present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have not
been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years. The monarchy
has been composed of the Greek provinces of Calabria and Apulia, of the
Lombard principality of Salerno, the republic of Amalphi, and the
inland dependencies of the large and ancient duchy of Beneventum. Three
districts only were exempted from the common law of subjection; the
first forever, the two last till the middle of the succeeding century.
The city and immediate territory of Benevento had been transferred,
by gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman pontiff; and
although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of St. Peter was
finally more potent than the sword of the Normans. Their first colony of
Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua; and her princes were reduced
to beg their bread before the palace of their fathers. The dukes of
Naples, the present metropolis, maintained the popular freedom, under
the shadow of the Byzantine empire. Among the new acquisitions of
Guiscard, the science of Salerno, and the trade of Amalphi, may detain
for a moment the curiosity of the reader. I. Of the learned faculties,
jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and property;
and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full light of religion and
reason. But the savage and the sage must alike implore the assistance
of physic; and, if our diseases are inflamed by luxury, the mischiefs
of blows and wounds would be more frequent in the ruder ages of society.
The treasures of Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian
colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace
and war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at
Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and the women
beautiful. A school, the first that arose in the darkness of Europe, was
consecrated to the healing art: the conscience of monks and bishops was
reconciled to that salutary and lucrative profession; and a crowd of
patients, of the most eminent rank, and most distant climates, invited
or visited the physicians of Salerno. They were protected by the Norman
conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the merit
and value of a philosopher. After a pilgrimage of thirty-nine years,
Constantine, an African Christian, returned from Bagdad, a master of the
language and learning of the Arabians; and Salerno was enriched by the
practice, the lessons, and the writings of the pupil of Avicenna. The
school of medicine has long slept in the name of a university; but her
precepts are abridged in a string of aphorisms, bound together in the
Leonine verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century. II. Seven miles
to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south of Naples, the obscure
town of Amalphi displayed the power and rewards of industry. The land,
however fertile, was of narrow extent; but the sea was accessible and
open: the inhabitants first assumed the office of supplying the western
world with the manufactures and productions of the East; and this useful
traffic was the source of their opulence and freedom. The government
was popular, under the administration of a duke and the supremacy of
the Greek emperor. Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the walls
of Amalphi; nor was any city more abundantly provided with gold, silver,
and the objects of precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her
port, excelled in the theory and practice of navigation and astronomy:
and the discovery of the compass, which has opened the globe, is owing
to their ingenuity or good fortune. Their trade was extended to the
coasts, or at least to the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India:
and their settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and
Alexandria, acquired the privileges of independent colonies. After three
hundred years of prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by the arms of the
Normans, and sacked by the jealousy of Pisa; but the poverty of one
thousand fisherman is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a
cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.--Part III.
Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long
detained in Normandy by his own and his father' age. He accepted the
welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the
esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valor and
ambition were equal; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners,
of Roger engaged the disinterested love of the soldiers and people.
So scanty was his allowance for himself and forty followers, that he
descended from conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft;
and so loose were the notions of property, that, by his own historian,
at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable
at Melphi. His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace: from these base
practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war; and the invasion
of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother Guiscard.
After the retreat of the Greeks, the _idolaters_, a most audacious
reproach of the Catholics, had retrieved their losses and possessions;
but the deliverance of the island, so vainly undertaken by the forces
of the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small and private band of
adventurers. In the first attempt, Roger braved, in an open boat, the
real and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charybdis; landed with only
sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the Saracens to the gates of
Messina and safely returned with the spoils of the adjacent country.
