Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  In spite of such deeds, however, Robert continued to be relatively poor. He suddenly improved his fortunes by matrimony. Being on his way to visit his brother Drogo, probably in the hope of extracting money from him, he was met by a Norman kinsman of his, named Gerard, who appears to have been the first to appreciate qualities that were surprising, if not good, for he first, and on that occasion, addressed Robert as ‘Guiscard,’ ‘the astute.’ ‘O Guiscard,’ said he, ‘why do you thus wander hither and thither? Behold, now, marry my aunt, the sister of my father, and I will be your knight, and will go with you to conquer Calabria, and I will bring two hundred riders.’

  In spite of Drogo’s strong objections, Robert took Gerard’s advice and espoused the aunt, of whom we have, unfortunately, no portrait; her name is variously written Adverarda and Alberada, and he afterwards repudiated her. Gerard kept his word, and with his help Robert won castles and towns and devoured the land.

  At this time a certain Richard of the Norman house of Aversa appeared upon the scene, having been exiled by the young Rainulf Trincanocte, who feared him on account of his great popularity. Coming to Apulia, he found a friend in Humphrey, but soon quarrelled with Drogo. He must have possessed by great charm, together with the gift of inspiring confidence, for an old Norman noble, the childless Lord of Genzano in Apulia, took him to his heart and home and made him master of all his castles. About this time, also, old Pandolph the Wolf closed his chequered career, dying that last in possession of his principality, and leaving it to his son; and at no great interval the young Rainulf of Aversa also died, leaving an only son, who was a mere child. Richard of Genzano would very naturally have seized Aversa, where he was beloved by the people, but in his quarrel with Drogo the latter had succeeded in imprisoning him, and it was not until the people of Aversa formally requested Guaimar to make him their count that Drogo consented to set him at liberty, and he was invested with the county by Guaimar himself. The south of Italy was now divided between this Norman Richard of Aversa, the sons of Tancred, the two Lombard princes of Salerno and Capua, and the Greeks who held Bari for the emperor. There was, moreover, the city and country of Benevento, which Henry the Third had given over to the Normans, but which before long appealed to the Pope for protection.

  We must now briefly return to the troubles in which the Papacy was involved. Henry the Black had returned to Germany, and he had left his German Pope, Clement the Second, in Rome. The latter was alone and without friends, and within seven months the anti-Pope, Benedict the Ninth, succeeded in poisoning him and in taking possession of the Holy See. In the following year the emperor sent a second German Pope to Rome, under the name of Damasus the Second; after a reign of twenty-three days he shared the fate of his predecessor, and was buried also. Henry now held a great assembly at Worms, the result of which was that Bruno, Bishop of Toul, in Lorraine, consented to go to Rome and to be made Pope, on condition that the Roman clergy and people should elect him of their own free will. He arrived, bringing with him as a friend and counsellor that famous Hildebrand who long afterwards brought Henry the Fourth barefooted in the snow to Canossa. Bruno was elected at once and took the name of Leo the Ninth.

  At the outset of his pontificate this Pope found himself face to face with something like starvation. The Holy See possessed absolutely no source of income; the Pope had soon expended the little ready money he and his friends had with them, and before long they actually made arrangements to sell their vestments and superfluous clothes in order to raise a little sum with which they might secretly return to Lorraine. At this critical juncture a deputation of nobles arrived from Benevento, bearing rich gifts, and entreating the Pope to revoke the excommunication which the emperor had caused to be pronounced upon their city. It must be remembered that the Papacy had long laid claim to Benevento, rightly or wrongly, and it seems that the people themselves, in spite of their conduct at the time of Henry’s visit, preferred to submit to the authority of the Papacy rather than to be left a prey to the Normans. Leo the Ninth at once undertook the journey to the south, where he was well received by the Lombard princes, and a year later he renewed his visit, remaining some time in Benevento. On these occasions he conceived a strong dislike for the Normans, but on meeting the Norman chiefs at Monte Gargano he was completely deceived by their promises. He did not understand that in taking possession of Benevento he had set a limit to the Norman conquest in a northward direction; and when, after a third visit to Benevento, during which he received the most friendly assurances from Guaimar and Drogo, the Normans in the neighbourhood rose and attacked the city, his irritation and disappointment knew no bounds. But the message whom he sent to the Count of Apulia to protest against the outrage was met by the news that Drogo had been assassinated.

