Conquest

CHAPTER TWO

Surprise was essential for Argyrus and it was a nervous two days while he waited for his chance to strike, a period in which the besiegers had to be kept in the dark about his preparations. It would take time to get his men ready, then they would have to deploy as they issued from the gates of the city to form up outside, that being the moment of maximum danger. He had a limited cavalry screen to protect his levies and keep them from an immediate counter-attack, so the decision to employ them in what might be a suicidal encounter, an all-out charge to pin down his foes, was forced upon him. If the battle were lost they were useless anyway.

Normally foot soldiers took time to deploy and it had to be done in daylight: their level of training precluded any attempt by torchlight. Present his enemy with too much of a chance by their being disordered and the whole enterprise might falter, leaving him weaker than he was now. So they would wait till the first hint of morning light; what they would face could only be a partly known fact — infantry long in the siege lines and thus, he hoped, not ready to do all-out battle.

More important was the lack of the leadership at which the Normans excelled plus their prowess in ensuring that when their milities met an enemy army, that force had been badly disrupted and often broken in spirit by the vigorous attacks of their mounted confreres. Vital to his hopes was one factor: they had become so accustomed to Norman support they would wilt for the lack of it, yet whichever way he examined the problems, more ifs surfaced than definite conclusions.

His system of hilltop beacons had seen the Normans pass beyond the point at which they could interfere in the coming battle and, on prior instructions, more fires would be lit if Robert Guiscard reappeared. The night before the battle was the worst, and not only for the watch being kept to the north: if Argyrus was a clever and skilled Catapan, he thought himself a far from competent general and thus he was prone to fret. He remembered his first night before a battle, outside the port city of Trani, many years previously, and recalled how calm William Iron Arm had been, just before the assault Argyrus had betrayed and rendered impossible.

Iron Arm had been preparing to lead his Norman warriors onto the walls of the city by means of a wooden siege tower, which meant meeting their enemies in almost single file, one sword against many, surely the most dangerous form of assault in creation. The titular leader of the attack might have been a Lombard but it was really the eldest de Hauteville who was the man in charge. How tranquil he had been, unconcerned that death might come with the morning sun. How different was he, Argyrus, who must now address his troops to put fire in their bellies. It was that last thought that gave him the possible key to inspiration: they needed not fire in their guts, but food.

‘Out on the plains before us are storerooms bursting with grain, as well as cattle and sheep on the hoof, an abundance of everything we lack.’

Looking down from the top step of the stairway that led to his citadel, he peered into the torch lit sea of faces, trying to discern the mood.

‘I know I can tell you about the need to be brave, to heed your captains, keep your discipline and to do battle with deadly purpose. I can invoke the threat to your hearths, for many of you have wives and children in the city, just as I can say to you who are Greek that beyond those walls are those we call barbarians: the Normans. I do not demean those amongst you who are Italian or Lombard, for you see as well as any the benign nature of imperial rule.’

That set up some murmuring: it was gilding it to say Constantinople was benign, more truthful would be to say it was greedy. As long as the revenues of this great trading port flowed east the empire did not bear down too heavily on its subjects, nor did largesse flow the other way to what was a distant fief. Argyrus knew it was not love of Byzantium that would make the Italians and Lombards fight: it was fear of Norman-led revenge on them and their families. The city had been offered terms a year past and he had turned them down, so Brindisi, by the laws of war, was open to pillage. Once those walls were breached, once the enemy was inside, no one would be safe from rapine or murder.

‘And I promise you this. There are, in our midst, many men of wealth, those who have grown rich on the trade of Brindisi, many Greeks who have settled here over the centuries. No doubt these prosperous folk will willingly give up their possessions to be shared once our city is free of the siege. But this I say to you, for I know they will have secreted away their gold, silver and valuable chattels, their chests of coins, their bezants of gold, concerned to keep at least part of it intact…’

That set off another rippling murmur from the poor people who made up his armed levies: it was they who did the fighting and dying, not the wealthy citizens who bore down on them in times of peace.

‘They will not keep them even should they desire to do so. I will undertake a gathering of their hidden goods and there will be, in this very square, a distribution of the spoils, the very thing that those beasts of Normans have come to our walls to steal. Fill your bellies outside the walls from what they have ravaged from the countryside and I will fill your purse from the riches of your city once victory is ours. There will be gold for every one of you.’

The cheering had started before those last words were spoken, a great bellow for a promise Argyrus doubted he could keep: those leading citizens were the very people he needed to hold on to power in this city — without them to carry out his edicts he would be a cipher. But to win this day was the purpose and honesty could go by the board. He waited till the cheering died down, then called forward the priests of his Orthodox faith to bless the enterprise, which they did with incense and incantations over bowed heads and whispered prayers.

