He had not very long to wait. The next two or three years made it plain that Duke William and his Lombard wife could expect no children, and William himself may have had intimations of an early death. At all events he accepted, in 1125, an invitation to meet the Count at Messina to discuss the future of his Duchy, and there it
1 Falco of Benevento.
was that, in return for another heavy subsidy, he formally recognised Roger as his heir.
On 25 July 1127, at the age of thirty, Duke William of Apulia died in his turn at Salerno. His wife Gaitelgrima, who loved him, cut off her hair to cover his corpse; it was then laid, as his father's had been, in an antique sarcophagus and placed in the Cathedral.1 Like Roger Borsa, William seems to have been popular enough as a man; Falco, the Lombard chronicler of Benevento who hated the Normans and all they stood for, has left us a moving account of how the people of Salerno flocked to the palace to look for the last time on a ruler 'who was lamented more than any duke or emperor, before him'. But William had shown himself unworthy of his name and of his throne, and with his death the once-great Duchy of Apulia flickered ingloriously to its end.
He died as incompetently as he had lived; for, while occupied to his last breath in making bequests to Monte Cassino, La Cava and other favoured foundations, he seems to have forgotten, deliberately or otherwise, to ratify his promise to Roger over the succession. Certainly no mention of the matter appeared in his will; worse, his disastrous anxiety to please everybody had apparently led him to make similar promises elsewhere. According to one report2 the dying duke, in an access of piety, had crowned his other endowments by leaving his entire estate to the Holy See; while William of Tyre, the great historian of Outremer, speaks of an arrangement he had made with Bohemund II before his departure to the Holy Land in 1126, according to which the first to die, if he left no issue, should bequeath his dominions to the other. Thus, on his cousin's death, Roger found himself not, as he had expected, the sole and unquestioned heir to South Italy, but merely one of a number of rival claimants.
By this time young Bohemund was too far away to cause trouble,
1 The sarcophagus, which is adorned with a frontal relief of Meleager and the boar, is Roman, and of the third century. It now stands beneath the arcade just outside the main entrance.
2 Walter of Therouanne in his life of Charles, Count of Flanders, to whose account Ordericus Vitalis, Bk XII, ch. 44, lends additional strength.
but Pope Honorius II1 was very much harder to ignore. For more than sixty years, ever since Alexander II had discovered the advantages of playing Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua off against each other, it had been papal policy to keep the Normans divided; Honorius, a man of humble origins but considerable ability, was well aware of the danger of allowing the Count of Sicily to seize his cousin's realm and thus bringing an influential, self-willed and ambitious ruler to the very threshold of the Papal States. Moreover, as suzerain of all South Italy, he had no need to assert his own claims to Duke William's inheritance; if he could merely show Roger's to be invalid, the Duchy of Apulia would revert to him by default. He believed, too, that he could count on the support of the Norman baronage. Several of its members had already taken advantage of Duke William's death to make formal declaration of the independence they had long enjoyed in practice, and many others were determined to prevent the Duchy from reconstituting itself in the firm, authoritative hands of the Count of Sicily.
Against such opposition, Roger knew that his best hope lay in being able to present the Pope and his allies with a fait accompli; and in the first days of August he sailed, with a hastily-gathered fleet of seven ships, to Salerno. His reception was frigid. The widespread grief at William's death had not apparently prevented an anti-Norman faction from immediately seizing control of the city; the gates were closed against him; and, to the protestations of his spokesmen that their Lord had come in peace, to take possession of his Duchy by a hereditary right confirmed in person by the late Duke, the Salernitans replied simply that they had suffered too much and too long from Norman occupation and that they could tolerate it no more. But the Count would not take no for an answer. Day after day, with quiet determination, he urged his claim. Tension gradually mounted; the city elders, courteous at first, grew hostile; but even after one of his chief negotiators was murdered by a Salernitan mob, Roger preserved his calm. And all the time his ships remained in full view, firmly anchored in the bay.
