fortune by the sword, who were not possessed of more A. D. than ordinary daring and skill in the use of arms. The 1010-1055. Norman mercenaries must therefore have possessed some superiority over ordinary troops; and the physical superiority of the individual soldier, when the lance, the sword, and the mace determined the fate of a battle, was of more importance than it is in our day, when the fire of distant artillery, and the evolutions of unseen regiments, often decide the victory. The personal superiority of the Normans in moral character must also be taken into consideration, in estimating the causes of their surprising fortune in Italy and Sicily. In their own country they belonged to a higher class of society than that from which mercenary soldiers were generally drawn, and their education had taught them to aspire even above their birth. This nurture gave them a feeling of self-respect, and a high estimation of their individual responsibilities— qualities which form a firmer basis of national greatness than literary culture or refinement of taste. To this moral education, and to the manner in which it tempered their ambition, we must ascribe the facility displayed by the Norman soldiers in assuming the duties of captains and generals, and their prudence as leaders and princes. Brave, skilful, disciplined, rapacious, wary, unfeeling, and ambitious, they possessed every quality necessary for becoming conquerors, and all the talents required to rivet the bonds of their tyranny. Never, indeed, did any race of men fulfil their mission as conquerors and tyrants with a firmer hand or more energetic will, whether we regard them in their earlier state, as the devastators of France, and the colonists of Russia; or in their more mature fortunes, as the lords of Normandy, the conquerors of England, Naples, and Sicily, and the plunderers of Greece.1

1 Guafredus Malaterra, 1. i. c. 3, has an admirable sketch of the Norman character, of which the original is more expressive than Gibbon's amplified version, x. 264; and the next chapter contains a correct portraiture of a Norman family.-Bibliotheca Historica Regni Siciliæ Carusii, tom. i. p. 161.

§ 5.

CHAP. II. Southern Italy, divided between the three Lombard principalities of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, and the Byzantine province, was saved from anarchy, and delivered from the ravages of the Saracens, by the Norman conquest.

SECT. V.-NORMANS INVADE BYZANTINE EMPIRE-THEIR RAVAGES
IN GREECE.

The wars of the Normans with the Byzantine emperors, and the facility with which they conquered the Greeks in Italy, induced them to aspire at the conquest of Greece itself. The rapidity with which they had subdued southern Italy, and the fame that attached to the Norman name from the recent conquest of England, raised their military reputation and their self-confidence to the highest elevation. No enterprise was regarded either by themselves or others as too difficult for their arms; and Robert Guiscard, when he found himself master of dominions in Italy which exceeded Normandy in wealth and population, aspired at eclipsing the achievements of William the Conqueror by subduing the Byzantine empire.

In the month of June 1081 he sailed from the port of Brindisi, with an army of thirty thousand men and with one hundred and fifty ships, on this expedition. Corfu, which then yielded an annual revenue of fifteen hundred pounds of gold to the Byzantine treasury, surrendered to his arms, and he landed in Epirus without opposition. The glorious victories of the Normans, the prudent perseverance of the Emperor Alexius I., the valour of Bohemund, the failure of the expedition, and the death of Robert Guiscard as he was about to renew his attack, are recorded with such details in the pompous pages of Anna Comnena, and in the gorgeous descriptions of Gibbon, that they are familiar to every reader of history.1

Robert Guiscard died at Cephalonia in 1005.

Bohemund again invaded the Byzantine empire in the year 1107 with a powerful army. He was then Duke of Antioch, and had recently married the daughter of the King of France. The army of Bohemund, like that of William the Conqueror, whose glory he expected to eclipse, was composed of warlike adventurers from Normandy, France, and Germany. The winter was consumed besieging Dyrrachium, whose ancient Hellenic walls still existed, and were so broad that four horsemen could ride abreast on their summit, while they were flanked at proper intervals by towers raised eleven feet above their battlements.1 The cities of Greece then preserved many classic monuments of art, and Bohemund encamped to the east of Dyrrachium, opposite a gate adorned with an equestrian statue of bronze.2 The Emperor Alexius had acquired more experience in the tactics of western warfare than he possessed when he encountered Robert Guiscard in the earlier invasion. Bohemund could neither take Dyrrachium nor force the emperor to fight; so that he was at last himself without resources, and compelled to sign a treaty, in September 1108, by which he acknowledged himself the liegeman of the Byzantine emperor. Such was the fate of an expedition under the haughty Bohemund, no way inferior to that which conquered England.3

