II. IMPERIAL AGGRESSIONS OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY
FREDERICK BARBAROSSA IN ITALY
The long war of the investitures, between the Franconian emperors and the popes, had given the first impulse to the ambition of the Lombard cities for alliance; as general interests were involved, as it was a question of distant operations and common danger, the cities felt the necessity of alliances and of an active correspondence, which soon extended from one extremity of Italy to the other. The smaller towns soon found that this general policy was beyond their means, and that the great cities, in which commerce and wealth had accumulated knowledge, and which alone received the communications of the pope or of the emperor, naturally placed themselves at the head of the league formed in their provinces, either for the empire or for the church. These two leagues were not yet known in Italy by the names of Guelf and Ghibelline, which in Germany had been the war-cry of the two parties at the battle of Winsberg, fought on the 21st of December, 1140, and which had previously distinguished, the former the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, devoted to the pope, the latter, the emperors of the house of Franconia. But although these two names, which seem since to have become exclusively Italian, had not yet been adopted in Italy, the hereditary affection respectively for the two parties already divided the minds of the people for more than a century, and faction became to each a second country, often served by them with not less heroism and devotion than their native city.[b]
[Sidenote: [1152-1155 A.D.]]
Such was the state of Italy, when the Germanic diet, assembled at Frankfort in 1152, conferred the crown on Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Swabia, and of the house of Hohenstaufen. This prince was nephew to Conrad III, whom he succeeded; he was allied to the two houses of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, which had contended with each other for the empire, and was regarded, with good reason, by the Germans as their most distinguished chief. Frederick Barbarossa was not only brave, but understood the art of war, at least so far as it could be understood in an age so barbarous. He made himself beloved by the soldiers, at the same time that he subjected them to a discipline which others had not yet thought of establishing. He held his word sacred; he abhorred gratuitous cruelty, although the shedding of human blood had in general nothing revolting in it to a prince of the Middle Ages; but the prerogatives of his crown appeared to him sacred rights, which from pride, and even from conscience, he was disposed to preserve and extend. The Italians he considered in a state of revolt against the imperial throne and the German nation, and he believed it to be his first duty to reduce them to subjection.
Frederick Barbarossa, accordingly, in the month of October, 1154, entered Italy with a powerful German army, by the valley of Trent. He proposed to himself not only receiving there the crowns of Italy and the empire and reducing to obedience subjects who appeared to him to forget their duty to their sovereign, but also to punish in particular the Milanese for their arrogance, to redress the complaints which the citizens of Pavia and Cremona had brought against them, and to oblige Milan to render to the towns of Lodi and Como, which it had dismantled, all the privileges which Milan itself enjoyed. On arriving at Roncaglia, where the diets of the kingdom of Italy were held, he was assailed by complaints from the bishop and nobles against the towns, as well as by complaints against the Milanese from the consuls of Pavia, of Cremona, of Como, and of Lodi; while those of Crema, of Brescia, of Piacenza, of Asti and Tortona vindicated them. Before giving judgment on the differences submitted to his decision, Frederick announced his intention of judging for himself the state of the country, by visiting in person Piedmont and Montferrat. Having to pass through the Milanese territory on his way to Novara, he commanded the consuls of Milan to supply him with provisions on the road. The towns acknowledged that they owed the emperors upon their journeys the dues designated by the feudal words “foderum, parata, mansionaticum” (forage, food, and lodging); but the Germans, retarded in their march by heavy and continued rain, took two days to reach a stage which the Milanese supposed they would reach in one; provisions of course failed; and the Germans avenged themselves on the unhappy inhabitants by pillaging and burning the villages wherever sufficient rations were not found.
Frederick treated with kindness the towns of Novara and Turin, but those of Chieri and Asti had been denounced to him as entertaining the same sentiments as Milan; the inhabitants fled at his approach, and he plundered and burned their deserted houses. Arrived next before Tortona, he ordered the inhabitants to renounce their alliance with the Milanese; but they, trusting to the strength of the upper town, into which they had retreated, while Frederick occupied the lower part, had the courage to refuse. The Germans began the siege of Tortona on the 13th of February, 1155. They could not prevent the entrance of two hundred Milanese, to assist in its defence. For sixty-two days did this brave people resist the attacks of the formidable army of Frederick, the numbers of which had been increased by the armed force of Pavia, and the other Ghibelline towns. The want of water compelled them at last to surrender; and the emperor allowed them to retire to Milan, taking only the few effects which each individual could carry away. Everything else was given up to the pillage of the soldiers, and the houses became a prey to the flames. The Milanese received with respect these martyrs of liberty, and every opulent house gave shelter and hospitality to some of the unhappy inhabitants of Tortona. Frederick meanwhile placed on his head, in the temple of Pavia, the iron crown of the kings of Lombardy, and began his march on Rome, to receive there the golden crown of the empire.
But the Germans who accompanied the emperor, notwithstanding the ardour with which they had undertaken this distant expedition, began to grow tired of so long an absence from their home. The license extended to their pillage and debauchery no longer appeared to them a sufficient compensation for tedious marches and the dangers of war. They pressed the emperor to advance towards Rome, and to avoid all quarrel with the great towns by which they passed, although almost all refused to admit them within their walls--providing subsistence and lodging for them in the suburbs only. The impossibility of maintaining discipline in a rapacious army, which beheld for the first time the unknown riches of commerce and the arts; the difficulty of avoiding quarrels between two nations, neither of which understood the language of the other, perhaps justified this precaution. Frederick thus passed by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, and Florence. He was not received even into Rome; his troops occupied what was styled the Leonine city, or the suburb built round the Vatican; he was there crowned by the pope, Adrian IV, while his army was obliged to repel the Romans, who advanced by the bridge of St. Angelo and the Borgo[6] of Trastevere to disturb the ceremony. Frederick withdrew from Rome the following day; conducting his army into the mountains to avoid the great heat of summer. The citizens of Spoleto, not having supplied with sufficient haste the provisions he demanded, he attacked, took, and burned their city; sickness, however, began to thin the ranks of his soldiers; many also deserted, to embark at Ancona. Frederick, with a weakened army, directed his march on Germany by the valleys of the Tyrol. The citizens of Verona, who would not admit the Germans within their walls, constructed for him a bridge of boats on the Adige, which he hastily passed over, but had hardly gained the opposite bank, when enormous pieces of wood, carried down by the impetuosity of the current, struck and destroyed the bridge. Frederick had no doubt that the Lombards had laid this snare for him, and flattered themselves with the breaking of the bridge whilst he should be in the act of passing over; but he was no longer sufficiently strong to avenge himself.
[Sidenote: [1155-1158 A.D.]]
The emperor at length returned into Germany with his barbarian soldiers. He everywhere on his passage spread havoc and desolation; the line by which he marched through the Milanese territory was marked by fire; the villages of Rosate, Trecale, and Galiata, the towns of Chieri, Asti, Tortona, and Spoleto were burned. But whilst he thus proved his barbarism, he also proved his weakness. He did not dare to attack the stronger and more populous cities, which congratulated themselves on having shut their gates, and refused submission to him. Thus a year’s campaign sufficed to destroy one of the most formidable armies that Germany had ever poured into Italy; and the example of ancient times encouraged the belief that it would be long before the emperor could again put the Germans in motion. The Milanese felicitated themselves on having preserved their liberty by their courage and patriotism. Their treasury was indeed empty; but the zeal of their opulent citizens, who knew no other luxury than that of serving their country, soon replenished it. These men, who poured their wealth into the treasury of the republic, contented themselves with black bread, and cloaks of coarse stuff. At the command of their consuls, they left Milan to join their fellow-citizens in rebuilding, with their own hands, the walls and houses of Tortona, Rosate, Trecale, Galiata, and other towns, which had suffered in the contest for the common cause. They next attacked the cities of Pavia, Cremona, and Novara, which had embraced the party of the emperor, and subjected them to humiliating conditions; while they drew closer their bonds of alliance with the towns of Brescia and Piacenza, which had declared for liberty.
But Frederick had more power over Germany than any of his predecessors; he was regarded there as the restorer of the rights of the empire and of the German nation. He obtained credit for reducing Italy from what was called a state of anarchy and revolt, to order and obedience. His vassals accordingly flocked with eagerness to his standard, when he summoned them at the feast of Pentecost, 1158, to compel the submission of Italy. The battalions of Germany entered Lombardy at the same time by all the passes of the Alps. Their approach to Brescia inspired the inhabitants with so much terror, that they immediately renounced their alliance with Milan, and paid down a large sum of money for their ransom. The Milanese, on the contrary, prepared themselves for resistance. They had either destroyed or fortified all the bridges of the Adda, flattering themselves that this river would suffice to stop the progress of the emperor; but a body of German cavalry dashed boldly into the stream, and, swimming across the river, gained in safety the opposite bank. They then made themselves masters of the bridge of Cassano, and the whole army entered into the Milanese territory. Frederick, following the course of the Adda, made choice of a situation about four miles from the ruins of the former Lodi.[7] Here he ordered the people of Lodi to rebuild their town, which would in future secure to him the passage of the Adda. He summoned thither also the militias of Pavia and Cremona, with those of the other towns of Lombardy, which their jealousy of Milan had attached to the Ghibelline party; and it was not till after they had joined him that he encamped, on the 8th of August, 1158, before Milan.
His engines of war, however, were insufficient to beat down the walls of so strong and large a town; and he resolved to reduce the Milanese by famine. He seized their granaries, burned their stacks of corn, mowed down the autumnal harvests, and announced his resolution not to raise the siege till the Milanese had returned to their duty. The few nobles, however, who had preserved their independence in Lombardy, proceeded to the camp of the emperor. One of them, the count of Blandrate, who had before given proofs of his attachment to the town of Milan, offered himself as a mediator, was accepted, and obtained terms not unfavourable to the Milanese. They engaged to pay a tribute to Frederick of nine thousand marks of silver, to restore to him his regal rights, and to the towns of Lodi and Como their independence. On their side, they were dispensed from opening their gates to the emperor. They preserved the right of electing their consuls, and included in their pacification their allies of Tortona and Crema. This treaty was signed the 7th of September, 1158.
Frederick, in granting an honourable capitulation to revolted subjects, whom he had brought back to their obedience, had no intention of renouncing the rights of his empire. He considered that he had preserved, untouched, the legislative authority of the diet of his kingdom of Italy. The Milanese, on the contrary, regarded their treaty as definitive; and were both astonished and indignant when Frederick, having assembled, towards the 11th of November following, the placita or diets of the kingdom at Roncaglia, promulgated by this diet a constitution which overthrew their most precious rights. It took the administration of justice from the hands of the consuls of towns, to place it in those of a single judge, and a foreigner, chosen by the emperor, bearing the name of podesta; it fixed the limits of the regal rights, giving them much more importance than had been contemplated by the Milanese when they agreed to acknowledge them; it deprived cities, as well as the other members of the empire, of the right of making private war; it changed the boundaries of territories appertaining to towns, and in particular took from Milan the little town of Monza, and the counties of Seprio and of Martesana, which the inhabitants had always regarded as their own property.
