By the late 11th century, the descendants of the Vikings were the undisputed overlords
of Southern Italy and Sicily, having subdued such foes as Lombard Princes, Islamic Taifas,
and the Pope himself.
However, the rising stars of the Mediterranean were not yet ready to put down their lances.
Welcome to part three of our history of the Normans of the south, where we follow the
twilight years of the mighty Duke, Robert Guiscard, as he brings his might against the
Eastern Roman Empire.
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Although our last episode ended with the conquest of the final Muslim outpost in Sicily, this
story begins two decades earlier.
In 1071, the Fox Guiscard had taken Bari, the last Byzantine city in Apulia, ending
500 years of Eastern Roman rule on the Italian peninsula.
With their long struggle against the Greeks in Italy now over, Norman Knights turned northwards
for adventure, war, and booty, ravaging their way through the beleaguered lands of Benevento
and the Abruzzi, lands under the nominal suzerainty of the Papal States.
The Papacy, for the most part, had maintained a stable, if an uneasy relationship with the
Normans after Pope Leo IX had been humbled by them at Civitate back in 1053.
But now the Franco-Norsemen were taking coin right out of the pocket of the Church, and
that it could not abide.
When Gregory VII became the pope 1073, he demanded a meeting with Guiscard, and when
the sly fox refused, the young pope excommunicated him, attempting to raise an army of Southern
French and Northern Italian Princelings to wage a holy war on the Franco-Normans.
However, unable to gain ample support, the Pope was forced to once more resign himself
to the permanent presence of the pathologically violent Knights on his southern doorstep.
At the same time, the Papacy was also embroiled in the escalating investiture controversy
with the King of the Germans to the north, vying bitterly for political supremacy over
the hierarchy of the church.
Knowing full well that the ambitious young King Henry IV may well use bigger army diplomacy
to settle the matter, the Pope was forced to look south for military aid.
In June of 1080, Gregory VII reached an accord with Guiscard.
The old Duke pledged himself as a nominal vassal of the Papacy, and agreed to come to
the Pope’s military aid if need be.
In return, he was absolved of his excommunication, and allowed to keep the lands he had taken
from the Papal states, provided he admitted he felt really bad about it, and made an empty
promise to give it back someday maybe.
With this new accord reached, it became evident that the Normans would inevitably be roped
into the brewing conflict between the Pope and the German Emperor.
However, that storm was still on the horizon.
With his own feud with the Pope sorted, Guiscard shifted his attention eastward, across the
Adriatic sea, to the heartland of the Eastern Roman Empire.
In the late 11th century, Byzantium was a rapidly disintegrating Empire.
1071 had been particularly bad for the Greeks, for in the same year the Normans kicked them
out of Italy, they had also suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Seljuk Turks at
Manzikert, losing most of Anatolia in the aftermath.
Recognizing his weak position, the Emperor in Constantinople, Michael VII, supplicated
himself to the Normans, allowing Duke Guiscard’s daughter to marry his son, and paying the
Franco-Norseman an annual tribute of 200 pounds of gold.
This stability would not last, for in 1078 Michael VII was overthrown in a civil war
by a usurper, Nikephoros Botaneiates, severing Guiscards’ ties to the Imperial family.
The news reached the Norman Duke in 1080, when a man claiming to be Michael VII arrived
at his Apulian court, beseeching Guiscard for aid in reclaiming his rightful throne.
However, this man was most likely not the real Michael VII, who had since become a monk
in the Constantinople Monastery of St. John.
Sources conflict on whether or not this Imperial imposter was a rogue seeking to con his way
into Imperial riches, or simply a ringer working for Guiscard, who needed the pretext to invade
the East.
The latter seems more likely, as the old fox had been eyeing the Byzantine Balkans with
hungry eyes for years, and the deposition of Michael VII was all the casus belli he
needed to launch an invasion.
In 1081, the gears of conquest began to turn.
At the turn of the spring campaigning season, Guiscard began to rally ships and levies off
the ports of Taranto and Otranto, all the while claiming his mission was to restore
the fake Michael.
Meanwhile in Constantinople, another military coup had seen the deposition of the usurper
Nikephoros, and the ascension of the young General, Alexios Komnenos, to the Imperial
throne.
In time, Alexios would prove himself to be one of the greatest Emperors of Eastern Rome,
and the coming war between him and the old fox Guiscard would be one of the most formidable
showdowns in Medieval history.
Sources differ wildly on the size of the Norman invasion force, but it probably came up to
700 elite heavy knights, and 15,000 light cavalry, conscript infantry and crossbowmen.
