In the spring of 1082, the great Fortress of Dyrrachium had fallen, and Byzantium’s
Balkan defences were in shambles.
The old Fox Guiscard had left his son in charge of the Byzantine campaign, himself having
returned to Italy to rescue the Pope from the ambitions of the German King.
In Greece, the showdown between an untested young Norman warlord and the cunning Eastern
Roman Emperor would decide the fate of the Eastern Rome, while the old Fox’s final
romp in Italy would cement the Normans’ legacy in the Catholic west.
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In the months following the fall of Dyrrachium, Guiscard and his armies marched eastwards,
taking the city of Castoria with ease, where they rested and prepared an offensive on Alexios’
temporary base of Thessaloniki.
In April, word of the brewing revolts in Apulia reached Duke Robert, and the old warlord hastily
departed back home to quell the rebellion, setting the stage for the coming contest between
Bohemond and the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who despite being bloodied, was
not ready to throw in the towel.
Surprisingly, Bohemonds’ first course of action was not to strike at Thessaloniki as
his father had planned, but to take his troops and march southwest to the capital of Epirus,
Ioannina.
On his way through Thessaly, he found his armies supplemented by the local Vlachs, a
collection of peoples who existed in pockets throughout the Balkans.
These Aromanians, as they were also known, had been chafing under the heavy taxation
and corrupt bureaucracy of the Byzantine empire for decades, and saw common cause with the
Normans.
By the end of April, Bohemond’s army had reached Ioannina.
The city quickly surrendered to spare itself from the ruthless pillaging that the Normans
were infamous for.
Bohemond spent the next few months fortifying its defenses.
Meanwhile, Alexios had retreated to Constantinople, where he had managed to scrape together a
new army despite depleted resources.
The total size of this army is lost to history, but it likely outnumbered Bohemonds’ expeditionary
force.
Some time in the summer, Alexios’ host had arrived in the hinterlands just outside Ioannina.
The shrewd Emperor had learned from his loss at Dyrrachium.
To counteract the thundering impact of a Norman cavalry charge, he had a squadron of light
chariots hidden behind a front line of infantry, with riders hiding beneath the vehicles.
The plan was to lead the Normans into believing that the Byzantines were a primarily foot-soldier
based army, prompting them to commit to a full-scale charge.
When the enemy knights came within striking distance, the front line would split and the
riders would rush onto their chariots, using their superior mobility to outmaneuver, flank
and destroy.
This however, would never come to pass.
Bohemond evidently had learned of the Greeks’ plans beforehand, and responded simply by
dividing his cavalry into two wings, charging into the Byzantine forces’ left and right
flank to catch them in a pincer movement, rendering them unable to maneuver around them.
Caught entirely by surprise, most of Alexios’ army fled the field, while many were slaughtered
in a brutal Melee.
Ioannina remained in Norman hands.
Humiliated once more, Alexios limped back to Thessaloniki, where he consolidated what
remained of his levies, all the while confiscating the treasures of the Orthodox church.
This was deeply unpopular with the clergy, but it allowed the Emperor to replenish his
army with mercenaries.
Bohemond, meanwhile, had marched his victorious forces southwards to the city of Arta, which
he laid siege to.
Just like Dyrrachium and Ioannina, Alexios marched once more to relieve the latest city
that had fallen into Norman clutches.
Once more, he predicted a full-frontal cavalry charge, and this time laid a perimeter of
caltrops hidden in the tall grass ways ahead of his front line.
His plan was to use the traps to pierce the Norman horses’ flesh, throwing them into
chaos, at which point the Byzantine light cavalry, situated on the wings, would charge
into their left and right flank.
Bohemond however, was of a simpler mind.
Deciding to simply use what had worked before, he once more divided his knights into a left
and right wing, barreling into the Byzantine forces in a pincer yet again, bypassing the
caltrops which had only been laid before the front lines.
Furthermore, Alexios’ had not accounted for his army’s low morale.
Terrified of the Normans’ who thus far had made mincemeat of them in every battle they
fought, the Greeks and their mercenaries either fled the field or were slaughtered.
Seeing yet another battle lost, Alexios fled back to Constantinople.
With Alexios’ stuck licking his wounds in his capital, Bohemond took the initiative
and advanced northeast, subduing the city of Skopje and the surrounding towns, before
marching back south to Castoria by mid-Autumn.
With the weather turning bleak, the young Norman warlord had to make a choice: settle
in for the winter or continue his advance.
Knowing the climate of western Macedonia to be chilly and damp, and not wanting to risk
sickness spreading through his army, Bohemond decided to push south-east, to the sunny,
fertile plains of Thessaly.
To that end, the Norman knights pointed their lances at the regions’ capital, the city
of Larissa.