[Sidenote: [1158-1161 A.D.]]
Just motives had made the emperor and the diet consider these innovations necessary for the public peace and prosperity; but the Milanese regarded them only as perfidious violations of the treaty. When the podesta of the emperor arrived at Milan to take possession of the tribunal, he was sent contemptuously away. The Milanese flew to arms; and making every effort to repossess the different passes of the Adda, prepared to defend themselves behind this barrier. Frederick, on his side, assembled a new diet of the kingdom of Italy at Bologna, in the spring of 1159, and placed Milan under the ban of the empire.
The emperor did not yet attempt to reduce the Milanese by a regular siege. His army was neither sufficiently numerous to invest so large a town, nor his engines of war of sufficient force to make a breach in such strong walls; but he proclaimed his determination to employ all his power, as monarch of Germany and Italy, to ruin that rebellious town. The Milanese, accordingly, soon saw their corn mowed down, their autumn harvests destroyed, their vine stocks cut, the trees which covered their country either cut down or barked, their canals of irrigation broken; but the generous citizens of this new republic did not allow themselves to be discouraged by the superior force of such an enemy, or by the inevitable issue of such a contest. They saw clearly that they must perish; but it would be for the honour and the liberty of Italy; they were resolved to leave a great example to their countrymen, and to future generations.
The Siege of Crema
The people of Crema had remained faithful to the Milanese in their good and evil fortune; but the siege of that town presented fewer difficulties to the emperor than the siege of Milan. Crema was of small extent, and could be invested on every side; it was also more accessible to the engines of war, though surrounded by a double wall and a ditch filled with water. The Cremonese began the siege on the 4th of July, 1159; and on the 10th, Frederick arrived to direct it in person.[c]
The emperor regarded the inhabitants of the town as revolted subjects and he probably expected to have little difficulty in accomplishing their overthrow. Contrary to his expectations, however, the Cremascans proved not only brave but stubborn, and despite his best efforts they held out against him for about six months. The siege gave rise to many picturesque incidents and furnished typical illustrations of the methods of warfare of the time. Even before the first attack Frederick sought to frighten the Cremascans into submission by the barbarous execution of several of their citizens who had previously been sent to him as hostages. Nothing daunted, the inhabitants of the besieged city retaliated in kind; moreover, they gave proof of their intrepidity by sallying forth and attempting to defeat a portion of the besieging army in open combat. Their small numbers rendered this an act of hardihood, but it evidenced the spirit in which they were prepared to repel the assault.
Frederick, on his part, began the construction of the usual machines employed against walled cities. The chief of these consisted of great towers called cats, which were tower-like structures provided with battering-rams and with grappling-irons for tearing down walls. When these were ready, a road-bed was made for them by filling in the outer ditch with some two hundred casks and two hundred car-loads of gravel. Over this improvised causeway the largest cat was slowly rolled preparatory to the assault.
The Cremascans marshalled themselves on the walls opposite this point of attack and assailed the cat with great stones hurled by catapults, and with showers of blazing arrows which had been dipped in a composition of oil, pitch, lard, and sulphur. These burning arrows were cut from the walls of the cat with scythes, but it was with difficulty that the flames could be extinguished, while the enemy’s projectiles threatened the complete destruction of the invading engine before it could be brought within close range of the walls.
Further enraged at the heroic resistance, Frederick resorted to one of those measures of barbarity which seem almost incredible when rehearsed to modern ears. He brought forth the Cremascan prisoners whom he had previously spared, bound them in chains and suspended them by ropes beneath their arms from the front of the cat. The Cremascans beheld with horror their friends and relatives thus used to shield the foe; but at length the needs of the many were held by the consul, Giovanni de Medici, to outweigh the interests of the unfortunate few, and the missiles of defence were again brought to bear upon the cat. Nine of the unfortunate Cremascans dangling from the cat were killed, and others were frightfully injured; but the occupants of the structure also suffered to such an extent that they were glad presently to retire and for the moment to acknowledge themselves beaten.
Where the invaders had failed by open attack, they in the end succeeded through the treachery of a Cremascan, one Marchisio, a mechanic of great ingenuity, whose skill had largely aided the besieged garrison in repulsing the enemy’s attack. Frederick found a way to approach this man and through bribery to gain him over. The importance laid upon this incident by the chroniclers of the siege illustrates the value that attached to individual effort in the warfare of those times. The reader of Roman history will recall how Archimedes long saved Syracuse from destruction by the ingenuity with which he contrived means to repel the assaults of the Romans. Warfare had but little changed in the interval of about fourteen hundred years--had, indeed, but little changed since the early days of the Egyptians and Babylonians--and the presence of one inventive mind might seemingly suffice to turn the tide for or against the besieged city. So now Marchisio, as the story goes, was able to point out at once to Frederick the inadequacy of his method of attack. He caused the emperor to abandon his cats, and to build in their place gigantic towers, the largest being, it is said, about one hundred cubits in height, and having attached to one of its upper stories a bridge no less than forty-six cubits long, which would enable its occupants to reach the wall of a city while their machine was yet at a considerable distance. The tower itself was further guarded from missiles by brass and iron plates.
In due course of time, these new machines being in readiness, a fresh attack was begun. The largest tower approached within grappling distance of the walls; the invaders poured over the bridge, despite the shower of missiles that assailed them, and accomplished heroic deeds on the walls where they grappled with the Cremascans. Tradition usually preserves the names of one or two among the hardy warriors who figure in such a scene as this. In the present case the chroniclers have loved to record the deeds of one Berthold von Arach, represented as a giant in strength, who was said to have sprung down from the wall with a small band of followers and recklessly to have invaded the city itself. After performing the usual deeds of prowess, he at last succumbed to superior numbers, and the conqueror proudly affixed his scalp with its waving hair as a trophy to his own helmet.
Another warrior who was said to have distinguished himself on that day was Otto, count palatine of Bavaria. He it was whose efforts were held to have turned the tide of battle against the Cremascans on the wall and to have decided the fate of the day; though Conrad, his brother, who with him led the assault, performed equal deeds of daring and barely escaped with his life.
At last the Cremascans were driven to abandon their outer wall. On the morrow, despairing of further defence, they offered to capitulate, throwing themselves on the mercy of Frederick. “Sad is ever the lot of the vanquished,” cried the despairing consul as he approached the emperor. “Oh, sire, the hand of the Almighty is heavy upon us. We surrender and throw ourselves upon your mercy. But if our prayers can touch your heart let us not be delivered into the hands of the Cremonese, whose many false accusations have wrought our ruin.” The emperor accepted the capitulation, and extended more merciful terms than his attack in the earlier part of the siege might have led one to expect. He permitted the Cremascans with their wives and children to depart, as also the militias of Brescia and Milan; the Cremascans taking with them so much as they could carry, their allies going empty handed.[a]
“The surrender of Crema,” says Testa,[d] “took place on January 27th, 1160. When that unhappy multitude, which amounted to more than twenty thousand persons, came forth, some with a few household goods, some with little children in their arms, some carrying or supporting the women, the infirm, and the wounded, it is said that, to avoid the quarters of the Cremonese, they went close by the pavilion of the emperor; and that he, at the sight of so much sorrow and distress, became thoughtful and sad; until at last, seeing in the crowd an old and infirm Cremascan who, having come to a difficult place, could hardly get any further, moved by irresistible compassion, he went up to him, offered him his hand, and helped him to go forward with the rest. So strongly can the most opposite affections prevail in turn over the same heart!”
[Sidenote: [1161-1163 A.D.]]
The siege of Crema exhausted the patience of the German army. At this period, soldiers were unaccustomed to such protracted expeditions. When they had accomplished their feudal service, they considered they had a right to return home. The greater number, accordingly, departed; but Frederick, with immovable constancy, declared he would remain, with the Italians only of the Ghibelline towns, to make war against the Milanese; and placing himself at the head of the militias of Pavia, Cremona, and Novara, carried on the war a whole year, during which his sole object was to destroy the harvests, and prevent the entrance of any kind of provision into Milan. In the month of June, 1161, a new army arrived from Germany to his aid. His subjects began to feel ashamed of having abandoned their monarch in a foreign country, amongst a people whom they accused of perfidy and rebellion. They returned with redoubled animosity, which was soon manifested by ferocious deeds; they tortured and put to death every peasant whom they surprised carrying provisions of any kind into Milan.
The rich citizens of the republic had aided the government in making large magazines, which were already in part exhausted; an accidental fire having consumed the remainder, hunger triumphed over courage and the love of liberty. For three entire years had the Milanese, since they had been placed under the ban of the empire, supported this unequal contest; when, in the beginning of March, 1162, they were reduced to surrender at discretion. In deep despair they yielded up their arms and colours, and awaited the orders of the emperor. Frederick, harsh and haughty, was not ferocious; never had he put to death by the executioner rebels or enemies whom he had vanquished. He suffered nearly a month to elapse before he pronounced his final determination; perhaps to augment the anxiety of the subdued, perhaps, also, to pacify his own wrath, which he at last vented on walls and inanimate objects, while he pardoned man. He ordered the town to be completely evacuated, so that there should not be left in it a single living being. On the 25th of March, he summoned the militias of the rival and Ghibelline cities, and gave them orders to raze to the earth the houses as well as the walls of the town, so as not to leave one stone upon another.
Those of the inhabitants of Milan whom their poverty, labour, and industry attached to the soil, were divided into four open villages, built at a distance of at least two miles from the walls of their former city. Others sought hospitality in the neighbouring towns of Italy; even in those which had shown most attachment to the emperor. Their sufferings, the extent of their sacrifices, the recollection of their valour, and the example of their noble sentiments, made proselytes to the cause of liberty in every city into which they were received. The delegates of the emperor also (for he himself had returned to his German dominions), the podestas whom he had established in every town, soon made those Lombards who had fought with him feel only shame and regret at having lent their aid to rivet his yoke on their own necks. All the privileges of the nation were violated; justice was sacrificed to party interest. Taxes continually augmenting had increased sixfold; and hardly a third part of the produce of the land remained to the cultivator. The Italians were universally in a state of suffering and humiliation; tyranny at length reached even their consciences.
RIVAL POPES
On the death of Pope Adrian IV, in September, 1159, the electing cardinals had been equally divided between two candidates; the one a Sienese, the other a Roman. Both were declared duly elected by their separate parties; the first, under the name of Alexander III; the second, under that of Victor III. Frederick declared for the latter, who had shown himself ready to sacrifice to him the liberties and independence of the church. The former had been obliged to take refuge in France, though almost the whole of Christendom did not long hesitate to declare for him. While one council assembled by Frederick at Pavia rejected him, another assembled at Beauvais not only rejected but anathematised Victor. Excommunication at length reached even the emperor; and Alexander, to strengthen himself against Frederick, endeavoured to gain the affections of the people, by ranging himself among the protectors of the liberties of Italy.
