10
In the middle years of the eleventh century, the Conqueror’s fellow countryman, Robert Guiscard made a name for himself in Italy. Thanks to a series of daring military ventures, he’d been able to secure control of much of the southern half of the peninsula, and had come to personify Norman achievement there. According to William of Malmesbury, Duke William was envious of these achievements, proclaiming that it would be shameful were he to be surpassed in strength and courage by a man of lesser birth.1 The Conqueror’s jealousy was not ill-founded. From relatively humble origins in the Cotentin, Robert and his brothers came to control vast tracks of land in Italy. Their exploits began in the later 1030s, and may have been the inspiration for William’s own fateful gamble in 1066, as Malmesbury implies. And they were to cast a similarly long shadow, with the independent Sicilian realm they founded enduring up to the unification of Italy in the 1860s.
For much of his early career, Robert played second fiddle to his elder half-brothers, foremost among these being Count William ‘Ironarm’. William was the eldest of twelve sons of Tancred de Hauteville with two successive wives. Tancred was a figure of middling stature in Normandy – an aristocrat of local note in the Cotentin, but not a man capable of supporting so many sons in the manner to which they’d become accustomed. As the eldest, William was well aware of his straitened prospects. Partible inheritance was the norm within the Norman duchy, and William faced a stark choice between poverty at home and seeking his fortune abroad. Not surprisingly, he chose the latter.
As William de Hauteville’s experiences suggest, population pressure was one of the factors which drove Norman expansion in these years. The population of the duchy was growing steadily, and the more sparsely populated regions of southern Italy – where recent conflicts had taken their toll – offered rich prospects. But though our accounts place considerable emphasis on this factor, it’s unlikely to have been the overriding incentive for Norman ventures abroad. Overpopulation is a common trope among medieval chroniclers, routinely wheeled out to explain migration and settlement. And while population was growing in Normandy, the same was true almost everywhere in France (and western Europe); yet only Normandy saw such an exodus. Another important factor was the increasing popularity of pilgrimage. Many sources report that the first Normans came south as pilgrims, and there are signs of a particularly strong Norman interest in the cult of the Archangel, whose leading shrine was at Monte Gargano (Monte Sant’Angelo) in northern Apulia. But again, these developments were not unique to Normandy – Count Fulk Nerra of Anjou went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land four times – and the Archangel’s cult was also popular elsewhere, so we must look further to explain the Norman settlement.
The decisive factor was almost certainly the political situation in Normandy.2 Norman activity in the south gained momentum in the 1030s and 1040s, during the troubled years of Duke Robert’s reign and (in particular) the Conqueror’s minority. A number of accounts have political exiles among the earliest settlers, and these years produced no shortage of such men. It’s also likely that others – men such as the Hauteville brothers – deemed this an inauspicious moment to seek their fortunes locally, so looked further afield. Southern Italy offered excellent prospects here. It was wealthy, but politically divided, and smaller groups of Norman mercenaries had already been plying their trade in the region for a few decades.
At what point William arrived in southern Italy is not entirely clear. Our most detailed report is furnished by Geoffrey of Malaterra, a Norman monk writing in Sicily in the late 1090s.3 Geoffrey states that the elder Hauteville brothers decided to seek their fortune as mercenaries, upon which God guided them to Italy. Here they entered the employ of the Lombard prince of Capua, before jumping ship to join the prince of Salerno to Capua’s south.4 Geoffrey says nothing about what drew the brothers south (save the guiding hand of the Almighty), and his silence is significant. For Geoffrey’s work is a panegyric on the Hauteville clan, culminating in the conquest of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily by Robert and his younger brother Roger (the real hero of Geoffrey’s story). As we know from other sources, the Hautevilles were not the first Normans to come to southern Italy. But by passing over such precedents in silence, Geoffrey was able to present William and his brothers as the founding fathers of the Norman colony.