In the fortress of Trani, his active and patient courage were equally
conspicuous. In his old age he related with pleasure, that, by the
distress of the siege, himself, and the countess his wife, had been
reduced to a single cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that
in a sally his horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the
Saracens; but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had
retreated with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might
be left in the hands of the miscreants. In the siege of Trani, three
hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the island. In the
field of Ceramio, fifty thousand horse and foot were overthrown by one
hundred and thirty-six Christian soldiers, without reckoning St. George,
who fought on horseback in the foremost ranks. The captive banners, with
four camels, were reserved for the successor of St. Peter; and had these
barbaric spoils been exposed, not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol,
they might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs. These
insufficient numbers of the Normans most probably denote their knights,
the soldiers of honorable and equestrian rank, each of whom was attended
by five or six followers in the field; yet, with the aid of this
interpretation, and after every fair allowance on the side of valor,
arms, and reputation, the discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce
the prudent reader to the alternative of a miracle or a fable. The Arabs
of Sicily derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen
of Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted by
the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of the two
brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible emulation. After a
war of thirty years, Roger, with the title of great count, obtained
the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful island of the
Mediterranean; and his administration displays a liberal and enlightened
mind, above the limits of his age and education. The Moslems were
maintained in the free enjoyment of their religion and property: a
philosopher and physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued
the conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven
climates was translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent perusal,
preferred the work of the Arabian to the writings of the Grecian
Ptolemy. A remnant of Christian natives had promoted the success of the
Normans: they were rewarded by the triumph of the cross. The island
was restored to the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff; new bishops
were planted in the principal cities; and the clergy was satisfied by
a liberal endowment of churches and monasteries. Yet the Catholic hero
asserted the rights of the civil magistrate. Instead of resigning the
investiture of benefices, he dexterously applied to his own profit the
papal claims: the supremacy of the crown was secured and enlarged, by
the singular bull, which declares the princes of Sicily hereditary and
perpetual legates of the Holy See.
To Robert Guiscard, the conquest of Sicily was more glorious than
beneficial: the possession of 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 fortune, 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 Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of Salerno; the
Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger; their
five daughters were given in honorable 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 valor 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 color 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 ardor 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, Robert 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.
At the mouth of the Adriatic Gulf, the shores of 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 harbor in the neighborhood
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) to the siege of Durazzo. That city, the western key of the
empire, was guarded by ancient renown, and recent fortifications, by
George PalÊologus, 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 their cables, and dragged away by the conqueror;
and a sally from the town carried slaughter and dismay 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 valor were encountered by equal valor and more perfect industry. A
movable 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 constantly consumed by artificial flames.
While the Roman empire was attacked by the Turks in the East, east, and
the Normans in the West, the 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 vigor and activity of his
measures, that in six months he assembled an army of seventy thousand
men, and performed a march of five hundred miles. His troops were levied
in Europe and Asia, from Peloponnesus to the Black Sea; his majesty
was displayed in the silver arms and rich trappings of the companies
of Horse-guards; and the emperor was attended by a train of nobles and
princes, some of whom, in rapid succession, had been clothed with
the purple, and were indulged by the lenity of the times in a life of
affluence and dignity. Their youthful ardor might animate the multitude;
but their love of pleasure and contempt of subordination were pregnant
with disorder and mischief; and their importunate clamors for speedy
and decisive action disconcerted the prudence of Alexius, who might have
surrounded and starved the besieging army. The enumeration of provinces
recalls a sad comparison of the past and present limits of the Roman
world: the raw levies were drawn together in haste and terror; and
the garrisons of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, had been purchased by the
evacuation of the cities which were immediately occupied by the
Turks. The strength of the Greek army consisted in the Varangians, the
Scandinavian guards, whose numbers were recently augmented by a colony
of exiles and volunteers from the British Island of Thule. Under the
yoke of the Norman conqueror, the Danes and English were oppressed
and united; a band of adventurous youths resolved to desert a land
of slavery; the sea was open to their escape; and, in their long
pilgrimage, they visited every coast that afforded any hope of liberty
and revenge. They were entertained in the service of the Greek emperor;
and their first station was in a new city on the Asiatic shore: but
Alexius soon recalled them to the defence of his person and palace; and
bequeathed to his successors the inheritance of their faith and valor.
