Conquest

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Pope Nicholas is coming south to hold a synod at your castle at Melfi and he asks, most humbly, that you attend.’

‘To what purpose?’ demanded a bemused Robert Guiscard.

The envoy was surprised to be so questioned. ‘I cannot read the mind of the pontiff.’

Now outside the walls of Reggio, the last Byzantine bastion in Western Calabria, Robert was reluctant to once more be dragged away from campaigning. That Roger was competent to press home the siege was not in doubt, but following on from Robert’s wedding and, on his previous return to the region, the mere sight of his banner had brought about the surrender of the last three inland bastions held by the Greeks. Yet Reggio, the old Roman city and a capital to Byzantine Calabria, was proving a tough nut to crack, for to lose this was, to the Eastern Empire, to lose their last foothold in this part of Italy.

‘You cannot refuse such a summons,’ Roger suggested.

‘Yes I can,’ Robert growled, his brow furrowed. ‘I cannot leave here now.’

‘Before you do something foolish, brother, I think there is someone you should meet.’

Roger asked that one of his brother’s attendants take care of the papal envoy, to get him out of the way, then sent another to his own tent to fetch his visitor, refusing to respond to Robert’s querulous enquiries as to what he was about. When Kasa Ephraim entered his tent he looked even more confused, doubly so when introduced.

‘What can a Jew tell me that I do not already know?’

‘There is not enough time in my life to allow for an answer,’ Roger replied, a remark which earned him a jaundiced look.

‘I have heard of you, Ephraim.’

That barked greeting from the Guiscard had no effect on Kasa Ephraim, who had on his face a bland look: if asked, he would have replied he had been insulted too many times, from his childhood to the present, for the perceived failings of his race, to ever feel the need to respond to irate behaviour.

‘I was an admirer of your brother William,’ he said.

‘Oh, it was mutual, Jew,’ Robert replied. ‘He mentioned you to me more than once and said you gave him sage counsel. Is that what you have come here to do for me?’

‘He came at my invitation,’ Roger interrupted, ‘and I would be obliged if you would treat him as you would any invited guest.’

‘I suspect he came in the hope of profiting from our seizure of Reggio.’

‘If my presence offends you then I will leave,’ Ephraim replied.

‘No, stay,’ Roger insisted. ‘Tell my brother what has happened in Rome.’

Ephraim nodded before looking directly at his brother. ‘You will know of Richard of Capua’s intervention in the deposing of the false pope?’

‘I do.’

‘Yet you will not know that the new Pope Nicholas, urged on by Archdeacon Hildebrand-’

‘Archdeacon?’

‘He has been elevated to that rank.’

‘Why not make him a cardinal?’

‘Hildebrand runs the papal office, if not the Pope himself. He is more powerful than any cardinal.’

‘So?’

‘Pope Nicholas, no doubt at Hildebrand’s bidding, called a synod at the Lateran and promulgated a bull on future papal elections, which takes scant notice of the privileges of either the Roman aristocracy or of the imperial claim of approval, though the emperor is to be consulted.’

‘Does that mean anything?’ demanded Robert. ‘“Consulted”.’

‘A courtesy is what it means, a piece of verbal flummery to sow confusion and buy time.’

‘Time to…?’

‘From now on it is intended that it should be the sole right of the leading dignitaries of the Church to elect a pope.’

Robert rounded on his brother. ‘You must have known of this, so why did you not tell me?’

‘I only found out before you summoned me to hear that papal envoy.’

‘I came from Capua, where the news of this was received just before my departure. It surprises me, yet it shows how important the needs of the pontiff are, that this envoy of his has arrived here so swiftly.’

‘You can fathom what this means, Robert.’