  The Italians of the south had formed a great conspiracy to rid themselves of the Norman domination by a wholesale massacre. From Benevento Drogo had gone to the castle of Montolio in Apulia, and there, on the tenth of August, being the feast of Saint Lawrence, he went to mass in the castle church. As he entered, the murderer sprang upon him from behind the door and stabbed him, and at the same moment the Italians in the castle fell upon the unsuspecting Normans, and killed many of them before they could defend themselves. In many parts of Apulia the conspiracy broke out at the same time, and many Normans perished, but Humphrey and Robert Guiscard escaped, and swore a great oath to avenge the treachery. So Humphrey became Count of Apulia, and Robert stood by him, and they bound the limbs of him who had slain Drogo, and sawed them off one by one, and because the man still breathed they buried him alive. The rest of the prisoners they hanged, and these executions, says the chronicler, somewhat allayed the grief of Humphrey. And Leo the Ninth, who had believed that Drogo was his friend, sang a mass for his soul that all his sins might be forgiven him.

  Drogo had undoubtedly been the man who might have made peace between the Papacy and the Normans, and his death drove Leo the Ninth to make a vain appeal to the emperor for help. He was ready to offer anything in his gift, temporal or spiritual, to Henry the First,º the King of France, and the Duke of Marseilles, if they would only help to deliver the land from the malice of the Normans. But they were not to be moved, and in his great need the Pope turned to the Greeks, who still had a foothold in Bari under the Lombard Argyros. The latter had returned from Constantinople in 1051, bringing immense sums of money, with which the emperor hoped that the Normans might be bribed to leave Italy and serve the Eastern Empire; but the Normans refused all such advances with scorn, and Argyros was obliged to continue the war he had so long waged at a disadvantage. Desiring the expulsion of the Normans quite as much as Pope Leo himself, he turned to him spontaneously and met his advances halfway.

  In 1052, the Pope made his first attempt at an attack, and gathered some troops in the neighbourhood of Naples, attempting at the same time to gain the alliance of Guaimar; but the latter remembered that the Normans had helped him in many a difficulty, and sternly refused to have anything to do with such a war; the Pope’s troops could no longer be kept together, and the Pope took refuge in Naples. A few weeks afterwards a frightful tragedy changed the course of events in the south.

  Guaimar’s wife was a daughter of one of the Lombard counts of Teano, and, unknown to Guaimar, her four brothers had long been conspiring to seize his throne. They drew into their conspiracy the people of Amalfi, who had not lost the tradition of their recent independence, and whom Guaimar had been obliged to treat with severity. They, indeed, began something like a regular war by attacking Salernitan vessels on the high seas, and at last they actually appeared with warships before Salerno, and effected a landing. Guaimar seized his arms and rushed down to the shore to repel the attack, but his Salernitan soldiers fled before the determined Amalfitans, and in a moment Guaimar found himself surrounded by his four brothers-in‑law and a host of conspirators, who were in reality in league with the men of Amalfi. One of the four pierced the prince with his lance, and the others stabbed him at once. He fell wi
th thirty-six wounds, and his murderers dragged his body along the beach with every indignity.

