by Jack Ludlow
Arduin would not be expecting a response for many weeks, and his first task would be to raise foot soldiers from the surrounding land and they would have to be trained. He still had some proper soldiers, his own personal troops and bodyguards, as well as some of the hastily conscripted levies from Bari with which he had put down the recent rebellion; with luck he might surprise the traitor while he was away from Melfi and get between him and the fortress.
If he could do that and he was weak, he would make Arduin pay for his treachery. As for the Normans, they could be bought off: they always put coin before loyalty to a cause — anyone’s cause.
But that brought forth another concern: mounted and already well trained and armed for war they could move swiftly and anywhere, which included the coast, which must be protected at all costs. If Byzantium held the port cities it held a firm grip on Apulia, but they were a rich and tempting prize for men who loved to plunder.
‘Captain, to which port are you bound?’ Doukeianos demanded, turning round to face a roomful of blandfaced officials, some of whom had served half a dozen previous catapans.
‘Ragusa, Excellency, with a cargo of oil.’
‘Forget that. You will proceed to Constantinople under my orders…’
The man’s hands were suddenly open in protest. ‘Your Excellency!’
‘Oil commands a good price there too, so you will not lose, and I will reward you for the service. You are to take a despatch which will be written speedily telling the emperor of what has occurred and asking for reinforcements.’ Then he looked past the bowing captain, that being enough to send one official off to compose the necessary document. To another he demanded, ‘Get me a list of what levies we still have under arms.’
‘Excellency.’
The command to a third was just as brusque. ‘I want a message sent by sea up the coast, first to alert the ports to the danger, and then a rider sent on to Troia, to the garrison there. They are to send out patrols to scour the border with Benevento. I want to know what kind of support the principality is providing in arms and men.’
A stream of other instructions followed, with the required officials departing to obey. It was an element of the efficiency of the Apulian administration that he had in his hands a paper outlining the message he wished to send to Constantinople with less than half the sand run through the glass, one which he perused quickly before, satisfied, he appended his seal. Quietly, he told the man holding the wax and candle how much to pay the captain for the service required, then ordered him, once the man was on his way, to return on his own.
With everything that could be put in hand complete, Michael Doukeianos sat down to compose a message to be sent to Salerno, one in which he imparted that he understood the constraints under which Prince Guaimar struggled, and also that he was appreciative of the stand he had taken, as well as the steps in informing the Western Emperor. He also wrote that he regretted his own concerns prevented him from offering to bring to Guaimar’s aid the kind of force which would put his rebellious vassal, Rainulf Drengot, in his place.
He stopped and smiled then: the last thing Guaimar would want to see was Byzantine war vessels filling his bay. Then he went back to composition.
The fulsome praise which followed was to the prince’s sagacity in the actions he had taken, as well as his caution, plus an assurance that once he had dealt with Arduin and recovered Melfi he would be content to leave Campania in peace while he sought to enforce redress on Benevento, albeit he would have no choice but to ask the men Drengot commanded to return to Campania.
Reading it over twice, the young Byzantine general was satisfied that it implied that which he intended: if Guaimar wanted to take part in the dismemberment of Benevento, he, as the representative of Constantinople in Southern Italy, would welcome him, and given that occupied Normans were better than idle ones, such a course might distract them from mischief in his own domains.
He knew the man who had sealed his despatch earlier was waiting and he called him over, sanding and sealing his own message without allowing the fellow to have sight of it. ‘This is to go by ship to Salerno, to be placed in the hand of Prince Guaimar and no one else. See to it.’
The message found Guaimar under the walls of Amalfi. Not that he himself was engaged in trying to subdue the place: on land that fell to Rainulf Drengot, who led his Normans as well as the foot soldiers the prince had raised in his fiefs. Likewise at sea, a trusted admiral was responsible for ensuring no ship entered or left the harbour and he had placed stout booms across the entrance to ensure that task was carried out.
To subdue the place would take time, perhaps till they were starving — it had stout protective land walls — but that he had. If he had ever thought he might have an enemy who could trouble him, the response from Michael Doukeianos was everything for which Guaimar could wish. Both Naples and Gaeta, his other trading rivals, were either only too happy to see Amalfi humbled or too afraid of his Normans to intervene. To amuse himself, given he had little to do but inspire the besiegers by his presence, he spent time making lists of those enemy citizens he would hang from the walls, some of whom had troubled his father before him, while also dreaming of one day being acclaimed as a king by his fellow Lombards.
CHAPTER NINE
News of that siege naturally travelled east, but it was of no concern to either Arduin or William de Hauteville, except that it kept Guaimar and Rainulf busy. When word came of the approach of a Byzantine army, William was occupied, with the aid of his youngest brother, supervising the reconstruction of the walls of Lavello, which, on inspection, had proved be in a more sorry state than those of Venosa.
Michael Doukeianos knew of the occupation of Melfi by the Normans, knew of Arduin’s betrayal: he was heading their way to set matters right, the size of his army unknown. The messenger, a Lombard from Giovinazzo, had set out to warn of the intention, without waiting to assess numbers, but the fellow was certain the catapan could not be far behind: had he not moved like lightning the previous year to crush revolt?
