In truth, blood boiling, Alexius had ignored his duties. All around him his host was breaking up and brave men were dying for want of a command that would save their lives and maybe aid them to fight another day. Wiping the stream of blood from his face, Alexius ordered the trumpets to sound the retreat, telling his soldiers to break contact and seek safety, which was only achieved by his own personal example. The Byzantine Emperor, in Greek the autokrator, rode time and again into danger to personally command his men to fall back and to lead them to a place where they could disengage, the order then to begin the tramp back to the East.
Robert de Hauteville kept up only enough pressure to make them run and soon it was his turn to sound the horns that would bring his host to a halt — all except those trying to capture George Palaeologus and stop him from getting back inside the walls of Durazzo. In the end that was only partially successful, Palaeologus being forced to retire with his brother-in-law, leaving the city without its best defender. Not that the Guiscard was disheartened; with no possibility of relief the fall of Durazzo was only a matter of time, while between him and the imperial capital there was nothing left to oppose him.
So tenacious was the defence, the siege of Durazzo went on for four more months, and while they were fighting to overcome those walls, Alexius, as well as trying to raise another army, was employing that well-worn Byzantine tactic of spreading trouble using a seemingly bottomless supply of treasury gold. Added to that the Apulian traitors got out of Durazzo and across the Adriatic without being intercepted and once there, with money and discontent to distribute, they had fomented yet another uprising, which broke out just after Durazzo fell and the Apulian army had begun to march up the Via Egnatia, with Sichelgaita insisting that Borsa needed help to contain it.
‘Let us see how good my son and heir is,’ Robert barked. ‘He will have to leave off counting my treasure and learn to employ his lance.’
Sichelgaita was not a person to be shouted at without replying in kind. ‘All you have to do is show yourself, husband, lop off a few heads, and the revolt will collapse.’
‘Are you mad, woman? I have Alexius Comnenus by the throat.’
‘What use an empire if you cannot hold your dukedoms?’
‘You wanted Borsa to be tested, this is his chance to show his mettle.’
‘You must send him the means.’
‘I will, Sichelgaita, I’ll send him my best general — you!’
In the end the Guiscard relented and sent Sichelgaita back with two hundred lances under Reynard of Eu; his jest to send Bohemund to command them was not a tease much appreciated. Having garrisoned Durazzo he set off east for Kastoria, the site of another impressive castle and one that he was told had been left in the hands of Alexius’s best remaining troops, with another sturdy and clever commander to hold it. In truth, these men surrendered the castle as soon as he demanded they do so, leading everyone in his army to assume the Empire was collapsing so rapidly it would fall into Apulian hands like a ripe apple in a high wind.
Robert de Hauteville had enjoyed good fortune throughout his life, but there had been setbacks too and, just as he thought he had the greatest of prizes in his grasp, it was snatched from him by both his duty and a greater threat. First, the revolt in Apulia was too dangerous to be left to Sichelgaita, but there was worse to follow. The call came from Pope Gregory demanding that he, as a papal vassal, come to the rescue of Rome, threatened by an imperial army led by Henry IV, bringing with him in his train the imperial antipope.
If it had just been Gregory, the Guiscard would have been tempted to leave him to his fate, but it was not. Jordan of Capua had deserted Rome and sworn allegiance to Henry, creating that combination of foes that always threatened the de Hauteville position. With nothing to fear from Capua the Eternal City might fall and Robert could not countenance Henry in possession of Rome, and nor could he have on the throne of the Supreme Pontiff a pope who would question the validity of his titles and might act to remove him.
Alexius Comnenus and Constantinople would have to wait. Handing over command to Bohemund, with an instruction to keep up the pressure without risking the host, Robert de Hauteville, with a heavy heart, headed back for Durazzo.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
If Bohemund commanded his father’s army, he did not command the resources required to sustain in the field. At first, this did not constrain him; he continued the advance and inflicted several defeats on the Emperor, as well as the Byzantine forces that Alexius managed to cobble together, taking control of Macedonia and moving on into Thessaly and near to the border with Thrace. Yet it was here he found he lacked the support that would have allowed him to press further forward; indeed some of his best lances were being drained away to help his sire, underlining the fact that the provinces of Apulia and Calabria were proving difficult to pacify, while the Saracen contingent had returned to Count Roger in Sicily.
If the ducal attention was fixed first and foremost on his domains, matters further north did not do anything to ease Robert de Hauteville’s concerns, which further impacted on his son. News filtered through from Durazzo that Henry IV was no longer prepared to be the Emperor-elect; he had entered Rome with his army, chased Pope Gregory into the Castel St Angelo and was awaiting a synod of high clerics that would agree to his being crowned with the diadem of Charlemagne. Instead of supporting Bohemund with money and men, the Duke of Apulia was busy raising a host at home with the intention of rescuing Gregory.
Both father and son also faced the effect of Byzantine gold: as much as money was generously disbursed to suborn the Apulian rebels, it had been used to finance the position of Henry IV to the tune of half a million gold pieces, both entities able to draw off the Guiscard from his intentions towards Byzantium. In contrast, the army led by Bohemund was being starved of funds and that led to discontent, which in turn dangerously lowered morale. Surveying his forces before the city of Larissa, Bohemund knew it lacked the power, in both numbers and in spirit, with which it had set out from the Adriatic coast. Yet he was still confident; opposing him once more was Alexius Comnenus and he had lost every battle since and including Durazzo, so it was therefore safe to assume his troops were never happy when facing an enemy to whom they had so regularly had to grant victory.
A good general learns from such defeats and Alexius had extracted much upon which to ponder at the two victories Bohemund had inflicted on him at Yannina and Arta; his foot soldiers could not stand against the Norman charge, so much more powerful now that they used their lances couched instead of loose — when the point made contact with a shield, it had behind it so much weight and power that no man could keep his feet, so his infantry line was being bowled aside rather than beaten back by bloody slaughter.
To counter that, Alexius lined up his foot soldiers at the base of a steep hill and now it was he who stood on the defensive, knowing that to progress at all, and given the state of his forces, Bohemund would be required to attack. At the sound of the horns the Byzantine infantry, under the command of their captains, began to step backwards onto that slope, though keeping their face to the enemy so that they would come on. This the massed conroys did but by the time they reached their enemy they had retired enough of a distance that the Normans were forced to ride uphill, which took all the momentum out of their charge. This allowed the shield wall to maintain its footing, despite repeated attempts to break it down.