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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 valour 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 honourable than his life.

taken. A.D.

[21]

It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by Durazzo the loss of a costly pageant, which had merited only the con- 1082, Feb. 8 tempt and derision of the Greeks. After their defeat, they still persevered in the defence of Durazzo; and a Venetian commander supplied the place of George Palæologus, who had been imprudently called away from his station. The tents of the besiegers were converted into barracks, to sustain the inclemency of the winter; and in answer to the defiance of the garrison Robert insinuated that his patience was at least equal to their obstinacy. Perhaps he already trusted to his secret correpondence with a Venetian noble, who sold the city for a rich and honourable marriage. At the dead of night several rope-ladders were dropped from the walls; the light Calabrians ascended in

Lupus Protospata (tom. iii. p. 45) says 6000; William the Apulian more than 5000 (L. iv. p. 273). Their modesty is singular and laudable: they might with so hittle trouble have slain two or three myriads of schismatics and infidels!

The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of Epi-damnus to Dyrrachium (Plin. iii. 26), and the vulgar corruption of Duracium (see Malaterra) bore some affinity to hardness. One of Robert's names was Durand, a durando: Poor wit! (Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 137). VOL. VI.-14

Robert

silence; and the Greeks were awakened by the name and trumpets of the conqueror. Yet they defended the street three days against an enemy already master of the rampart; and near seven months elapsed between the first investment and the final surrender of the place. From Durazzo the Norman duke advanced into the heart of Epirus or Albania; traversed the first mountains of Thessaly; surprised three hundred English in the city of Castoria; approached Thessalonica; and made Constantinople tremble. A more pressing duty suspended the prosecution of his ambitious designs. By shipwreck, pestilence, and the sword, his army was reduced to a third of the original numbers; and, instead of being recruited from Italy, he was informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and dangers which had been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities and barons of Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach Return of or invasion of Henry king of Germany. Highly presuming that [A.D. 1082] his person was sufficient for the public safety, he repassed the sea in a single brigantine, and left the remains of the army under the command of his son and the Norman counts, exhorting Bohemond to respect the freedom of his peers, and the counts to obey the authority of their leader. The son of Guiscard trod in the footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are compared, by the Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom devours whatever has escaped the teeth of the former.96 After winning two battles against the emperor, he descended into the plain of Thessaly, and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of Achilles," which contained the treasure and magazines of the Byzantine camp. Yet a just praise must not be refused to the fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who bravely struggled with the calamities of the times. In the poverty of the state, he presumed to borrow the superfluous ornaments of the churches; the desertion of the Manichæans was supplied by some tribes of Moldavia; a reinforcement of seven thousand

and actions

of Bohe

mond

96 Βρούχους καὶ ἀκρίδας εἶπεν ἄν τις αὐτοὺς [τὸν] πατέρα καὶ [τὸν] υἱόν (Anna, l. i. p. 35 [c. 14]). By these similes, so different from those of Homer, she wishes to inspire contempt as well as horror for the little noxious animal, a conqueror. Most unfortunately, the common sense, or common nonsense, of mankind resists her laudable design.

97 Prodiit hâc auctor Trojans cladis Achilles.

The supposition of the Apulian (1. v. p. 275) may be excused by the more classic poetry of Virgil (Æneid II. 197), Larisseus Achilles, but it is not justified by the geography of Homer.

211 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; 98 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 enlisted 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.

peror

III. [İV.)

by the

A.D. 1081

Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of The emRobert, the most prompt and powerful was Henry, the Third or Henry Fourth, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the invited West. The epistle of the Greek monarch 99 to his brother is Greeks. 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 age, a radiated crown of gold, a cross set with pearls to hang on

98 The Tŵy Tedĺλwv podλμara, which incumbered the knights on foot, have been ignorantly translated spurs (Anna Comnena, Alexias, 1. v. p. 140 [c. 6]). Ducange has explained the true sense by a ridiculous and inconvenient fashion, which lasted from the xith to the xvth century. These peaks, in the form of a scorpion, were sometimes two feet, and fastened to the knee with a silver chain.

