Count Bohemond

by Alfred Duggan

  Bohemond felt vaguely sorry for all those noble stark corpses. A pity they had to be killed; if they had asked for quarter he would have granted it. But there had been nothing else to be done with them. They would not run away, they would not yield, they just went on swinging their great axes until the arrows struck them down. Obstinate men, and after all it was what they were paid for. He would have a Mass said for their souls, here in this roofless chapel. Bohemond contributed generously to the support of religion, and already a great number of Masses had been offered for the repose of the souls of his enemies.

  His father and stepmother sought him out where he mused among the corpses. They were in high spirits, and he remembered to congratulate Sigelgaita on her gallantry. “I enjoyed myself,” she answered. “It was fun. I wish I could do it more often, but all those confounded babies kept me at home.”

  “You won the battle for us, my dear,” said her proud husband. “I shall make sure the jongleurs get the story right, so that everyone knows it. But now that the battle is won, what shall we do next? There is no army to oppose us, no army to defend Romania. We can chase Alexius all the way to the city, and plunder his dominions in Europe. There’s a lot of good plunder to the south and east.”

  “We must stay here and make sure of Durazzo,” Bohemond answered at once. “We can hold that place once it’s ours, but if we ride on to plunder Thrace they will chase us back again after a year or two. Even this battle has weakened Durazzo. Palaeologus and the Greek nobles of the garrison rode out to link up with the Emperor, and they never had a chance to get back again. There can be no one but Venetians inside it.”

  “Those Greeks did muddle their battle, didn’t they?” Guiscard chuckled. “Their timing went wrong on every move. It’s the mistake they all make, even Alexius who is better than most of them. They can’t really remember, when the crunch comes, that their troops are barbarian mercenaries. They imagine they have only to issue an order and it will be obeyed. They always move too fast or too slow. But that infantry bodyguard was a nasty surprise, eh? There was a time when I thought they had us beat. Clever of you to change direction after you had started your charge.” “I remembered something I had heard about the battle in England,” Bohemond explained. “Mailed foot can’t move if you threaten to charge them, and then archers can shoot them down. Luckily our cross-bows were brave enough to come close. But what a muddle it was, even on our side. Half my knights galloped off where they were no use at all, and the cross-bows on your flank never shot an arrow from first to last. I wish I could lead an army where every man did what he was told. Only ten years ago there was an army like that, here in Romania. It’s maddening to think it was destroyed before I could see it. How on earth did the Turks beat it?”

  “That was treachery, my boy, or so they say. If the second in command wants to overthrow his Emperor more than he wants to beat the foe the best army in the world will get beaten. But you’ve got to admire one thing in those Greeks, they never give in. Young Alexius has no native army at all, but with one thing and another he manages to keep his end up.”

  “He keeps his end up with money. When that is spent he will be finished,” said Bohemond with relish. “He can’t go on for ever, hiring Venetians and Patzinaks.”

  “I enjoyed fighting his bodyguard,” Sigelgaita murmured dreamily. “What a pity he lives so far off.”

  “The city is far away, but one day I shall go there,” said Bohemond with sudden decision. “I want to get into Anatolia, where they used to recruit those wonderful soldiers. The same kind of men must be living there now, if only we could drive back the Turks. Think what an army it would be, Greeks led by Normans. The man who had an army like that could be greater than Charlemagne.” “It’s too difficult,” said Guiscard, shaking his head mournfully. “No Frank can cope with those artful Greeks. You remember that fellow Roussel I told you about? He did well for a time until he was poisoned by a Greek, more or less by accident in the course of some Greek feud. Come to think of it, Alexius was mixed up in that, before he was Emperor. For a Greek, he knows rather a lot about Franks.”

  “No need to make plans now,” said Bohemond. “We must stay here until Durazzo falls, and that may be a long way ahead.”

