The Good, the Bad and the Unready (59 page)

The Sons of Tancred

Tancred de Hauteville was a Norman nobleman of little note. Several of his twelve sons, however, achieved considerable notoriety through their exploits in southern Italy. Three of the children who found fame and fortune in the Mediterranean acquired nicknames that reveal their different paths to success.

William the Iron Arm

Count of Apulia, d.1046

In about 1035 William and his brothers Drogo and Humphrey left France to join the mercenary Norman army in southern Italy where William soon became count of Apulia. He earned his nickname of ‘il Bracchio di Ferro’ during the siege of the Muslim-occupied city of Syracuse. According to one biographer, the count was not only a ‘lamb in society and an angel in council’ but also a ‘lion in war’, and with his ‘iron arm’ is said to have ‘unhorsed and transpierced’ the city’s hapless emir.

Robert the Cunning

Duke of Apulia, c.1015–85

That same year Robert ‘Guiscard’ –sometimes translated as ‘the Weasel’ but more commonly as ‘the Cunning’ –headed south from France with four horsemen and a couple of dozen followers on foot. Once in the Mediterranean he initially led the life of a robber baron and supported himself by cattle rustling. By 1053, however, he had amassed a considerable army and defeated the forces of Pope Leo IX at the battle of Cività. The pope himself was taken prisoner, but, in a cunning plan, Robert and his men knelt and asked for his blessing, knowing that an alliance with the papacy could be an advantage in the future. Indeed it was. Six years later Pope Nicholas II formally invested Robert with all the lands he had conquered.

Robert was not satisfied with being just the duke of Apulia, Calabria and (by his own decree) Sicily. Various military exploits followed, including an invasion of Rome and an expedition through Greece to fight the Byzantine emperor Alexius I. It was on this final campaign that he made a deep impression upon Anna, the emperor’s daughter. In
The Alexiad
Anna describes Robert as ‘In temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning… and subordinate to nobody in the world.’ Anna was also impressed with Robert’s physique. In breathless tones she tells us that ‘his stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen… [and] his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire.’

Roger the Great Count

Count of Sicily, 1031–1101

Roger, Tancred’s youngest, decided that he would like to rule the island of Sicily rather than a region on the Italian mainland, and in 1061, after a spell as a bandit and a horse thief, his campaign to conquer the entire island began in earnest.

It was no easy task. Starting with a mere hundred knights and facing fierce Muslim resistance, he made painstakingly slow progress. For thirty long years he laboriously laid siege to each and every town until finally, in 1091, the island was his and he was on a par with most of the monarchs in Europe. Extremely proud of his achievements Roger deemed the title of ‘count’ that came with the crown of Sicily to be demeaning, and so instead he gave himself the title ‘the Great Count’.

Some contemporary historians write how Roger demonstrated general tolerance to Sicily’s vanquished Muslim population by allowing them to maintain their magistrates and mosques. The count’s other epithet, ‘the Terror of the Faithless’, suggests that he made it unequivocally clear that Sicily was a Christian realm.