Other sources help round out this picture, though the gaps in our knowledge remain large. The problem is that, much as in Rollo’s Normandy, the advent of the Normans only took on its full significance many years later. There was no reason to believe that the earliest Norman incomers would stay, let alone flourish. Only once they had, did this require explanation. The main challenge for modern historians is that none of our early sources agrees with another; and on many points, they actively contradict each other. Pride of place is traditionally given to Amatus of Montecassino, who furnishes our earliest narrative. According to Amatus, writing c.1080, the Normans came to the region shortly before the year 1000 (avan mille puis que Christ). First to arrive was a group of pilgrims on their way home from the Holy Land. Whether they’d been travelling by land or sea is unclear; but either way, they stopped off at Salerno, which they found besieged by Saracens. Grasping the gravity of the situation, the pilgrims asked the local prince, Guaimar III, for weapons and horses (as pilgrims, they were travelling unarmed). They then set the Muslim force to flight. So impressed were Guaimar and his people, that they begged the Normans to stay on. When the pilgrims politely refused, the Salernitans sent them on their way with rich gifts and the request to send more of their fellow countrymen south. This wish was soon fulfilled when the Norman duke (Richard II) exiled a man called Gilbert, who set off south with his four brothers. They formed the first permanent Norman presence in the region, immediately joining the rebellion of Melus within Byzantine Apulia in 1017, which aimed to achieve independence from Byzantium for the local Lombard population.5
Our next account is that of William of Apulia, writing in Latin verse in the 1090s. He places the arrival of the Normans exclusively in the context of Melus’ rebellion. Here, too, they arrive as pilgrims, albeit ones en route to the shrine of the Archangel in Monte Gargano. Upon arrival they (rather implausibly) bump into the rebel Melus, who persuades them to join his endeavour.6 Despite differences in the detail, Amatus and William agree that the Normans arrived in Italy early (no later than 1017), initially as pilgrims. The situation is complicated, however, by the fact that two other earlier accounts, those of Adémar of Chabannes and Raoul Glaber writing north of the Alps, have the Normans come south at the behest of the pope, whom they’d met in Rome. Only thereafter did they join Melus’ rising.7
There are enough recurring features across these reports to encourage prudent speculation. Pilgrimage was becoming increasingly popular in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, and Norman involvement here is well attested. It’s quite likely that the Normans first became acquainted with southern Italy as pilgrims – and the shrine of the Archangel was a frequent staging post to the Holy Land. Likewise, it’s clear that these incomers soon became implicated in Melus’ revolt, perhaps with papal blessing (or even on papal instruction). It’s harder to know what to make of Amatus’ remarks about earlier Norman activity at Salerno. On the one hand, he’s unique in mentioning this; on the other, Amatus speaks as a Salernitan, and Salerno did boast a major Norman mercenary force in later years. In fact, a number of other Italian sources – some more garbled than others – record traditions of a Norman arrival just before (or after) the year 1000, so this is unlikely to be an outright invention.8
In the end, it would be wrong to look for a single moment of Norman settlement. Unlike in England, the conquest and settlement of Italy was a piecemeal affair. The earliest Normans came as mercenaries, only slowly putting down roots; and there was almost always more than one group active at a time. This process of settlement was well on its way by the 1030s and 1040s, when external observers such as Adémar and Glaber started to take note. It’s also around this time that the Hautevilles seem to have appeared. In this sense, Geoffrey of Malaterra is right to place the brothers at the start of his narrative. The Hautevilles may not have been the first Normans to come to the region, but their arrival marks a qualitative change in the nature of Norman activity. It was now that the incomers went from being occasional mercenaries to being lords and settlers in their own right.
The Normans encountered a very different social and political order to that of northern France. Southern Italy was composed of a complex web of political players, from the Byzantine governors in the south east and south west (Apulia and Calabria), to the Lombard princes of the north and west (Campania), to the Muslim amirs of Sicily. The Normans’ cause was aided by local social and political developments. The power of the Lombard principalities of Capua and Salerno was ebbing in favour of that of the landed aristocracy.9 The Byzantine Empire was entering a phase of decline, as large swathes of Asia Minor (the old imperial heartlands) were lost to the Seljuk Turks.10 As a consequence, the local governors (or catepans) of Italy were often left isolated and underfunded. Similar processes were under way in Sicily. Such divisions played into the hands of the Normans. Not only did they ensure a ready market for their martial skills (the Normans were still first and foremost mercenaries), but they made any co-ordinated response difficult.