  In February 1082 the defenders of Durazzo yielded on terms, after an honourable resistance of more than eight months. They were permitted to withdraw to Venice with their ships, baggage and arms, and the town was not sacked. Even after this long battering the walls were little damaged, and the Venetians claimed that hunger had compelled them to surrender. But a few timely bags of Apulian silver had helped them to make up their minds. The Venetians were honest mercenaries, who gave good value for money. They had earned their pay from Alexius, and if they took a little present from his enemies as well that was only common prudence. The Apulians loaded their baggage on mules and rode off down the great road to drive Alexius from his base at Salonica.

  It was a pleasant march. They saw no Greek troops though local bandits could be dangerous. Romania was an empty land of tall mountains separated by wide valleys. Walled towns were rare, though where they existed their walls were strong. But their governors, used to constant revolution, were usually willing to admit the Apulians provided they levied an orderly ransom instead of promiscuous plunder. By May they had reached Castoria and there was still no Greek army in the field.

  In Castoria a messenger reached them from Italy with important news. Guiscard summoned Bohemond and Sigelgaita to talk it over in private.

  “Alexius deserves his wealth,” he said with a rueful grimace. “He knows how to use it. There are half a dozen rebellions in Apulia. The rebels hire all the soldiers they need, I suppose with Greek silver. I hate to leave here while things are going so well, but I ought to get back. There’s another reason too, a secret one. The Pope wants me. The German Emperor is making trouble again. We must help the Pope when he calls on us, remember that, Bohemond. The Pope’s friendship is the only thing that keeps us even moderately respectable. Without it we would be nothing but land-pirates. So I must go, and of course my dear wife will come with me. But perhaps we need not wind up this lucrative foray. Bohemond, could you stay here with most of the troops, and keep the pot boiling until I return?”

  Chapter III - Bohemond Against Alexius

  Bohemond was then in his twenty-eighth year; so naturally as soon as he was on his own he changed the plan of campaign his father had laid down for his guidance. Instead of marching down the great road that led to Salonica and then to the city, the road by which Alexius expected him, he turned south to conquer a Greek province. Romania was a good land to rule. The Greeks were accustomed to paying heavy taxes, in cash, to some arbitrary tyrant who had been appointed in the city, and who gave the provincials nothing in return for their tribute. They were quite glad to pay money to a Norman instead, who hanged thieves and chased away Sclavonian brigands. Bohemond thought it more prudent to take some of the empire, and keep it, rather than ride on with the bare chance of sacking the great city if all went well.

  While he was blockading Janina he got word that Alexius had broken camp. Greek peasants willingly brought information, once it was known that he paid well for it. To them any marching soldier was an enemy; their only hope of surviving military requisition was to gather silver coins and bury them.

  It seemed that Alexius brought no great force with him. The mercenary army scattered last autumn outside Durazzo had been replaced only by a few bands of Patzinaks. Patzinaks were cheap, and there were always plenty of them seeking wages; but they would not fight hand-to-hand, because that was not their custom at home.

  Alexius, therefore, would not force a battle. But he would not have left his secure base at Salonica unless he intended to break the blockade of Janina. He must be going to try one of those cunning Greek dodges.

  But a secret weapon is little use if it must be handled by untrustworthy mercenaries. A patrol of Patzinaks came into the Apulian camp with information for sale, and after a
little trouble in finding a competent interpreter Bohemond was forewarned.

  On an open grassy plain south of the town Alexius led a fullscale attack, though his men followed him without enthusiasm. When he had probed the Apulian line of battle and discovered its flanks he launched a sudden charge of scythed chariots.

  Chariots had gone out with the Trojan War, as a cultivated clerk remarked to Bohemond. Even so they might have worked if the Apulians had not been expecting them. Each was drawn by four horses abreast, the scythes were sharp, and to make them more frightening each had inside it a flaming brazier. Perhaps the horses of the Apulian knights would have bolted rather than face them. As it was, cross-bows shot them down.

