Mercenaries

by Jack Ludlow

  Hardrada had taken service with the guard on his way back from Jerusalem, and rose by sheer ability to the command. It was they who would lead the army to besiege Messina, the first objective, because it would provide, given its harbour and the proximity to the mainland, a secure base for supplies and reinforcements; Maniakes could safely advance from there on to the major emirates of Syracuse and Palermo.

  ‘I would wager it is the Varangians and us who will do the work,’ said Drogo, as he watched them pass, heading for Messina, their axes across their shoulders.

  ‘I’m glad they are on our side,’ William replied, and he meant it; these were the very same axemen who had defeated the last great Lombard revolt, including Rainulf and his brother, at Cannae.

  As the last axeman passed, William fell in behind them, followed by the companies he now commanded.

  It looked as if it would take a year to subdue Messina – it was a city of great strength which had been given much time to prepare – a siege of starvation more than relentless attack or enemy sortie. The sea was blocked to them, so few supplies could get through to the city, and that was a situation in which mounted Norman warriors, doing no more than foraging, were wasted, though it took William several months to persuade George Maniakes of this. He was a difficult man to like: a good general maybe, but a man of sudden temper, so convinced of his own superiority that he saw helpful suggestion as disagreement.

  ‘Let me take my men and ravage the countryside.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  William replied with an exasperated growl. ‘We are of little use here if you are not going to try to breach the walls. Every day we hear rumours of forces being gathered to oppose us.’

  ‘Rumours,’ Maniakes trumpeted, looking down at William. ‘As if these Saracens can ever agree to combine, they’re worse than Lombards.’

  William would have agreed they were little different when it came to tribal loyalty, but that did not obviate the possibility. ‘Left alone they will.’

  ‘You are paid, are you not?’ Maniakes growled. ‘Be content with that.’

  ‘My men are fighters and they want more than just pay. If you keep them here they will grow feeble, and when you do need them, when we move from here and perhaps meet an army in the field, you will require them at their best.’

  ‘I command here, de Hauteville.’

  It annoyed William, the way Maniakes used his name; it annoyed Drogo even more, which was why he had been left out of this meeting. Big as Maniakes was, Drogo would still try to fell him. Yet he was right, he was the general in command, able to manage the endless trouble he had with his Apulian, Calbrian and Bulgar levies and keep his army tight as a fighting unit. William did not want to add to his difficulties, to seem insubordinate. He knew, even if he had never personally experienced it, that an army could quickly fall apart if the leadership was not stable.

  ‘No one disputes that, George Maniakes, but I command my men. You have your Varangians, who are great fighters, and your Apulian and Bulgar sheep to hold the lines. The garrison shows no sign of emerging to take issue, but if they do, let the axemen deal with them.’

  ‘I will consider it.’

  That having been said with reluctance, William knew he had to press. ‘What are the Messina garrison praying for?’

  ‘Divine intervention,’ Maniakes hooted. ‘They hope their prophet will send a ball of fire to destroy us.’

  ‘No. They hope to see you drawn off by the combined force of the other Saracen emirs, Abdullah in particular, and if you just sit here that might happen. Let us Normans guarantee your back, George Maniakes, and take away hope from the city we are besieging. It is the only thing sustaining them.’

  ‘I cannot do without good cavalry. Just because they have not emerged to fight does not mean it will never happen. You lack experience, de Hauteville, while I do not. In my Syrian campaigns…’

  Maniakes was off, listing his victories again, as well as his genius for tactics and strategy, a litany that William knew would brook no interruption. It was like the high spring tides feeding the salt pans back home on the Contentin coast: you just had to wait for them to recede, but it did give the listener the lever he needed. If this giant was so full of himself, it would be better to feed his vanity than counter it.

  ‘Then let us lead them out a company at a time, a hundred lances, and you, George Maniakes, who know so much more about fighting than I, will tell us where you want us to go.’

  No great genius was required to fix the locations that needed to be subdued, the first being Rometta, sat on a high hill surrounded by mountains, the nearest fortress and littoral large enough to sustain a gathering army. Yet William knew he needed more than a hundred lances to attack such an obstacle, so instead he went for the next important target, the beach below Bàusu, a place where reinforcements could land from anywhere in Sicily or North Africa, and a location close enough to Messina to pose a threat from sudden raids.

  Part of what he learnt on that journey was the suitability of the terrain for small-scale operations of the kind he was engaged in. The country was high hills and deep fertile valleys with few plains of any size to support a large mobile force, but it was well watered, so that and pasture were plentiful, which meant mounted men could move with speed and safety without having to carry too much in the way of fodder or food, the greatest constraint on cavalry mobility.

  The local population, being Sicilian, had a jaundiced view of armed strangers; in their time they had seen too many invaders to care as long as they were left to till their fields and tend their vines, groves and orchards. Where he might have expected loyalty to a local overlord there was none; the Saracens had cleansed the land of the previous Greek/Byzantine nobility and, as long as they paid what was due in tribute, the new suzerains left the peasants in peace. The advantage of peasant indifference was that he could move without his opponents being forewarned, with the obvious connected fact that they, too, could do the same. The Sicilian peasant would no more warn him of approaching danger than a Saracen!