If Byzantine sources are to be believed, the Franco-Norsemen appeared before the walls
of Larissa on November 3rd, laying siege to the city and cutting it off from the outside
world.
The city defense was headed by a veteran soldier named Leo Cephalas, who remained ardently
loyal to his Emperor in Constantinople.
Leo defiantly held out against Bohemond for over six months, but as winter turned to spring,
morale in the city began to plummet as the Larissans starved under the Norman blockade.
Meanwhile, Emperor Alexios, predictably, had not yet given up.
Despite suffering crushing loss after crushing loss, the remarkably stubborn Roman would
not turn his back on his dying Empire.
First he resorted to diplomacy.
Using the same underhanded tactics that had sent Guiscard rushing back to Italy, he found
a way to spread whispers into the Norman camp, lighting the fires of conspiracy.
Three senior generals in the Norman army, Peter of Aulps, and two men named Renaldus
and William, were accused by the rest of the Franco-Norsemen of scheming to defect to the
Byzantines.
This created a rift within Bohemond’s leadership core, no doubt dealing a blow to Norman morale,
and buying Alexios some time.
Meanwhile, using what remained of Byzantine coffers and confiscated Church artifacts,
Alexios managed to purchase for himself a mercenary army of 7,000 Seljuk Turks, loaned
to him by the Rum Sultan, Suleiman I.
Despite being the recent enemies of the Eastern Romans, it can be surmised that the Turks
had a vested interest in ensuring that an army of zealous Latin Knights did not advance
right onto their doorstep.
In March of 1083, Alexios began his westward march for one final, decisive battle with
the Normans.
Joined by Greek levies from Thessaloniki and some Pecheneg sellswords on the way, he passed
his army through the narrow Tempe valley, and via the river Peneus, making his camp
in the town of Trikala, where he began formulating his plan of attack.
With each defeat, Alexios had adapted his strategy, and this time was no different.
He knew that his troops were comparatively low in experience and morale compared to the
veteran, battle-hardened Norman knights, and that therefore any direct confrontation with
the Latin enemy would result in yet another crushing loss.
To that end, he apprehended a local Thessalian farmer and had him educate his generals on
every detail of the local terrain, with the intention of planning an ambush.
On a sunny summer’s morning, sometime in July of 1083, a line of Byzantine soldiers
appeared on the plains of Larissa’s eastern approach.
Led by the generals Nicephorus Melissinus and Basil Curticius, their Imperial banners
flew proudly, challenging the Normans to fight.
Believing the flags to represent the main Roman army, Bohemond immediately ordered his
knights to mount up.
With himself at the head of one squadron, and his trusted officer Brienne at the other,
they barreled down in a full frontal cavalry charge upon the Byzantine line.
This time, however, would not be like the others.
Instead of engaging in a general melee, the Byzantines began a planned retreat to a place
called Lykostomion: The Wolf’s Mouth.
It was here Alexios’ genius finally pulled through.
Setting his ambush into action, the Greek Emperor ordered a contingent of mounted archers
and peltasts to begin harassing the charging Norman knights from the flank, prompting them
to break their pursuit.
This worked like a charm, as Count Brienne peeled off his squadron of knights to charge
at his harassers.
Unfortunately for him, the Normans’ heavy cavalry proved unable to outmaneuver the likely
Turkic mounted archers, who circled around them with ease, shooting out the horses from
under the Latin Knights, and raining chaos upon them.
Brienne made a desperate attempt to call for reinforcements, but he had been separated
from Bohemonds’ squadron and communication lines had been cut.
Meanwhile, Bohemond himself had broken off his pursuit of the Byzantine decoy army, and
made a temporary camp on a small river-island called Salabria, a narrow region on the outskirts
of Larissa defined by marshy swamplands.
According to Byzantine sources, Bohemond did not take his situation very seriously, reportedly
having been lounging around eating grapes.
Some time later, Briennes’ squadron had likely managed to link back up with Bohemond,
and their ragged, wounded state alerted the young Norman duke to the reality of the threat
he faced.
The next morning, Alexios bore the full might of his army down upon Bohemond’s camp.
His Turkic and Pecheneg horse-archers circled around the narrow marshlands, peppering the
heavily armoured knights with arrows in an attempt to draw them out of their camp and
expose themselves.
Learning from Briennes’ mistake, Bohemond did not take the bait, ordering his warriors
to remain dismounted and to form a phalanx with their lances and shields, turtling down
to protect themselves from the missiles.
Pinned down and trapped, it was clear that Alexios finally had the upper hand.
The contest was decided when a stray arrow struck Bohemond’s standard bearer, causing
the Normans to panic, break formation, and flee westwards to Trikala.
Finally, it was Alexios who saw the Norman’s jugular exposed, and he went all in to end
their campaign for good.