The name of a Norman invader revived the memory of their wrongs: they
marched with alacrity against the national foe, and panted to regain
in Epirus the glory which they had lost in the battle of Hastings. The
Varangians were supported by some companies of Franks or Latins; and
the rebels, who had fled to Constantinople from the tyranny of Guiscard,
were eager to signalize their zeal and gratify their revenge. In
this emergency, the emperor had not disdained the impure aid of the
Paulicians or ManichÊans of Thrace and Bulgaria; and these heretics
united with the patience of martyrdom the spirit and discipline of
active valor. The treaty with the sultan had procured a supply of some
thousand Turks; and the arrows of the Scythian horse were opposed to
the lances of the Norman cavalry. On the report and distant prospect of
these formidable numbers, Robert assembled a council of his principal
officers. "You behold," said he, "your danger: it is urgent and
inevitable. The hills are covered with arms and standards; and the
emperor of the Greeks is accustomed to wars and triumphs. Obedience and
union are our only safety; and I am ready to yield the command to a more
worthy leader." The vote and acclamation even of his secret enemies,
assured him, in that perilous moment, of their esteem and confidence;
and the duke thus continued: "Let us trust in the rewards of victory,
and deprive cowardice of the means of escape. Let us burn our vessels
and our baggage, and give battle on this spot, as if it were the
place of our nativity and our burial." The resolution was unanimously
approved; and, without confining himself to his lines, Guiscard awaited
in battle-array the nearer approach of the enemy. His rear was covered
by a small river; his right wing extended to the sea; his left to the
hills: nor was he conscious, perhaps, that on the same ground CÊsar and
Pompey had formerly disputed the empire of the world.
Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved to risk
the event of a general action, and exhorted the garrison of Durazzo to
assist their own deliverance by a well-timed sally from the town. He
marched in two columns to surprise the Normans before daybreak on two
different sides: his light cavalry was scattered over the plain; the
archers formed the second line; and the Varangians claimed the honors of
the vanguard. In the first onset, the battle-axes of the strangers made
a deep and bloody impression on the army of Guiscard, which was
now reduced to fifteen thousand men. The Lombards and Calabrians
ignominiously turned their backs; they fled towards the river and the
sea; but the bridge had been broken down to check the sally of the
garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetian galleys, who played
their engines among the disorderly throng. On the verge of ruin, they
were saved by the spirit and conduct of their chiefs. Gaita, the wife of
Robert, is painted by the Greeks as a warlike Amazon, a second Pallas;
less skilful in arts, but not less terrible in arms, than the Athenian
goddess: though wounded by an arrow, she stood her ground, and strove,
by her exhortation and example, to rally the flying troops. Her female
voice was seconded by the more powerful voice and arm of the Norman
duke, as calm in action as he was magnanimous in council: "Whither," he
cried aloud, "whither do ye fly? Your enemy is implacable; and death
is less grievous than servitude." The moment was decisive: as the
Varangians advanced before the line, they discovered the nakedness of
their flanks: the main battle of the duke, of eight hundred knights,
stood firm and entire; they couched their lances, and the Greeks deplore
the furious and irresistible shock of the French cavalry. Alexius was
not deficient in the duties of a soldier or a general; but he no sooner
beheld the slaughter of the Varangians, and the flight of the Turks,
than he despised his subjects, and despaired of his fortune. The
princess Anne, who drops a tear on this melancholy event, is reduced
to praise the strength and swiftness of her father's horse, and his
vigorous struggle when he was almost overthrown by the stroke of a
lance, which had shivered the Imperial helmet. His desperate valor broke
through a squadron of Franks who opposed his flight; and after wandering
two days and as many nights in the mountains, he found some repose,
of body, though not of mind, in the walls of Lychnidus. The victorious
Robert reproached the tardy and feeble pursuit which had suffered the
escape of so illustrious a prize: but he consoled his disappointment by
the trophies and standards of the field, the wealth and luxury of the
Byzantine camp, and the glory of defeating an army five times more
numerous than his own. A multitude of Italians had been the victims
of their own fears; but only thirty of his knights were slain in
this memorable day. In the Roman host, the loss of Greeks, Turks, and
English, amounted to five or six thousand: the plain of Durazzo was
stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor Michael
was more honorable than his life.