  He was avenged within the week by the Normans, who not only remembered that he had recently refused to join the Greeks and the Pope against them, but were extremely anxious to maintain his dynasty in the principality. In answer to the appeal of his brother Guy, who found some of the Norman chiefs in the neighbourhood of Benevento, they hastily gathered their forces and appeared before Salerno five days after the murder. The city opened its gates to them, but the conspirators took refuge in the strong fortress above. The Normans held the wives and children of the four as hostages and consented to exchange them and liberate them on condition that they would set free Guaimar’s son Gisulf, and solemn promises were given that the sons of the Count of Teano and their accomplices should be allowed to depart unhurt. Guy probably meant to keep his word, but his Norman soldiers protested that they had not given theirs, and falling upon the fugitives slaughtered six and thirty of them, one for every wound that had been found in the murdered Guaimar’s body. The Duke of Sorrento alone was spared. With splendid good faith, considering the times, Guy set his nephew Gisulf upon the throne of Salerno, and stood by him as a loyal counsellor.

  The Pope now took advantage of circumstances which made him a successful mediator between the King of Hungary and Henry the Third, to make a fresh appeal to the latter, but could obtain nothing except the confirmation of the papal Duchy of Benevento; for although the emperor saw the necessity of lending the Pope an army wherewith to hold it against the Normans, he could not make up his mind to do so. Leo the Ninth, with undaunted energy, collected a little force of adventurous Suabians and other Germans, whom he led southwards with considerable strategic skill until he had effected a junction with Argyros of Bari. The hatred of the Normans throughout Italy was only exceeded at that time by the fear they inspired, and during the Pope’s progress a motley company of irregular fighters flocked to his standard from all parts of Italy. With the exception of the few Germans who had crossed the Alps with him, his army was chiefly Italian, for the Lombards, who had joined him, had long lost their distinctive nationality. Argyros met them in the low land not far from Monte Gargano and probably within sight of that famous place of Norman pilgrimage. The Normans, on their side, had collected together a little army. Robert Guiscard had brought up his wild marauders from the furthest limits of Calabria, Richard of Aversa was there with his trained men-at‑arms, and Humphrey had called out every Norman fighting man in Apulia. Yet the whole army was so small that before giving battle the Normans attempted, with their usual prudence, to effect a compromise, and sent messengers to the Pope suing for peace and declaring that every Norman in Italy was willing to acknowledge his authority.

  Leo the Ninth was in the midst of the allied forces, surrounded by his little band of Suabians and Germans; and they, in scorn of men who fought on horseback with pointed sticks, laughed at the Norman messengers and constrained the pontiff to give an overbearing answer. The Normans were to lay down their arms and leave Italy at once; if they refused to do so they should taste of the long German sword. They might choose between instant destruction or immediate departure.

  Seeing that they could obtain no terms, the messengers retired, and after a short reconnoissance of the enemy’s position, the Normans gave battle on the eighteenth of June, 1053. Count Humphrey held the centre, Richard, with his splendid cavalry, took the right, while Robert Guiscard had the left wing. Richard of Aversa, as commanding the most thoroughly trained troops, made the attack, falling upon the united force of the Italians, says the chronicler, like a vulture upon a flock of doves, and scattering them far and wide in instant panic. The Suabians, on the contrary, stood firm against Humphrey’s repeated charges, for the struggle was between Teutons and Northmen. Hand to hand they fought with their swords, and the Germans learned that their own were not the better. Then Robert Guiscard made one of those wild charges that have often turned the fortunes of war and directed the course of history, leading men who, like himself, had little to lose and all to gain. The faithful Gerard was beside him, and together they broke the stout German ranks. Robert’s great sword paused not in slaughter, beheading men at a blow to right and left, and inflicting frightful wounds. Three times his horse was killed under him and three times he caught another and mounted again. The huge Germans stood up to him and his followers, and died where they stood, while the less sturdy Lombards fled from the fight, and when the victory seemed won, the wounded and mutilated still fought on. Meanwhile Richard had returned from pursuing his scattered Italians, and came back to strike the final blow, and when the battle was over there was not a Suabian nor a German alive on the field.

