war fleet, he had sailed at once; and as night was falling he bore down on the Norman ships. Robert's men fought tenaciously, but their inexperience of sea warfare betrayed them. The Venetians adopted the old Byzantine trick, used by Belisarius at Palermo five and a half centuries before, of hoisting manned dinghies to the yard-arms, from which the soldiers could shoot down on to the enemy below;
1
it seems, too, that they had learnt the secret of Greek fire, since a Norman chronicler, Geoffrey Malaterra, writes of how 'they blew that fire, which is called Greek and is not extinguished by water, through submerged pipes, and thus cunningly burnt one of our ships under the very waves of the sea'. Against such tactics and such weapons the Normans were powerless; their line was shattered, while the Venetians were able to beat their way to safety in the harbour of Durazzo.

But it took more than this to discourage the Duke of Apulia, whose army (which he had prudently disembarked before the battle) was still unimpaired and who now settled down to besiege the city. Alexius had sent his old ally George Palaeologus to command the local troops, with orders to hold the enemy at all costs while he himself raised an army against the invaders; and the garrison, knowing that relief was on the way, fought stoutly. All summer long the siege continued, enlivened by frequent sorties on the part of the defenders - in one of which Palaeologus fought magnificently throughout a sweltering day with a Norman arrow-head embedded in his skull. Then on 1
5
October Alexius's army appeared, with the Emperor himself riding at its head. Three days later he attacked. By this time Robert had moved a little to the north of the city and had drawn up his line of battle. He himself had assumed command of the centre, with his son Bohemund on his left, inland, flank and on his right his wife, the Lombard princess Sichelgaita of Salerno.

Sichelgaita needs some explanation. She was cast in a Wagnerian mould: in her we come face to face with the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie. A woman of immense build and herculean physical

1 See
Byzantium: The Early Centuries,
p. 215
.

strength, she hardly ever left her husba
nd's side - least of all in battl
e, one of her favourite occupations. At such moments, charging magnificently into the fray, her long blond hair streaming out from beneath her helmet, deafening friend and foe alike with huge shouts of encouragement or imprecation, she must have looked - even if she did not altogether sound — worthy to take her place among the daughters of Wotan: beside Waltraute, or Grimgerda, or even Brunnhilde herself.

As was the invariable rule when the Emperor took the field in person, his Varangian Guard was present in strength. At this time it consisted largely of Englishmen, Anglo-Saxons who had left their country in disgust after Hastings and had taken service with Byzantium. Many of them had been waiting fifteen years to avenge themselves on the detested Normans, and they attacked with all the vigour of which they were capable. Swinging their huge two-handed battle-axes round their heads and then slamming them into horses and riders alike, they struck terror in the hearts of the Apulian knights, few of whom had ever come across a line of foot-soldiers that did not immediately break in the face of a charge of cavalry. The horses too began to panic, and before long the Norman right had turned in confusion, many galloping straight into the sea to escape certain massacre.

But now, if contemporary reports are to be believed, the day was saved by Sichelgaita. The story is best told by Anna Comnena:

Directly Gaita, Robert's wife (who was riding at his side and was a second Pallas, if not an Athene) saw these soldiers running away, she looked fiercely after them and in a very powerful voice called out to them in her own language an equivalent to Homer's words: 'How far will ye flee? Stand, and acquit yourselves like men!' And when she saw that they continued to run, she grasped a long spear and at full gallop rushed after the fugitives; and on seeing this they recovered themselves and returned to the fight.

Now, too, Bohemund's left flank had wheeled to the rescue, with a detachment of crossbowmen against whom the Varangians, unable to approach within axe-range, in their turn found themselves defenceless. Having advanced too far beyond the main body of the Greek army, their retreat was cut off; they could only fight where they stood. At last the few exhausted Englishmen remaining alive turned and sought refuge in a nearby chapel of the Archangel Michael; but the Normans immediately set it on fire - they were a long way now from Monte Gargano — and most of the Varangians perished in the flames.

