enemy, and though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his own life, and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of a naval combat. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements, in sight of the Isle of Corfu in the two former, the skill and numbers of the allies were superior; but in the third, the Normans obtained a final and complete victory." The light brigantines of the Greeks were scattered in ignominious flight: the nine castles of the Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were sunk, two were taken; two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the victor; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been supplied by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening, when he had sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects, and to baffle the advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his progress: with the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople; but, instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms against Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labor, and where the land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations with vigor and effect. But, in the Isle of Cephalonia, his projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease: Robert himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent ; and a suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumor, to his wife, or to the Greek emperor.9 This prema ture death might allow a boundless scope for the imagination of

92

1 William of Apulia (1. v. p. 276) describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena, (1. vi. p. 159, 160, 161.) In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge und rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter excidium stoli, (Dandulus in Chron. in Murator, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.)

02 The most authentic writers, William of Apulia, (1. v. 277,) Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 41, p. 589,) and Romuald of Salerno, (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.,) are ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen William of Malmsbury (1. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden, (p. 710, in Script. post Bedam ;) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian is indeed so tlind, that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I., who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke of Apulia's death.

his future exploits; and the event sufficiently d'ares, the. the Norman greatness was founded on his life.93 Witnout the appearance of an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in his deliverance. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard was ship wrecked on the Italian shore; but the duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of Venusia,94 a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace " than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son and successor, immediately sunk to the humble station of a duke of Apulia: the esteem or partiality of his father left the valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword. The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the first crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more splendid field of glory and conquest.96

Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the second generation; but his younger brother became the father of a line of kings; and the son of the great count was endowed with the name, the conquests, and the spirit, of the first Roger.97 The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily; and, at the age of only four years,

3 The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy, (Alexiad, 1. v. p. 162-166;) and his best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign of his family. Græcia (says Malaterra) hostibus recedentibus libera læta quievit Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur.

94

Úrbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris,

is one of the last lines of the Apulian's poems, (1. v. p. 278.) William of Malmsbury (1. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing.

95 Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia: he was carried to Rome in his childhood, (Serm. i. 6;) and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii. 4, Serm. ii. 1) are anworthy of his age and genius.

9 See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88-93) and the historians of the first crusade.

97 The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily, fills four books of the Istoria Civile of Gianonne, (tom. ii. l. xi.—xiv. p. 136340,) and is spread over the ixth and xth volumes of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliothèque Italique (tom. i. p. 175-222) I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger I to Frederic II. inclusive.

he succeeded to the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous, wish of dominion. Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies,98 the opulence and power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian limits beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently watched the declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the grandson of Robert. On the first intelligence of his premature death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor in the Bay of Salerno, received, after ten days' negotiation, an oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from the reluctant popes, who could not long endure either the friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot of Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his uncle Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of count; and the Isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the continent of Italy, might form the basis of a kingdom 99 which would only yield to the monarchies of France and England. The chiefs of the nation who attended his coro

According to the testimony of Philistus and Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a standing force of 10,000 horse, 100,000 foot, and 400 galleys. Compare Hume, (Essays, vol. i. p. 268, 435,) and his adversary Wallace, (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307.) The ruins of Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, D'Orville, Reidesel, Swinburne, &c.

99 A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger from the year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the consent of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and Palermo, without introducing Pope Anacletus, (Alexand. Cœnobii Telesini Abbatis de Rebus gestis Regis Rogerii, lib. iv. in Muratori, Script. Rerum. Ital. tʊm. v. p. 607-645.)

nation at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name ne should reign over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir were insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the Latin world 100 might disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title, which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit; 101 but his own legitimacy was attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second; and while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown, by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of Lothaire the Second of Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of the Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was driven from the continent of Italy a new duke of Apulia was invested by the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end of the gonfanon, or flagstaff, as a token that they asserted their right, and suspended their quarrel. But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious duration: the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion: 102 the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a conqueror who seidom forgave either the dead or the living; like his predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff became the

100 The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castille, Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created by their sword; the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary alone was honored or debased by a papal crown.

101 Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and independent coronation, (A. D. 1130, May 1,) which Giannone unwillingly rejects, (tom. ii. p. 137-144.) This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious character of Messina, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 340. Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468.)

10 Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans (says Cinnamus, 1. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ignorant of the use of trumpets. Most ignorant himself!

Cinnamus says nothing of their ignorance. The signal for retreat was οὐ σάλπιγγος ἠχὴ, ἤ τι ἄλλο τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ βάρβαρός τις καὶ ἀξύνετος τρόπος. -- Μ

captive and friend of the Normans; and their reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily.

As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St. Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross, and he accomplished with ardor a vow 30 propitious to his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens: the Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their strength they contended with the decline of en African power. When the Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a gift of his royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his palace with its sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers. The Zeirides,103 the descendants of Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude to a distant benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now fainting in their own weakness. On the side of the land, they were pressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco, while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and Franks, who, before the close of the eleventh century, had extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the first arms of Roger, the island or rock of Malta, which has been since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli,104 a strong and maritime city, was the next object of his attack; and the slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females, might be justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves. The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the country, and Mahadia 105

103 See De Guignes, Hist. Générale des Huns, tom. i. p. 369-373, and Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique, &c., sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 70-144. Their common original appears to be Novairi.

104 Tripoli (says the Nubian geographer, or more properly the Sherif al Edrisi) urbs fortis, saxeo muro vallata, síta prope littus maris. Hanc expugnavit Rogerius, qui mulieribus captivis ductis, viros pere

mit.

105 See the geography of Leo Africanus, (in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 74. verso, fol. 75, recto,) and Shaw's Travels, (p. 110,) the viith book of