1 Not to be confused with the anti-Pope, also styled Honorius II, who had so complicated the life of Alexander II some sixty years before.
At last his patience was rewarded. He soon managed to make secret contact with the pro-Norman party in the city led by Archbishop Romuald, and it was they who finally persuaded their recalcitrant fellow-citizens to submit to the inevitable. In existing circumstances Salerno would not in any case be able to maintain its independence; surely it was wiser to negotiate while the Count was still prepared to offer favourable conditions than to risk the sort of siege by which his uncle had captured the city half a century before. And so, on the tenth day, the Salernitans came to terms. They would accept Roger, they promised, as their Duke, on three conditions: first, that the fortifications and castle should remain in their hands; second, that they should never be conscripted into military service more than two days' march from Salerno; and thirdly, that no Salernitan should be imprisoned without proper trial. Roger had no time to waste; he accepted. The gates were opened, and he made his ceremonial entry into the city, where the Bishop of Cappaccio, traditional enthroner of Salernitan princes, anointed him Duke of Apulia. It was a near-bloodless victory, a victory of patience and diplomacy—the kind Roger liked best; and it was followed at once by the submission of Amalfi on similar lines.
Meanwhile Count Rainulf of Alife, husband of Roger's half-sister Matilda, had hurried south to greet his brother-in-law and pledge his support. All he asked in return was that the new Duke should grant him suzerainty over his neighbour the Count of Ariano. The request was well-timed; Count Jordan of Ariano, Duke William's persecutor, had been killed the previous week, and his son was hardly in a strong position to object. Roger had no wish to see Rainulf, whom with good reason he heartily mistrusted, any more powerful than he was already; but he needed his help. Once again he agreed. It was a decision he would live to regret.
The news of Roger's success reached Pope Honorius at Benevento, where he had gone to keep a closer watch on developments. It caught him largely unprepared; but now he too acted with decision, and sent a message to Roger at Salerno, formally forbidding him on pain of anathema to assume the ducal tide. He might have saved himself the trouble; only two days after his own arrival a troop of four hundred cavalry appeared outside the walls of Benevento with Roger at their head. It was the second time in a week that he had taken the Pope by surprise, but on this occasion he may well have been equally surprised himself. His journey to Benevento seems to have been made in response to a message he had received from certain supporters in the city, congratulating him on his succession and assuring him of their good will. It had probably encouraged him to think that even this outpost of papal power in the South might be his for the taking—in which case the presence of Honorius in his palace must have come as something of a shock.
Roger was anxious not to antagonise the Pope unnecessarily while there still remained a chance of obtaining his recognition; but Honorius was not like the men of Salerno—arguments, promises and bribes alike left him cold. In such circumstances to delay in Benevento was pointless. Instructing the local barons, whom he knew to be on his side, to keep the papal troops occupied by harrying the city and its surroundings till further notice, the Count accordingly left with his own army for Troia. From here, the gateway to Apulia and the scene of one of the earliest Norman triumphs in Italy, he passed to Melfi, where his new dukedom had had its first uncertain beginnings almost a century before; and, as he rode, he must have gazed over the plain of Apulia to where the dark massif of the Garg
ano crouched on the horizon—sheltering, somewhere in its depths, the cave of the Archangel. Roger would have been brought up on Mala terra's history, and the first sight of a land he knew so well by repute may have added still further to his convicdon that he and he alone was born to rule it. The people of the towns and villages through which he passed seemed to share this view; as he continued south-east along the foot of the mountains, he was everywhere acclaimed with apparent rejoicing. The end of August found him, with a great gathering of bishops, barons and notables, including his Emirs Christodulus and George of Antioch, at Montescaglioso; thence, moving slowly through loyal Calabria, he at last reached Reggio where he received solemn recognition of his Calabrian claims; and before the onset of winter he was back in Sicily.
