The Kingdom in the Sun (50 page)

For all that, the homecoming was not an easy one. Frederick did everything he could to prevent it, even hiring pirates to waylay the papal convoy on the high seas. Next he sent another army into Italy, which established the wretched Paschal at Viterbo and ravaged all the Roman Campagna until Gilbert of Gravina, at last justifying his existence, appeared with a Sicilian force and drove it back into Tuscany. But somehow Alexander defeated all these machinadons. In order to escape the Pisan, Genoese and Provencal ships that he knew were lying in wait for him he took a roundabout route and landed, in September 1165, at Messina. William I did not come to greet him; by that time he had retired so completely into seclusion that not even the Roman Pondff himself could bring him out. But he sent orders that his honoured guest should be treated as a 'lord and father', and furnished with all the money and troops he needed; and on 23 November the Pope reached Rome where, escorted by senators, nobles, clergy and people, all bearing olive branches in their hands, he rode in state to the Lateran.

Although at the time of Alexander's visit King William had only a few more months to live, this was not the last instance of his generosity towards the Pope whose closest ally he had never ceased to be. On his death-bed he sent Alexander a further gift of forty thousand florins, the better to continue his struggle against the Emperor.
¹
The gesture was not altruistic, nor was it merely a selfish attempt to purchase divine favour in the life to come. It was the dying King's last recognition of political reality; William knew that if Pope Alexander did not emerge victorious from that struggle, the Kingdom of Sicily could not long survive.

Frederick Barbarossa's army crossed the plain of Lombardy early in 1167; then it split into two parts. The smaller was jointly commanded
by
the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainald of Dassel—who was also imperial Chancellor and the Emperor's right hand—and by another warlike ecclesiastic, Archbishop Christian of Mainz. Their orders were to march down the peninsula towards Rome, enforcing the imperial authority as they went, and to open up a safe road to the city for the anti-Pope Paschal, still sitting nervously in Tuscany. On their way they were to stop at Pisa, there to secure the services

¹
John of Salisbury's letter 145 (to Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter).

of its fleet for the moment when, later in the year, the whole weight of the Empire was to be flung against Sicily. Meanwhile Frederick himself, with the bulk of his army, pressed on across the peninsula towards Ancona, the nucleus of Byzantine influence in Italy.

Frederick was, if anything, even angrier with the Greek Emperor than with Pope Alexander. For well over a decade Manuel Comne-nus had been stirring up trouble in Venice and Lombardy. His agents treated Ancona—a city standing squarely within the territory of the Western Empire—as if it were a Byzantine colony. More irritating still, he had recently tried to take advantage of the papal schism by putting himself forward as a protector of Alexander. He seemed to forget that he was himself a schismatic. He would be reminded—forcibly—of this and of many other things as well once the German army reached Ancona.

Barbarossa would have been more enraged still had he understood the full extent of his fellow-Emperor's ambitions; for Manuel had seen in the schism nothing less than a chance of realising his father's old dream—the reunion of the Christian Church under the Pope of Rome in return for that of the Roman Empire under the Emperor at Constantinople. Frederick's recent behaviour had persuaded him that the time was now ripe for a direct approach; and some time in the spring of
11
67—possibly at the very moment that the imperial troops were marching on Ancona—a Byzantine ambassador in the person of the
sebastos
Jordan, son of Prince Robert of Capua, arrived in Rome to offer Alexander men and money 'sufficient', as he put it, 'to reduce all Italy to papal obedience' if he would endorse the scheme.

Manuel was fully aware that at this of all moments the Pope could not antagonise the King of Sicily; and he had no delusions about the Sicilian view of his interference in Italian affairs. But even this problem, he believed, might be soluble. Though he had now been married for six years to his second wife, the fabulously beautiful

Mary of Antioch, their marriage was still childless; the heir to the Empire remained his daughter by Bertha-Irene, a girl named Maria now fifteen years old.
¹
Though she was theoretically betrothed

¹
Bertha-Irene had died of a sudden fever in 1060. Manuel had given her a splendid funeral and had her buried in the church of the Pantocrator; but he had married Mary within a year.

to Prince Bela of Hungary, he now proposed that she should be given in marriage to young William of Sicily; once the boy found himself heir apparent to the throne of Constantinople, he would see Byzantine ambitions in a very different light. It was a bold and imaginative proposal, and Manuel had had it formally put to the Queen Regent immediately after her husband's death. So far, however, the Sicilians had expressed only a cautious interest, and the Emperor was still awaiting a definite reply.
¹

All this, we must assume, was unknown to Frederick Barbarossa as he marched towards Ancona. But his dislike of the Greeks was already more than enough to give him enthusiasm for the task before him, and as soon as his army had dug itself in the siege of the city began. The inhabitants put up a spirited resistance. Their defences were strong and in good order, and they were determined not to be deprived of an association that was bringing so much wealth to them all. Luck, too, was on their side. First the Emperor was diverted by the appearance further down the coast of a Sicilian force under Gilbert of Gravina; soon after his return he received news which caused him to raise the siege altogether and leave at once for Rome. The Anconans were saved.

