small river; his right wing extended to the sea; his left to the hills: nor was he conscious, perhaps, that on the same ground Cæsar and Pompey had formerly disputed the empire of the world.72 Durazzo, A.D. 1081, Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved to risk Battle of the event of a general action, and exhorted the garrison of Durazzo to assist their own deliverance by a well-timed October 18. 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 honours 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: 73 though wounded by an arrow, she stood her ground, and strove, by her exhortation and example, to rally the flying troops.74 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 66 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 72 See the simple and masterly narrative of Cæsar himself (Comment. de Bell. Civil. iii. 41-75). It is a pity that Quintus Icilius (M. Guischard) did not live to analyse these operations, as he has done the campaigns of Africa and Spain. 73 Παλλὰς ἄλλη κὰν μὴ ̓Αθήνη, which is very properly translated by the President Cousin (Hist. de Constantinople, tom. iv. p. 131, in 12mo.), qui combattoit comme une Pallas, quoiqu'elle ne fût pas aussi savante que celle d'Athènes. The Grecian goddess was composed of two discordant characters-of Neith, the workwoman of Sais in Egypt, and of a virgin Amazon of the Tritonian lake in Libya (Banier, Mythologie, tom. iv. p. 1-31, in 12mo.). 74 Anna Comnena (1. iv. p. 116 [tom. i. p. 210, ed. Bonn]) admires, with some degree of terror, her masculine virtues. They were more familiar to the Latins; and though the Apulian (1. iv. p. 273) mentions her presence and her wound, he represents her as far less intrepid. Uxor in hoc bello Roberti forte sagittâ The last is an unlucky word for a female prisoner. deplore the furious and irresistible shock of the French cavalry.75 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 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: 76 the plain of Durazzo was stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor Michael was more honourable than his life. Durazzo A.D. 1082, It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by the loss of a costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt 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 correspondence with a Venetian noble, who sold the city for a rich and honourable marriage. At the dead 75 ̓Απὸ τῆς τοῦ Ρομπερτοῦ προηγησαμένης μάχης γινώσκων τὴν πρώτην κατὰ τῶν ἐναντίων itanics Tân Ki2 Tân Cả VÚ TOTO (Anna, 1. v. p. 133 [tom. i. p. 137, ed. Bonn]); and elsewhere καὶ γὰρ Κελτὸς ἀνὴρ πᾶς ἐποχούμενος μὲν ἀνύποιστος τὴν ὁρμὴν καὶ τὴν θέαν ἐστίν (p. 140 [tom. i. p. 251, ed. Bonn]). The pedantry of the princess in the choice of classic appellations encouraged Ducange to apply to his countrymen the characters of the ancient Gauls. 76 Lupus Protospata (tom. v. p. 45) says 6000; William the Apulian more than 5000 (1. iv. p. 273). Their modesty is singular and laudable: they might with so little 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, à durando: poor wit! (Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 137.) Return of actions of of night several rope-ladders were dropped from the walls; the light Calabrians ascended in silence; and the Greeks were awakened by the name and trumpets of the conqueror. Yet they defended the streets 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 or invasion of Henry king of Germany. Robert, and Highly presuming that his person was sufficient for the Bohemond. 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. After winning two battles against the emperor, he descended into the plain of Thessaly, and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of Achilles,79 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 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 78 Βρούχους καὶ ἀκρίδας εἶπεν ἄν τις αὐτοὺς, [τὸν] πατέρα καὶ [τὸν] υἷον (Anna, l. i. p. 35 [tom. 1. p. 70, ed. Bonn]). 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. 79 Prodiit hâc auctor Trojanæ cladis Achilles. The supposition of the Apulian (1. v. p. 275) may be excused by the more classic poetry of Virgil (Eneid II. 197), Larissæus Achilles, but it is not justified by the geography of Homer. 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; 80 his archers were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and snares were 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 sympathised in his misfortune. The emperor Henry III. the Greeks, invited by A.D. 1081. Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of Robert, the most prompt and powerful was Henry the Third or Fourth, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the West. The epistle of the Greek monarch 8 to his brother is 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 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 farther 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, who was already in Lombardy at the head of an So The Tv idida súaμara, which encumbered the knights on foot, have been ignorantly translated spurs (Anna Comnena, Alexias, 1. v. p. 140 [tom. i. p. 251, ed. Boun]). 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. 81 The epistle itself (Alexias, 1. iii. p. 93, 94, 95 ¡tom. i. p. 174-177, ed. Bonn]) well deserves to be read. There is one expression, άστροπέλεκυν δεδομένον μετὰ χρυσαφίου [p. 177], which Ducange does not understand. I have endeavoured to grope out a tolerable meaning: χρυσάφιον is a golden crown ; ἀστροπέλεκυς is explained by Simon Portius (in Lexico Græco-Barbar.), by xiguvos, Tenrng, a flash of lightning. For these general events I must refer to the general historians Sigonius, Baronius, Muratori, Mosheim, St. Marc, &c. Besieges A.D. 1081-1084. 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 sincere 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: 83 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.84 But the Roman people adhered to the cause of Gregory : their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and money from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged by the king of Germany. In the fourth year he corrupted, as it is said, 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 anti-pope, Cle31. ment the Third, was consecrated in the Lateran: the grateful pontiff crowned his protector in the Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the Capitol, as the lawful successor of 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 had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints; but, on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation A.D. 1084, 24, 83 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, Biblioth. ancienne et moderne, tom. viii.), and much amusement in Bayle (Dictionnaire Critique, Grégoire VII.). That pope was undoubtedly a 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. iii. p. 69, seq.) with which I am the least dissatisfied?" 84 Anna, with the rancour of a Greek schismatic, calls him xaráztuctos cŬtos Náwas (1. i. p. 32 [tom. i. p. 66, ed. Bonn]), a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon; and accuses him of scourging, shaving, and perhaps of castrating, the ambassadors of Henry (p. 31, 33). But this outrage is improbable and doubtful (see the sensible preface of Cousin). There is a fair Life of Gregory the Seventh by Voigt (Weimar, 1815), which has been translated into French. M. Villemain, it is understood, has devoted much time to the study of this remarkable character, to whom his eloquence inay do justice. There is much valuable information on the subject in the accurate work of Stenzel, Geschichte Deutschlands unter den Fränkischen Kaisern-the History of Germany under the Emperors of the Franconian Race.--M. |