The unexpected warmth of his reception throughout the dukedom from the moment he had left Salerno had persuaded Roger that his position was already secure. Only the Pope was still holding out against him, but sooner or later even the Pope was bound to see reason. And if he did not, what harm could he do without a single powerful ally in the South ? So at least Roger must have reckoned; never otherwise would he have taken the huge risk of returning at such a moment to Sicily and leaving the field free for his enemies.
Roger's lightning progress had certainly given him the advantage of surprise, but its very speed carried its own dangers. The towns at which he had stopped, the barons through whose fiefs he had passed, had had no opportunity to take stock of the situation or to consult one another. Thus, unprepared and undecided, they were virtually forced to pay lip-service to his claims—an obligation which they performed the more readily in the knowledge that these claims had no validity until they were recognised by the Pope. And Roger, in the exhilaration of his success, had believed them.
Honorius had been slower off the mark, and had been further obstructed by the gadfly tactics of Roger's partisans round Benevento. But he had lost no time in raising support, and by the end of October had rallied to his cause most of the leading barons of the South—Grimoald of Bari, Robert, Tancred, and Alexander of Conversano, Geoffrey of Andria, Roger of Ariano and, the moment his brother-in-law's back was turned, Rainulf of Alife, who had pledged his allegiance to the new Duke only two months before. Meanwhile the citizens of Troia, under the guidance of their bishop, William,1 had also revised their opinions; and it was at Troia that Honorius's villainous crowd—all of whom had long histories of faithlessness and rebellion behind them—assembled in November and, in the presence of the Pope himself, bound themselves in solemn league against the usurper. A few weeks later they received a further addition to their strength—Prince Robert II of Capua, who had just succeeded his father and was crowned on 30 December.
1 Bishop William's portrait can still be made out on the bronze doors of Troia Cathedral, which date from 1119. Near it is an adulatory inscription, describing him as 'Liberator Patriae' and adding that 'in the year of the death of Duke William of Salerno the people of Troia destroyed their citadel and fortified the city, in the cause of liberty, with walls and a palisade'.
He was, we are told by Falco, a puny creature; 'of delicate constitution, he could endure neither labour nor hardship'. But Honorius, overjoyed by this opportunity of reviving the old Apulia-Capua counterpoise, determined to take full advantage of the occasion. Having failed, Falco tersely points out, to achieve anything good or useful in Benevento, he rode to Capua to attend the ceremony in person; and there, before the assembled congregation of Robert's vassals, he delivered himself of a passionate oration in which, after dwelling at length on the atrocities committed by Roger's men against the Beneventans, he confirmed the Count as excommunicate and granted indulgences to all those who should take up arms against him. The movement was beginning to assume all the trappings of a Crusade.
Away in Palermo, Roger had recognised his mistake. Once again, just as in the North African affair three years before, he had underestimated the opposition. But this time he was less concerned. It was typical of him that even now, with the papal league already massing its forces, he should have tried to buy Honorius off with the surrender of two towns—Troia and Montefusco—and a substantial sum of money. Only when these attempts failed did he begin serious preparations for war, and still he seemed to be in no particular hurry. It was not until May 1128 that he returned, with an army estimated at two thousand knights and fifteen hundred archers, to the mainland. His plan of campaign was to assure himself of the southern half of the dukedom, where the forces of the league were at their weakest, before pitting himself against the main body of the opposition in the north. Hastening through Calabria, to which his title was unquestioned, he therefore struck straight across to those regions around the heel of Italy which his cousin Bohemund, before departing for the Holy Land, had left in the joint care of the Pope and Alexander of Conversano. It was a wise decision. Taranto, Otranto and Brindisi surrendered without demur, and by mid-June Roger was in undisputed control of all Italy south of the Brindisi-Salerno line.
