336 HENRY III. FLIES BEFORE GUISCARD. [CH. LVI. to the cause of Gregory; their resolution was fortified by supplies of men and money from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually besieged by the king of Germany. In the fourth year he corrupted, as it is said, with Byzantine gold, the nobles of Rome, whose estates and castles had been ruined by the war. The gates, the bridges, and fifty hostages, were delivered into his hands; the antipope, Clement the Third, was consecrated in the Lateran; the grateful pontiff crowned his protector in the Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the Capitol, as the lawful successor of Augustus and Charlemagne. The ruins of the Septizonium were still defended by the nephew of Gregory: the pope himself was invested in the castle of St. Angelo; and his last hope was in the courage and fidelity of his Norman vassal. Their friendship had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints; but, on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation 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 of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope, and of compelling the two emperors of the East and West to fly before his victorious arms.* But the triumph TUOTOS OUтоç Пáñas (1. 1, p. 32), a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon; and accuses him of scourging, shaving, perhaps of castrating, the ambassadors of Henry (p. 31. 33). But this outrage is improbable and doubtful. (See the sensible preface of Cousin.) * Sic uno tempore victi Sunt terræ Domini duo: rex Alemannicus iste, Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur; et alter It is singular enough, that the Apulian, a Latin, should distinguish the Greek as the ruler of the Roman empire (1. 4, p. 274). A.D. 1084.] GREGORY RETIRES TO SALERNO. 331 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 Coliseum, was consumed by the flames, and devoted to perpetual solitude.+ From a city where he was now hated, and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end his days in the palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the vanity of Guiscard, with the hope of a Roman or imperial crown; but this dangerous measure, which would have inflamed the ambition of the Norman, must for ever have alienated the most faithful princes of Germany. The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged 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 kingdoms of Greece and Asia; his troops were assembled in arms, flushed with success, and eager for action. Their numbers, in the language of Homer, are compared by Anna * The narrative of Malaterra (1. 3, c. 37, p. 587, 588) is authentic, circumstantial, and fair. Dux ignem exclamans urbe incensa, &c. The Apulian softens the mischief (inde quibusdam ædibus exustis), which is again exaggerated in some partial chronicles. (Muratori, Annali, tom. ix. p. 147.) + After mentioning this devastation, the Jesuit Donatus (de Româ Veteri et Nova, 1. 4, c. 8, p. 489) prettily adds, Duraret hodieque in Coelio monte, interque ipsum et capitolium miserabilis facies prostratæ urbis, nisi in hortorum vinetorumque amoenitatem Roma resurrexisset ut perpetuâ viriditate contegeret vulnera et ruinas suas. The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed by the pope (Anna, 1. 1, p. 32), is sufficiently confirmed by the Apulian (1. 4, p. 270); Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal advocates should be displeased with this new instance of apostolic jurisdiction. 339 SECOND EXPEDITION OF ROBERT [CH. LVI. to a swarm of bees;* yet the utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been already defined; they were contained on this second occasion in one hundred and twenty vessels; and as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium+ was preferred to the open road of Otranto. Alexius, apprehensive of a second attack, had assiduously laboured to restore the naval forces of the empire; and obtained from the republic of Venice an important succour of thirty-six transports, fourteen galleys, and nine galliots, or ships of extraordinary strength and magnitude. Their services were liberally paid by the licence or monopoly of trade, a profitable gift of many shops and houses in the port of Constantinople, and a tribute to St. Mark, the more acceptable as it was the produce of a tax on their rivals of Amalphi. By the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with a hostile fleet; but their own neglect, or the vigilance of Robert, the change of a wind, or the shelter of a mist, opened a free passage; and the Norman troops were safely disembarked on the coast of Epirus. With twenty strong and well appointed galleys, their intrepid duke immediately sought the enemy, and, though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his own life and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of a naval combat. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements, in sight of the isle of Corfu; in the two former, the skill and numbers of the allies were superior; but in the third, the Normans obtained a final and complete victory. The light brigantines of the Greeks were scat * See Homer, Iliad B. (I hate this pedantic mode of quotation by the letters of the Greek alphabet) 87, &c. His bees are the image of a disorderly crowd: their discipline and public works seem to be the ideas of a later age. (Virgil, Æneid. 1. 1.) Gulielm. Appulus, 1. 