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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
A recently published history of naval power and trade in the Mediterranean in the early medieval period provides a reminder of that vital but little-explored change in the balance of maritime power which preceded the Crusades and of the movement which won back for the Christians of the West, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta, threatened the shores of Africa and Albania, and was both a rehearsal and an essential preliminary for the great Drang nach Osten which was to follow. Little is known of the shipping used in these operations or of the tactics employed, but an attempt has been made to investigate the scanty sources for the Norman naval operations in the early stages of their conquest of southern Italy and Sicily, not merely because some of these operations were important in their immediate results, but also as an example of the naval technique of the Latin Christian military commanders in southern Europe. The subject derives additional interest from the spectacle it affords of Vikings finding their sea-legs again after many decades as farmers and cavalrymen in Normandy. It also offers one explanation for the conquest of the considerable area of southern Italy and Sicily by a comparatively small force, and once again demonstrates the eclecticism and adaptability of the Normans.
2 Lewis, A. R., Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean, 500–1100 (Princeton, N.J., 1951Google Scholar)
3 Malaterra, G., [De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae e Siciliae Comitis, ed. Pontieri, E. in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, n.s., v, 1], p. 58Google Scholar.
4 Cohn, W., Die Geschichte der Normannisch-Sizilischen Flotte (Breslau, 1910)Google Scholar. This book is useless for the period before 1076, because Cohn starts from the unsupported assumption that the Normans must from the start have built all the ships they used.
5 The main sources for the siege of Bari are Malaterra, pp. 48–51: Aimé [of Montecassino, Storia del Normanni, ed. V. De Bartholomaeis in Fonti per la Storia d' ltalia], pp. 248–55; Apulia, William of [Gesta Roberti Wiscardi in Mon. Germ. Hist., SS., ix], pp. 263–8Google Scholar; and Protospatarius, Lupus, [ed. Muratori, L. A., Rerum Ital. Script., v], p. 153Google Scholar.
6 The passage in Lupus Protospatarius describing this battle is obscure, but makes sense if it is read as multi homines necati sunt et alios compraehenserunt Franci (reading alios for alii).
7 The main sources for the siege of Palermo are Malaterra, pp. 52–3: Aimé, pp. 275–82: and William of Apulia, pp. 269–72.
8 The Normans had also captured Catania on their way to Palermo, but the only weapon employed seems to have been treachery (Chalandon, F. [Histoire de la Domination Normande en Italie], i, 206Google Scholar).
9 Malaterra, pp. 58–9: Aimé, pp. 349, 354–6, 366–7, 372; William of Apulia, p. 274.
10 Aimé, pp. 234 and 246.
11 For Rossano's revolt in the tenth century against this compulsory service, see Acta Sanctorum, Vita sancti Nili, pp. 295 et seq. See now also Eickhoff, E., ‘Byzantinische Wachtflottillen in Unteritalien im 10. Jahrhundert’, Byz. Zeitschrift xlv (1952), 340–4Google Scholar, where it is shown that Reggio, Tropea, and Amantea also owed this service and received financial help for it from inland towns.
12 Lupus Protospatarius, p. 153.
13 Malaterra, pp. 31–2: Aimé, p. 235. (For ‘germundus’, see Amari, M., Storia del Musulmani di Sicilia (ed. 2), iii, 68Google Scholar.)
14 Dolley, R. H., ‘The Warships of the Later Roman Empire’ in Journal of Roman Studies, xxxviii (1948), p. 53Google Scholar.
15 Manfroni, C., Storia delta Marina Italiana, Livorno, 1897, i, 456Google Scholar.
16 William of Apulia, p. 263. I take replet Caiairis advectis navibus aequor to mean ‘ships laden with Calabrians’, but the point still holds if the meaning is ‘laden Calabrian ships’.
17 Aimé, pp. 275–6, and Malaterra, p. 52; William of Apulia, p. 270. In no case does the context make it absolutely clear that the reference is to sailors and not soldiers, but William seems to imply this.
18 Aimé, pp. 366–7.
19 Chalandon, i, 37. Note also the big call-up of Italians by the Normans before the expedition against the Eastern Empire in 1081 (Comnena, Anna, Alexiad, i, 14Google Scholar).
