Jack Ludlow: Conquest

Robert was lenient: he could afford to be. What soldiers of Byzantium remained, and any Greeks who wished to depart, he let sail away. The Duke of Apulia had what he wanted, absolute control of his domains. The Eastern Empire no longer had a toehold in Italy: on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, banners that had flown over the city since the time of the Emperor Justinian, five hundred years before, were hauled down for the last time to the sound of a Latin Mass being celebrated in the great cathedral.

Palermo suspected the de Hautevilles were coming and they knew that this time the Normans had a powerful navy. Every Byzantine satrap, from the Dalmatian coast to the Bosphorus, was busy strengthening their defences in fear of that fleet appearing off their shores. Yet Palermo had strong walls and surely, after a three-year siege these warriors would want some respite. Not so: the Guiscard, with that power to inspire which was the hallmark of his leadership, had his army enthused and marching to Reggio within a month, Roger insisting there was one task to perform on the way to Palermo. If there was one area where he felt outshone by Robert it was in his cunning — hence his soubriquet — a fact well known to the older brother, so it was with some amusement the Guiscard listened to his younger brother as he outlined his plans and reasons for taking Catania.

‘For all al-Tinnah is long dead we are still well thought of there, and it would not surprise them to have me request some men to aid us in taking Palermo.’

‘You think they will respond?’ Robert asked.

‘I doubt they will welcome the notion. Their late emir might have dangled possession of Sicily in front of us but I never thought he really believed in it. But if I sail into the harbour they will not dare refuse me permission to land. I will then request they allow you to enter with the fleet to pick up their contingent…’

Roger did not finish, leaving his brother ruminating. Even with Palermo, the rest of Sicily was not going to be easy to conquer. It was mountainous, had many elevated and redoubtable fortresses, the Greeks were not universally friendly, and while the natives were not openly hostile, the Saracens, numerous and religioninspired, were. The problems lay in securing the big ports, Catania being one, as well as Agrigento on the south coast, which would need to be secured to stop incursions from North Africa. But biggest of all was Syracuse, the gateway to Sicily since ancient times. To hold that was to deny the island to a resurgent Byzantium; that the Eastern Empire was weak now did not mean it would always be so and Catania was not far up the same coast.

‘If they resist?’ Robert asked.

‘I don’t doubt they will, but they will succumb because we will be inside their walls.’

And so it proved: Roger was welcomed, not with open arms but with grace, and the Catanians were not so foolish as to deny the request he made, for was not the Count of Sicily known to be an honourable man, unlike his brother? They were still unsuspecting when Robert led his fleet into their harbour. His soldiers landed and fanned out through the town, the scales only falling from the Catanian eyes when they found their strong points being occupied and Normans manning the city gates. They fought but it was futile, within a week, Catania had been re-fortified and had a Norman garrison. The brothers who had deceived them were on their way to Palermo, Roger leading the army via Troina, Robert taking his fleet north to round Cape Faro.

Robert made several landings on the way to overawe the coastal settlements, so Roger arrived first and set up his camp to the east of the port on a fertile plain cut with a good river, a place of palaces and summer residences surrounded by orange and lemon groves where the rich traders of Palermo were wont to escape the stink of a crowded city, a teeming metropolis with a population reckoned to be a quarter of a million. All were abandoned, their owners now inside the walls, so the Norman host were free to accommodate themselves in much comfort in houses made of cool marble, escaping the summer heat.

There was a fort called the Castle of Yahya at the point where the river met the sea, running into a good bay, a perfect place in which to anchor Robert’s fleet and disembark his army — the shape of Palermo harbour, lying as it did in a deep gulf, precluded the same tactic he had used to blockade Bari. Taking the castle looked simple, but the Saracens, expected to surrender against hopeless odds, instead came out to fight and suffered much for their bravery. Roger did not realise it, Robert did not know, but this presaged much of what was to come. Those men had fought for their faith as much as for their island and that was to be replicated in the city itself, for there was not a citizen who did not know that what they were fighting for was the honour of the Prophet and the future of Islam in Sicily.

On landing his warriors Robert ordered that a Mass be said, so that all could confess, that to be followed by an immediate assault, the hope being they could take Palermo by a coup de main. Robert sailed his ships round Cape Zafferano and into the great bight on which Palermo stood, while Roger led the army towards the walls to let them see the size of the force they now faced, made up of Normans and Greeks, Apulians, Calabrians and even men from Bari. Those they were intent on subduing had been waiting years for this moment: they had worked on their fortifications and even walled up several of the city gates, gathered arms and trained with them. A hail of stones and arrows met Roger, while the sheer number of vessels that emerged to meet and fight him thwarted Robert. The attack failed both on land and at sea.

Was there a soul in Palermo who thought they could repulse the men who had conquered so much? Did they, in their darker moments, wonder at a race like the Normans, and at a family, the eldest of whom had only arrived in Italy thirty-five years previously and with nothing: bare-arsed knights, as they described themselves? By sheer ability with sword, shield, horse and lance, guile, cunning, political ability and a strong dose of good fortune, they had risen to consort with kings and popes, had come to make emperors fearful. Did they reflect that in the past invasions of these lands it had been an overwhelming force of numbers that had triumphed, yet these de Hautevilles were few, and the men they led never were large in numbers? If they did think such thoughts, it seemed they knew they were doomed, yet they fought, not with despair, but with faith that when they died, all the promises of Paradise made to them would be theirs.

The Greeks of Bari had stayed behind their walls, but the Saracens of Palermo came out to fight and, if they paid a high price for their courage, they extorted a fair one in exchange, for they matched the men Roger led in sheer brio. They applied cunning too, opening gates to entice their besiegers forward, then coming out to fight in massive numbers, falling back to heavily manned walls from which their companions could inflict casualties with boiling oil, fire, rocks and arrows while their fellows slipped back into the city.

Nor were they shy at sea: a combined Sicilian and African galley fleet appeared off the Gulf of Palermo intent on destroying Robert’s ships, each one with a thick awning over its deck to protect the rowers from crossbow bolts and lances, each vessel full to capacity with men so willing to die that if they lacked leadership it mattered little. A battle begun near dawn was still raging as the sun began to dip, and it took that long for the Guiscard’s ships to gain the upper hand. In the end, though, such stalwart resistance contributed to their undoing.

Finally breaking off the action and fleeing for safety, with their exhausted oarsmen collapsing over their sticks, the Saracen fleet made for the harbour. Pursued by Robert’s ship they sought to secure the entrance with a great chain, a device that had kept them safe for decades, only to fail to secure it in enough time to stop him breaking through. Once in the confined space of the harbour, and using fire to set light to those protective awnings, the destruction of the Saracen galleys was total.