5, p. 276. The admirable port of Brundusium was double; the outward harbour was a gulf covered by an island, and narrowing by degrees till it communicated by a small gullet with the inner harbour, which embraced the city on both sides. Cæsar and nature have laboured for its ruin; and against such agents, what are the feeble efforts of the Neapolitan government? (Swinburne's Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 384-390.) William of Apulia (l. 5, p. 276) describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena (1. 6, p. 159-161). In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge and rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge, A.D. 1084.] INTO GREECE.-HIS DEATH. 339 tered in ignominious flight; the nine castles of the Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were sunk, two were taken; two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the victor; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been supplied by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening, when he had sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects, and to baffle the advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his progress; with the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople; but, instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms against Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labour, and where the land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations with vigour and effect. But, in the isle of Cephalonia, his projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease; Robert himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and a suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumour, to his wife, or to the Greek emperor. This premature death might allow a boundless propter excidium stoli. (Dandulus in Chron., in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.) [The popular clamour was excited at Venice by the donatives and arts of Vitale Faledro, who thus intrigued himself into the situation of the deposed doge. (Annali d'Italia, xiii. p. 414, 8vo. Venezia, 1790.) Stolus, although used here and by many writers to designate a naval armament, had not strictly that meaning. It was no less applicable to a body of land forces, and indeed to any assemblage of men acting in concert. The progress of written language indicates the course by which the unwritten advanced. Those who are interested in the study may observe, in the Thesaurus Stephani, 8678, the stages by which the Greek substantive oróλos (formed from orέλλw, mitto), from denoting a simple mission, came to bear the import of an armed host. Through the Latin stolus, it arrived at its Italian form of stuolo, in which it still signifies any "multitudine di gente armata." -ED.] *The most authentic writers, William of Apulia (1. 5. 277), Jeffrey Malaterra (1. 3, c. 41, p. 589), and Romuald of Salerno (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.), are ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen, William of Malmsbury (1. 3, p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden (p. 710, in Script. post Bedam) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian is indeed so blind, that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I. who ascended the throne fifteen years after : 340 BURIAL OF GUISCARD. [CH. LVI. 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. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard was shipwrecked on the Italian shore ; but the duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of Venusia,† a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace,‡ than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son and successor, immediately sank 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.§ Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of the duke of Apulia's death. [The account of Robert Guiscard given by William of Malmsbury (p. 295, Bohn's Translation) is generally correct, except as to his death by poison. At p. 428 the duke of Apulia appears to be confounded with Robert, the eldest brother of Henry I. Hoveden followed and embellished William of Malmsbury. The evidences of imperfect information justify the doubts expressed in a former note, p. 329, on the authority of such writers for transactions at Constantinople.—ED.] * The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy (Alexiad. 1. 5, p. 162-166); and his best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign of his family, Græcia (says Malaterra), hostibus recedentibus libera læta quievit; Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur. + Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is one of the last lines of the Apulian's poem (1. 5, p. 278). William of Malmsbury (1. 3, p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing. Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia; he was carried to Rome in his childhood (Serm. 1, 6); and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. 3, 4, Serm. 2, 1), are unworthy of his age and genius. [All inen are sensible, if not of obligation, at least of attachment, to their birthplace, which, in its turn, glories in the accident of having produced an illustrtrious son. Horace lived long enough in Venusia, for his nurses to presage the future eminence of the "animosus infans." It is not very clear, why his allusions to an ill-determined boundary are unworthy of his genius.-ED.] § See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88-93) and the historians of the first crusade, |