Stewart Binns - Conquest

Torfida was indeed right about Roger Guiscard.

For the next three years, Hereward, Einar and Martin campaigned with him in Sicily and throughout the heel and toe of Italy. Torfida stayed in Melfi and the surrounding area, working with the Duchess Adela in establishing hospitals and almshouses, and supporting the monasteries in their work with the poor. Hereward and Torfida saw one another at the end of each of Roger’s campaigns. During these furloughs, Torfida fulfilled her promise to teach Hereward the nuances of chess. He took to the game well, enjoying its affinity with the tactics of the battlefield.

When the men came home from their campaigns, they returned largely unscathed. Hereward put the Great Axe of Göteborg to fearsome use, and there were only minor setbacks in a year of successes, the greatest of which took place near Taranto in the summer of 1061.

Guiscard’s Normans had come across a large Byzantine column and forced it to retreat. It was the major part of a Greek theme of good quality, but was slowed by the cumbersome baggage train of the local Byzantine governor and several Greek merchants and their families. As the Normans closed in, the Greeks’ reluctance to abandon their bulky possessions put them in great peril. Either noble duty or foolish miscalculation led the Byzantine general to leave it too late before insisting that the baggage be left behind. Even then, there were acrimonious arguments and widespread confusion, and many of the merchants were still digging makeshift hiding places for their possessions when the Norman force crested the hill behind them.

Within minutes, Hereward and his companions were in the vanguard of a cavalry charge that swept into the valley below with fearsome momentum. The men of the Greek theme hastily formed a reasonable redoubt, but the Normans had too much impetus to be repulsed. The battle lasted less than an hour. The first wave of Norman cavalry easily breached the Greek lines, and it was only a matter of time before the infantrymen, exposed in isolated pockets, sought surrender.

Hereward cut an impressive figure in battle. Sitting tall in his saddle, with his golden hair flowing below the rim of his helmet, the great sweeps of his war axe cleared wide arcs of ground around him. The Normans suffered few casualties, but many in the Greek ranks were cut down, as the Norman horsemen ploughed through them.

It was Hereward himself who reached the Byzantine General first. He and a few of his bodyguards had become detached from the bulk of his theme. On seeing this, Hereward pulled up his mount and signalled his companions to halt. Faced with the choice between a valiant but futile fight, and a less than glorious surrender, the General chose the noble death of a warrior.

He summoned his guards to his side, perhaps fifteen men, and with the cry, ‘For the Emperor!’ kicked his horse into a gallop towards the Normans. Hereward immediately ordered a charge in response. As the General closed, he saw him nod to his men on either side to acknowledge their comradeship and bravery. They had attacked an overwhelming force without hesitation, just as they had been ordered to do.

Hereward felt enormous admiration for his foes. Beneath the face-guard of the General’s ornate plumed helmet, a full grey beard was plain to see. He was a soldier of many years’ experience. He would have fought many battles and killed many men; now it was his turn to die. The brutal truth was that these would be his final moments on earth. He made straight for Hereward, his eyes fixed on the Englishman.

He was dead before he hit the ground. Hereward caught him full in the chest with his great axe, catapulting him out of his saddle and over the back of his horse, leaving him spreadeagled on the ground. The weapon protruded from where it had been plunged: clean through the General’s armour and deep in the breast of a noble soldier of Byzantium.

Only four men survived the courageous charge, and they were soon rounded up. Hereward learned from the Byzantine prisoners that his foe was General Michael Andronicus from Rhodes, a man with nearly thirty years’ service, who had risen from the junior ranks of an army he had joined as a boy of fifteen. He was given an interment worthy of his rank and distinguished service, in a ceremony that Hereward supervised personally and with all the respect due to a fellow warrior.

Calabria was cleared of the Byzantine army by the end of the year; Roger Guiscard returned to Melfi a hero, and southern Italy became a Norman stronghold. Duchess Adela was determined that Norman rule would be at least palatable to the local Italian population, if not embraced by them. She worked tirelessly to ameliorate the usual Norman brutalities, and life in Apulia became peaceful and prosperous.

Hereward and his loyal group, flourishing in the warm Mediterranean climate, became assimilated into the Norman community, speaking their language and enjoying their zest for life. There was much for Torfida to do and, while Ingigerd and Maria looked after the farmhouse that the three couples shared, she became, in essence, the steward of Adela’s domain. She learned much from the locals about Greek and Arab healing and had already acquired a good grounding in the Arabic language.

Hereward’s military knowledge was expanding at a pace, as was his understanding of the strengths and frailties of men in battle. Being at war suited him; he needed to fight, to satisfy his martial instincts. But he needed a reason to fight – not just wantonly and savagely, as most men did, but for a purpose that he felt was just.

Even though Robert Guiscard was a tyrant whose family ethic was founded on aggression and conquest, the Normans had brought much to their previously troubled domain. Hereward had a love of tolerance and justice that was shared by Roger Guiscard and the Duchess Adela, and thus found moral justification for fighting on behalf of his hosts.

The campaigns in Calabria and Sicily were a new kind of warfare for Hereward. This involved much more mobile battles than were usual in northern Europe. The rapid deployment of cavalry was vital, as was the need to move supplies at great speed. Naval warfare was also on a larger scale than in northern Europe. Hereward encountered ‘Greek fire’, spewed forth from the telltale dragon’s mouth mounted on the bow of Byzantine triremes. It was said that only the Emperor of Byzantium himself knew the secret ingredients of ‘the fire’. Once ignited in wooden cylinders lined with lead and catapulted into the opposing fleet, it would spew its deadly contents everywhere. Its main ingredient was pitch, which meant it adhered to anything it hit, including sails, ships’ timbers and, of course, men. It would even continue to burn on and under water.

The Normans recruited many mercenaries from North Africa, Spain and the Adriatic, men whose families had fought Saracens for generations. From them Hereward learned of warfare by stealth – techniques little known in the north – where men stood and faced one another in open conflict. He was fascinated by the tactics of infiltration, disruption and deception. He learned how, under cover of darkness or by the use of camouflage, a small group of men, or even a single man, could burn tents, poison wells, scatter horses, steal weapons, or assassinate leaders.

During the Sicilian campaigns, Hereward would often lead incursions into Saracen camps to create havoc. One of his companions, Alphonso of Granada, a man with a good deal of Arab blood in him, became Hereward’s most trusted accomplice and a close friend. Eventually, the small but immensely agile and robust young man became accepted by Martin and Einar as the fourth member of their brotherhood-in-arms.

Hereward became the most respected man in Roger’s army. He was a trusted knight and friend to his Norman employer, who was himself a noble warrior. There was even a reconciliation of sorts between Hereward and Duke Robert.