[Sidenote: [1163-1167 A.D.]]
Frederick re-entered Italy in the year 1163, accompanied not by an army, but by a brilliant retinue of German nobles. He did not imagine that in a country which he now considered subdued, he needed a more imposing force; besides, he believed that he could at all times command the militias of the Ghibelline towns; and, in fact, he made them this year raze to the ground the walls of Tortona. He afterwards directed his steps towards Rome, to support by his presence his schismatic pontiff; but, in the meantime, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, the most powerful towns of the Veronese marches, assembled their consuls in congress, to consider the means of putting an end to a tyranny which overwhelmed them. The consuls of these four towns pledged themselves by oath in the name of their cities to give mutual support to each other in the assertion of their former rights, and in the resolution to reduce the imperial prerogatives to the point at which they were fixed under the reign of Henry IV. Frederick, informed of this association, returned hastily into northern Italy, to put it down. He assembled the militias of Pavia, Cremona, Novara, Lodi, and Como, with the intention of leading them against the Veronese marches; but he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty had made progress in the Ghibelline cities as well as in those of the Guelfs; that the militias under his command complained as much of the vexations inflicted by his podestas as those against whom he led them; and that they were ill-disposed to face death only to rivet the chains of their country. Obliged to bend before a people which he considered only as revolted subjects, he soon renounced a contest so humiliating, and returned to Germany, to levy an army more submissive to him.
Other and more pressing interests diverted his attention from this object till the autumn of 1166. During this interval his anti-pope, Victor III, died; and the successor whom he caused to be named was still more strongly rejected by the church. On the other side, Alexander III had returned from France to Rome; contracted an alliance with William, the Norman king of the Two Sicilies; and armed the whole of southern Italy against the emperor.
IMPERIAL CAMPAIGNS AND REVERSES
When Frederick, in the month of October, 1166, descended the mountains of the Grisons to enter Italy by the territory of Brescia, he marched his army directly to Lodi, without permitting any act of hostility on the way. At Lodi, he assembled towards the end of November, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he promised the Lombards to redress the grievances occasioned by the abuses of power by his podestas, and to respect their just liberties; he was desirous of separating their cause from that of the pope, and the king of Sicily; and to give greater weight to his negotiation, he marched his army into central Italy. The towns of Romagna and Tuscany had hitherto made few complaints, and manifested little zeal in defence of their privileges. Frederick hoped that, by establishing himself amongst them, he should revive their loyalty, and induce them to augment the army which he was leading against Rome. But he soon perceived that the spirit of liberty which animated the other countries of Italy worked also in these; he contented himself, accordingly, with taking thirty hostages from Bologna, and having vainly laid siege to Ancona, he, in the month of July, 1167, marched his army towards Rome.
The towns of the Veronese marches, seeing the emperor and his army pass without daring to attack them, became bolder: they assembled a new diet, in the beginning of April, at the convent of Pontida, between Milan and Bergamo. The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo, of Brescia, of Mantua and Ferrara, met there, and joined those of the marches. The union of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, for the common liberty, was hailed with universal joy. The deputies of the Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the destruction of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese villages in imploring aid of the confederated towns to rebuild the city of Milan. This confederation was called the League of Lombardy. The consuls took the oath, and their constituents afterwards repeated it, that every Lombard should unite for the recovery of the common liberty; that the league for this purpose should last twenty years; and, finally, that they should aid each other in repairing in common any damage experienced in this sacred cause, by any one member of the confederation; extending even to the past this contract for reciprocal security, the league resolved to rebuild Milan.
The militias of Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Verona, and Treviso arrived the 27th of April, 1167, on the ground covered by the ruins of this great city. They apportioned among themselves the labour of restoring the enclosing walls; all the Milanese of the four villages, as well as those who had taken refuge in the more distant towns, came in crowds to take part in this pious work; and in a few weeks the new-grown city was in a state to repel the insults of its enemies. Lodi was soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to take the oath to the league; while the towns of Venice, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, and Bologna voluntarily and gladly joined the association.
Frederick, meanwhile, arrived within sight of Rome. The Romans dared to await him in the open field; he defeated them with great slaughter, and made himself master of the Leonine city. The inhabitants still defending themselves in the Vatican, he dislodged them by setting fire to Santa Maria, the adjoining church; Alexander, in his fright, escaped by the Tiber. After his retreat the Romans took the oath of fidelity to the emperor, without, however, receiving his army within their walls; but fever, and the suffocating heat of the Campagna, soon began, by its ravages, to avenge the Italians; from the first days of August an alarming mortality broke out in the camp of the emperor.
[Sidenote: [1167-1174 A.D.]]
The princes to whom he was most attached, the captains in whom he had most confidence, two thousand knights, with a proportional number of common soldiers, were carried off in a few weeks. He endeavoured to flee from the destructive scourge; he traversed in his retreat Tuscany and the Lunigiana; but his route was marked with graves, in which every day, every hour, he deposited the bodies of his soldiers. He was no longer strong enough to vanquish even the opposition of the little town of Pontremoli, which refused him a passage; and it was by roads almost impracticable that he at length crossed the Apennines. He arrived at Pavia about the middle of September, and attempted to assemble a diet; but the deputies of Pavia, Novara, Vercelli, and Como alone obeyed his summons. He harangued the assembly with great vehemence; and, throwing down his glove, challenged the rebellious cities to a pitched battle. He passed the winter in combating, with his small remaining army, the league of Lombardy; but in the month of March, 1168, he escaped from the Italians, and repassed Mont Cenis, to return and arm the Germans anew against Italy.
After his departure, Novara, Vercelli, Como, Asti, and Tortona also entered into the confederation, which resolved to found, as a monument of its power, and as a barrier against the Ghibellines of Pavia and Montferrat, a new city, on the confluence of the rivers Tanaro and Bormida. The Lombards named it Alexandria (Alessandria), in honour of the chief of the church, and of their league. They collected in it all the inhabitants of the different villages of that rich plain, which extends from the Po to the Ligurian Alps, and secured to them all the liberty and privileges for which they themselves had fought.
Frederick had sacrificed more time, treasure, and blood, to strengthen his dominion over Italy, than any of his predecessors; he had succeeded for a long period in associating the German nation in his ambition. He persuaded the Germans that their interest and their honour were concerned in the submission of the Italians. They began, however, to feel tired of a long contest, from which they derived no advantage; other interests, affairs more pressing, demanded the presence of the emperor at home; and Frederick was obliged to suspend for five years his efforts to subdue Italy. During this period the towns of Lombardy, in the plenitude of their power and liberty, corrected their laws, recruited their finances, strengthened their fortifications, and finally placed their militias on a better war establishment. Their consuls met also in frequent diets, where they bound themselves by new oaths to the common defence, and admitted fresh members into the confederation, which at length reached to the extremity of Romagna.
Frederick, however, did not entirely abandon Italy. He sent thither Christian, the elected archbishop of Mainz, and arch-chancellor of the empire, as his representative. This warlike prelate soon felt that there was nothing to be done in Lombardy; and he proceeded to Tuscany, where the Ghibelline party still predominated. His first pretension was to establish peace between the two maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa, which disputed with arms in their hands the commerce of the East. As he found a greater spirit of pride and independence in the Pisans, he caused to be thrown into a dungeon their consuls, who had presented themselves at the diet of the Tuscan towns convoked by him at San Ginasio, in the month of July, 1173; he arrested, at the same time, the consuls of the Florentines, their allies, while he studiously flattered those of Lucca, of Siena, of Pistoia, and the nobles of Tuscany, Romagna, and Umbria; promising to avenge them on their enemies: but, said he, “to do so more effectually, you must first co-operate with me in crushing the enemies of the emperor.” He thus succeeded in persuading them to second him in the attack which he meditated for the following spring on Ancona.
This city, the most southern of all those attached to the league of Lombardy, contained about twelve thousand inhabitants, enriched by maritime commerce, and confident in the strength of their almost unassailable position. Their town, beautifully situated on the extremity of a promontory, which surrounded a magnificent port, presented on the side open to the continent only precipitous rocks, with the exception of a single causeway. The citizens had accordingly repulsed successively for ages all the attacks of the barbarians, and all the pretensions of the emperors. The archbishop Christian arrived before Ancona in the beginning of April, 1174, and invested the city with an army levied among the Ghibellines of Tuscany and Umbria. The people of Ancona repulsed their attack with their accustomed bravery. But hunger, more formidable than the sword, soon menaced them. The preceding harvests had failed; their granaries were empty; and an enemy’s fleet closed their port. They saw the harvest ripen, without the possibility of a single sack of corn reaching them. All human subsistence was soon exhausted; undismayed, however, they tried to support existence with the herbs and shell-fish which they gathered from their rocks, or with the leather which commerce had accumulated in their magazines. Such was the food on which had long subsisted a young and beautiful woman. Observing one day a soldier summoned to battle, but unable from hunger to proceed, she refused her breast to the child whom she suckled; offered it to the warrior; and sent him, thus refreshed, to shed his blood for his country.
But to whatever distress the people of Ancona were reduced, they rejected every proposal to capitulate. At length the succour invoked from the Guelfs of Ferrara and Romagna approached; Christian saw the fires which they lighted on the mountain of Falcognara, about four miles from Ancona; and, unable to give them battle with an army exhausted by the fatigues of a long siege, he hastily retreated.
FREDERICK ONCE MORE AGGRESSIVE
[Sidenote: [1174-1175 A.D.]]
In the beginning of October, 1174, Frederick, at the head of a formidable army, again re-entered Italy. He passed from the county of Burgundy into Savoy, and descended by Mont Cenis. Suza, the first town to which he came on his passage, was taken and burned; Asti, in alarm, opened its gates, and purchased its security from pillage by a heavy contribution; but Alexandria stopped the progress of the emperor. This city, recently founded by the league of Lombardy, did not hesitate to enter into a contest with the imperial power for the sake of its confederates; although its mud walls were an object of derision to the Germans, who first gave this town the surname of Alessandria della paglia, or of straw. Nevertheless these walls of mud and straw, but defended by generous and devoted citizens, resisted all the efforts of the most valiant army and the most warlike monarch of Germany. Frederick consumed in vain four months in a siege, which was prolonged through the winter. The inundation of rivers more than once threatened him with destruction, even in his camp; sickness also decimated his soldiers. Finally, the combined army of the Lombard League advanced from Piacenza to Tortona; and on Easter Sunday of the year 1175, Frederick found himself obliged to raise the siege, and to march for Pavia, to repose his army.