They sailed across the Adriatic in Byzantine-style Khelandia ships, equipped with ramps capable
of unloading horses directly onto the shore, enabling quick sea-to-land mobilization of
the deadly Norman cavalry.
Guiscard sent his son, Bohemond, ahead of the main fleet with 15 ships.
The vanguard captured the towns of Aulon and Oricum with little trouble, but found itself
unable to crack the ardent citadel on the isle of Corfu.
On May 21st, Guiscard arrived with the main fleet, and Corfu soon fell.
Having established their footholds on the Balkan coast, the detachments of the Norman
army then coalesced at Aulon, from where they intended to strike north, at the fortress
of Dyrrhachium.
This was an ancient institution on the Adriatic coast famous for being the site of a battle
between the forces of Caesar and Pompey in 48 BC.
A thousand years later, it served as the main bastion of Eastern Roman power in the western
Balkans.
Situated on a long, narrow peninsula cut off from the mainland by thick, swampy marshlands,
it was a tough nut to crack.
Nevertheless, if it was taken, the dominos of Byzantine defense would collapse, allowing
the Normans to strike into the heart of Greece, and then perhaps across the Aegean, into Constantinople
itself.
The Norman approach was hardly smooth: as Guiscard scaled up the coast, a good chunk
of his fleet was lost to a storm.
Thankfully, the bulk of the army had been travelling by land, and the campaign pushed
on.
On the 17th of June, the Normans had arrived outside the walls of Dyrrhachium, setting
camp in the ruins of an old Roman town in its immediate hinterland.
Meanwhile, the shrewd Emperor Alexios had not been idle.
Realizing his own western navy was ill-equipped to stop the Normans’ naval advance, he called
upon his ally for aid: the Maritime Republic of Venice.
Formally a vassal of Byzantium, the Serene Republic was functionally an independent merchant
Empire on the rise, motivated principally by the pragmatisms of gold.
However, the ambitious Normans proved a threat to Venetian trade hegemony in the Adriatic
sea, and thus, the Doge Domenico Selvo agreed to aid the Byzantine cause, dispatching a
fleet of warships southwards to confront the Norman fleet, which was now blockading Dyrrachium
by sea.
Soon, the battle on land was joined.
Guiscard’s forces constructed helepoleis, large Byzantine-style siege towers, and with
them attempted to storm the north and eastern sides of the citadel.
They were repeatedly repulsed by outward sorties of Dyrrhachiums' defenders, who managed to
burn down the siegecraft.
For a while, the contest seemed deadlocked.
This changed in late July, when the Venetians finally arrived to relieve their Greek allies.
The Normans, lacking the naval acumen of their Viking ancestors, were not a match for the
seasoned Venetian fleet.
Accounts of this maritime skirmish differ wildly between Latin and Greek sources, but
it seems likely that the Venetian fleet formed an impenetrable crescent like formation known
as pelagolimen, and sprayed Greek fire upon the Norman fleet, routing it in a baptism
of chaos and flame.
It was a devastating blow to Guiscard.
With his ships scattered or destroyed, the Byzantines and Venetians dominated the Adriatic
Sea, cutting off his supply lines from Italy.
With no more provisions coming from Apulia, and stuck in the thick, humid climate of southern
Illyria, starvation and disease had begun to spread through the landward Norman camp.
Meanwhile, by August, the warrior-Emperor Alexios had set off from Constantinople to
destroy the Normans once and for all.
His army was an unlikely coalition of the Byzantines past enemies-turned-allies, including
Armenians, Turks, Frankish mercenaries, the Tagmatas of Thrace and Macedon, and a Serbian
contingent led by their King, Constantine Bodin.
Most notable in the Byzantine expedition was the Varangian guard, an elite unit of Norse
and Anglo-Saxon warriors and the cream of the Eastern Roman army.
All told, they amounted to anywhere between 18,000 to 20,000 souls.
Following the old Roman road of Via Ignatia, Alexios’ army arrived at Dyrrhachium on
the 15th of October, setting up his camp on the seaward side of the wide lagoon north
of the citadel.
Within Alexios’ war council there were two contrasting views.
The governor of Dyrrachium and the more experienced officers cautioned for a more conservative
strategy; after all, their enemy was isolated and starving, and by blockading their camp
and doing guerilla-style raids they could grind them down into nothing.
However, the younger, more hot-headed generals demanded an immediate, full-scale pitched
battle, predicated on honour and pride.
The latter won out, so on October 17th the Byzantine army marched en masse back across
the lagoon, circling southwards to strike the Norman camp from the east.
Realizing that the final battle was nigh, Guiscard ordered his remaining ships to be
burned.
The old fox’s message to his troops was clear: There was no turning back; they would
fight until the end.