99 The epistle itself (Alexias, I. iii. p. 93, 94, 95 [c. 10]) well deserves to be read. There is one expression, ἀστροπέλεκυν δεδεμένον μετὰ χρυσαφίου, which Ducange does not understand; I have endeavoured to grope out a tolerable meaning; xpuoápiov, is a golden crown; àσтpoñéλekus, is explained by Simon Portius (in Lexico GræcoBarbar.) by xepauvós, apnoтhp, a flash of lightning. [Heinemann has shown that this letter reached Henry IV. at Rome in June, 1081 (op. cit., p. 396-8). The embassy is mentioned in Benzo's Panegyricus rhythmicus, probably composed at end of 1081 (printed in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. xi. p. 591 sqq.).]

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-four 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,100 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: 101 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.102 But the Roman people adhered to the cause of Gregory : their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and money from Besieges Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged by the 1081-1084; king of Germany. In the fourth year he corrupted, as it is said,

Rome. A.D.

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

101 The lives of Gregory VII. are either legends or invectives (St. Marc, Abrégé, tom. iii. p. 235, &c.), and his miraculous or magical performances are alike incredible to a modern reader. He will, as usual, find some instruction in Le Clerc (Vie de Hildebrand, Bibliot. ancienne et moderne, tom. viii.) and much amusement in Bayle (Dictionnaire Critique, Grégoire VII.). That pope was undoubtedly s great man, a second Athanasius, in a more fortunate age of the church. May I presume to add that the portrait of Athanasius is one of the passages of my history (vol. ii. p. 383 sqq.), with which I am the least dissatisfied? [The nineteenth century produced an enormous Hildebrandine literature. The pioneer work was that of Johannes Voigt in 1815; Hildebrand als Papst Gregor VII. und sein Zeitalter. The Protestant author represented Gregory in the light of a reformer. Voigt's work led to an English monograph by J. W. Bowden: The Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII. (1840). Gfrörer, Papst Gregorius VII. und sein Zeitalter, 7 vols. (1859-61); W. Martens, Gregor VII. sein Leben und Wirken, 2 vols. (1894). See further the article on Gregory in the latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.] 102 Anna, with the rancour of a Greek schismatic, calls him [8] KATÁ#TUOTOS ODTOS Пáras (1. i. p. 32 [c. 13]), a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon; and accuses him of scourging, shaving, perhaps of castrating, the ambassadors of Henry (p. 31, 33). But this outrage is improbable and doubtful (see the sensible preface of Cousin).

March 21,

with Byzantine gold the nobles of Rome whose estates and castles had been ruined by the war. The gates, the bridges, and fifty hostages were delivered into his hands; the antipope, Clement the Third, was consecrated in the Lateran; the grateful pontiff crowned his protector in the Vatican; and the emperor Henry A.D. 1084, fixed his residence in the Capitol, as the lawful successor of 24, 31 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

Robert;

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 Flies before indispensable affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; May exhorted the Romans to persevere in their allegiance; and hastily retreated three days before the entrance of the Normans. In less than three years, the son of Tancred of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope, and of compelling the two emperors of the East and West to fly before his victorious arms.103 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 an hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and pillage.104 The Saracens of Sicily, the

103 Sic uno tempore victi

Sunt terræ Domini duo: rex Alemannicus iste,
Imperii rector Romani maximus ille.

Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur; et alter

Nominis auditi solå formidine cessit.

It is singular enough that the Apulian, a Latin, should distinguish the Greek as the ruler of the Roman empire (1. iv. p. 274).

194 The narrative of Malaterra (1. iii. c. 37, p. 587, 588) is authentic, circumstantial, and fair. Dux ignem exclamans urbe incensâ, &c. The Apulian softens the mischief (inde quibusdam ædibus exustis), which is again exaggerated in some partial Chronicles (Muratori, Annali, tom. ix. p. 147).

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