This last check at length compelled the emperor to acknowledge the power of a people which he had been accustomed to despise. The chiefs of the Lombard army showed themselves well prepared for battle; but still respecting the rights of their monarch, declined attacking him. He entered into negotiations with them; all professed their ardent desire to reconcile the prerogatives of the emperor and the rights of the Roman church with those of liberty. Six commissioners were appointed to settle the basis of a treaty which should reconcile the several claims. They began by demanding that the armies on each side should be disbanded. Frederick did not hesitate to comply; he dismissed his Germans, and remained at Pavia, trusting solely to the fidelity of his Italian Ghibellines. Legates from the pope arrived also to join the commissioners; and the negotiations were opened. But the demands of Frederick were so high as to render agreement almost impossible. He declared that he desired only his just rights; “but they must be those,” said he, “which have been exercised by my predecessors, Charlemagne, Otto, and the emperors Henry III and Henry IV.” The deputies of the towns opposed to this the concessions of Henry V and Lothair; but even these could no longer satisfy them. For the Italians, liberty had advanced with civilisation; and they could not now submit to the ancient prerogatives of their masters, without returning to their own ancient barbarism.
THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO; THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE
[Sidenote: [1175-1177 A.D.]]
The negotiations were broken off, and Frederick sent to Germany for another army, which, in the spring of 1176, entered the territory of Como by the Grisons. The emperor joined it about the end of May, after traversing, without being recognised, the territory of Milan. It was against this great town that he entertained the most profound resentment, and meditated a new attack. He flattered himself that he should find the citizens still trembling under the chastisement which he had before inflicted on their city. On the 29th of May, he met the Milanese army between Legnano and Barano, about fifteen miles from Milan. Only a few auxiliaries from Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Novara, and Vercelli had yet joined them. An impetuous charge of the German cavalry made that of the Lombards give way. The enemy pressed forward so near the carroccio, as to give great alarm lest this sacred car should fall into their hands. But in the army of the Milanese there was a company of nine hundred young men, who had devoted themselves to its defence, and were distinguished by the name of “the company of death.” These brave youths, seeing the Germans gain ground, knelt down; and invoking God and St. Ambrose, renewed their vow to perish for their country; then rising, they advanced with such impetuosity that the Germans were disconcerted, divided, and driven back. The whole army, reanimated by this example, hastily pressed forward. The Germans were put to flight; their camp was pillaged; Frederick was separated from his companions in arms, and obliged to conceal himself, and it was not till he had passed several days, and encountered various dangers, that he succeeded in reaching Pavia, where the empress was already mourning his death.
[Sidenote: [1177-1183 A.D.]]
The defeat of Legnano at length determined Frederick to think seriously of peace, and to abandon pretensions which the Lombards resisted with so much energy. New negotiations were opened with the pope; and Venice was chosen, in concert with him, as the place for holding a congress. This town had withdrawn its signature from the league of Lombardy; it was acknowledged foreign to the Western Empire, and might be considered neutral and indifferent in the quarrel between the emperor and the free towns. The pope, Alexander III, arrived at Venice on the 24th of March, 1177. The emperor, whose presence the Venetians feared, first fixed his residence at one of his palaces, near Ravenna; approached afterwards as far as Chioggia, and finally came even to Venice. The negotiation bore upon three different points--to reconcile the emperor to the church, by putting an end to the schism; to restore peace between the empire of the West and that of the East, and the king of the Two Sicilies; and finally to define the constitutional rights of the emperor and of the cities of Lombardy.[c] Frederick was obliged to bend before the angry countenance of a proud priest, and offer his head as a footstool to the Roman bishop!
“I will tread upon the aspic and basilisk,” said the pontiff as he placed his foot upon the emperor’s neck, “and the lion and the dragon will I trample beneath my feet.” “Non tibi sed Petro,” replied the prince. “Et mihi et Petro,”[8] haughtily returned the priest while he pressed more firmly on the humbled monarch.[b] So at least the story goes. But unfortunately it is a narrative that cannot be accepted without many grains of allowance. Contemporary accounts do not give these picturesque details, and we are forced to conclude that the story of Frederick’s humiliation was embellished in after times with incidents quite foreign to the reality. But, divested of all apocryphal incidents, Frederick’s concessions to the pope constituted a distinct abasement of the imperial authority. If Alexander did not literally tread upon the neck of the emperor, he was certainly entitled to feel that he was figuratively grinding the secular “aspic and basilisk,” the royal “lion and dragon,” beneath his spiritual heel.[a]
Frederick had few subjects of dispute with the Grecian emperor, or the Norman king of the Sicilies; these parts of the treaty were not difficult to terminate. But that part which related to the league of Lombardy must be founded on a new order of ideas; it was the first pact that Europe had seen made between a monarch and his subjects; the first boundary line traced between authority and liberty. After long and vain attempts, the negotiators separated, contenting themselves only with obliging the emperor and the Lombards to conclude a truce of six years, bearing date from the 1st of August, 1177. During its existence, the rights on each side were to remain suspended; and the freedom of commerce was re-established between the cities which remained faithful to the emperor, and those which drew still closer their bonds of union by a renewal of the league of Lombardy.
The six years of repose, however, which this truce guaranteed, accustomed the emperor to submit to limitations of his authority. Thirty years had passed since the contest had begun between him and the Italian nation; age had now tempered his activity and calmed his pride. New incidents had arisen in Germany to fix his attention. His son, Henry VI, demanded to be associated in the sovereignty of his two kingdoms of Germany and Italy. A definitive peace only could restore to Frederick his rights and revenues in Lombardy, which his subjects there did not dispute, but which the truce held suspended. The adverse claims were honestly weighed at the Diet of Constance; reciprocal concessions were made both by the monarch and his subjects, and the Peace of Constance, the basis of new public rights for Italy, was at length signed on the 25th of June, 1183. By this peace the emperor renounced all regal privileges which he had hitherto claimed in the interior of towns. He acknowledged the right of the confederate cities to levy armies, to enclose themselves within fortifications, and to exercise by their commissioners within their own walls both civil and criminal jurisdiction. The consuls of towns acquired by the simple nomination of the people all the prerogatives of imperial vicars. The cities of Lombardy were further authorised to strengthen their confederation for the defence of their just rights, recognised by the Peace of Constance. But, on the other side, they engaged to maintain the just rights of the emperor, which were defined at the same time; and in order to avoid all disputes, it was agreed that these rights might always be bought off by the annual sum of two thousand marks of silver. Thus terminated, in the establishment of a legal liberty, the first and most noble struggle which the nations of modern Europe have ever maintained against despotism.
The generous resistance of the Lombards, during a war of thirty years, had conquered from the emperors political liberty for all the towns of the kingdom of Italy. The right of obeying only their own laws, of being governed by their own magistrates, of contracting alliances, of making peace or war, and, in fine, of administering their own finances, with the exception only of a certain revenue payable into the imperial treasury, was more particularly secured by the Peace of Constance to the confederate cities of the league of Lombardy.
But the Germans easily comprehended the impossibility of refusing to their allies the privileges which their enemies had gained by conquest; the liberties, therefore, stipulated by the Peace of Constance, were rendered common to all the towns of Italy; and those which had been most distinguished by their attachment to the Ghibelline party were often found the most zealous for the establishment and preservation of all the rights of the people. The cities, however, did not consider themselves independent. They were proud of the title of members of the empire; they knew they must concur in its defence, as well as in the maintenance of internal peace; reserving only that it must be in pursuance of their free choice and deliberation. They were in a manner confederates of an emperor, who acted on them rather by persuasion than orders, rather as a party chief than as a monarch; and as he was habituated to this compromise with public opinion in his relations with the princes of the empire, he yielded with the less repugnance to his Italian subjects. It is a circumstance highly honourable to the princes of the house of Hohenstaufen, which continued to reign sixty-seven years after the Peace of Constance, that during this long period they made no attempt to infringe the conditions of the compact. They admitted, with good faith, all the consequences of the concessions made; they pardoned liberty, which the vulgar order of kings always regarded as a usurpation by the subjects of the rights of the crown.
DEATH OF FREDERICK; HIS SUCCESSOR
[Sidenote: [1183-1198 A.D.]]
It was not long, however, before the struggle was renewed between the emperor and most of the towns. It was supported with not less devotion and not fewer sacrifices; it caused not less calamity whilst it endured; and it was crowned, at its close, with results not less happy. But the cities did not, as in the preceding struggle, engage in it for their own immediate interest; they rather seconded the policy of the holy see, which sought the independence of the church and of Italy, and did not cease to fight for the attainment of this object till the extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen.
Frederick I survived the Peace of Constance seven years. During this period he visited Italy with his son Henry VI; he remained some time at Milan, where he was received with respect, and gained the affection of all the inhabitants, towards whom he testified the utmost trust, confidence, and kindness. Instead of endeavouring to intimidate Lombardy, and recover by intrigues his former power, he was occupied only with the marriage of his son Henry, whom he had previously crowned king of Germany, with Constanza, sole heiress of the Norman kings who had conquered the Two Sicilies. The union of this crown with that of Germany and of Lombardy would have reduced the pope to be no more than the first bishop of his states; it would have disarmed the two auxiliary powers which had supported the league of Lombardy against the emperor; and it alarmed the church, in proportion as it flattered his ambition. The endeavours to prevent or dissolve this union gave rise to a series of wars extending over a long period. Frederick Barbarossa did not see the commencement of them. When the news of the taking of Jerusalem by Saladin, on the 2nd of October, 1187, had thrown all Europe into consternation, Frederick, listening only to his religious and chivalric enthusiasm, placed himself at the head of the Third Crusade, which he led into the East by land, and died the 10th of June, 1190, of a stroke of apoplexy, caused by the coldness of the waters of the little river Calycadnus [Salef] in Asia Minor.
Henry VI had worn for five years the German and Italian crowns, when he received in Germany, where he then was with his wife, news of the death of William II, king of the Two Sicilies, to whom Constanza was successor; and a few months after, that of his father Frederick I. He immediately began his journey towards southern Italy. Tancred, a bastard of the race of the Norman kings, put in opposition to him by the Sicilians, defended, for some time with success, the independence of those provinces, but died in 1194; and Henry, who had entered the kingdom as conqueror, and had made himself detested for his cruelty, also died there suddenly, on the 28th of September, 1197. He left by his marriage with Constanza only one son, Frederick II, hardly four years old, who lost his mother in the following year; and was, under the protection of the pope, acknowledged, child as he was, king of the Two Sicilies; but the imperial and Lombard crowns were withheld from him for several years.
GROWING POWER OF THE NOBILITY
From the Peace of Constance to the death of Henry VI the free cities of Italy had, for the space of fifteen years, no contest to maintain against the emperors; but their repose and liberty were during this period constantly endangered by the pretensions of the nobility. The growing grandeur of the cities, and the decay of the imperial power, had left the nobles of Italy in a very ambiguous position.