  If the terrain, plus his determination to stay off the skyline, made the route to Bàusu torturous, imposing frequent halts along the way, it also meant that when they got close there was no risk of their mounts being blown by being pushed too far. William, without surcoat or mail, having set sentinels on the surrounding hills, went ahead on foot with a small bodyguard to reconnoitre the town.

  He was careful to avoid being sighted and identified from the watchtower which covered the long open bay, getting close enough to see that the beach was full of small vessels and that from the west, a steady stream of supplies – grain, fruit and the like – was being brought in both by larger boats and, over the narrow roadway in the hills, by donkeys. Yet there was no sign of serious forces to oppose him: his enemies had either grown complacent or were encamped elsewhere.

  ‘Some of that has to be for Messina.’

  ‘The siege?’

  William barely glanced at the man who had posed that question; no siege was watertight. Laziness, stupidity, indifference and ineptitude meant they leaked, but the greatest source of secret supply would be bribes. Some the ship’s captains Stephen Calaphates had under his command would, for not very much money, turn a blind eye at night to local boats smuggling supplies into Messina. Such trickles of what would be seen as luxuries to a population on short commons helped to keep up the spirits of those who controlled the city. To deny them such, when hope was the weapon which sustained them, was worth a dozen battailes.

  Yet it was also a place where a force could gather and be supplied, exactly the kind of thing about which he had spoken to George Maniakes, and some of those supplies would be for them. There was no doubt in William’s mind that he could stop the present flow, but he did not have with him enough men to hold the place in the middle of hostile terrain. That such a thing might be needed in future had to be left to that; his task was to destroy what was here now, so the leaders of Messina would find this lifeli
ne cut and the enemy soldiery likewise. He had another notion, but it was one which would have to wait until Bàusu had been destroyed.

  Back in his encampment his men were eating dried strips of beef and fruit; no fires or cooking could be allowed and, once he had fed himself, William called together those in command of the various convoys to outline the tasks he had for each one. The first would depart by moon and starlight to cut the road to the west, the most likely route by which any relieving force could approach; others would, after he had begun his assault, block the two trails out of Bàusu he had identified to ensure no one escaped. William needed time to do what was required.

  That night, they slept in their mail, swords close by, as they had done since leaving the siege works of Messina, under the stars, close to their snuffling and snorting mounts tied in lines. William did the rounds of the sentries himself to ensure they stayed awake and oversaw the first change. He slept little and was up before the first of his sleeping knights stirred. On a day in which they knew they would be fighting prayers were said first, the ritual each man followed of commending his soul to God, the first convoy mounting and departing long before the sun had touched the horizon.

  They were tasked to ride quickly, so as to be astride the trail before the first traveller appeared. William led his remaining men more slowly forward on foot, horses softly plodding on the rein, seeking forest cover where it could be found, aware that if the men on the watchtowers were alert they would see, even in nothing but the prevailing gloom, that something substantial was disturbing the birds in the trees, yet without sight they would be unsure if it was a friend or a foe.

  The point was reached where subterfuge no longer served, so William had his men mount, set themselves and their lances, and with a war cry that had struck fear into the hearts of half of Europe, kicked his horse into a fast trot on to what remained of a roadway, for the town which overlooked the beach. The folk lived by the sun and not the lamp, so most were still asleep, so he caught the whole town unawares. Certainly half-dressed men emerged to fight, but on foot, faced with lances and swords from men mounted, they were cut down in their doorways.

  William wanted to control the beach, to ensure that no boat, not even the smallest used for fishing, got away, and that required they dismount. Shouting his commands, he formed his men up into an unbroken line, then began to march back up towards the line of buildings through which they had just charged. Like every tiny Sicilian town, Bàusu was a maze of narrow alleys into which he did not want to go, for in such constrained areas a mailed knight lost the value of his sword and became at the mercy of the knife.

  The locals either slammed their doors in the hope of being ignored or fled in panic up the surrounding hills looking for safety, and some Saracens joined them. The latter ran into the Normans blocking the trails and if they were unarmed they were merely herded. The odd one, armed, was not and they, on the orders of William de Hauteville, were in receipt of no mercy. They suffered the same fate as any caught still in the town; he had too few men to think of leniency.

  The remnants of the Saracens made for the mosque, the only substantial building they felt they could defend, and there they died either fighting or pleading for mercy as William and his men cut them down. That complete, the bodies were collected and placed inside before they fired the building. Remounted, men were sent to bring in the pack animals, a strong party to attack the watchtower – now with a flaming, smoking beacon on the crenellated roof – to take it if they could, to ensure no one got away if they could not.

  Before the sun was fully up, the Normans had complete control and the destruction of the town could begin: houses, storerooms, the small warehouses. The only building not torched after being plundered was the Orthodox church in which the remaining Sicilians had taken refuge. Inside, William de Hauteville, in a halting combination of Latin and Greek, was questioning the locals as to what they knew of the surrounding countryside and how they carried out the smuggling into Messina, and he was not gentle, time being short.