Under the cover of night, Guiscard moved his troops up to the Sanctuary of St. Theodorus,
where he organized his army into three contingents.
The left wing, led by Bohemond, the right wing, led by a knight named Amicetas, and
the center, led by the old Fox himself.
The two wings were composed of conscripted levies and light cavalry, while the elite
Norman Knights were concentrated in the center.
When the sun rose on the morning of October 18th, Alexios saw his Norman foes lined up
before him.
Like Guiscard, the warrior-Emperor arranged his army into three contingents, and took
personal command of the center company.
Notably however, he deployed his Varangians as a vanguard a few yards ahead of the main
army lines, hoping their mastery as heavy shock troopers could absorb a Norman cavalry
charge.
Many of the Anglo-Saxons were veterans of Hastings in 1066 - they had been driven out
of their homeland by the usurper-king William, and longed for vengeance against his Norman
cousins in the south.
The staredown came to a jarring end when Guiscard deployed a contingent of light cavalry from
his center out to harass the Varangian vanguard, attempting to break their tight formation.
The Englishmen held firm, while the light archers and peltasts in the Byzantine lines
advanced, hurling their missiles at their foe to keep the Knights at bay.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Norman line had begun a slow advance.
On the Byzantine side of the field, the Serbians and Turks kept their troops in reserve in
the back of the line.
Their loyalty to the Greek Emperor was dubious, and they wanted to see who had the upper hand
before joining the fight.
Soon Amicetas’ right division charged forward, smashing into the Varangians’ left flank.
However, the Saxons held firm, and together with the Eastern Roman left and elements of
Alexios’ center company, routed the Norman light cavalry and conscripts, sending them
fleeing to the shore.
Meanwhile, the Norman light infantry on the center and left had engaged in a general melee
with the Byzantine center and right, with neither side giving any ground.
It is here the battle reached a critical junction.
The Varangians, swelling with confidence and after repelling the initial Norman charge,
barreled after their fleeing foe.
This bloodlust would cost them their lives, for as they pursued the Norman right, they
became separated from the main Byzantine lines, making them vulnerable to flanking.
Guiscard wasted no time.
Seeing the jugular exposed, he sent a contingent of spearmen and crossbowmen from his center
to peel off from the melee, and strike at the Varangians left flank.
The Saxons, exhausted, were taken completely by surprise, and their ranks were devastated.
Those who survived fled up a hill to the nearby Church of St. Michael, where they boarded
themselves up for protection.
The Normans, in a stroke of poetic irony, set the church of their own patron saint ablaze,
committing every Varangian within to a fiery death.
The annihilation of the Varangians was a death-blow to Byzantine morale.
The Turks and Serbians, thus far kept in reserve, peeled off from the Roman army, with some
7,000 soldiers abandoning the fight.
Emperor Alexios ardently fought on with what remained of his forces, but his was now a
doomed struggle.
Guiscard, who had previously kept his elite Knights in reserve, now ordered a full cavalry
charge into the Byzantine line.
Whatever was left of Roman morale shattered, and their troops were slaughtered, or routed
off the field.
During his flight, Emperor Alexios was waylaid by Amicetas and his right wing, seeking to
redeem their tarnished honour from being routed earlier.
The Greek Emperor managed to fight them off however, while sustaining injuries.
He escaped and fled to Ohrid, where he desperately began mounting a new line of defense.
The battle of Dyrrhachium exacted a heavy toll on both sides.
The Byzantines suffered 5,000 men dead, while Norman losses were unknown but heavy.
The siege of the fortress itself continued for another four months, until February of
1082, when an Italian citizen within the walls opened the gates for the Normans, allowing
Guiscard to finally conquer the stubborn citadel.
For Alexios, the situation was incredibly dire.
Emptying out the Imperial coffers, the desperate Emperor offered 360,000 gold pieces to Henry
IV, The King of the Germans, with a plea to invade the Papal States, the Normans’ suzerain
and ally.
By doing this, he hoped Robert Guiscard would be forced to divert his troops back to Italy,
giving the Byzantines some reprieve from his invasion.
Henry, for his part, was still deeply embroiled in the investiture controversy with the Pope,
and therefore was all too happy to take Alexios’ exorbitant tribute and invade his biggest
rival.
Marching down the Italian Peninsula, he soon bore his might down upon the city of Rome.
To further compound matters, Guiscards’ own vassals back in Apulia had risen up against
him in his absence, no doubt spurred on by Byzantine whispers and silver.
With his hand forced, the old fox returned to Italy to quell the brewing chaos, leaving
his son in charge of the Balkan campaign.
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