Jack Ludlow: Conquest

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.’