The third invasion of the Byzantine empire took place in consequence of the Emperor Manuel rudely disavowing the conduct of his envoy, who had concluded a treaty with Roger, King of Sicily. But its real origin must be sought in the ambitious projects of the Sicilian king, and the warlike and haughty spirit of the young emperor. Roger, by the union of the Norman possessions in Sicily and southern Italy, was one of the wealthiest and most

1 Anna Comnena, 384.

Ibid., 380. Other monuments of ancient sculpture also remained in Dyrra chium. Compare p. 99.

3 Anna Comnena, 406.

A D.

1107.

E

$ 5.

CHAP. II. powerful princes of his time. The wealth in his hands, and the large fleet and well-disciplined army at his disposal, authorised him to aspire at new conquests; and he hoped to accomplish what his uncle, Robert Guiscard, and his cousin, Bohemund, had vainly attempted. But the Byzantine power in the interval had improved as rapidly as the Norman had increased. Manuel I., proud of the excellent army and well-filled treasury he received from his father, John II., was as eager for war as the Norman king, expecting to recover all his predecessors had lost in Italy, and even to reconquer Sicily. Indeed, had the emperor been able to direct all his forces against the Normans, such might possibly have been the result of a war; but the attention of Manuel was diverted by many enemies, and his forces were required to defend extensive frontiers; while Roger was enabled to commence hostilities by landing his troops at any point where least preparation appeared to have been made to encounter an enemy. The Normans invaded Greece, and their expedition inflicted a mortal wound on the prosperity of the country.

When the second crusade was on the eve of marching through the Byzantine empire, Roger, who had collected a powerful fleet at Brindisi, either for attacking Manuel's dominions or for transporting the Crusaders to Palestine, as might turn out most advantageous to his interests, was put in possession of Corfu by an insurrection of the inhabitants. The weight of the taxes they paid to the distant central government at Constantinople, contrasted with the trifling advantages they received from the Byzantine connection, became intolerable. This occurred in the year 1146. From Corfu the Sicilian admiral sailed round the Peloponnesus to Monemvasia, at that time one of the principal commercial cities in the Mediterranean; but the population of this impregnable rock boldly encountered the Sicilians, and repulsed their attacks. The

Norman fleet then proceeded to plunder the island of
Euboea, after which it again sailed back to the western
coast, and laid waste the coasts of Acarnania and Etolia.
The whole of Greece was thrown into such a state of
alarm, by these sudden and far distant attacks, that it
was impossible to concentrate the troops in the province
at any particular point. The Norman admiral decided
on directing his whole force against Thebes, whose situation
appeared to secure it from any sudden assault, but whose
wealth, from this very circumstance, promised a larger
amount of plunder than any city on the coast. Thebes
was then a rich manufacturing town, but without any
walls capable of defence. George Antiochenus, the
Sicilian admiral, entered the Straits of Naupaktos with
his whole force, and debarked his troops at the Scala of
Salona a spot since rendered memorable in the annals of
naval warfare by the first display of the terrible effect of
hot shot and shells when used by a single ship against a
hostile squadron. The glory of Frank Abney Hastings
may be eclipsed by future exploits at sea on a grander
scale, but he will ever retain the merit of having been the
first to make these destructive projectiles the habitual
weapons of a crew on board ship, and of having shown
that, with common prudence and such discipline as he
could enforce in a ship maintained from his own private
resources, and with a crew composed of different nations,
their use is free from danger. From the Scala of Salona
the Norman troops marched past Delphi and Livadea
to Thebes.

Thebes was taken and plundered in the most barbarous
The inhabitants carried on an immense trade

manner.

1 On this occasion Hastings blew up a brig of war, and set fire to a large schooner of war and an armed transport, with hot shot.-Memoir on the Use of Shells, Hot Shot, and Carcass Shells from Ship Artillery. By Frank Abney Hastings, Captain of the Greek steam-vessel of war Karteria. Ridgway. London 1828. Biographical Sketch of Frank Abney Hastings.-Blackwood's Magazine, vol. Iviii., October 1845.

A. D.

1146.