They in some measure no longer had a country; their only security was in their own strength; for the emperor in resigning his power over the towns had not thought of giving an organisation to the nobles dispersed in castles. All the families of Italian dukes, and almost all those of marquises and counts, had become extinct; those who remained had lost all jurisdiction over their inferiors; no feudal tenure was respected; no vassal appeared at the baronial court, to form the tribunal of his lord. The frontiers of the kingdom of Lombardy were called marches, after a German word adopted into almost all the European languages, and the commander of these frontiers was called marquis; but the families of the powerful Tuscan marquises were extinct, as well as those of the marquises of Ancona, of Fermo, of Camerino, of Ivrea, and of those of the Veronese and Trevisan marches. There remained, however, on these frontiers some families which bore the same title, and had preserved some wrecks of these ancient and powerful marquisates.
The nobles were not united by the hierarchical connection of the feudal system, but by the affections or antipathies of the Guelfs or Ghibellines. In general, the most powerful families among the nobles, those who had castles sufficiently strong, lands sufficiently extensive, and vassals sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, listening only to the ambition of courts, were attached to the Ghibelline party. Those families, on the contrary, who possessed castles capable of but little resistance, situated on accessible eminences, or in plains; those whose castles were near great towns, and too weak to support a contest with them, had demanded to be made citizens of the towns; they had served them in the wars of the league of Lombardy; they had since taken a principal share in the government, and they thus found themselves attached by common interests to the party of the Guelfs. Independent nobles were no more to be found in all the plains of Lombardy; there was not one who had not become citizen of some republic; but every chain of mountain was thick-set with castles where a nobility, choosing obedience to an emperor rather than to citizens, maintained themselves independent; these too, attracted sometimes by the wealth and pleasures of towns, and sometimes desirous of obtaining influence in the counsels of powerful republics, in order to restore them to the emperor, demanded to be made citizens, when they thought it would open the way to a share in the government; and as war was their sole occupation, they were often gladly received by the republics, which stood in need of good captains.
It was thus the Ghibelline family of Visconti, whose fiefs extended from the Alps to the Lago Maggiore, became associated with the republic of Milan. The house of Este, allied to the Guelfs of Saxony and Bavaria, and devoted to the pope, possessors of several castles built on the fertile chain of the Euganean hills, joined the republic of Ferrara; the parallel chain, which serves as a base to the Tyrolese Alps, was crowned with the castles of Ezzel, Ezzelino, or Eccelino, of Romano, a family enriched by the emperors, entirely devoted to the Ghibelline party, and in process of time attached to the republics of Verona and Vicenza. In like manner were situated on the northern side of the Apennines the fortresses of the Ghibelline nobles, who excited revolutions in the republics of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena: on the southern side were the castles of other Ghibellines, in turns citizens and enemies of the republics of Arezzo, Florence, Pistoia, and Lucca; lower in the valleys of the Po, or in the upper vale of Arno, were the castles of the Guelfs, who had become decidedly citizens of the same republics.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[6] Borgo is the communication between Trastevere and the Vatican.
[7] [In 1111, the Milanese totally destroyed the city of Lodi, and forbade its rebuilding. Nevertheless a prosperous commune again came into existence, and in 1158 the Milanese came again, repeating their work of destruction in a more thorough manner.]
[8] [“Not to you but to St. Peter (I kneel),” said the prince. “Both to me and to Peter,” returned the priest.]
III. THE NORMANS IN SICILY
A people forsooth most astute, vengeful of injuries; in the hope of profit elsewhere despising their paternal territories, imitative in every way, keeping some mean betwixt prodigality and avarice. Their leaders indeed are most prodigal from their delight in reputation. They are a people apt in flattery, so studious of eloquence that even the very boys you’ll find are orators. Unless kept under the yoke of law, the race is most exceedingly unrestrained (effrenatissima) yet long suffering in toil, in famine, in cold, when fortune demands; industrious in falcon hunting. They rejoice in horses and the other affairs of war, and in luxurious garb. From their name indeed comes the name of their land. North in English means the region of the north wind (aquilo) and because they themselves came thence they call the land Normannia [Normandy].--MALATERRA.[b]
[Sidenote: [787-1204 A.D.]]
Normans is the softened form of the word “Northman,” applied first to the people of Scandinavia in general, and afterwards specially to the people of Norway. In the form of “Norman” (Northmannus, Normannus, Normand) it is the name of those colonists from Scandinavia who settled themselves in Gaul, who founded the Norman duchy, who adopted the French tongue and French manners, and who from their new home set forth on new errands of conquest, chiefly in the British Islands and in southern Italy and Sicily. From one point of view the expeditions of the Normans may be looked on as continuations of the expeditions of the Northmen. As the name is etymologically the same, so the people are by descent the same, and they are still led by the old spirit of war and adventure.
[Sidenote: [787-1090 A.D.]]
But in the view of general history Normans and Northmen must be carefully distinguished. The change in the name is the sign of a thorough change, if not in the people themselves, yet in their historical position. Their national character remains largely the same; but they have adopted a new religion, a new language, a new system of law and society, new thoughts and feelings on all matters. Like as the Norman is still to the Northmen, the effect of a settlement of Normans is utterly different from the effect of a settlement of Northmen. There can be no doubt that the establishment of a Norman power in England was, like the establishment of the Danish power, greatly helped by the essential kindred of Normans, Danes, and English. But it was helped only silently. To all outward appearances the Norman conquest of England was an event of an altogether different character from the Danish conquest. The one was a conquest by a people whose tongue and institutions were still palpably akin to those of the English. The other was a conquest by a people whose tongue and institutions were palpably different from those of the English. The Norman settlers in England felt no community with the earlier Danish settlers in England. In fact the Normans met with the steadiest resistance in a part of England which was largely Danish. But the effect of real, though unacknowledged, kindred had none the less an important practical effect. There can be no doubt that this hidden working of kindred between conquerors and conquered in England, as compared with the utter lack of all fellowship between conquerors and conquered in Sicily, was one cause out of several which made so wide a difference between the Norman conquest of England and the Norman conquest of Sicily.
These two conquests, wrought in the great island of the ocean and in the great island of the Mediterranean, were the main works of the Normans after they had fully put on the character of a Christian and French-speaking people, in other words, after they had changed from Northmen into Normans. The English and the Sicilian settlements form the main Norman history of the eleventh century. The tenth century is the time of the settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and of the change in religion and language of which the softening of the name is the outward sign. By the end of it, any traces of heathen faith, and even of Scandinavian speech, must have been mere survivals. The new creed, the new speech, the new social system, had taken such deep root that the descendants of the Scandinavian settlers were better fitted to be the armed missionaries of all these things than the neighbours from whom they had borrowed their new possessions. With the zeal of new converts they set forth on their new errand very much in the spirit of their heathen forefathers. If Britain and Sicily were the greatest fields of their enterprise, they were very far from being the only fields. The same spirit of enterprise which brought the Northmen into Gaul seems to carry the Normans out of Gaul into every corner of the world.[c]
We may for the present leave the ethnology and early history of the Northmen to the later history of Scandinavia, and fuller details of their invasions of France and England to the histories of those countries, giving here only a brief résumé of their wanderings, and a fuller account of their career in the powerful little kingdom in Sicily where they meddled busily with the affairs of all Europe, and much of Asia and Africa. This was, as Freeman[c] says, “the most brilliant time for Sicily as a power in the world.” Even under the Greeks it was not so prominent. But before reaching this period, some mention of their first appearances in continental European history is necessary.[a]
Evils still more terrible than political abuses were the lot of those nations who had been subject to Charlemagne. They, indeed, may appear to us little better than ferocious barbarians: but they were exposed to the assaults of tribes, in comparison with whom they must be deemed humane and polished. Each frontier of the empire had to dread the attack of an enemy. The Saracens of Africa possessed themselves of Sicily and Sardinia, and became masters of the Mediterranean Sea.
[Sidenote: [787-870 A.D.]]
Much more formidable were the foes by whom Germany was assailed. The Slavonians, a widely extended people, whose language is still spoken upon half the surface of Europe, had occupied the countries of Bohemia, Poland, and Pannonia, on the eastern confines of the empire, and from the time of Charlemagne acknowledged its superiority. But at the end of the ninth century, a Tatarian tribe, the Hungarians, overspreading that country which since has borne their name, and moving forward like a vast wave, brought a dreadful reverse upon Germany. All Italy, all Germany, and the south of France, felt the scourge; till Henry the Fowler, and Otto the Great, drove them back by successive victories within their own limits, where in a short time they learned peaceful arts, adopted the religion, and followed the policy of Christendom.
If any enemies could be more destructive than these Hungarians, they were the pirates of the north, known commonly by the name of Northmen (Normans). The love of a predatory life seems to have attracted adventurers of different nations to the Scandinavian seas, from whence they infested, not only by maritime piracy, but continual invasions, the northern coasts both of France and Germany. The causes of their sudden appearance are inexplicable, or at least could only be sought in the ancient traditions of Scandinavia. For undoubtedly the coasts of France and England were as little protected from depredations under the Merovingian kings, and those of the Heptarchy, as in subsequent times. Yet only one instance of an attack from this side is recorded, and that before the middle of the sixth century, till the age of Charlemagne. In 787, the Danes, as we call those northern plunderers, began to infest England, which lay most immediately open to their incursions. Soon afterwards they ravaged the coasts of France. Charlemagne repulsed them by means of his fleets; yet they pillaged a few places during his reign. It is said that, perceiving one day, from a port in the Mediterranean, some Norman vessels which had penetrated into that sea, he shed tears, in anticipation of the miseries which awaited his empire. In the ninth century, the Norman pirates not only ravaged the Balearic Isles, and nearer coasts of the Mediterranean, but even Greece.
THE NORMANS IN FRANCE
[Sidenote: [870-923 A.D.]]
In Louis’ reign their depredations upon the coast were more incessant, but they did not penetrate into the inland country, till that of Charles the Bald. The wars between that prince and his family, which exhausted France of her noblest blood, the insubordination of the provincial governors, even the instigation of some of Charles’ enemies, laid all open to their inroads. They adopted a uniform plan of warfare both in France and England; sailing up navigable rivers in their vessels of small burden, and fortifying the islands which they occasionally found, they made these intrenchments at once an asylum for their women and children, a repository for their plunder, and a place of retreat from superior force. After pillaging a town, they retired to these strongholds or to their ships; and it was not till 872 that they ventured to keep possession of Angers, which, however, they were compelled to evacuate.