  He was not naïve enough to think that no enemy had got clear, nor that he would get back to Messina without incurring danger. News would spread that a Norman force held Bàusu, and the tocsin would sound to gather a force to retake it, but how far away would they be, how much time did he have?

  Some of the men he questioned owned the boats on the beach and they were the ones who made their living smuggling. Faced with a sharp knife at their throats they were only too willing to tell him what he needed to know. When he felt he had exhausted the chances of more information, he could calculate what he had to do. First, every boat on the beach must be put to the torch. Next he must get his men and animals together, then fed and watered. That done they must be off on the shortest route back to the safety of the siege line.

  The town was smouldering by the time they departed, each man leading a horse weighed down with any booty they could carry, everything else having been destroyed. At the top of every rise they could see beacons burning on the hillsides and they had to assume that the whole countryside was alerted. The temptation to push the mounts without mercy had to be avoided, given a blown animal was useless if they needed to fight.

  They were walking through rows of vines when the first horsemen appeared, not enough to trouble them, a mere six riders, but it was worrying that on every hilltop over which they rode they stopped to wave the pennant on their lances; a bluff possibly, but also they might be signalling to a superior force heading for a place where they knew they could cut them off. Though the horses were far from rested, William had his men remount and set off at a trot to see what those trailing them would do and, when nothing changed, he began to look for a clear field in which to fight.

  Tancred had always told him, ‘If you can’t avoid a fight, choose the ground on which to have it. Never let your enemy do that.’ What he needed was an area in which he could properly deploy, one where he could stand and force the enemy to come to him, but at the same time he had to ensure that by doing so he was not allowing his opponents time to bring up overwhelming force.

  It was a calculation with which William was comfortable, relying as it did on the same mental processes he had used at Bessancourt. Nothing in war is certain, that was another one of his father’s doctrines. You had to make judgements based on what you knew and what you suspected, and William de Hauteville was working on two assumptions: the first that, given the time, only so much force could be gathered to range against him, the second being that they would be Saracens who had never faced Normans. They would not know what to expect.

  ‘Tie up the packhorses,’ he ordered as they emerged from an orchard into a broad valley of green fields left fallow, not very long, but bounded on both sides by quite steep hillsides. Then he dismounted himself, but hauled hard on his horse’s head to stop him grazing. No horse works well on a full belly and the last thing he wanted was his mount thinking of pasture when he should be thinking of that for which he had been trained.

  Whoever he was going to have to fight would now come to him, and since he intended to give battle straight away it would be their horses that would be fatigued. If the force was too numerous it would be necessary to break through them; let the Saracens have the booty. If the force was less or equal he would seek to destroy them. Having sent two men up each side of the valley as lookouts he addressed the rest, all of whom were making sure their horses’ heads never got to the tempting grass at their hooves.

  ‘It’s about time these Saracens saw what Normans can do, and if they are better than we, then say goodbye to everything we have plundered today.’

  That set up a growl; these men would fight doubly hard to keep their booty. William went to his own pack animal and rummaged in the pannier, pulling out the blue and white pennant his father had given him which, when opened, showed a chequer set across it.

  ‘These are my family colours. Today, these are the ones you will follow.’

  The shout from above made them all look up to a s
oldier with his arms spread wide, so lots of men were coming. He made a reins sign to tell William they were mounted and started to flash his five fingers four times. It could only be an estimate, but it seemed they were outnumbered two to one. Everyone had seen it, and it pleased William that none reacted.

  ‘Check your girths.’

  It was, in a sense, an unnecessary command: every man present knew to do that, and to ease the swords in their scabbards once or twice to ensure they would not stick from dried blood. Each would remove his helmet and dry his head before replacing it and tug at a friend’s mail to make sure all was secure. These were habits, good ones.

  ‘Mount up.’

  That done, he led them out at a slow walk to the middle of the valley, which cut down the amount of room his opponents would have to gain momentum, their red and black pennants fluttering in a warm breeze. Each wing was elevated by the rising ground so he called them back to take station to the rear until they saw what their enemy intended.

  And suddenly they were there, black-clad Saracen horsemen. Even at a distance William could admire the lines of their fine horses, but they were built for speed, not battle, which is why he would have been overtaken anyway. He felt vindicated by his halt, all the more so when he saw the sweat of the flanks of the enemy mounts; they had been pushed hard.

  He tried to imagine what they were seeing: a line of men and horses, red and black shields, the tall lances and the fact that they were stationary, with one man out front, him. The man in command had also halted his horsemen and was riding back and forth on a spirited animal, the words of his exhortations floating across the grass, not clear, but obvious as encouragement.

  William dipped his lance and the line began to move forward at a walk, each Norman making sure his thigh was near to touching that of his neighbours. The two men behind him opened a gap into which he fitted and the effect on the enemy leader was clear; seeing the Normans standing he had assumed they were waiting for him to attack, but their movement meant if he was going to control the action he must move now and, to William’s satisfaction, he did, raising a round sword designed for slashing and pointing it forward, that followed by a high-pitched yell.