The answer was so obvious it did not need to be spoken: with a child on the throne in Bamberg, thus lessening the chance of an army imposing his will, a chance had come to detach the papacy from imperial control. Richard of Capua had so recently, with a fraction of his lances, helped depose the papal choice of the Roman aristocracy. The decision of that synod at the Lateran could only hold if Rome could count on the same armed force and someone, probably Hildebrand, was shrewd enough to see that to solely rely on the Prince of Capua was unsound. To be truly secure they needed the Guiscard as well. No wonder his annulment had come through with such alacrity following on from the elevation of Nicholas: he was being wooed.

‘And what, Jew, is this pope prepared to offer me?’

‘More than you could possibly ask for.’

And so it proved: Pope Nicholas invested not only Richard of Capua with a legitimate title of prince, he created Robert Guiscard Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. That his right to do so was very dubious — the two mainland provinces were Byzantine and Capua was held to be an imperial fief, while Sicily was Saracen — was not allowed to interfere with the ceremony, nor with the aim, articulated by Archdeacon Hildebrand rather than the Pope himself, that it was now the duty of these newly elevated magnates to spread the faith as practised by Rome.

Kneeling, both Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua swore to uphold the papacy against anyone who would threaten either its lands or the pontiff’s prerogatives, to acknowledge whoever was pope as their liege lord and to protect his person. More than the battle at Civitate, this changed the whole nature of power south of Rome. It also offered the Normans protection from the only authority which could raise a combined force against them of a size they could not overcome: the fear for these mercenaries had always been that alliance between Rome and Constantinople which had led to Civitate, or another with the might of the Holy Roman Empire; both threats were now dead!

An open-air Mass was said and a sermon preached, one that had only one real message from this new pope to the thousands of knights attending. ‘It is our Christian duty to uphold the power of my office. I also command you to purge Sicily of the infidel and spread the word of God.’

Kasa Ephraim, a witness to the ceremonies in Melfi, was not the only person present to ask which god, nor did he, far-sighted as he was, realise that this pope had just initiated a movement which, over the next two centuries, would dominate the world in which they lived and spill rivers of blood — a crusade to take back from Islam lands that had once been Christian.

The problem for the Guiscard was concentration: he returned to Calabria after the investiture to resume his final attempts to subdue the region by taking Reggio. A settlement of note since early antiquity and an important commercial centre of what had once been Magna Graecia, it was the key to trade with the fertile island of Sicily — the Saracens might be at religious and political odds with their neighbours across the water but that did not interfere with commerce. So important was Reggio to the exchange of goods that it, of all the cities in Calabria, had suffered least from their raiding.

Yet no sooner had the new duke invested the city than he was once more called away to face a Byzantine army that had landed on the Adriatic shore at Bari, leaving his brother in command. Over the winter, Roger accomplished something never before attempted by the Normans themselves: the building of ballista with which to attack the walls, a tactic they had hitherto relied on the Lombards to provide. But to just sit around watching carpenters and metalworkers toil was anathema, so he mounted a small raid on the Sicilian shore with fifty knights, only to find he and his lances facing the garrison of Messina, which led to a hasty re-embarkation.

Nevertheless, he saw it as valuable in the way it identified the core problem, one that had faced Byzantium in the aborted invasion in which his brothers William and Drogo had taken part: the need for a Saracen ally. Any thoughts of a return to the island had to be put to one side when Robert returned: Reggio had to be taken.

‘God forgive me,’ Robert said, crossing himself with a mailed glove, ‘but I love what we are about to do.’

Roger de Hauteville could see that his elder brother’s eyes gleamed with the prospect of a fight: had he been equine he would have been champing at his bit, snorting and pawing the ground. To their rear stood lines of dismounted Norman knights and ahead, not more than two hundred paces distant, lay the walls of Reggio, now being pounded by the stones from Roger’s mangonels. If it was an inaccurate mode of fire, it was a telling one, with those hitting the flat curtain wall gouging great chunks out of the masonry and the odd lucky boulder flying high enough to take out not only the top of the wall but the men defending it as well.