Arduin was travelling throughout Benevento, well to the north, seeking Lombard volunteers, too far away to make any decisions affecting the urgent problem, leaving William to make them instead. He sent word at once to Drogo at Venosa, to Humphrey and Geoffrey still in Melfi, all three to join him while he despatched Mauger with a small party of horsemen to ride down the southern side of the River Ofanto, the route he suspected his enemy would take, to warn of their approach.
Instinctively, he wanted to meet the catapan in the open — the idea of being locked up in a fortress, however strong, was anathema. He also had to take a chance that Michael Doukeianos would not take the direct route from Bari across the high uplands, that he would hog the fertile coastal plain and the port cities, which would provide his troops with both ample sustenance and, if he had time to press into service the younger men, with recruits.
Drogo was with him the next day, bringing in the conroys who had been working with him, supervising the restoration of the Venosa defences; from Melfi came the garrison, excepting a skeleton force to hold it safe as a refuge to which they could fall back if need be. William had at his disposal all the men he could muster.
‘He can surely only assemble a small force,’ Drogo insisted, ‘and cannot field much in the way of trained bands. Moving as quickly as he has, he has not had time to raise fresh levies.’
That word ‘time’ hung in the air. Doukeianos had been expected to react but he should not have marched so soon. He had come to know of the Norman presence in Apulia long before he should; how had he found out mattered less than his being on the way: that had to be dealt with immediately.
‘That lack of trained bands applies to us even more,’ William replied. ‘We have none at all, and only a few Lombards who have volunteered as foot soldiers.’
None of his brothers, cogitating on that unpleasant fact, seemed willing to offer any ideas. It was William, looking over Drogo’s shoulder at the hundreds of labour
ers he had been supervising, who came up with a solution. They had been forced to the work and, apart from a couple of stonemasons, were the least skilled men in the town. That mattered less than their number; that they would certainly, without training, be near useless as soldiers, was even less important.
He knew there were weapons in the Lavello armoury — swords, shields and pikes. It was a requirement of any sizeable town in the Catapanate to act as an arsenal as well as a storehouse for any passing Byzantine army. The sight of men in such numbers, as long as he had no idea of their quality, might force Doukeianos to alter his tactics; it might even throw him off balance.
‘Drogo, get back to Venosa. I want all the labourers you have employed armed and marched to the east of here.’
‘Labourers?’
‘Bodies, brother. Let’s make our enemy think we have more force than he expects.’
The party from Melfi had brought with them the old Roman maps, and while certain place names had changed in the last five hundred years, the locations of the towns remained the same. Studying them, and working on his earlier assumptions, William surmised that Doukeianos would rest, regroup and recruit at Barletta, but he would not delay there long, given speed and surprise were his most potent weapons.
From Barletta the route to the interior would be through Canosa, large enough to be fortified, his next point to replenish his supplies. From there he would come on to Lavello, then Venosa, and for the same reason: to gather more men and to replenish his stocks of food and fodder before proceeding on to besiege Melfi. He could not yet be aware these towns were already in Norman hands.
If Doukeianos moved at the pace William thought — not slowing his march to forage — to confront him to the east of Canosa would be impossible. To reduce his options it was therefore best to let him advance from there to a point closer to Lavello, where whatever supplies he had garnered would be depleted, which would also hamper his options when faced with an enemy. Inglorious it might be, and when he suggested the thinking his immediate family certainly thought he was showing Byzantium too much respect, but William did not want to fight the catapan, he wanted to scare him into withdrawing: the time to engage him in battle would be when Arduin had created a properly equipped and trained Lombard army large enough to crush him.
Drogo, having fought with his elder brother many times — and having seen the power of Byzantium in Sicily — took it best, sensing after only a moment’s thought that this was no time for glory; it was a time for prudence. He at least had discerned they were in Apulia for a campaign, probably an extended one, not some all-consuming battle. That would take time, effort and good fortune. Shouting to his men, he had them mounted and on their way as soon as he and William had agreed to rendezvous on the far bank of the Olivento, the closest north-to-south tributary of the River Ofanto.
‘Open the armoury, Geoffrey,’ William ordered, as soon as Drogo had departed, ‘and let’s get these labourers with pikes in their hands. Tell them we will march in the morning and if anyone even looks like refusing they have a choice: they can do as we wish, or hang from the walls they have been working on. Humphrey, take a party of three conroys ahead and ensure we have fodder for the horses and food for all.’
‘The peasants and landholders will resist,’ Humphrey insisted. ‘How do I treat them, brother?’
That was a shrewd question and one William appreciated, harking back as it did to his instructions regarding the inhabitants of Melfi, but this was no time for gentle measures.
‘Tell them they have a choice,’ William growled, ‘they can let us take their produce or the catapan and his army will grab it.’
‘No choice at all, then?’