Back inside his chamber, on the table, lay a map of the exterior plain on which the city stood, and around it were gathered those who would carry out his plans. Placing an elbow on the table, Argyrus swept his forearm in an arc to emphasise his aims.

‘We must sweep them towards the shoreline. With water at their back and the choice to drown or surrender no army can maintain cohesion, all history tells us this. And I want no quarter, every enemy soldier who discards his weapon must die. Any of your troops who give succour must be likewise killed to encourage the soft-hearted. Let them know it is death for them or those they fight and thus there is no choice. I want that seashore red with the blood of those who have dared to challenge the empire. Let it flow out to those Venetian galleys to rot the cables that hold them to the seabed.’

Looking around at those assembled he had no doubt they would be determined. He had few real soldiers but these men were just that, with one notable exception, all servants of the empire come from far-flung places to Italy to fight its battles; if Constantinople would not send him troops, they had sent him men who could command them. They were trained to war and, he had to admit, they had about them that air of calmness he had once seen and so envied in William de Hauteville. Yet his inability not to agonise made him say more; it was Byzantine gold that had made him desert his fellow Lombards and he had never lost faith in the working power of that commodity.

‘Be assured, what I said to the levies assembled applies more to you than to them. Win this fight and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Not only will I reward you, so will the emperor. Any citizen of Brindisi with the means to do likewise who fails to be generous to the men who have saved his life and possessions, as well as his family, I will hang from the city walls.’

Looking to the sandglass, now with the last grains running through the neck, he added, ‘In one turn of the glass the sun will come up and we will deploy. Go to your men and encourage them, as I have encouraged you. Remember, if our enemies are not asleep when we attack they will not be long from their slumbers, for they will not think to be assaulted so soon after dawn. Go!’

Two dozen fists thudded into leather breastplates as Argyrus received from his captains the salute that had been the right of an imperial general since the time of the Roman legions.

The first hint of grey on the Adriatic skyline saw the great oak and metal-studded gates, oiled to be silent, swung open, the first troops out, the limited force of cavalry, animals led — not ridden — for silence. Out on the plain they mounted up and waited, horses snorting and prancing but held in check. Their task, once the milities had exited, was to engage in that wild charge, to pin in their lines the besieging army, to harry them mercilessly and spread alarm and confusion, making an organised defence impossible.

Argyrus was not a general to lead from the front where he feared, being indecisive, he might cause more uncertainty than clarity. He was watching from the highest point of the exterior walls on the landward side of the city, surrounded by those leading citizens he had promised to impoverish, delighted, once the signal was given, by the way his horsemen performed when the order was given to attack.

Nothing was harder to control than cavalry; indeed it was in that which lay the Norman strength. But for what he required this day, a horde of galloping men, yelling and waving their swords, was the very thing, they being insufficient in number to otherwise affect the battle. Behind them the foot soldiers had exited, their captains yelling and using the flats of their weapons to keep them in order, tight cohorts that their Catapan hoped would come up against disorganised bands, hastily assembled, men who would break when presented with their more organised opponents. Cool as was the morning he found he was perspiring, his body jerking involuntarily as he sought to urge on his men.

‘Good, good, keep to that line,’ he shouted, even if he knew he could not be heard, happy that his captains were doing as he had planned, leading their fighting men in a straight line away from the gates, heading directly inland where they could wheel, hopefully without losing their cohesion, to outflank the enemy at the point of maximum weakness, far from the active siege lines, to roll them up and drive them towards that fatal shore and slaughter.

Agony attends all warfare for a leader; so much can go wrong and so quickly does what looks possible vanish like a chimera, yet for all his fretting and anxiety Argyrus watched with increasing hope as his tactics seemed to unfold in a perfect reproduction of that which he had ordered. Truly, he had caught his enemies unaware. His risk of deploying before the sun was fully up, no doubt a manoeuvre thought to be beyond his poorly trained levies, was paying a huge dividend. His horsemen had suffered much, attacking a vastly more numerous foe, but they had sown the necessary disarray.

Far out from the walls Argyrus could see his foot soldiers, now with the sun on their backs: the uneven ground had spoilt their perfect symmetry, that was to be expected, so it was a heaving mass that began to wheel north towards the main enemy encampment and the tents of their leaders, two crowned by fluttering pennants bearing the blue and white chequer of the de Hautevilles. Robert would be gone, but was his brother Geoffrey still present? Nothing would crown this day more than that a member of the hated family should be taken alive or dead, preferably the former, so that he could make the Guiscard crawl for the chance to ransom. A dead body he would return naked and despoiled.