Yet it was the equipment which completed the elements of this assault that would most worry the defenders: two huge siege towers high enough to overcome the height of the defences, and a wheeled, metal-tipped battering ram, which would soon be pounding into the central gates, which the mangonels would seek to set alight with fire pots full of inflammable materials.

‘They may accept your terms at this sight.’

‘No,’ Robert replied. ‘They will fight until they can fight no more.’

‘And when it falls you will truly be Duke of Calabria. Our late brothers should be witness to this.’

Such a remark got a growl from Robert: he was not comfortable when reminded of how much he owed to those who had preceded him, while Roger was mindful that neither of them would be here if it were not for William Iron Arm. Those remarks of Geoffrey’s regarding Robert’s disinclination to abide comparison had, over time, been seen by Roger as a sound appreciation. It was the seat of any disagreement between them, for sometimes Robert saw in his younger brother a rival, not an ally, and no amount of reassurance seemed to be able to shake that concern. But such distractions were not allowed to interfere with the need to concentrate the ballista fire, for it was easy to see that in one spot the destruction was greater than anywhere else.

‘Time for fire pots,’ Robert said.

‘Not yet, we should stick to rocks and move their aim,’ Roger insisted, once he had pointed out the obvious fact that at one place the walls showed a telling crack.

‘That will take time.’

‘Better to waste time, Robert, than blood.’

It was, of course, the Guiscard’s decision: he was the man in command, ready to personally lead his men towards the gates under a hail of crossbow bolts, and it was obvious that his impatience was having an effect on his thinking, or was it his reputation? He was a great leader of men and one whose personal example was inspirational: even Normans fought better under his banner than that of others, though Roger was close to matching that, but sometimes it seemed Robert was too proud of that standing.

‘No one will think the worse of you for a little delay, and if we can effect a breech then Reggio is lost.’

‘Half a glass of sand, brother, no more.’

Roger was gone before Robert finished speaking, hurrying through the lines of warriors to those working the four ballista, one set of men toiling, stripped to the waist and sweating, to load the great stones into the baskets hauled down by a windlass to contain them. They were not wheeled, and of necessity the bases were heavy, so levering three of them so they were all aimed at the same spot was the hardest work of all, this while Roger sought to persuade his master stonemasons to have a care in their choice of projectiles so they were a similar shape and weight.

The first balls were hitting the walls by the time he returned to stand by his brother, who responded to their effect with no more than a nod: they were doing damage, striking close to and very occasionally right on the spot where the first crack had appeared. It was clear that above the point no defenders remained — they too were aware of the possibility of an imminent collapse. Not that such a thing promised easy access: if the wall did crumble it would be into a heap of masonry difficult to traverse.

Part of Robert’s misgivings was that delay tended to sap the will of attackers more than defenders, and good as they were the Normans were not immune to such a loss of morale. Any good commander had an ear for what was being said in the ranks of the men behind him, even if it was indistinct. He would know that there was thirst: no man ever did battle with a wetted throat, and then there would be the warriors who thought their skills equal to his own, no doubt grousing that he had lost the use of the rising sun to blind his enemies.

The men atop the towers, his best fighters in one-to-one combat, would be wondering when the great machine on which they were perched would move to take them to the deadliest form of combat — the need to get down the dropped front ramp, exposing them to immediate and close crossbow fire if their own archers, atop them, could not suppress it. They had to fight their way onto heavily defended walls where they would be outnumbered until some of their fellows, in full mail and impeded by sword and shield, could make their way up the internal ladders to their aid, this while the defenders did everything in their power to set the towers alight.

The portion of wall went with a rumbling that spread across the glacis before them, half of it tumbling into the deep protective ditch, the rest into an untidy heap sending a great cloud of dust billowing over the landscape. Robert’s sword was up before the sound had died away and those on the ropes began to haul forward the siege towers. To their fore, parties of milities advanced, planks held above their heads, accompanied by nimble boys too young to fight, clearing away any stones that might halt the progress of the rough-hewn wheels, others with water butts to douse the fireballs flying in their direction. To their rear came a solid mass of Norman warriors, shields held high to keep away crossbow bolts, swords ready to slice human flesh as soon as it presented itself.

