Jack Ludlow: Soldier of Crusade

The defenders of Durazzo knew the Apulians were coming and, if they had eased the passage of the first forces that had landed on the Adriatic shore under the French nobleman, the Count of Vermandois, they were less inclined to welcome the next to arrive for the very sound reason that they entirely mistrusted their motives. The knights and nobles accompanying Vermandois had been seen as honest Crusaders, needing to traverse the lands of Romania with no prior aim other than to aid Byzantium in throwing back the infidel Seljuk Turks from the very borders of Constantinople, the ultimate aim to then move on and free Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine from the grip of Islam.

The armies of Southern Italy were different; led by a member of the family of de Hauteville, whose collective military prowess had kicked Byzantium out of Italy, the mounted Norman lances they commanded counted as the most formidable warriors in Christendom. Many of the foot soldiers were Lombards who, if they marched for pay and plunder, would be fully trained to do battle and loathed the old Eastern Roman Empire for the hundreds of years of what they saw as the suppression of their right to rule themselves. Such a combination had breached the eastern boundary of Romania twice in the last fifteen years as invaders not friends and, even worse, they had enjoyed a high degree of success in both battle and conquest.

The walls on which the watchers of Byzantium now stood, as well as many other castles and towns, added to great swathes of the lands of ancient Illyria, had been taken from them, only wrested back after much blood and even more treasure had been expended. The Apulians, always inferior in numbers, had been commanded by men of genius and if the now dead father, Robert, Duke of Apulia, had been seen as the devil incarnate throughout Romania then he was not in present times to be outshone in black-heartedness as well as ability by the present leader, his natural, first-born son, Bohemund of Taranto.

‘I am told he is such a giant, this Bohemund, that he can pick up and consume a man whole, Father.’

‘Children’s tales,’ John Comnenus replied to his too impressionable son. ‘To demand the likes of you cease chattering and go to sleep, but it is true he is reputed to be a meaty fellow. Your great uncle the Emperor had a sight of him outside these very walls before you were born, and if you can mark one man for his size in the heat and confusion of a great battle, that tells you of his stature. It is said that he even made look human the giants of the Imperial Guard.’

‘What is it that they feed these Normans that they are so tall as a race?’

‘They are raised on a diet of arrogance and greed.’

‘Odd that,’ replied the ten-year-old Comnenus, his tone deadly serious, ‘I heard it was apples.’

The laughter that produced echoed off the formidable walls of the port city but the humour was not long-lasting; it was known the fleet bearing Bohemund and his army had departed Otranto and Brindisi three days previously, so given the distance and even sailing easy to allay seasickness, it should be in sight by now. Unlike the approach of Vermandois, the foppish brother of the King of France, who had come close to losing his life by drowning in stormy seas, the Adriatic was flat calm and those who knew how to read the weather, master mariners who had sailed these waters all their lives, pronounced that with the nature of the sky added to the direction of the wind such conditions would likely hold for days.

John Comnenus, topoterites of Durazzo, had been given a task to perform and it was one to be applied only to the host from Southern Italy, more specifically to Bohemund. Prior to landing he must swear an oath to the Emperor Alexius that would bind him to the aims of the papal crusade and, if possible, imperial service; in short, the Count of Taranto must make assurances that he had come to aid Byzantium and not under the guise of assistance to attempt that which had failed before: outright conquest.

The Norman leaders of Southern Italy had eyes on the imperial purple, hankering after it as an adornment for their own shoulders. As a race they were avaricious for land and plunder, no better than the Viking forbearers who had settled along the banks of the River Seine and so harried the Frankish king that he had been obliged to cede to them the whole peninsula from which they now took their name. That had not stilled their appetite; formidable warriors, they had become a permanent menace instead of an occasional one and had increased so much in numbers that they threatened not only France but also neighbouring Anjou and ultimately their own suzerain, the Duke of Normandy.

Those who first came south to Italy were the rebellious, the landless and the discontented, amongst who were the first two de Hautevilles, subsequently to be joined by five more brothers. Employed as mercenaries to fight for Lombard independence they had, in less than fifty years, cast aside their erstwhile paymasters, then wrested the centuries-held provinces of Langobardia and Calabria from imperial control, before invading and conquering Saracen Sicily. Despite the odd reverse, they had bested Byzantium in battle after battle to become, first, counts of Apulia, and then, after papal recognition — that body too had suffered more than one military defeat at the hands of the Normans — had become acknowledged in their ducal titles.

Never likely to be sated they had turned their gaze east, seeing the remains of the old Roman Empire as weak and ripe for a fall. If they had tried and failed, that had not dented their desire — what better way to introduce the force necessary to accomplish total conquest than under the guise of this religious endeavour called a crusade? So the man who commanded at Durazzo was not about to let such a puissant general as Bohemund ashore without that pledge of loyalty.

To aid his cause John had the ability to deny them a landing at the western end of the Via Egnatia, the road to Constantinople, added to the lure of a trouble-free passage with plentiful supplies provided en route that would obviate the need to forage or, more importantly, oblige the Norman leader to raid his own chests of gold to pay for the things necessary to keep his army fed. Given such advantages he was sure he could impose the imperial will on Count Bohemund as well as his senior captains. The man who spoilt this comfortable illusion of security came while the topoterites was eating in his own chamber.

‘One of the piquet boats approaches, Your Honour, and she is flying an alarm pennant.’

Comnenus was confused and it showed both on his face and in his reply to the messenger from the battlements. ‘If we are not overburdened with friends, I cannot think who would be an enemy so threatening as to cause a piquet boat to hoist an alarm pennant?’

‘The Norman devils?’

That answer had about it the air of, ‘Who in the name of the Lord else, you fool?’

Comnenus carried the burden of having his place by family connection rather than experience and that showed in an occasional lack of due respect from those whom he commanded.

‘They are supposed to be coming in peace, fellow — and even if they are not, how would ill intent show while they are still afloat? I fear our sailor has overplayed what he might have seen. Still, we cannot ignore what it says. Send to the captain of the garrison to man the walls.’

‘It was he who sent me to you, Your Honour, and he has already ordered that done.’

The thought for the titular commander could not be avoided: such a precaution had been carried out without the courtesy of informing him, just as the message regarding the approaching piquet boat had first gone to his second in command. Was it that which induced a knot in his gut or the notion that there may well be an approaching threat? Durazzo was a prize after which many lusted and one any man who held it for the empire feared to lose.