The Romans, on the other hand, were as good as lost. On Whit Monday, 29 May, just outside Tusculum, their large but undisciplined army had attacked the Germans and Tusculans under Christian of Mainz, and, though outnumbering them many times over, had been utterly shattered. Out of a total estimated at some thirty thousand, barely a third had escaped. Before the last survivors had left the field, imperial messengers were already speeding to Frederick with the news. Rome itself, they reported, was still holding out, but failing massive reinforcements it could not last long; still less could
it
hope to resist a new German attack at full strength. When he heard the news, the Emperor was jubilant. With Rome ripe for the plucking, what did Ancona matter ? He could deal with the Greeks later.

Although the troops under Archbishop Christian had now been swollen by the local militias of several neighbouring towns, all

¹
For a fuller discussion of this proposal—which, if it had been accepted, would quite possibly have changed the course of history—see J. S. F. Parker, 'The attempted Byzantine Alliance with the Sicilian Norman Kingdom,
11
66-
1167',
Papers of the British School at Rome,
vol. XXIV, 1955.

eager for revenge after years of Roman arrogance and oppression, Rome itself was still fighting hard. The Emperor's arrival, however, sealed the fate of the Leonine City.
¹
A single savage onslaught smashed the gates; the Germans poured in, only to find an unexpected inner fortress—St Peter's basilica itself, ringed with strong-points and hastily-dug trenches. For eight more days, we are told by an eyewitness, Acerbus Morena, it held out against every attack; it was only when the besiegers set fire to the forecourt, destroying first the great portico so carefully restored
by
Innocent II, then the lovely little mosaic-covered oratory of S. Maria in Turri, and finally hacking down the huge portals of the basilica itself, that the defending garrison surrendered. Never had there been such a desecration of the holiest shrine of Europe. Even in the ninth century, the Saracen pirates had contented themselves with tearing the silver panels from the doors; they had never penetrated the building. This time, according to another contemporary,
²
the invaders left the marble pavements of the nave strewn with dead and dying, the high altar itself stained with blood. And this time the outrage was the work not of infidel barbarians but of the Emperor of western Christendom.

It was on 29 July
11
67 that St Peter's fell. On the following day, at that same high altar, the anti-Pope Paschal celebrated Mass and then invested Frederick with the golden circlet of the Roman
Patricias
—a deliberate gesture of defiance to the Senate and People of Rome. Two days later still, he officiated at the imperial coronation of the Empress Beatrice, with her husband—whom Pope Adrian had crowned twelve years previously—standing by. That day marked the summit of Frederick's career. He had brought the Romans to their knees, imposing on them terms which, though moderate enough, should ensure their docility in the future. He had placed his own Pope on the Throne of St Peter. North Italy he had already subdued; and now, with the imperial strength still undiminished and the Pisan ships already moored along the Tiber quays, he was ready to mop up the Kingdom of Sicily. He foresaw no difficulties. The Sicilians were governed—if that was the word—by a woman, a child and, he understood, some Frenchman who was little more than a child himself. Soon they would all three be grovelling before

¹
See p. 181.
              
²
Otto of St Blaise.

him, and the ambition that had been gnawing away at him for fifteen years would be fulfilled at last.

Poor Frederick—he could not have foreseen the catastrophe that was so soon to overtake him, one that in less than a single week was to destroy his proud army in a way that no earthly foe could ever have matched. On that memorable first of August, the skies had been clear and the sun had blazed down on his triumph. Then, on the second, a huge black cloud suddenly obscured the valley by Monte Mario; heavy rain began to fall, followed immediately by a still and oppressive heat. On the third came pestilence. It struck the imperial camp with a swiftness and a force such as never before was known; and where it struck, more often than not, it killed. Within a matter of days, it was no longer possible to bury all the dead; and the growing piles of corpses, swollen and putrefying in the heat of a Roman August, made their own grim contribution to the sickness and the pervading horror. Frederick, by now in despair, seeing the flower of his army dead or dying around him, had no choice but to strike his camp; and by the second week of August, 'like a tower in flames' as John of Salisbury describes him, he and his silent, spectral procession were dragging themselves back through Tuscany. The plague went with them. Rainald of Dassel, his Chancellor-Archbishop, succumbed on the fourteenth,
¹
so, at about the same time, did Frederick of Rotenburg, son of Conrad III and thus the Emperor's first cousin, who had been responsible for the destruction of the doors of St Peter's; so, did Bishop Daniel of Prague, Acerbus Morena the historian and more than two thousand others.

And even now the nightmare was not over. Full reports of the plague had already spread through Lombardy, and the Germans arrived to find town after town closed against them. At last, and with considerable difficulty, they reached the imperial headquarters at Pavia; and there Frederick was forced to halt, watching in impotent despair when, on i December, no less than fifteen of the leading cities of the region formed themselves into the greater Lombard League, the foundations of which had been laid at

¹
So convinced were his followers—on what grounds it is hard to say—that Rainald had been a saint, that they boiled his body until there was nothing left but the bones, which they took back as relics to Germany.