20 For this expedition Amari, v. M., Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia (ed. 2), ii, 439–53Google Scholar. The Byzantine troops in this campaign included many Scandinavian mercenaries headed by Harold Hardrada.
21 Leo Diaconus (Bonn, ed. Hase), p. 7.
22 Liber Maiolichinus (ed. C. Calisse in ‘Fonti per la Storia d'ltalia’), p. 10. Wiel, A., The Navy of Venice (London, 1910), claims (p. 40Google Scholar) that the Venetians used vessels of this type against the Normans in 1081, but I have not been able to trace any source for this statement.
23 The ‘huissiers’ were transports, not assault vessels. Jal, A., Archéologie Navale (1840) i, 427–32Google Scholar, derived the word from the Greek οὐσία, but a more probable etymology is from the Italian uscio ( = door), as these ships had sides which opened for the horses to enter and leave the ship. Prof. R. J. H. Jenkins kindly informs me that an οὐσία was not a type of ship (as Jal supposed) but a naval unit; he considers Jal's derivation very improbable.
24 Malaterra, pp. 50–1.
25 Aimé, p. 235. Malaterra does not mention the number of ships used, but gives the strength of the two ‘waves’ as 150 and 300 (p. 32), which comes comparatively close to Aimé and very close to him in the total number of horsemen carried.
26 Aimé, pp. 237–8: Ibn Haldun in Amari, M., Biblioteca Arabo-Sicula (Italian version, 1880), p. 196Google Scholar.
27 Mr. T. C. Lethbridge writes on this point: ‘I do not think it would be easy to transport horses in an ordinary galley without putting shifting boards between the rowing thwarts … The space between rowing ports was usually about three feet and without shifting boards it seems very hard to imagine horses being persuaded to stand in what the Vikings called “rooms”… Some would be almost certain to break their legs kicking unless they were boxed in between the thwarts.’
28 Aimé mentions 51 ships (pp. 276–7), Protospatarius, Lupus 58 (in the version of Mon. Germ. Hist., SS., v, 60Google Scholar).
29 Aimé, pp. 231–8; Malaterra, pp. 29–33.
30 This may provide evidence in favour of the authenticity of the feigned flight of the Normans at Hastings six years later, which has recently been assailed again (Glover, R., ‘English Warfare in 1066’, English Historical Review, lxvii, 1952CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
31 Aimé (pp. 232–3) puts the assault on Messina before the trouble over embarkation, but I have followed the more convincing account given by Malaterra.
32 It is not clear whether the minor naval battle in the Strait described by Aimé (p. 234) was fought during the return of this force or later.
33 Chalandon, i, 194.
34 For the conflicting figures of Aimé and Malaterra, see above p. 122 n. 25.
35 This seems to follow from Aimé's account (p. 236) of how at daybreak the Normans se leverent et se adornerent de lor armes et monterent sur lor chevaux. Aimé is unlikely to have been an eye-witness, but his description of these campaigns seems to derive from those who were present.
36 Amiens, Guy of, ‘De Bello Hastingensi Carmen’, ed. Petrie, H. in Monumenta Historica Britannica, London, 1848, p. 861Google Scholar. Guy refers to the presence of Apulus et Calaber, Siculus quibus jacula fervet. This may be poetical hyperbole, but it shows that a certain number of knights from Italy were at Hastings.
37 The master of the English king's ship in the early twelfth century was an Italian (Haskins, C. H., Norman Institutions, Cambridge, Mass., 1918, pp. 121–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and the twelfth century saw the introduction of a number of Mediterranean features such as ‘castles’, the bowsprit and the side-rudder (Anderson, R. and Anderson, R. C., The Sailing Ship, London, 1926, pp. 80–4Google Scholar).
The Normans apparently took no horses when they attempted an invasion of England c. 1040 (if we are to accept William of Jumièges, vi, 9–10) and this also favours the theory of southern influence in the 1060s. Mr. T. C. Lethbridge writes: ‘The Roman army appears to have been quite at home transporting cavalry and probably the method was not forgotten in Italy or Gaul. The Normans might have learnt it in Normandy but certainly did not bring the idea from the North. I do not think it necessary to suppose that the Normans in Normandy would have been incapable of transporting their horses without outside help; but it does seem probable that they might have got some good ideas from the South.’
