Second expedition of Greece. A.D. 1094, October subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries of his brother, embraced this fair occasion of rifling 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.105 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. The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged Robert into himself in season of repose; but, in the same year of the flight of the German emperor, the indefatigable Robert resumed the design of his eastern conquests. The zeal or gratitude of Gregory had promised to his valour the kingdoms of Greece and Asia; 106 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; 107 yet the utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been already defined; they were contained on this second occasion in one hundred and twenty vessels; and, as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium 108 was preferred 105 After mentioning this devastation, the Jesuit Donatus (de Româ veteri et novâ, 1. iv. c. 8, p. 489) prettily adds, Duraret hodieque in Coelio monte interque ipsum et Capitolium miserabilis facies prostratæ urbis, nisi in hortorum vinetorumque amoenitatem Roma resurrexisset ut perpetuâ viriditate contegeret vulnera et ruinas suas. 106 The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed by the pope (Anna, 1. i. p. 32 [c. 13]), is sufficiently confirmed by the Apulian (1. iv. p. 270). Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal advocates, should be displeased with this new instance of apostolic jurisdiction. 107 See Homer, Iliad B (I hate this pedantic mode of quotation by the letter of the Greek alphabet), 87, &c. His bees are the image of a disorderly crowd; their discipline and public works seem to be the ideas of a later age (Virgil, Eneid, 1. i.). 108 Gulielm. Appulus, 1. v. p. 276. The admirable port of Brundusium was double; the outward harbour was a gulf covered by an island, and narrowing by degrees, till it communicated by a small gullet with the inner harbour, which em braced the city on both sides. Cæsar and nature have laboured for its ruin; and against such agents, what are the feeble efforts of the Neapolitan government? (Swinburne's Travels in the two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 384-390), 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 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.103 By the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with an 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 fought 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 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.110 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 169 [The golden Bull is printed in Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedigs, in Fontes rer. Aust. ii. 12, No. 23.] 110 William of Apulia (1. v. p. 276) describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena (1. vi. p. 159, 160, 161 [c. 5]). In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge and rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter excidium stoli (Dandulus in Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249). 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 forces might pursue their joint operations with vigour and effect. But, in the isle of Cephalonia, his projects His death. Were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease; Robert himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and a suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumour, to his wife, or to the Greek emperor. This premature death might allow a boundless scope for the imagination of his future exploits: and the event sufficiently declares that the Norman greatness was founded on his life." 112 Without the appearance of an enemy, A.D. 1085, July 17 111 a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in his deliverance. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard was shipwrecked on the Italian shore; but the duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of Venusia,113 a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace 114 than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, 111 The most authentic writers, William of Apulia (1. v. 277), Jeffrey Malaterra (1. iii. c. 41, p. 589), and Romuald of Salerno (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.), are ignorant of this crime so apparent to our countrymen William of Malmesbury (1. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden (p. 710 in Script. post Bedam), and the latter can tell how the just Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian is indeed so blind that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I. who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke of Apulia's death. [When he died, Robert was on the point of sailing to Cephalonia, but he did not die in the island. He died (where he had made his winter quarters) at Bundicia on the river Glykys, on the coast of Epirus. Heinemann (op. cit., p. 401-3) treats the question in an acute appendix, and makes it probable that this Glykys is to be connected with the Γλυκὺς λιμήν, the name given by Strabo to the bay into which the Acheron flows-now called the bay of Phanari. He conjectures that Bundicia is the ancient Pandosia. The Chronicon breve Nortmannicum, sub ann., states that Guiscard died in Cassiopi and Romuald of Salerno says apud insulam Cassiopam; hence it has been supposed that the place was Cassiope, on the north side of the island of Corfu. Heinemann would connect "Cassiopa" with Cassopia in Epirus. The statement that he died in Cephalonia is due to Anna Comnena (vi. 6) and Anon. Bar. sub ann., but is irreconcilable with the rest of the story.] 112 The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy (Alexiad. 1. vi. p. 162-166 [c. 6, 7]), and his best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign of his family. Græcia (says Malaterra) hostibus recedentibus libera læta quievit: Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur. 113 Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is one of the last lines of the Apulian's poem (1. v. p. 278). William of Malmesbury (1. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing. 114 Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia: he was carried to Rome in his childhood (Serm. i. 6), and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii. 4; Serm. ii. 1) are unworthy of his age and genius. his second son and successor, immediately sunk to the humble station of a duke of Apulia: the esteem or partiality of his father left the valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword. The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the first crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more splendid field of glory and conquest.115 ambition of of Roger, great count A.D. 1101 Of human life the most glorious or humble prospects are Reign and alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at of Sicily. Antioch, in the second generation; but his younger brother 1154, Feb. 9 became the father of a line of kings; and the son of the great count was endowed with the name, the conquests, and the spirit of the first Roger.116 The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily and, at the age of only four years, he succeeded to the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous, wish of dominion. Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, an happy and grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and, if a wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies,117 the opulence and power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian limits beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently watched 115 See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88-93) and the historians of the first crusade. 116 The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily, fills four books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone (tom. ii. l. xi.-xiv. p. 136-340), and is spread over the ninth and tenth volumes of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliothèque Italique (tom. i. p. 175-222) I find an useful abstract of Capecelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger I. to Frederic II. inclusive. [The old collection of authorities for Sicilian history by Fazellus (1579) was reissued at Catania in 1749-52. The Neapolitan collection of G. Del Re in 2 vols. (see below, note 118) includes some Sicilians. Some chronicles written in the Sicilian tongue were collected by Vincenzo de' Giovanni and published in 1865 (Cronache Siciliane dei secoli xiii.-xiv. c. xv.).] 117 According to the testimony of Philistus and Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a standing force of 10,000 horse, 100,000 foot, and 400 galleys. Compare Hume (Essays, vol. i. p. 268, 435) and his adversary Wallace (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307). The ruins of Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, d'Orville, Reidesel, Swinburne, &c. Duke of First king of Sicily. A.D. 1130 Dec. 25 A.D. 1139, July 25 the declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the grandson of Robert. On the first intelligence of his premature death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor in the bay of Salerno, received, after ten days' negotiation, an oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from the reluctant popes, who could not long endure either the friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot of Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his uncle Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of count; and the isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the continent of Italy, might form the basis of a kingdom 118 which would only yield to the monarchies of France and England. The chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir were insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the Latin world 119 might disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit; 120 but his own legitimacy was attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second; and, while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown, by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and 118 A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger, from the year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the consent of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and Palermo, without introducing pope Anacletus (Alexand. Conobii Telesini Abbatis de Rebus gestis Regis Rogerii, lib. iv. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 607-645 [printed with Italian translation, Del Re's Cronisti e scrittori sincroni Napolitani, vol. i. p. 85 sqq. (1845)]). 119 The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castile, Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne ; the three next were created by their sword, the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary alone was honoured or debased by a papal crown. 120 Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and independent coronation (A.D. 1130, May 1), which Giannone unwillingly rejects (tom. ii. p. 137-144). This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious charter of Messina (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 340; Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468), |