Meanwhile, in the centre, the Emperor was still fighting bravely; but the cream of the Byzantine army had been destroyed at Manzikert, and the motley collection of barbarian mercenaries on whom he now had to rely possessed neither the discipline nor the devotion to prevail against the Normans of Apulia. A sortie from Durazzo under Ge
orge Palaeo
logus had failed to save the situation, and to make matters worse Alexius suddenly saw that he had been betrayed by his vassal, King Constantine Bodin of Zeta, and by a whole regiment of seven thousand Turkish auxiliaries, lent to him by the Se
ljuk Sultan Su
leyman, of whom he had had high hopes. His last chance of victory was gone. Cut off from his men, saddened by the loss on the battlef
ield of George's father Nicepho
rus Palaeologus and Michael VII's brother Constantius, weak from exhaustion and loss of blood and in considerable pain from a wound in his forehead, he rode slowly and without escort back over the mountains to Ochrid, there to recover and regroup what he could of his shattered forces.

Somehow, Durazzo was to hold out for another four months; not till February 1082 were the Normans able to burst open the gates, and even then only through the treachery of a Venetian resident (who, according to Malaterra, demanded as his reward the hand of one of Robert's nieces in marriage). From Durazzo on, however, the pace of conquest quickened; the local populations, aware of their Emperor's defeat, offered no resistance to the advancing invaders; and within a few weeks the whole of Illyria was in the Guiscard's hands. He then marched east to Kastoria, which also surrendered instantly - despite the fact that its garrison was found to consist of three hundred more of the Varangian Guard. This discovery had a further tonic effect on the Normans' already high morale. If not even the crack troops of the Empire were any longer prepared to oppose their advance, then surely Constantinople was as good as won.

Alas for Robert: it was nothing of the kind. The following April, while he was still at Kastoria, messengers arrived from Italy. Apulia and Calabria, they reported, were up in arms, and much of Campania as well. They also brought a letter from Pope Gregory VII. His arch-enemy Henry IV, King of the Romans,
1
was at the gates of Rome, demanding to be crowned Emperor of the West. The Duke's presence was urgently required at home. Leaving the command of the expedition to Bohemund, and swearing by the soul of his father Tancred to remain unshaven until

1 A purely honorary title, normally adopted by the elected Emperor of the West until he could be properly crowned by the Pope in Rome.

he could return to Greece, Robert hurried back to the coast and took ship across the Adriatic.

The Venetians were not the only people whom Alexius had approached for help against Robert Guiscard. Already at the time of his accession he had been fully aware of the preparations being made against him, and he had lost no time in seeking out potential allies. The nearest at hand was one of Robert's own nephews: Abelard, son of his elder brother Humphrey, who had been dispossessed by his uncle and had later sought refuge in Constantinople, where he needed little persuading to return secretly to Italy and, with the aid of his brother Herman and a quantity of Byzantine gold, to raise the revolt. Meanwhile the Emperor had sent an embassy to Henry IV, pointing out the dangers of allowing the Duke of Apulia to continue unchecked; subsequent exchanges had ended in an agreement by which, in return for an oath of alliance, Alexius sent Henry no less than 360,000 gold pieces, the salaries of twenty high court offices, a gold pectoral cross set with pearls, a crystal goblet, a sardonyx cup, and 'a reliquary inlaid with gold containing fragments of various saints, identified in each case by a small label'. It was, by any standards, an expensive contract; but when in the spring of 1082 the Emperor received reports of Robert's sudden departure, he must have felt that his recent diplomatic activities had been well worth while.