  The Pope, overcome at the sight of the bloodshed he had caused, rather than disappointed in his hopes, had retired into the neighbouring town of Civitate and watched the last destruction of his army from the ramparts; but the inhabitants of the little town, seeing which way the fight had gone, thrust out the venerable pontiff just as the infuriated Normans had set fire to the houses and sheds that stood outside the gate. With sublime indifference to danger, the Pope and his few attendant clerks marched straight towards the enemy, bearing a cross in their midst. It is said that as they went towards the rising flames, a sudden breeze sprang up and drove the fire back upon the Normans. How this may be we know not, but it is certain that either on that evening or on the next day at dawn, Leo met the Norman chiefs face to face, and he spoke to them with such eloquence, so tenderly and yet so strongly, that they were touched, and kneeled down before him and asked his blessing, and, perhaps in one of their rare moments of sincerity, they promised that they would be faithful to him, and would take the place of his soldiers whom they had slain.

  Then he caused the dead to be buried hard by Civitate, and many centuries afterwards men saw the great mound that was raised above their bones; and when he had said a mass for the repose of their souls, he departed towards Benevento. Humphrey of Apulia was himself the first to lead the Pope’s escort, and many hundred Normans accompanied him to the end of his journey; and though they might well be glad that they were rid of his army, there was something not unchivalrous, after all, in the reverent courtesy they showed to their vanquished and venerable foe. But at Benevento all the people came out to meet him, and when they saw the sad faces of the bishops and clerks that were with him, and that he was surrounded, not by his own army, but by Norman knights, they all broke out into cries and lamentations, which ceased not while they led him in mournful procession to the church.

  During about a year, Leo the Ninth remained in Benevento, still believing that he might accomplish the expulsion of the Normans before his death, for he was only about fifty years of age, and we learn that he at this time began the study of the Greek language. But he had not long to live, and his last months were embittered and disturbed by theological controversies with the East, which ended soon after his death in the final separation of the Eastern and Western Churches. The Eastern emperor and the Pope were both equally anxious to free Southern Italy from the Normans, but the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose influence with the people of that city was paramount, and with whom the emperor was obliged to reckon at every turn, was jealous of Rome and aimed at the absolute independence of his patriarchate. At that time a correspondence which took place between an Eastern and a Western bishop concerning the use of leaven in the consecrated bread, the celibacy of the clergy, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, was placed in the hands of Leo the Ninth. He took up the matter and wrote a vigorous letter to the Patriarch Michael, whom the emperor obliged to return a meek answer for the sake of his own political relations with the Pope. The latter then sent three legates to Constantinople bearing an epistle to Michael which condemned the Eastern view of the three mooted points in the strongest possible language. In spite of the letter he had been obliged to write, however, the patriarch successfully avoided a meeting with the ambassadors, stirred up a popular riot a
gainst the emperor, and persevered in his errors. An exchange of excommunications and other amenities at once followed, the three legates excommunicated the Patriarch Michael, and the Patriarch Michael excommunicated the three legates, who departed, shaking the dust from their feet. During their absence, Leo the Ninth was taken ill and died in the month of April; in July his bull was burned in Constantinople, and the permanent division of the Eastern and Western Churches, which had begun with the dissension of Photius two centuries earlier, became an accomplished fact.

  The Pope died in April. He left Benevento in a dying condition in March, and was accompanied to Capua by Count Humphrey and the Normans. He spent his last days in Rome in visiting the Church of Saint Peter’s, and in pious exhortations to his people and the Roman clergy concerning the vanity of human things, and he departed from this world, as he had lived in it, a very upright and just man.

  Unsuccessful though he had been at Civitate, his moral influence throughout Italy had been a check on the Norman expansion. When he was gone, the people of Benevento saw that the Roman Church was wholly unable to protect them against the Normans, who set at naught the emperor’s donation of their city to the popes. They were able to resist a siege, but restored the Lombard dynasty, and Count Humphrey departed southwards in sullen wrath to wreak vengeance upon the conspirators who had slain Drogo. There being now neither papal nor Greek troops to oppose him, he subjected the south to a reign of terror, and wholesale executions of Italians, by hanging and beheading, avenged the murder of Tancred’s son.