  Alexius withdrew, with few casualties but great loss to his reputation. Soon afterwards Janina surrendered on the usual terms. Bohemond was elated. He was doing better than his father. This campaign seemed very easy. He led his army southward and laid siege to Arta.

  Alexius still kept the field, though he dared not launch another attack. He was a gallant warrior, who did not seem to know when he was beaten. But what could he do? His army was just not fit to meet the Apulians in the open field.

  He could do quite a lot, Bohemond discovered. His presence was a tiresome handicap. Knowing that their emperor was in the neighbourhood the garrison of Arta fought with great devotion, confident that he would find some way to rescue them. He would have to be driven right away.

  The Apulians found him holding a strong position on a ridge, his whole front entrenched. He seemed anxious to stay and fight it out, so Bohemond gave orders for an attack next morning. Then, luckily, as he tossed on his bed during the night before the battle, he smelt a rat.

  Why did the emperor stand his ground, at the head of such a puny and discredited army? Because he wanted to be attacked where he stood. A wise man never does what his enemy wants of him.

  By dawn he was inspecting the field. There would be an ambush farther back, of course, because Alexius was fond of ambushes; though so far they had done him no good. As well as the morning mist allowed he searched the ground in front of the enemy for pits and mantraps. The turf had not been disturbed, and it was fair going for heavy horses. But the whole shape of the enemy line, the way the archers were drawn up on the flanks with the few mailed horse and the best of the Patzinaks massed in the centre, showed that the Greeks expected him to charge in the usual Frankish manner: with his knights in the centre and his cross-bows on the wings. Very well, he would do just the opposite.

  It took a lot of explaining, and some pushing and shoving; for no one else in his army could understand what he wanted to do. But in the end he was ready to advance with his foot massed in the centre and his horse divided into two wings.

  After the Greeks had fled he discovered that the ground in the centre of their position, where they had expected the Frankish charge, had been sown with caltrops. If he had done the usual thing the Greek archers would have shot down all his horses.

  Alexius had lost his second army within two years. With only a small escort he fled right back to the city; Salonica was already too near the Apulian advance.

  But when Arta surrendered the season was very late; instead of returning north to the great road Bohemond led his army eastwards to the town of Trikala, where they found warm winter quarters.

  Soon after Christmas came cheerful news from Guiscard. In Italy all was going well. His father added, as something to bear in mind during this joyful season, that in all Christendom there were only two emperors: during the Christmas of 1082 Robert Guiscard, son of a simple knight from Hauteville, had been chasing the German Emperor Henry; and Bohemond, son of Robert, had been chasing the Greek Emperor Alexius. That would be something for their descendants to remember.

  As soon as the grass began to grow Bohemond moved east to besiege Larissa. That was the last barrier before the coast of the Aegean; as soon as he had conquered it, and collected a fleet, the way would be clear to Constantinople.

  But during the winter that undaunted Alexius had hired yet a third army. Word came that he was marching westward, ready to fight before Larissa fell.

  “He’s a good man, almost as brave as a Norman,” Bohemond remarked to his captains. “It seems a shame to beat him again and again, and kill more of his mercenaries. Yet what else can we do when he won’t give in? I wish he had the sense to do a deal with us. I wonder what he would say if I suggested that he keep the city, and Thrace, and what the Turks have left of Anatolia; and let us have Salonica and everything to the west of it? That’s all I want, at least for the moment. I don’t think my father, or any other Norman for that matter, could govern Constantinople.”

  “Alexius is willing to part with some of his land,” said John of Brienne, a well-born Frenchman who was second in command. “I had a letter from him today, or the spy said it came from him. He offers me Arta and a good fief round about if I will desert you to join him. I can’t think of a polite answer, and I don’t want to insult a brave man. So I shan’t answer at all.”

  “It does sound a dirty business,” said Bohemond in answer to the look of disgust on Brienne’s face. “But these Greeks have different standards. They buy traitors. It doesn’t follow that they themselves can be bought. How much did they offer you, Aulps?”