He himself had spent the winter in Thessalonica, trying to raise troops for the following summer's campaign. Bohemund and his army were steadily extending their power through the Empire's western provinces, and his father would probably be back in person before long, ready to march on the capital. A strong and adequately-trained defence force was essential if the Normans were to be resisted; but mercenaries by definition cost money, the imperial treasury was bare, and to have asked any more from the hard-pressed Byzantine taxpayer would have been a virtual invitation to rebellion. Alexius appealed to his mother, his brother and his wife, all of whom provided what they could, paring their living expenses to the bone; but the proceeds were nowhere near enough for his purposes. Finally his brother Isaac the
sebastocrator
summoned a synod at St Sophia and, invoking ancient canons which allowed ecclesiastical gold and silver to be melted down and sold for the redemption of Byzantine prisoners of war, announced the confiscation of all church treasures. Byzantine history recorded only one near precedent: when, at the time of the invasion of the Persian King Chosroes in 618, the Patriarch Sergius had voluntarily put the entire wealth of every church and monastery at the disposal of the State and the Emperor Heraclius had gratefully accepted his offer.
1
On this occasion the initiative came from the other side. The
hierarchy showed itself distinctl
y less public-spirited and made little attempt to conceal its displeasure. It had no choice, however, but to submit, and in doing so enabled Alexius to raise his army.

Yet even that army, in the first year of its existence, proved powerless to halt Bohemund's advance. After two more major victories, at Yanina and Arta, he had slowly pressed the Byzantines back until all Macedonia and much of Thessaly lay under his control. Not until the spring of 1083, at Larissa, did Alexius succeed in turning the tide. His plan was simple enough. When he saw that battle was imminent, he handed over the main body of the army, together with all the imperial standards, to his brother-in-law George Melissenus and another distinguished general, Basil Curticius, with orders first to advance against the enemy but then, when the two lines were face to face, suddenly to turn and run as if in headlong flight. He meanwhile, with a body of carefully picked troops, crept round under cover of darkness to a place behind the Norman camp and lay there in hiding. At daybreak Bohemund saw the army and the standards and immediately launched his attack. Melissenus and Curticius did as they had been instructed, and before long the Byzantine army was galloping away in the opposite direction, with the Normans in pell-mell pursuit. Meanwhile Alexius and his men overran the enemy camp, killing all its occupants and taking substantial plunder. On his return Bohemund was obliged to raise the siege of Larissa and to withdraw to Kastoria. From that moment on he was lost. Dispirited, homesick, its pay long overdue and now still further demoralized by the huge rewards which Alexius was offering to all deserters, the Norman army fell away. Bohemund took ship for Italy to raise more money, and his principal lieutenants surrendered as soon as his back was turned; next, a Venetian fleet recaptured Durazzo and Corfu; and by the end of 1083 Norman-held territory in the Balkans was once again confined to one or two offshore islands and a short strip of the coast.

Across the Adriatic, on the other hand, Robert Guiscard was doing splendidly. The insurrection in Apulia had admittedly taken him longer to deal with than he had expected, largely owing to the generous subsidies that the rebels had been receiving from Constantinople; but by mid-summer the last pockets of resistance had been satisfactorily

1 See
Byzantium: The Early Centuries,
p. 288.

eliminated. He had then set about raising a new army with which to rescue Pope Gregory - who had barricaded himself into the Castel Sant' Angelo - and to send Henry packing. Early the following summer he marched; and on 24 May 1084, roughly on the site of the present Porta Capena, he pitched his camp beneath the walls of Rome. The Emperor, however - who had deposed Gregory and had had himself crowned by a puppet anti-Pope on Palm Sunday - had not waited for him. Three days before the Duke of Apulia appeared at the gates of the city he had retired, with the greater part of his army, to Lombardy.

Had the Romans not been foolish enough to surrender to Henry the previous March, the Normans would have entered the city as deliverers; instead, they came as a conquering enemy. On the night of 27 May, Robert silently moved his men round to the north of the city; then at dawn he attacked, and within minutes the first of his shock-troops had burst through the Flaminian Gate. They met with a stiff resistance: the whole area of the Campus Martius - that quarter which lies immediately across the Tiber from the Castel Sant' Angelo — became a blazing inferno. But it was not long before the Normans had beaten the defenders back across the bridge, released the Pope from his fortress and borne him back in triumph through the smoking ruins to the Lateran.