Still, it’s important not to exaggerate the importance of early Norman settlement in Italy. Norman mercenaries constituted but a small part of Melus’ force in 1017/18; and even once they entered Lombard service thereafter, they did so as auxiliaries. Only in 1030 was the first permanent base established, by a certain Rainulf at Aversa under the auspices of the local Lombard prince, Guaimar IV. Further Norman incursions were then enabled by a fresh round of revolts against Byzantine authority in the early 1040s. One of the leaders of these, a dissident Lombard officer named Arduin, who’d previously led Norman mercenaries in the Byzantine army, inflicted a series of major defeats on the imperial forces. The Normans were just one element in his army, though a more significant one than in Melus’ revolt. After initial victories under Arduin, the Normans transferred their allegiance, first to the Lombard lord Atenulf, then to Argyros, the son of Melus. Argyros himself soon turned coat, perhaps realising the Normans posed a greater threat than his old Byzantine overlords. In response, the Normans now decided to go it alone, electing William de Hauteville – later known as ‘Ironarm’ – as their leader. No longer would they serve Lombard lords and Byzantine rebels; now the Normans were their own masters.
Before this point, we know little of William and his brothers. Malaterra reports that they’d served under the Lombard princes of Capua and Salerno in the 1030s. They almost certainly joined Rainulf’s settlement at Aversa and were part of a scion of Aversa Normans that joined a Byzantine expedition to retake Sicily from the increasingly divided Saracens in 1038.11 (It was in this connection that the Hautevilles encountered Arduin, who would draw them into revolt against the Byzantines a few years later.) William de Hauteville was thus an established presence within the Norman ranks; and by Malaterra’s (admittedly encomiastic) report, he gained considerable acclaim for his actions in Sicily. When the time came to elect a leader in 1042, William was the natural choice.
It’s clear that many of the Aversa Normans had been chomping at the bit to carve out their own territories; and Rainulf was more than happy to see the back of the Hautevilles and their men in 1038 and again in early 1041. Yet as such actions reveal, the Italian Normans were still far from unified. Unlike in England, where conquest was planned and directed by a single will, in Italy it evolved slowly and organically from a series of loosely associated initiatives. Some men first came as pilgrims, others as mercenaries; some wanted land, others were (for the time) happy to make do with financial reward. No-one set out to conquer the south, and it was only a confluence of unforeseen circumstances which led to this result.
William’s election in 1042 was an essential step along the way. It marked a first tentative move towards independence for those Normans who’d participated in the revolts against Byzantine authority in Apulia. They still deferred to Rainulf of Aversa on some matters. But it was now clear that they would pursue their own interests, if needs be against Rainulf and their erstwhile Salernitan allies. Their ambitions were evidently growing – and the Hautevilles were the most ambitious of all of them.
That the count was no more than first among equals, however, is reflected in the nature of his election. As Amatus notes, this was part of a much wider territorial settlement. Twelve other leading Norman barons are mentioned in this connection, each of whom was assigned authority over a town or region. These ranged from William’s younger brother Drogo, who was given Venosa (William’s future resting place), to the family’s future rival Peter, son of Amicus, who received Trani. The division itself was less a matter of rewarding loyal service than a programme of conquest, since many of the lordships lay outside Norman hands at this point.
These events thus stand at the start of the Norman conquest proper. Initial progress in the following years was slow. The Normans held on to their base at Melfi, along with other cities taken in the early 1040s, but were able to add little more. In 1044, William decided to change tack, leading an expedition into Calabria, where he established a new outpost at Scribla. The following year, Drogo is reported to have secured Bovino, opening the way into the Capitanata in central to eastern Apulia. Incursions were also now starting to be made into the Lombard principality of Benevento to the west.
In late 1045, however, William fell ill and died in the winter months. His death was a major blow to the Hauteville clan, but had little discernible effect on the course of Norman conquest and settlement. William’s oversight during the past four years had been largely nominal, so a change of leader was little cause for concern. Moreover, in his brother Drogo, William had an obvious successor. Drogo had come to Italy with William in the 1030s and was already one of the leading men in the Norman camp at the time of the 1042 settlement. He was now able to inherit his brother’s mantle. The situation remained fragile, however. The Normans only held parts of Apulia and a small toehold in Calabria; a Byzantine revival remained very much on the cards. Nor could the danger posed by the Lombard princes be ignored. The Apulian Normans remained nominally under the authority of Guaimar IV of Salerno, who’d yet to flex his muscles. Still, William’s achievements were considerable. He’d united the Normans and given them purpose. The only question was whether his brothers would prove worthy of William’s legacy.