A.D. 1101-1154.] ROGER, GREAT COUNT OF SICILY. 341 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, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous, wish of dominion. Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and, if a wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies,t the opulence and power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great count was ignorant of these noble pursuits: it was gratified by the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian limits beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently watched the declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the grandson of Robert. On the first intelligence of his premature death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor in the bay of Salerno, received, after ten days' negotiation, an oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from the reluctant popes, who could not long endure either the friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot of Benevento was *The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily, fills four books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone (tom. ii. 1. 11-14, p. 136— 340), and is spread over the ninth and tenth volumes of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliothèque Italique (tom. i. p. 175222) I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger I. to Frederic II. inclusive. According to the testimony of Philistus and Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a standing force of ten thousand horse, one hundred thousand foot, and four hundred galleys. Compare Hume (Essays, vol. i. p. 268, 435) and his adversary Wallace (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307). The ruins of Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, D'Orville, Reidesel, Swinburne, &c. 342 * ROGER, DUKE OF APULIA, [CH. LVI. respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his, uncle Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of count; and the isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the continent of Italy, might form the basis of a kingdom which would only yield to the monarchies of France and England. The chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir was insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the Latin world + might disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title, which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit; but his own legitimacy was attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second; and while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown, by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of Lothaire the Second of Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of the Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was driven from the continent of Italy; a new duke of Apulia was invested by the pope and the emperor, each of whom * A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger from the year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the consent of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and Palermo, without introducing pope Anacletus. (Alexand. Coenobii Telesini Abbatis de Rebus gestis Regis Rogerii, 1. 4, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. v. p. 607-645.) The kings of France, England, Scotland. Castile, Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne, the three next were created by their sword, the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary alone was honoured or debased by a papal crown. Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and independent coronation (A.D. 1130, May 1), which Giannone unwillingly rejects (tom. ii. p. 137-144). This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious charter of Messina. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 340; Pagi, A D. 1130-1139.] FIRST KING OF SICILY. 343 held one end of the gonfanon, or flag-staff, as a token that they asserted their right, and suspended their quarrel.* But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious duration; the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion;t the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a conqueror, who seldom forgave either the dead or the living; like his predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff became the captive and friend of the Normans; and their reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily. As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St. Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross, and he accomplished with ardour a vow so propitious to his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens; the Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their strength they contended with the decline of an African power. When the Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a gift of his royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468.) * [The gonfanon was not the flag-staff, but the flag itself. None dispute its derivation from the Gothic fana, the root of the present German fahne, a standard. But there are many opinions as to the meaning of its first syllable. These may be seen in F. Wachter's learned dissertation on Fahnen. (Ersch and Gruber, Encyc. 41, p. 121-144.) The most probable is that which derives it from chund, gund, or gunnr, an early Gothic term for battle, which was introduced into many proper names, such as Gundobald, Gundhelm, Gunther, &c. and is found in our word gun. Ducange gives, without any explanation, guntfana as the earliest form of gonfanon, which was therefore the schlachtfahne, the battleflag, borne in the field by or near the commander-in-chief of an army. See also the Glossary to the Prose Edda, Mallet, North. Ant. p. 554, edit. Bohn, and that of Meyrick, Ancient Armour, vol. viii. edit. 1842. In process of time it was applied to the banners of companies, guilds, municipalities, and churches, particularly in Lombardy. The gonfalonier, or standard-bearer, became the designation of the chief magistrate in some Italian republics. Hallam, Middle Ages, 1, 345, 427, &c.-ED.] + Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans (says Cinnamus, 1. 3, c. 1, p. 51) are ignorant of the use 344 CONQUESTS OF ROGER IN AFRICA. [CH. LVI. palace, with its sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers. The Zeirides*, the descendants of Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude to a distant benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now fainting in their own weakness. On the side of the land, they were oppressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco, while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and Franks, who before the close of the eleventh century, had extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the first arms of Roger, the island or rock of Malta, which has been since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli,t a strong and maritime city, was the next object of his attack; and the slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females, might be justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves. The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa, from the country, and Mahadia from the Arabian founder; it is strongly built on a neck of land, but the imperfection of the harbour is not compensated by the fertility of the adjacent plain. Mahadia was besieged by George, the Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one hundred and fifty galleys, amply provided with men and the instruments of mischief; the sovereign had fled, the Moorish governor refused to capitulate, declined the last and irresistible assault, and, secretly escaping with the Moslem inhabitants, abandoned the place and its treasures to the rapacious Franks. In successive expeditions, the king of Sicily or his lieutenants reduced the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia, Bona, and a long tract of the seatrumpets. Most ignorant himself! * See De Guignes, Hist. Générale des Huns, tom. i. p. 369-373, and Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique, &c. sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 70—144. Their common original appears to be Novairi. [For Joseph, or Jusef Ben Taxfin, and El Mehedi, the founder of the Almohades, their successors, and their wars, see Condé, Arabs in Spain, vol ii. p. 205, et seq. edit. Bohn.-ED.] Tripoli (says the Nubian geographer, or more properly the Sherif al Edrisi) urbis fortis, saxeo muro vallata, sita prope littus maris. Hanc expugnavit Rogerius, qui mulieribus captivis ductis, viros peremit. See the geography of Leo Africanus (in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 74, verso, fol. 75, recto) and Shaw's Travels (p. 110), the seventh book of Thuanus, and the eleventh of the Abbé de Vertot. The possession and defence of the place was offered by Charles V. and wisely declined by the knights of Malta. A.D. 1146.] HIS INVASION OF GREECE. 345 coast; the fortresses were garrisoned, the country was tributary, and a boast, that it held Africa in subjection, might be inscribed with some flattery on the sword of Roger.t After his death, that sword was broken; and these transmarine possessions were neglected, evacuated, or lost, under the troubled reign of his successor.‡ The triumphs of Scipio and Belisarius have proved, that the African continent is neither inaccessible nor invincible; yet the great princes and powers of Christendom have repeatedly failed in their armaments against the Moors, who may still glory in the easy conquest and long servitude of Spain.§ 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 regal 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 * Pagi has accurately marked the African conquests of Roger; and his criticism was supplied by his friend the Abbé Longuerue, with some Arabic memorials (A.D. 1147, No. 26, 27, A.D. 1148, No. 16, A.D. 1153, No. 16). +Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer. A proud inscription, which denotes that the Norman conquerors were still discriminated from their Christian and Moslem subjects. Hugo Falcandus (Hist. Sicula, in Muratori Script. tom. vii. p. 270, 271) ascribes these losses to the neglect or treachery of the admiral Majo. § [The piracies of Barbary corsairs, the longendured scourge and disgrace of Europe, have been quelled; and Algeria has been for nearly thirty years subjugated and colonized by a civilized and powerful people. What impediments are there now to obstruct the revival of industry and arts, of beauty and prosperity, in an extensive region, which once surpassed in productiveness every country of Europe?-ED.] **The silence of the Sicilian historians, who end too soon or begin too late, must be supplied by Otho of Frisingen, a German (de Gestis Frederici I. lib. 1, c. 33, in Muratori Script. tom. vi. p. 668), the Venetian Andrew Dandolo (Id. tom. xii. p. 282, 283), and the Greek writers Cinnamus (1. 3, c. 2-5) and Nicetas, in Manuel. (1. 2, c. 1—6). |