Sixteen years afterwards, they laid siege to Paris, and committed the most ruinous devastations on the neighbouring country. As these Northmen were unchecked by religious awe, the rich monasteries, which had stood harmless amidst the havoc of Christian war, were overwhelmed in the storm. Perhaps they may have endured some irrecoverable losses of ancient learning; but their complaints are of monuments disfigured, bones of saints and kings dispersed, treasures carried away. St. Denis redeemed its abbot from captivity with 685 pounds of gold. All the chief abbeys were stripped about the same time, either by the enemy, or for contributions to the public necessity. So impoverished was the kingdom, that in 860 Charles the Bald had great difficulty in collecting 3000 pounds of silver, to subsidise a body of Northmen against their countrymen. The kings of France, too feeble to prevent or repel these invaders, had recourse to the palliative of buying peace at their hands, or rather precarious armistices, to which reviving thirst of plunder soon put an end. At length Charles the Simple, in 918, ceded a great province (Neustria), which they had already partly occupied, partly rendered desolate, and which has derived from them the name of Normandy. Ignominious as this appears, it proved no impolitic step. Rollo [Rolf or Hrolf an exile from Norway], the Norman chief, with all his subjects, became Christians and Frenchmen.[d]
France would have only had to congratulate herself upon the assignment she had been compelled to make to the Normans, had the Treaty of Saint-Clair ratified peace forever between the kingdom and this nation of pirates. Unfortunately such was not the case, and for a considerable time the Normans continued to add their ravages to the burden of the many sacrifices France had made, of all the calamities she had experienced.
Some years before, a number of pagans who were independent of Rollo, but of whose adventures but little is known, had established themselves at the mouth of the Loire. Rollo came and attacked them in their retreat, but they defended themselves valiantly, and the conqueror of the shores of the Seine was obliged to return to his domains, and leave the pagans in possession of the mouth of the Loire. Sometime afterwards, both companies united and fought together; this came about in the following manner. There was much indignation in France on account of the deplorable government of Charles the Simple, the last degenerate scion of the Carlovingian race. Rudolf or Ralph, duke of Burgundy, who was considered the only man capable of putting a stop to the anarchy in the kingdom and the ravages of the Normans, was proclaimed king.
Charles entreated the help of the Normans of the Seine, and those of the Loire. Accordingly they all came to join the forces of the fallen king, marched with them towards the Oise, marking their progress by their usual devastations. For the first time, the people of the north interposed in a civil war which did not concern them. Rudolf turned his forces against them, and put them to flight. They revenged themselves by killing the prisoners they had taken. Regnaud, leader of the Normans of the Loire, who had extended his inroads as far as Arras, was forced to retire to his strongholds. Immediately after this retreat, the Burgundians crossed the Epte and put Normandy to fire and sword. Rollo, who evidently had not expected this invasion, made a truce with Rudolf, and gave him hostages, as a guarantee of his peaceable intentions, but, in his turn, set up claims which had to be satisfied. King Charles, he said, whose cause he had followed, had promised him more lands. To do no less than the dethroned monarch, Rudolf, according to Flodoard (or Frodoard),[e] the historian, bestowed upon Rollo, Bessin, and also Maine. The Normans of the Loire were treated in like manner, and it seems that a sum of money was granted to them, and that a tax had to be levied in all parts of France to pay it.
[Sidenote: [923-930 A.D.]]
The kingdom continued to be very much agitated by political events. Although he twice sold peace to Rudolf and broke it again, the Norman duke embraced Count Heribert’s cause, who, forsaking Rudolf after seconding him ably, had gone over to the dethroned prince, his prisoner, and with the assent of Rollo and Hugh, had again proclaimed the unhappy Charles king. All seemed lost to Rudolf. But Charles was the puppet of his party; scarcely had he reascended the throne, than Heribert once more changed his mind, flung the phantom prince into prison again, and acknowledged Rudolf. Charles died sometime after in the castle of his jailer.
Whilst these events were taking place in the interior of France, the Breton generals, in the vicinity of Normandy, commenced, perhaps in revenge for the incursions of the Scandinavians, ravaging the territory of their neighbours, and invaded the province of Bayeux, but Rollo appeared with his warriors, engaged in battle with the aggressors and conquered them. One of the Breton counts, Beranger, yielded to the Normans; another, Alan, the chief instigator of the war, took refuge in England. The nobles who had fought under these two commanders established themselves in France, in Burgundy, or in Aquitaine; some of them followed Alan to England. All those who remained were obliged to acknowledge the suzerainty of the duke of Normandy. The neighbouring provinces, such as Anjou and Poitou, were henceforth delivered from the hostile irruptions of these turbulent chiefs. Thus, Rollo, in his old age, found himself the peaceful possessor of Normandy, and able to maintain order and peace therein.
It is said that Charles the Simple, while he was still upon the throne, secretly sent emissaries to Rouen to his daughter Gisela who had married Rollo; that this clandestine mission gave umbrage to the Normans, and that Rollo seized and publicly put to death the envoys of his father-in-law. Gisela died sometime afterwards; and Rollo lived as before with Popa, by whom he had two children, a son named William, and a daughter called Gerloc, who later received the Christian name of Adela or Adeline.
When William grew to man’s estate, the Norman nobles requested their duke to appoint his successor. He named his son, and he it was the Normans had in mind, in spite of his illegitimacy. The nobles swore fidelity and obedience to him beforehand. Rollo lived for five years after this important event, and died of old age at Rouen. The precise date of his death, and also his age, are unknown. Everything tends to show that it was about the year 930, that the death of the first and probably octogenarian duke of Normandy took place. His bravery, his steadfastness, the energy of his government are incontestable, but it is permissible to doubt the truth of the eulogies which the Norman monks in their chronicles have bestowed upon his devotion, and his respect for the clergy. It is possible he enriched the churches and convents, that he walked in processions, and with bare feet before the relics of St. Ouen, formerly taken to France, and which he forced his father-in-law to restore; but on the other hand we read in an English chronicle, that he sold or allowed to be sold many relics belonging to the Norman churches, which were acquired by his ally, Athelstan, king of England.
A French historian, Adhémar,[f] even declares that, feeling his end approaching, Rollo caused a hundred Christian prisoners to be sacrificed to the northern idols, and he gave a hundred pounds in gold as a gift to the churches of Normandy in order to propitiate the pagan gods and the Christian deity at the same time. According to another historian it was at the moment that he was about to embrace the Christian faith that Rollo offered a last human sacrifice to the divinities of that worship he was forsaking. Perhaps that massacre of Christian prisoners, which he ordered when Rudolf drove him back from the north of France, was the cause of these strange tales.
Rollo was buried in the church he had built at Rouen; afterwards his remains were placed in a chapel of the cathedral itself. His tomb, facing that of his son, is still to be seen there.[g]
THE NORMANS COME TO ITALY
[Sidenote: [930-1053 A.D.]]
When the Northmen, or Normans, had embraced Christianity, in their attachment to pilgrimage to the Holy Land, they surpassed all the European people. This was consistent enough with the habits of men, the most enterprising, courageous, and valiant on earth. Two motives appear to have directed their route to Naples; Mounts Cassino and Gargano were illustrious for miracles; and from Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, or Bari, parts which maintained a constant intercourse with the East, a passage to Syria might easily be obtained.
Early in the eleventh century, while forty of these adventurers were at Salerno, on their return from the Holy Land, a Saracen fleet anchored off the coast, and demanded heavy contributions as a reward for sparing the city. The Normans instantly asked Guiomar III, prince of the place, for arms. To the astonishment of the inhabitants, they mounted their steeds, caused the gates to be opened, and plunged into the midst of the misbelievers, many of whom they slew, the rest they forced precipitately to embark.[9] Guiomar, with the hope of retaining them at his court, offered them riches and honours as the condition; and when he found them resolved to revisit their homes, he brought them to proclaim his offers among their kindred and friends. It appears, however, that the Normans had no great reason to be dissatisfied with their own country; one knight only, Drengot by name, who, from a deadly feud with a noble of his nation, was not averse to foreign adventure, resolved to collect his kindred and dependents and sail for Italy.
On his arrival there with about one hundred followers, he found the yoke of the Greeks no less detested than the depredations of the Saracens; that the pope, emperor, and feudatory were alike prepared to reduce the maritime places and the mountain forts. For some time their success was thwarted by obstacles which valour could not surmount. On one occasion they were defeated by a greatly superior force, and their leader slain; and the emperor, Henry II, whose army they had joined, was compelled by a pestilence to abandon the north of Italy. But under Rainulf, the brother of Drengot, they resolved to establish a sovereignty for themselves; and in this view they reduced Aversa, a fortress belonging to the duchy of Naples, which they fortified in opposition to the wish of that republic. That city, however, they had soon an opportunity of conciliating. When Pandulf IV, prince of Capua, took Naples by surprise, where open force would have failed, Sergius, master of the soldiers, and head of the commonwealth, fled to Aversa, implored the succours of the strangers, and with their aid expelled the garrison of Capua. The grateful chief erected Aversa into a fief, with which he invested the Norman leader as Count Rainulf. But this leader was not destined to lay the foundation of Norman sovereignty.
About this time and allured by the same hope of distinction, there arrived three sons of Tancred of Hauteville, an illustrious house of Normandy. In the war which ensued, both Greeks and Saracens were worsted, until all Apulia was wrested from the former, when the new conquests were partitioned among twelve counts, each with a town and territory. At the head of these adventurers was Guillaume Bras de Fer, eldest son of Tancred. But they acknowledged no subordination; they committed on churches and monasteries, Christians and infidels, friends and foes, excesses which neither Greek nor Saracen could have exceeded, until the pope, justly regarding them as the greatest curse of the country, formed a league to expel them.
At the head of a motley army of Romans, Germans, Greeks, Campanians, and Apulians, Leo IX himself took the field. Guillaume was dead, but his brother Humphrey (or Humbert) filled his place; Humphrey was assisted by Robert Guiscard [or Wiscard] another son of Tancred, and by the count of Aversa.[i]
CAPTURE OF THE POPE; ROBERT GUISCARD (1053 A.D.)
The Normans of Apulia could muster in the field no more than three thousand horse, with a handful of infantry; the defection of the natives intercepted their provisions and retreat; and their spirit, incapable of fear, was chilled for a moment by superstitious awe. On the hostile approach of Leo, they knelt without disgrace or reluctance before their spiritual father. But the pope was inexorable; his lofty Germans affected to deride the diminutive stature of their adversaries; and the Normans were informed that death or exile was their only alternative.
Flight they disdained; and, as many of them had been three days without tasting food, they embraced the assurance of a more easy and honourable death. They climbed the hill of Civitella, descended into the plain, and charged in three divisions the army of the pope. On the left, and in the centre, Richard, count of Aversa, and Robert, the famous Guiscard, attacked, broke, routed, and pursued, the Italian multitudes, who fought without discipline, and fled without shame. A harder trial was reserved for the valour of Count Humphrey, who led the cavalry of the right wing. The Germans have been described as unskilful in the management of the horse and lance; but on foot they formed a strong and impenetrable phalanx, and neither man, nor steed, nor armour could resist the weight of their long and two-handed swords. After a severe conflict they were encompassed by the squadrons returning from the pursuit, and died in their ranks with the esteem of their foes and the satisfaction of revenge.