The Pope, meanwhile, had been in serious difficulties. Rainulf of Alife and Robert of Capua—the first through self-interest, the second through pusillanimity—were threatening to withdraw from the league, while Roger's supporters had increased their pressure on Benevento. It was already midsummer before Honorius made sure of his allies and led them to the relief of his city; only then could he concentrate his full attention on Roger in Apulia. Early July found him and his forces in the region of Bari, still having encountered neither sight nor sound of the enemy; then, turning towards the south-west, he advanced to a point on the Bradano, no longer identifiable, where the shallow, stony river-bed provided an easy ford; and it was here that he saw the Sicilians waiting for him, strongly entrenched among the hills on the farther bank.
Roger had the advantage of position; his army was fresh and rested, and his Saracen shocktroops were probably eager for the fray. Yet, typically, he refused to attack. Alexander of Telese sycophantically suggests that veneration for the Pope restrained him; this seems highly improbable. Far likelier is it that the size of the papal army, together with his own instinctive aversion from unnecessary bloodshed, convinced the Count that there were other, better ways of gaining his objective. He was right. For more than a month the two armies faced each other, as one attempt after another failed to lure the Sicilians down from their vantage-point. Meanwhile Honorius's feudal levies, who could be conscripted only for a limited period in any one year, grew increasingly restive; quarrelling broke out, as it always did, among the various league members; and the fierce July sun beat remorselessly down on the unprotected papal camp. From his shady retreat on the opposite hillside Roger could imagine the Pope's discomfiture; and he was not surprised to receive a message one night informing him that His Holiness might, after all, be prepared to negotiate.
And indeed Honorius had no choice. He was now beginning to understand what Roger had perhaps known all along—that his league was too fissile to last, its individual members too long accustomed to independence and lawlessness to be able to sink their differences in a common cause. Already they were at each other's throats; soon they might well be at his; and Robert of Capua, who had, predictably, fallen ill and was now lying groaning in his tent, was not the only one to be speaking of giving up the struggle. The Pope also saw that he was faced with an adversary too powerful to be crushed, and with too much moral right on his side to be dismissed out of hand. South Italy needed peace—so much was certain—and although the Count of Sicily could be trusted to disrupt that peace for as long as the dukedom were denied him, he might also be the one man capable of imposing it if he were given the chance. The danger of accepting so formidable a figure as a neighbour was still undeniable, but it was a risk which would have to be taken.
The negotiations, which were conducted on the papal side by the Papal Chancellor, Cardinal Aimed of S. Maria Novella, and by Cencius Frangipani, took place at night in conditions of the utmost secrecy; for Honorius was understandably anxious that his
allies should not hear of their betrayal until his dispositions were made. He was a proud man and now thought only of saving his own face; he seems to have made no effort to obtain terms for anyone else. Roger too knew just what he wanted—investiture as Duke of Apulia, under papal suzerainty as always but with no other strings attached. Granted this, and provided only that his own dignity were preserved, he was prepared to fall in with Honorius's wishes; he had no desire to humiliate him unnecessarily. And so it was agreed. Nothing would be done on the spot, but if Roger would come himself to Benevento and formally seek investiture, it would no longer be denied him. The barons of the league, informed of the cessation of hostilities and somehow dissuaded from taking their vengeance on the papal person, dispersed in fury; and Honorius set off for Benevento to await his distinguished visitor.
Roger arrived early on 20 August and set up his camp on Monte S. Felice, just outside the city. Three more days of negotiation followed on points of detail. There could, he explained, be no further question of surrendering to the Pope the towns of Troia and Monte-fusco which he had offered him some months before; but he would willingly swear to respect the papal status of Benevento and even— if His Holiness insisted—guarantee the continued independence of Capua. This last concession—a final, pathetic attempt on the part of Honorius to preserve that traditional balance of power by which he had always set so much store—must inwardly have irked him; certainly Robert of Capua had done time enough to deserve such consideration. For the moment, however, the matter was unimportant—it could always be renegotiated later if necessary.
The Normans In The South Page 37