Clay fire pots flew over the heads of the men pushing forward the battering ram, many falling short of the gates, others flying too high, only a few doing what they were supposed to and spreading flames up and down the thick oak. The aim was not to set the gates alight — the wood was too solid and too seasoned to do anything other than smoulder — but dense smoke from that made it difficult for anyone right above the gates to breathe and seriously hampered their ability to interfere with the efforts of those beneath them. The ram was already moving at speed, the band tasked to protect their heads running alongside, bearing the thick thatched and wetted canopy designed to nullify such defensive ploys as boiling oil and pitch.

The yelling from the walls, designed to induce courage in the defence as much as fear in the assault, rose to a mighty pitch, met by silence from those coming to do battle: well versed in war, these men were not about to waste their puff — or render even drier their throats — by shouting: that they would reserve until engaged. So there was no sound from the attackers until the ram crashed into the join of the gates which, no doubt buttressed at the rear with timber baulks, did not move a fraction. The chances of breaking them down were slim: the value of the effort lay in the way it committed the fellow commanding the defence to keep men occupied in seeking to prevent it, while behind the gate he must have force enough to repel success, for if the gate did go and the assault was not repulsed, the city would be lost.

The men bearing the roughly hewn planks dropped into the ditch and sought to get them set to bear the weight, which would allow the siege towers to be rammed hard against the walls. Robert had redirected his own assault to that breech in the walls, leaving Roger to lead the tower support parties. The first tower reached the bridged ditch, but those now pushing it instead of pulling had not followed correctly the directions of the man guiding them and one of the wheels at the very fore missed the edge of the laid boards.

It began to tip to one side, slowly and majestically, though not silently, for many a scream came from those up top, most fearsome those crossbowmen at the very apex, there to suppress the defence. The men below would see nothing but would know they were in great danger as the floor below their feet began to tilt. Mentally Roger was with them, knowing each would be dropping their weapons to seek some kind of handhold they could use to break the inevitable contact with the ground. But he could not dwell on their fate — the second tower was successful, crashing into the walls and the ramp, fitted with deadly spikes, dropped on the heads of those defenders too stupid to get clear.

It was time to run hard: the defence was split, not into three as had been hoped, but divided between protecting that breech and fighting off the assault from the siege tower. Roger was perspiring and sucking in air: climbing a ladder fully armed was no easy matter but speed was of the essence: only twenty knights had been accommodated on the tower — too much weight made it immovable — and they would now be fighting to get onto the parapet, massively outnumbered by defenders who had been gifted ample time to identify the spot where they would arrive, a place to which even a half-brained commander would send some of his best fighters.

The rest would be in that breech, ready to sell their blood at a high price to keep Reggio from sack. Robert led his men onto the rubble, slithering and sliding as he sought to climb to where he could partake of the fighting he so loved. Now he was yelling, waving his sword, that great bellow egging on those with him, their responding cries soon drowned out by the sound of clashing metal as sword and shields were employed in close battle. Robert had a man close on either side of him, his shield used to protect the right-hand side of his left neighbour, he benefiting from the same for the man on his right as he swung the great weapon, destroying both shields and flesh before him.

Roger emerged onto the top of the tower to find the knights he had come to help being driven backwards, so numerous were the enemies they faced. Instinctively he knew they would be tiring: wielding a heavy weapon without a moment of respite wearied even the most puissant warrior. Hearing his shout that they should disengage, they broke off contact quickly, surprising their opponents, and slipped through the line of knights who had come up to stand behind them — they immediately moving forward to take their comrades’ place in battle, fresh arms against those also tiring from combat. The result was immediate, the defenders falling back under the relentless pressure and, within moments, Roger and his knights were over the wall and on the parapet, splitting up to carry the battle forward in both directions, seeking by hard blows to knock those they faced off this platform, to fall with bone-breaking screams onto the cobbled streets below.