The gates of Civitella were shut against the flying pope, and he was overtaken by the pious conquerors, who kissed his feet, to implore his blessing and the absolution of their sinful victory. The soldiers beheld in their enemy and captive the vicar of Christ; and though we may suppose the policy of the chiefs, it is probable that they were infected by the popular superstition. In the calm of retirement, the well-meaning pope deplored the effusion of Christian blood, which must be imputed to his account; he felt that he had been the author of sin and scandal; and as his undertaking had failed, the indecency of his military character was universally condemned. With these dispositions, he listened to the offers of a beneficial treaty; deserted an alliance which he had preached as the cause of God, and ratified the past and future conquests of the Normans. By whatever hands they had been usurped, the provinces of Apulia and Calabria were a part of the donation of Constantine and the patrimony of St. Peter: the grant and the acceptance confirmed the mutual claims of the pontiff and the adventurers. They promised to support each other with spiritual and temporal arms; a tribute or quit-rent of twelve-pence was afterwards stipulated for every plough-land; and after this memorable transaction, the kingdom of Naples remained above seven hundred years a fief of the holy see.
[Sidenote: [1015-1057 A.D.]]
The pedigree of Robert Guiscard, born about 1015, is variously deduced from the peasants and the dukes of Normandy; from the peasants, by the pride and ignorance of a Grecian princess; from the dukes, by the ignorance and flattery of the Italian subjects. His genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order of private nobility. He sprang from a race of valvassors, or bannerets, of the diocese of the Coutances, in lower Normandy; the castle of Hauteville was their honourable seat; his father Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke; and his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights. Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient for his numerous and daring progeny; they saw around the neighbourhood the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance. Two only remained to perpetuate the race, and cherish their father’s age; their ten brothers passed the Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans. The elder were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their younger brethren; and the first three in seniority, William, Drogo, and Humphrey, deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of the new republic.
Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the second marriage; and even the reluctant praise of his foes has endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and gracefulness; and to the decline of life he maintained the patient vigour of health and the commanding dignity of his form. Robert, at once and with equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his sword, his lance in the left; in the battle of Civitella he was thrice unhorsed, and, in the close of that memorable day, he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valour from the warriors of the two armies. His boundless ambition was founded on the consciousness of superior worth; in the pursuit of greatness he was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and seldom moved by the feelings of humanity; though not insensible of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined only by his present advantage.
The surname of Guiscard[10] was applied to this master of political wisdom, which is too often confounded with the practice of dissimulation and deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian poet[j] for excelling the cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. According to the Greeks he departed from Normandy with only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance appears too bountiful: the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim, and his first military band was levied among the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia; but they guarded their shares with the jealousy of avarice; the aspiring youth was drawn forwards to the mountains of Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labours which formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.
[Sidenote: [1057-1060 A.D.]]
As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life was threatened and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey, the tender age of his sons excluded them from the command; they were reduced to a private estate by the ambition of their guardian and uncle; and Guiscard was exalted on a buckler, and saluted count of Apulia, and general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of force, he resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that should raise him forever above the heads of his equals. By some acts of rapine or sacrilege, he had incurred a papal excommunication; but Nicholas II was easily persuaded that the divisions of friends could terminate only in their mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions of the holy see; and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince, than the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was convened at Melfi; and the count interrupted an important enterprise, to guard the person and execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal title, with the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens.
This apostolic sanction might justify his arms; but the obedience of a free and victorious people could not be transferred without their consent; and Guiscard dissembled his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the conquest of Cosenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph he assembled his troops and solicited the Normans to confirm, by their suffrage, the judgment of the vicar of Christ. The soldiers hailed with joyful acclamations their valiant duke; and the counts, his former equals, pronounced the oath of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret indignation.
CONQUEST OF SICILY; EASTERN INVASIONS (1060-1090 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1060-1081 A.D.]]
After this inauguration, Robert styled himself, “by the grace of God and St. Peter, duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily”; and it was the labour of twenty years to deserve and realise these lofty appellations. Such tardy progress, in a narrow space, may seem unworthy of the abilities of the chief and the spirit of the nation; but the Normans were few in number, their resources were scanty, their service was voluntary and precarious. The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons; the twelve counts of popular election conspired against his authority; and against their perfidious uncle the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By his policy and vigour, Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their rebellions, and punished the guilty with death or exile; but, in these domestic feuds, his years and the national strength were unprofitably consumed.
After the defeat of his foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, their broken forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the sea coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and defence; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted near four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient.
Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long detained in Normandy by his own and his father’s age. He accepted a welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valour 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 prosperity, that, by his own historian Malaterra,[b] at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable of Melfi. 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 siege of Trani, three hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the island. 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.
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 fortunes, 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 princess of Salerno; the Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger; their five daughters were given in honourable 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 VII exhorted the bishops to preach, and the Catholics to fight, in the pious work of his restoration. After two years’ incessant preparations, the land and naval forces were assembled at Otranto, and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of the emperor Michael.
Before the general embarkation the Norman duke despatched Bohemond with fifteen galleys to seize or threaten the Isle of Corfu. The Island of Epirus and the maritime towns were subdued by the arms or the name of Robert, who led his fleet and army from Corfu (we use the modern appellation) to the siege of Durazzo. 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 was either lost or damaged.
The Normans 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 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.
[Sidenote: [1081-1085 A.D.]]
While the Roman Empire was attacked by the Turks in the 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 Anna,[k] 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.
Against the advice of his wisest captains Alexius resolved to risk the event of a general action. The princess Anna, 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 Venetian noble 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 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 or invasion of Henry, king of Germany. Highly presuming that 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.
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. 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.
Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of Robert, the most prompt and powerful was Henry IV, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the West. Henry was the severe adversary of the Normans, the allies and vassals of Gregory VII, his implacable foe. The long quarrel of the throne and mitre had been recently kindled by the zeal and ambition of that haughty priest; 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. 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, 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, Clement III, 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 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 indispensable affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; 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 de Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope, and of compelling the two emperors, of the East and the West, to fly before his victorious arms.
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 a hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and pillage. The Saracens of Sicily, the 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 Colosseum, was consumed by the flames.
The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged himself in a 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 kingdom of Greece and Asia; his troops were assembled in arms, flushed with success and eager for action. By the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with a hostile fleet. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements, in sight of the Island of Corfu; in the two former, the skill and number of the allies were superior; but in the third, the Normans obtained a final and complete victory. The winter season suspended his progress; with the return of spring he again aspired 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.
[Sidenote: [1085-1138 A.D.]]
But in the Isle of Cephalonia, his projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease; Robert himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent (July 17th, 1085); 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. Without the appearance of an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in his deliverance. Roger, 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.
ROGER, GREAT COUNT OF SICILY (1101-1138 A.D.)
Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the second generation; but his younger brother 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. 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.[l]
This prince, who thus succeeded to such extensive states was dissatisfied with the title of duke; to obtain a higher one, he lent his aid to the anti-pope Anacletus II, who crowned him king of the Two Sicilies. This new dignity caused him to regard the republican institutions of Amalfi and Naples with dislike, perhaps with dread. He took the former, abolished its privileges, and subjected it to a feudal governor. His next step was to humble his proud barons, of whom some had too much power always to remain peaceful. It was attended with equal success; one after another all were subdued; but the chief, Robert, prince of Capua and Aversa, the descendant of Drengot, was destined to give him some trouble.
Naples, though nominally subject to the Norman princes, still preserved its own government, laws, and institutions, and was prepared to defend them to the last extremity. It opened its gates to Robert, and thereby afforded another stimulus to the vengeance of Roger. The republicans obtained the aid of a fleet from Pisa; Amalfi was forced to equip another to oppose them; the Pisans plundered Amalfi, their chief prize being a copy of the famous Pandects, an accident which is said to have changed the jurisprudence of half Europe; they were defeated, and forced to re-embark by the king, who invested Naples more closely than before. The besieged applied for relief to the emperor and the true pope, Innocent II. Lothair marched in person to their aid, while a Pisan fleet advanced by sea. The siege was raised; Robert of Capua was restored to his principality, and the whole country as far as Bari threw off its allegiance to the Normans.
But discord soon appeared between the pope, the emperor, and the Pisans; their combined forces retired, and Roger had little difficulty in regaining possession of his territories. The fate of Leo IV, a century before, did not deter Innocent II from taking the field against the excommunicated Normans; the result was the same; Innocent was defeated and made prisoner, and was glad to procure his liberation by confirming the regal title of Roger. He did more; he granted to the king the investiture not only of Capua, but of Naples, which had hitherto maintained something like independence, and over which he had assuredly no control. The republic, abandoned by its allies, was constrained to submit; the ducal crown was conferred on the king; the kingdom of the two Sicilies was admitted into the great family of nations.
ROGER II (1138-1154 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1138-1154 A.D.]]
The reign of Roger II was one of vigour, of success, and of internal tranquillity. He rendered tributary the Mohammedan tyrants of Tripoli and Tunis, built fortresses, churches, and monasteries, and administered justice with unparalleled severity, in regard not only to the poor, but to his haughty barons. The feudal system which had long before been introduced into Naples, he perfected; and extended its observance to Sicily, which had hitherto followed the policy of the Greeks and Saracens. By this revolution, the free colonists were at once transformed into vassals; new laws were introduced, which were calculated to confirm the ascendency of the nobles and prelates; and new fiscal impositions followed, more oppressive, we are told, than any which had been invented by preceding conquerors. But here, as everywhere else, the same system also brought its advantages.
In their native hills and forests, the Normans, like the Lombards, and, we may add, like all other people of Scandinavian or of Germanic descent, had been accustomed to meet twice a year, not merely to advise their chief, but to form a sort of diet or parliament, where their more weighty affairs were discussed and decided. At first these assemblies consisted of the conquerors only; but in time the more influential inhabitants were permitted to attend them. During a long period, however--probably unto the reign of Frederick II--they consisted of two estates only, the nobles and the ecclesiastics; the great body of the people had no rights, and consequently no representation. But as the towns purchased their independence of the feudal tribunals, and constituted themselves into municipal corporations; as the number of these corporations was multiplied by charters from the crown the new communities were permitted to send deputies to their general meetings.
The kings, who so often suffered from the powers of a haughty aristocracy, were here, as elsewhere, sufficiently disposed to encourage the formation and influence of this third chamber, or arm of the legislature. Besides, the burgesses were generally more able to supply the wants of the state; they were attached to the crown which had called them into existence; and among them justice was administered, at least in the last resort, by the royal judges. This triple power of the legislature was established contemporaneously both in the island and on the continent; but in the former, which had less intercourse with the world, it has subsisted in greater vigour down to our own times.