‘None. Also send a messenger on to contact Mauger and tell him what we plan.’
There was only one act in the next hours that was not surrounded by chaos: the riding out of those thirty lances under Humphrey. Drumming into the locals what was required of them could not be done gently, it had to be carried out with a degree of brutality, given time was short. William took charge of the few Lombard volunteers, some of whom had seen service before, seeking to teach them a few basic commands and manoeuvres in Norman French — the language he would have to use with his own lances — to turn right or left or to advance; he did not even mention retreat, given it was an option men fighting on foot were prone to take too readily.
Geoffrey had the harder task with the unwilling citizenry: at least the Lombards were enthusiastic. Both brothers worked well into the night to ensure all was made ready, that at least their charges could move forward in relatively disciplined groups, and then when they had done as much as possible, they set guards to make certain none of their forced recruits slipped away in the dark.
Naturally the affair had to be blessed and the priests were summoned to the task before the need for torches had passed, intoning, since this was Byzantine territory, their consecrations in the Orthodox rite. The march began as soon as they had been fed, and William led them away, heading into the rising sun as a straggling line, to the wailing sound of the womenfolk, sure they were seeing the last of their men.
‘The catapan is north of the river.’ The messenger who, coming from Mauger on a seriously blown mount forced to run hard and long, had found him on the east bank of the Olivento, at the rendezvous he had arranged with Drogo. ‘Not south as you expected, and he is pushing his army hard.’
‘Horsemen?’
‘Few. His men are almost all on foot.’
‘Numbers?’
‘We were on the far side of the river and they were half a league from the bank. Also there was much dust, but it would take several thousand to kick up what they did.’
William, pacing up and down, tried to work out the ramifications of what he had just been told, and it was troubling: the young Byzantine general had outthought him. Michael Doukeianos had not acted as William thought he should, given what he suspected he had at his disposal. The numbers suggested he had pressed into service many recruits on the way, while their present location meant he must have moved north from Barletta and crossed the Ofanto where the shallow delta met the sea, and that could only be done by boats brought up the coast from the ports through which he had passed, which in turn pointed to much forethought.
That meant both he and Drogo, yet to join him, would be in very much the wrong place, and if he did not move with speed Doukeianos would have a clear route to Melfi and only a small garrison to face when he got there. The Normans could find themselves fighting just to try to relieve the fortress, and that would mean facing an army in prepared defensive positions — not good for cavalry at all.
There was one chance, but it would have to be taken at speed. From memory he knew there was a mapped river crossing just to the north: a place where the Ofanto, crossing a wide, low plain, was shown as fordable, certainly for mounted men — but not, he suspected, at this time of year and with a river flowing strongly, for those on foot. As of this moment he had no idea how far away Drogo was, and he had with him a sizeable number of the available lances. If he was to have any chance of stopping the catapan he would need every man he commanded.
Decision made, the orders came out in a stream: the messenger to ride back to Mauger on a fresh horse, contacting Humphrey en route and telling them to retire west along the riverbank until they came to the piquet he would leave at the point at which he and his men had forded it, though it should be obvious from the evidence of hundreds of mounts preceding them. Another messenger was sent to tell Drogo to speed up: he must abandon anyone on foot and push his horses hard if he was to be of any use.
‘What about our foot soldiers?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘Find one of the Lombards who looks as if he has a brain. Tell them to march our labourers back to Lavello and close the gates. Then get our men mounted.’
This time the Normans were on the move quickly, watched by their bewildered conscripts, with William trying to calculate distances and how far he could push his mounts,
a reckoning made on years of experience. Around seven leagues in any one day, with frequent halts, was held to be a good norm for horses; he needed to do more.
Like every Norman, he had grown up surrounded by several varieties of horses: those bred for battle, trotting alongside on a short rein, others more fleet, like the one he was now riding, another of the strain he was leading, his broad-backed packhorse. He had foaled them, whatever their type, watched them grow to yearlings, nursed them when sick and come to know each one as an individual: the shy, the biters and kickers, the cunning and the near human in their attitude; but all had common features.
Push any mount too hard with a weighty rider or panniers on its back, eschew the periodic walk, and they would tire very quickly. Put aside any thoughts of a complete break twice a day with water and at least some pasture and even those being led would be less effective if it came to an immediate battle. They required to be fed, as well, and each of his men had only one day’s supply of oats on his packhorse, that set against plentiful pasture; but cosset them and Doukeianos might outpace him and get between him and Melfi. What emerged had to be a compromise: he would work them harder than was prudent, but not so hard as to render them blown.
The stops they made were short, and always near some habitation, the numerous hamlets scattered throughout the land next to strips of cultivation, where small amounts of fodder and food for his men could be had; water was plentiful, it being springtime. No one resisted the demand for the last of their produce stored over the winter: no peasant would contest with armed men, especially these giants from the north, for if they had never in their life come across one, the reputation of the Normans was a folk tale well spread. They were sullen, certainly, but offered nothing more than black looks, which matched the increasing density of the clouds overhead.