  “I haven’t heard from them. Is that because they think I am not worth buying? That’s another kind of insult. Should I be annoyed by it?”

  Peter of Aulps led the cross-bows, though in rank he was a knight. He was a simple and greedy mercenary, though a competent commander.

  Bohemond kept his eyes on the ground. Spies had warned him that Alexius might be trying to buy Brienne; but they said there had been two messages, the other for Aulps. If Aulps chose not to report it he might have been tempted. He was a man who yielded easily to temptation. Well, the best way to guard against desertion was to win the next battle. Aulps would never desert to the losing side, and if he did his men would not follow him. But it must all be kept in mind.

  Towards the end of April Alexius again challenged battle. It was all as it had been before. Bohemond led the Apulian horse against a cloud of Patzinaks, while on the wings his cross-bows skirmished with the Greek foot. This time Alexius was not in the front line. As the knights chased the timid Patzinaks they encountered him some way back. He charged from the flank with a body of light horse, in one of his usual ambushes. The Apulians thought little of it. Alexius placed his ambushes cleverly, but what was the good of that when the men he led would not charge home?

  This time, however, they did charge home, against the unshielded right side of the Franks. They were a new breed of mercenary, heathen Turks from the far east. Although they rode light ponies and wore armour of leather instead of iron, they carried sharp slashing sabres and were willing to use them. Their charge halted the Franks, and then the Patzinaks turned about and began shooting in earnest. After a good many horses and some men had been disabled Bohemond decided to retire. Meanwhile Russian axemen had charged the Apulian cross-bows and got rather the better of the encounter.

  A straggling disorganized fight, covering a great deal of ground, continued until nightfall. Bohemond could never see in one glance all that was going on, though Peter of Aulps did not seem to be pulling his weight. There was never any danger of a rout; but each Apulian detachment in turn found it necessary to fall back to keep in touch with their comrades. For once the complicated Greek system of tactics seemed to work out better than the simple Frankish charge.

  When darkness fell the Apulians were still in one body and willing to go on fighting. But they had been pushed well north of Larissa, so that the siege was raised. Worst of all, a band of Turkish horse overran their camp, and they had lost the plunder of two successful campaigns. Most of their Italian servants got away while the enemy was pillaging, but of course all their Greek foragers and concubines and grooms stayed behind to join the winning side.

  Luckily the night was warm and dry as Bohemond led his defeated and hungr
y army northward in the general direction of Durazzo.

  In Trikala they found food, but they burned the place from sheer spite as they retired from it. After that the retreat continued in growing misery. In a strange land they must go back by the roads they knew, though during the advance their foragers had taken all the available food and now they had no native foragers. Turks and Patzinaks followed close behind. The paychest had been lost in the captured camp, and unpaid cross-bows grumbled. After a few days Aulps deserted, though most of his men remained faithful for fear that the Greeks would murder them. Bohemond discovered that war on the losing side could be a very unpleasant experience. He did his best to encourage the troops. Brienne remained loyal, which helped; but Alexius published the letters in which he had offered him great rewards, so that many common soldiers suspected that he was about to betray them. Some troopers went over to the Greeks, who paid punctually; many others just went home to get away from such an unlucky war.

  By the time they reached the Adriatic the Apulian army was very much smaller. Alexius was too cautious to follow, but they found an enemy waiting for them. The energetic Venetians had come back again to lay siege to Durazzo. Bohemond found safe and warm winter quarters in Valona. But in the spring of 1084 he despaired and sailed home to Apulia.

  By autumn of the same year the Hautevilles were back again. It was their settled policy, on which their prestige rested, never to give in. Robert Guiscard had made his name by his four-year siege of Bari, and he would batter at the ports of Illyria until they were firmly his. To show that he was in earnest he brought with him most of his family: not only Bohemond and Sigelgaita, but three of Sigelgaita’s sons, Roger and Robert and Guy. After a great buffeting by autumn gales they reached, in December, the island of Corfu where the Venetians were besieging the port.