But if Roger thus established his sovereignty, he had the mortification to lose his two eldest sons, and to see the succession depend on a third, who was at once vicious and imbecile. Soon after his death, which happened in 1154, troubles began to distract the realm.[i]
Since the decease of Robert Guiscard, the Normans had relinquished above sixty years their hostile designs against the Empire of the East. The policy of Roger solicited a public and private union with the Greek princes, whose alliance would dignify his real character; he demanded in marriage a daughter of the Comnenian family, and the first steps of the treaty seemed to promise a favourable event. But the contemptuous treatment of his ambassadors exasperated the vanity of the new monarch; and the insolence of the Byzantine court was expiated, according to the laws of nations, by the sufferings of a guiltless people. With a fleet of seventy galleys, George, the admiral of Sicily, appeared before Corfu; and both the island and city were delivered into his hands by the disaffected inhabitants, who had yet to learn that a siege is still more calamitous than a tribute. In this invasion, of some moment in the annals of commerce, the Normans spread themselves by sea, and over the provinces of Greece; and the venerable age of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth was violated by rapine and cruelty.
The silk-weavers of both sexes, whom George transported to Sicily, composed the most valuable part of the spoil; and in comparing the skilful industry of the mechanic with the sloth and cowardice of the soldier, he was heard to exclaim, that the distaff and loom were the only weapons which the Greeks were capable of using. The progress of this naval armament was marked by two conspicuous events, the rescue of the king of France, and the insult of the Byzantine capital. In his return by sea from an unfortunate crusade, Louis VII was intercepted by the Greeks, who basely violated the laws of honour and religion. The fortunate encounter of the Norman fleet delivered the royal captive; and after a free and honourable entertainment in the court of Sicily, Louis continued his journey to Rome and Paris.
In the absence of the emperor, Constantinople and the Hellespont were left without defence, and without the suspicion of danger. The clergy and people--for the soldiers had followed the standard of Manuel--were astonished and dismayed at the hostile appearance of a line of galleys, which boldly cast anchor in front of the imperial city. The forces of the Sicilian admiral were inadequate to the siege or assault of an immense and populous metropolis; but George enjoyed the glory of humbling the Greek arrogance, and of marking the path of conquest to the navies of the West. He landed some soldiers to rifle the fruits of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or more probably with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the palace of the cæsars. This playful outrage of the pirates of Sicily, who had surprised an unguarded moment, Manuel affected to despise, while his martial spirit, and the forces of the empire, were awakened to revenge. The Archipelago and Ionian Sea were covered with his squadrons and those of Venice; in his homeward voyage George lost nineteen of his galleys, which were separated and taken; after an obstinate defence, Corfu implored the clemency of her lawful sovereign; nor could a ship, or a soldier of the Norman prince be found, unless as a captive, within the limit of the Eastern Empire. The prosperity and the health of Roger were already in a declining state; while he listened in his palace of Palermo to the messengers of victory or defeat, the invincible Manuel, the foremost in every assault, was celebrated by the Greeks and Latins as the Alexander or Hercules of the age.
A prince of such a temper could not be satisfied with having repelled the insolence of a barbarian. It was the right and duty, it might be the interest and glory, of Manuel to restore the ancient majesty of the empire, to recover the provinces of Italy and Sicily, and to chastise this pretended king, the grandson of a Norman vassal. The natives of Calabria were still attached to the Greek language and worship, which had been inexorably proscribed by the Latin clergy; after the loss of her dukes, Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the crown of Sicily; the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and his death had abated the fear without healing the discontent of his subjects; the feudal government was always pregnant with the seeds of rebellion, and a nephew of Roger himself invited the enemies of his family and nation.
[Sidenote: [1155-1156 A.D.]]
To the brave and noble Palæologus, his lieutenant, the Greek monarch entrusted a fleet and army; the siege of Bari was his first exploit, and in every operation, gold as well as steel was the instrument of victory. Salerno, and some places along the western coast, maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in two campaigns the greater part of his continental possessions; and the modest emperor, disdaining all flattery and falsehood, was content with the reduction of three hundred cities or villages of Apulia and Calabria, whose names and titles were inscribed on all the walls of the palace.
But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon escaped from the hand of the Greek emperor. His first demands were eluded by the prudence of Alexander III, who paused on this deep and momentous revolution; nor could the pope be seduced by a personal dispute to renounce the perpetual inheritance of the Latin name. After his reunion with Frederick, he spoke a more peremptory language, confirmed the acts of his predecessors, excommunicated the adherents of Manuel, and pronounced the final separation of the churches, or at least the empires, of Constantinople and Rome. The free cities of Lombardy no longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and he soon incurred the enmity of Venice. One hundred galleys were launched and armed in as many days; they swept the coasts of Dalmatia and Greece; but after some mutual wounds, the war was terminated by an agreement inglorious to the empire, insufficient for the republic. The lieutenant of Manuel informed his sovereign that his forces were inadequate to resist the impending attack of the king of Sicily. His prophecy was soon verified; the death of Palæologus devolved the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed by land and sea; and a captive remnant abjured all future hostility against the person or dominions of their conqueror.
Yet the king of Sicily esteemed the courage and constancy of Manuel, who had landed a second army on the Italian shore; he respectfully addressed the new Justinian; solicited a peace or truce of thirty years; accepted as a gift the regal title; and acknowledged himself the military vassal of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine cæsars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman army; and the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any hostilities between Sicily and Constantinople. About the end of that period, the throne of Manuel was usurped by an inhuman tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence of his country and mankind; the sword of William the Second, the grandson of Roger, was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and the subjects of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends, since they detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The Latin historians expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts who invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many castles and cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks accuse and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors, who were destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud in songs of triumph the repeated victories of their countrymen on the sea of Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of Andronicus, had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful insurgents; ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Normans: before the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian monarchy.
WILLIAM THE BAD (IL MALO) (1154-1166 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1154-1166 A.D.]]
The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and grandson; they might be confounded under the name of William; they are strongly discriminated by the epithets of the “bad” and the “good”; but these epithets, which appear to describe the perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate from the valour of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners were dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the monarch is responsible not only for his personal vices but for those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the life of his benefactor.
From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of oriental manners; the despotism, the pomp, and even the harem of a sultan; and a Christian people was oppressed and insulted by the ascendant of the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly cherished, the religion of Mohammed. An eloquent historian of the times, Falcandus,[m] has delineated the misfortunes of his country; the ambition and fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself; the private feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the various forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo, the island and the continent, during the reign of William the First, and the minority of his son.
WILLIAM THE GOOD (1166-1189 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1166-1194 A.D.]]
The youth, innocence, and beauty of William II, endeared him to the nation; the factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and from the manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily enjoyed a short season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose value was enhanced by the remembrance of the past and the dread of futurity. The legitimate male posterity of Tancred de Hauteville was extinct in the person of the second William; but his aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful prince of the age; and Henry VI, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, descended from the Alps to claim the imperial crown and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish of a free people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms.
The historian Falcandus writes at the moment and on the spot, with the feelings of a patriot, and the prophetic eye of a statesman. “Constanza, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in the pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners of this fortunate isle, departed long since to enrich the barbarians with our treasures, and now returns with her savage allies to contaminate the beauties of her venerable parent. Already I behold the swarms of angry barbarians; our opulent cities, the places flourishing in a long peace, are shaken with fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by intemperance and lust. I see the massacre or captivity of our citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons. In this extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act? By the unanimous election of a king of valour and experience, Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved; for in the levity of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose neither confidence nor hope. Should Calabria be lost, the lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the naval strength of Messina, might guard the passage against a foreign invader. If the savage Germans coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if they destroy with fire the fruitful region, so often wasted by the fires of Mount Ætna, what resource will be left for the interior parts of the island, these noble cities which should never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a barbarian?
“Catana has again been overwhelmed by an earthquake; the ancient virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude; but Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her triple walls enclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the two nations, under one king, can unite for their common safety, they may rush on the barbarians with invincible arms. But if the Saracens, fatigued by a repetition of injuries, should now retire and rebel, if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and sea coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude.” We must not forget, that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in the state of Sicily.[m]
The hopes or at least the wishes of Falcandus were at first gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, but whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish. During four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constanza herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease, the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German Empire with the kingdom of Sicily.
But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine III had kicked away the imperial crown from the head of the prostrate Henry, such an act of impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure; their fleet commanded the Straits of Messina, and opened the harbour of Palermo; and the first act of his government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mohammedans; they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island.
[Sidenote: [1194-1266 A.D.]]
By the policy of Frederick II, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Manfred were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated at the end of the thirteenth century by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou.
All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored, were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom; the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. The young king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps; and on the slightest rumour of rebellion the captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constanza herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony of her newborn son, of an emperor so famous in the next age under the name of Frederick II.
Ten years after this revolution, the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy; the sceptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a granddaughter of William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations.[l]
In Sicily the circumstances of the conquest led the Norman settlers to remain far more distinct from the older races of the land than they did in England, and in the end not to lose themselves in those older races of the land but in the settlers of other races who accompanied them and followed them. So far as there ever was a Sicilian nation at all it might be said to be called into being by the emperor-king Frederick II. In his day a Latin element finally triumphed; but it was not a Norman French-speaking element of any kind. The speech of the Lombards at last got the better of the Greek, Arabic, and French; how far its ascendency can have been built on any survival of an earlier Latin speech which had lived alongside of Greek and Arabic, this is not the place to inquire.
NORMAN INFLUENCE
[Sidenote: [1130-1194 A.D.]]
Of all the points to be insisted on, that which it is most necessary to bear in mind is the Norman power of adaptation to circumstances, the gift which in the end destroyed the race as a separate race. English history is utterly misconceived if it is thought that an acknowledged distinction between Normans and English went on, perhaps into the fourteenth century, perhaps into the seventeenth. Long before the earlier of those dates the Norman in England had done his work; he had unwittingly done much to preserve and strengthen the national life of a really kindred people, and, that work done, he had lost himself in the greater mass of that kindred people. In Sicily his work, far more brilliant, far more beneficent at the time, could not be so lasting. The Norman princes made Sicily a kingdom; they ruled it for a season better than any other kingdom was ruled; but they could not make it a Norman kingdom, nor could they themselves become national Sicilian kings. The kingdom that they founded has now vanished from among the kingdoms of the earth, because it was only a kingdom and not a nation. In every other way the Norman has vanished from Sicily as though he had never been. His very works of building are hardly witnesses to his presence, because, without external evidence, we should never have taken them to be his. In Sicily, in short, he gave a few generations of unusual peace and prosperity to several nations living side by side, and then he, so to speak, went his way from a land in which he had a work to do, but in which he never was really at home. In England he made himself, though by rougher means, more truly at home among unacknowledged kinsmen. When in outward show he seemed to work the unmaking of a nation, he was in truth giving no small help towards its second making.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[9] [Some historic doubt has been thrown on this anecdote by St. Marc.[h]]
[10] The Norman writers and editors most conversant with their own idiom interpret Guiscard or Wiscard, by Callidus, a cunning man. The root “wise” is familiar to our ear; and in the old word “wiseacre” we can discern something of a similar sense and termination.