In the breech, all Robert could taste was dust; he knew he had lost men to the thrusts of pikes and lances, but the line had closed as quickly as a gap appeared, while those in support dragged away the wounded so they, too, could come up to take their place. The Guiscard’s sword was lopping off more weapon heads than human ones and, identified by his blue and white surcoat, he knew he had become the prime target of the defence: kill him and the assault would falter. Such a thing was to be expected, so he did not mind any more than the bruises he knew he would discover when he stripped off his mail, as well as the odd bleeding wound he could now feel.

But by trying to kill him his enemies were making a fatal mistake: the men he led might not have his outstanding skill but they were superb warriors who knew how to press on their opponents without his personal leadership. They began to drive back the defenders on either side of those determined to kill the Guiscard, creating the one thing that doomed them, a small salient of the over-committed who, so busy with what lay to their front, could not at the same time keep safe their flanks, now being pressed upon by the Normans. The men before Robert de Hauteville began to die, and in doing so created a fissure in the whole defending line, and that, just like the wall itself had done so recently, began to crumble.

Roger and his knights had possession of their section of the wall and ladders were being fetched up to provide a means to get the lightly armed milities down to the narrow roadway that ran to the rear of the walls, this while the crossbowmen sought to suppress the fire of enemy bolts from the windows of the high buildings that lay close to the parapet. The task of the knights was to push back the defenders beyond the stairways by which they had come up to man the defence, so they, too, could pour down and begin to fight their way into the city.

The point at which those seeking to beat off an assault realise they are losing is not something an attacker can easily calculate: an easing of effort, the look in an opponent’s eye that says he is not secure to either side and indicates he wants to disengage. Roger de Hauteville was sure it was something you could smell, a definite odour of spreading fear and he was sniffing that now, unaware that his brother had led his men through the breech in the walls and was now fighting his way down the narrow street that led to the gates, while behind him the thousands of men he led were pouring through and spreading out in all directions.

Robert knew the defenders were mixed: certainly there were proper soldiers, the men of the Byzantine garrison, but in the main they would be citizens drummed into service, many with a passion to defend their homes, others more fearful of losing their lives. The time of decision would come when those whose profession was arms, and especially the man who commanded them, knew the battle was lost, that his enemies were as likely to be behind as in front of him, at which point the commander would call upon his men to fall back and seek out a place they could defend.

The collapse was sudden, as the conscripted citizens found they no longer had amongst them the men of the garrison: they ran for their homes, casting aside their weapons to leave a line of Norman knights, led by both Robert and Roger, chests heaving, surcoats and swords stained with blood and caked in dust, too weary to cheer and far too worn out to pursue; that was left to the levies the Guiscard had raised in both Apulia and Calabria, many of whom had not even had to fight.

Yet there were enough Normans with breath left to do what Robert required: to find the leading citizens and get them to surrender the city before the whole place was set alight and his army became so uncontrollable that they would begin the kind of blind, drunken massacre that would leave few of the people of Reggio alive.

Clean and splendidly mounted, just ahead of Roger and the rest of his captains, Robert de Hauteville rode down the magnificent avenue lined with colonnaded villas that had stood since Roman times, interspersed with one-time pagan temples now dedicated as places of Christian worship. With them came the Latin priests from the north, to take over those churches and dedicate them to the Roman rite, displacing the Greeks who had held them for centuries; from this day, Calabria would be a part of the Church of Rome.

The Byzantine garrison, those professionals who had survived the battle for Reggio, had retreated to the fortress of Scilla on a high and rocky headland. They did not stay there long, they took ship and sailed away, no doubt heading east to tell the emperor that he had lost the last portion of what had been a province of Byzantium since the time of Justinian.