‘The day will be ours,’ Argyrus cried as his tangled levies hit the even more muddled Lombards and Italians, the milities of the Count of Apulia’s army. ‘They are turning to a rabble, look.’

Eager to watch the cessation of nearly a year of increasing gloom, albeit with even less ability than Argyrus to make sense of what was actually happening, those around him pressed forward to see what was nothing more than a mass of bodies pressing against each other, pikes and other weapons flashing in the morning sun, men in dun-coloured padded tunics, making it hard to tell friend from foe. But if their leader was excited, it behoved them to be the same, until a point came where even the most untutored eye could see that one faction was falling back.

‘Look, a de Hauteville banner and the device of Geoffrey of Loritello. Get me a messenger.’ A youth came forward to stand before a man now wild-eyed with excitement. ‘Go to the leading captains, tell them I will give them all of the ransom for a de Hauteville. Tell them it is an express command, to take him alive.’

Argyrus was back leaning over the parapet as the lad ran off, eagerly pointing out to those around him how favourably the battle was progressing. The news that the Venetian galleys were slipping their anchors and rowing furiously for the shore only added to his glee.

‘Let them try to take off Guiscard’s army, for they will fail, and if God is truly on our side then they too will suffer the fate as those they seek to embark. We will turn their hulls to cinder and drown every man who dared to ply an oar.’

‘They do not give in easily, Catapan,’ said one of the men beside him.

That was true; there was no rout and he sought to soothe his own anxiety by allaying that of those around him. ‘They are Robert de Hauteville’s men and he has trained them, his brothers before him, making them the best foot soldiers in all Italy. But the Guiscard is not here to lead them, for I tell you, if he was I would yet be fearful. Thank the Almighty his brother is not half the general he is.’

Having wheeled and committed their entire force, the captains of Brindisi were pressing their opponents back to a point right under the eyes of their leader, so that the line of those engaged ran straight before them. Argyrus fretted that his enemies were retreating in too orderly a manner: he needed a collapse, prayed for a slaughter and swore to heaven above to bring that on.

‘God be praised,’ he yelled as his wish was granted.

The line of Apulian levies broke and ran, hotly pursued by his own, now jumbled cohorts. Then, inexplicably, they halted, leaving him near to foaming with frustration, which had him running along the walls to shout at them to push on. The sight that stopped him nearly did the same for his heart. It was, without question, the death of his hopes.

In a line, before the beach, stood a serried mass of mailed warriors, obviously Normans by their helmets and tear-shaped shields. In the middle stood the banner of the Count of Apulia and even at a distance, due to his height and build, the Guiscard was visible. The men, his retreating army, were not routed, they broke and ran left and right of their confreres and as soon as the ground before the Normans was clear they began a slow and measured advance. Frantically he could see his captains forming their men into a line of defence, beating them again, and hard, with flattened swords, while their best-trained soldiers went to the rear to put a stop to desertion.

All the noise was coming from there: the Normans were advancing in silence, pennants fluttering on their lances, with not even a beating drum to set their pace, as if to underline they needed no sound to control their pace. Behind them, drawn up on the soft sand of the beach, were the galleys that had fetched them ashore, leaving Argyrus to wonder how the Guiscard had managed it.

Those beacons he had seen in the night would not have been lit for horses; they would only have been fired when Norman cavalry was seen to have gone by. Yet here they were before him, and worse, they were advancing on troops he knew in his pounding heart would not be able to repel them: the Normans knew how to fight on foot and would not break. The choice for him was simple; to watch the slaughter or to prepare to flee, for he had no illusion of what would happen to him if he fell into the hands of Robert de Hauteville.

The harbour of Brindisi was full of boats that had not set to sea since the imposition of the siege. Yet, in bringing the Normans ashore, the Venetians had opened up an avenue of escape. Turning quickly, he faced those wealthy citizens who had made so much from this port, some leading Greek families that had been here for five centuries. If he had a duty not to fall into the hands of the enemy, and not just for the sake of his skin, surely he had, too, a responsibility to deny to the Guiscard as much of the spoils of the city as he could.

‘Citizens, the city is lost. The way is clear to get to sea and I must take it and make for Bari.’

‘The Normans have not yet won.’

‘Then I invite you to stay here and watch them do so. Perhaps the spilling of so much blood will please you as a spectacle.’ Argyrus could see how many his words had already affected, the wiser souls: they were moving swiftly away to gather up their treasure and buy or steal a boat. ‘If our levies break, those on the gates will close them to keep out the Normans and leave our fellows to die against their own walls. If they stand, they will have a more noble ending to their lives, but an ending it will be.’

‘Then, Catapan, send word to them to surrender.’

Argyrus smiled, but it contained no mirth. ‘They have one more duty to perform and that is to allow those of us who must flee to do so.’