Having sowed the seeds of division in the Norman ranks even before the battle, and knowing
now that defeat would have shattered their morale further, Alexios promised lavish gifts
and high court titles to any Norman noble who would desert Bohemond and join him.
Bohemond found himself unable to match Alexios’ extravagant offers, nor was he even able to
pay his soldiers for the two and a half years of campaigning they had done in the Balkans.
Fearing a total mutiny in his army, he was forced to retreat back across the Adriatic,
abandoning the lands he had taken Macedonia and Thessaly to be reconquered by the Eastern
Roman Empire.
Larissa proved to be a great victory for Alexios, but the Emperor was not yet done.
He called the Venetians back into action, who surprisingly had remained loyal to Byzantium
throughout this whole ordeal.
Spurred on with the promise of trade concessions and a colony in Constantinople, the Italian
sealords took to their warships once more, driving the Normans out of Dyrrachium and
Corfu, returning those territories to the Greeks.
The Balkan campaign was over.
Despite the best efforts of the fearsome Norman knights, the shrewd and practical policies
of the Komnenian Emperor had won the day, and saved the Eastern Roman Empire from total
destruction.
Meanwhile back in Italy, Robert Guiscard had little time to process his son’s defeat
in the east, too busy dealing with the chaos Alexios had created for him on his home turf.
He spent 15 months quelling the rebellions in Apulia, before finally marching north with
an army of at least 4000 to aid his spiritual suzerain in Rome.
For Pope Gregory, the situation was desperate.
The German King Henry had more or less taken full control of the Eternal City, leaving
the Pope confined in the Castel Sant’Angelo.
An Antipope, Clement III, had been coronated in St. Peters’ Basilica at the behest of
the King, and in turn had crowned Henry with the symbolic title of Charlemagne: Holy Roman
Emperor.
Upon hearing that Guiscard was marching to face him, Henry opted to avoid open battle,
seeing no need for it.
After all, he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Perhaps also fearing the martial prowess of the Normans, he and his army retreated back
to Germany.
When Guiscard arrived at the gates of Rome in 1084, he had expected to be treated like
a liberator.
Instead, to his unpleasant surprise, he found himself barred by an angry Roman populace,
who had thrown their support behind Emperor Henry, rather than the Pope who remained hidden
in his castle.
Naturally, the old warlord was undeterred by this mob, and formulated a plan to break
through their defenses.
The bulk of his army remained camped outside the east side of the city, where they skirmished
sporadically with the Romans on the walls.
Meanwhile, under cover of darkness, he snuck 1400 men around the walls to the Porta Latina,
a small, sparsely defended gate.
Shrouded by night, they scaled the battlements and opened the portcullis for the rest of
the army, which poured into the city, taking the Romans completely by surprise.
From here, sources differ wildly on what happened next.
Roman chroniclers bitterly claim that Guiscard’s troops committed a brutal and ruthless sacking,
slaughtering and violating indiscriminately, while Norman chroniclers assert that Guiscard
simply set some buildings aflame to distract the Romans, used it to rescue the Pope, then
left the city.
It seems most likely that the Normans ravaged their way through the Capitol and Palatine
hills, looting and pillaging as they had done for years, while burning eight churches in
the process.
However, the damage was nowhere near what Rome had seen from its sacks of yore, under
the Gauls or the Goths.
Having lost most of his support, and reviled by the citizens of Rome for his role in the
Norman sacking, Pope Gregory was forced into exile in Norman Benevento, where he died a
year later.
Meanwhile, the German’s Imperial Antipope, Clement, retained power as Christendom’s
supreme pontiff.
As for Guiscard, following his little side quest of sacking the heart of the Catholic
world, he set about returning to the main story mission, but his attempt to pick up
where he’d left off in Byzantium would end before it truly began.
In May of 1085, while rallying his troops on the Greek island of Kefalonia, he succumbed
to disease.
Frail and sickly, he passed peacefully in his bed, ending the four-decade long career
of one of the most successful medieval warriors of all time.
The attempted Norman conquest of the Balkans became a watershed moment for the Eastern
Roman Empire.
In his darkest hour, the shrewd and cunning Emperor Alexios was tested in fire and blood,
and during the rest of his enlightened reign, the borders of his Empire were secured.
Over the next century, his dynasty, the Komnenoi, would retake much of the Balkans and Anatolia,
breathing new life into a long struggling Imperium.
The death of the cunning fox Guiscard marked the end of an era for the Normans of the south.
The warlord and his de Hauteville clan had cemented their permanent legacy, and although
they had failed to conquer the east, southern Italy and Sicily remained firmly in their
control, and neither Greeks, Germans, or Popes would be able to dislodge them from this land.
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