The Kingdom in the Sun (64 page)

It was, wrote Nicetas, a visible manifestation of the Divine Power.

Those men who, but a short while before, had threatened to overturn the very mountains, were as astonished as if they had been struck by lightning. The Romans,
¹
on the other hand, no longer having any commerce with fear, burned with the desire to fall upon them, just as an eagle falls upon a feeble bird.

At Dimitritza,
²
just outside Amphipolis on the banks of the river Strymon, Baldwin at last consented to discuss peace. Why he did so remains a mystery. The defeat at Mosynopolis had not affected the main body of his army, encamped in good order around him. He

¹
The Byzantines always so described themselves, seeing their Empire as the unbroken continuation of that of ancient Rome. The word
Romios
is still used by their descendants today—on occasion. See Patrick Leigh-Fermor's brilliant essay on the subject in
Roumeli,
London, 1966.

²
I have had some trouble over Dimitritza. This is the version given by Nicetas Choniates but there is no trace of any place of such a name along the Strymon. Chalandon calls it Demetiza, then adds in brackets (without giving his authority) the obviously Turkish word Demechissar. If he is right in so doing, it is tempting to see this word as a corruption of Demir-Hisar, i.e. Iron Fort; in which case we must be talking about the modern Greek town of Siderokastron, which today stands just where Dimitritza might have been expected to be.

still held Thessalonica. Though the new Emperor in Constantinople was not senile as his predecessor had been, he was not in his first youth; and his claim to the throne was certainly weaker than that of Andronicus or of the pretender Alexius, who had accompanied the army all the way from Messina and was seldom far from Baldwin's side. But winter was approaching, and the autumn rains in Thrace fall heavy and chill. To an army that had counted on spending Christmas in Constantinople, Mosynopolis had probably proved more demoralising than its strategic importance deserved.

Alternatively, Baldwin may have had a darker purpose. The Greeks certainly claimed that he did. On the pretext that he intended to take advantage of the peace negotiations to catch them in their turn unprepared, they decided to strike first—'awaiting,' Nicetas himself assures us, 'neither the sound of the trumpets nor the orders of their commander'. Baldwin's army was taken unawares. His men resisted as best they could, then turned and fled. Some were cut down as they ran; many more were drowned as they tried to cross the Strymon, now swift and swollen from the rains; yet others, including both the Sicilian generals, Baldwin and Richard of Acerra, were taken prisoner, as was Alexius Comnenus, whom Isaac subsequently blinded for his treachery. Those who escaped found their way back to Thessalonica, where some managed to pick up ships to return them to Sicily. Since, however, the bulk of the Sicilian fleet was still lying off Constantinople waiting for the land army to arrive, the majority were not so lucky. The Thessalonians rose up against them, taking a full and bloody revenge for all that they had suffered three months before. Of the titanic army which had set out so confidently in the summer, it was a poor shadow that now dragged itself back through the icy mountain passes to Durazzo.

Byzantium was saved. Isaac Angelus would, however, have done well to take the Sicilian invasion as a warning. There were other western eyes fixed covetously on his Empire. Only twenty years later Constantinople was to face another attack, ludicrously known to history as the Fourth Crusade. Then too, Norman adventurers would be playing their part, and this time they would be victorious.

For William of Sicily, this destruction of the greatest army he or any of his predecessors had ever sent into the field spelt the end of his Byzantine ambitions. But he was not yet ready to admit himself beaten. His fleet under Tancred of Lecce, after seventeen days' waiting in the Marmara, had returned unscathed; and the following spring he sent it off to Cyprus, where another member of the Comnenus family, Isaac, had seized power and, in defiance of his namesake in Constantinople, had proclaimed himself Emperor. Although this histrionic gesture was to result in the permanent loss of the island to the Byzantine Empire, neither it nor the indecisive and somewhat desultory struggle that followed it need concern us here—except in one particular. It is in Cyprus that we first hear of the fleet's new commander Margaritus of Brindisi, the last great admiral of Norman Sicily, whose brilliance and courage were to do much to restore his country's military reputation and to shed a few last rays of glory over a doomed Kingdom.

The squabble over Cyprus gave Margaritus little opportunity to show his qualities. To appear at his best advantage he needed a greater challenge and a wider conflict. Neither was long in coming. In the autumn of 1187 he was summoned back to Sicily, ordered to refit bis ships in haste and then to sail, at the earliest possible date, for Palestine. William had at last forgotten his differences with Byzandum; there were graver matters on hand. On Friday
2
October the Muslim armies under Saladin had retaken Jerusalem. The whole future of Christianity in the Holy Land hung in the balance.

19

THE RESPLENDENT SHADOW

Vos matrone nobiles

Virgines laudabilis

Olim delectabiles

Nunc estote flebiles . . .

 lacet regnum desolatum

Dissolutum et turbatum,

Sicque venientibus

Cunctis patet hostibus

Est ab hoc dolendum

Et plangendum Omnibus . . .

Rex Guilielmus

Abut non obiit.

Rex ille magnificus

Pacificus

Cuius pita placuit

Deo et hominibus.

Ye noble matrons,

Most excellent virgins,

Once so full of joy,

Now is the time for tears . . .

Desolate lies the Kingdom,

Torn asunder and in disarray,

Lying open to the enemies

Approaching from all sides;

A cause for weeping

And for lamentation

By all people . . .

William the King

Has departed, not died.

Glorious he was,

And a bringer of peace,

Whose life was pleasing

To God and to men.

Contemporary dirge quoted by Richard of S. Germano

Early
in August 1185, while his still unvanquished army was battering on against the walls of Thessalonica, William of Sicily had escorted his aunt Constance across the sea to Salerno on the first stage of her bridal journey; and on the 28th of the same month, just four days after those walls had crumbled, Constance was delivered into the care of Frederick Barbarossa's special emissaries, waiting at Rieti. Thence, followed by a retinue of five hundred pack-horses and mules laden with a dowry appropriate to a future Empress who was also the wealthiest heiress in Europe, she travelled by easy stages to Milan.

The marriage was to take place in the ancient capital of Lombardy at the request of the Milanese themselves. To them the bride's name had a special significance; for it was at Constance, only two years previously, that Frederick had recognised the claims of the Lombard cides to self-government. What more fitting gesture could there be to mark the ending of their long struggle than to select the greatest of those cities for the marriage of his son ?

Twenty-three years before, the Emperor had sacked Milan and left it a pile of rubble. He now returned to find a proud new city already risen on the ruins of the old. Only the cathedral was not yet rebuilt; fortunately, however, the imperial soldiery had spared the loveliest and most venerable of the city's churches, the fourth-century basilica of S. Ambrogio.
¹
Long abandoned as a place of worship, S. Ambrogio had in recent years been doing service as a granary; it was now hastily refurbished and before its high altar, on
27
January
1186,
Henry and Constance were declared man and wife. The ceremony was immediately followed by another, in which the couple were both crowned by the Patriarch of Aquileia with the iron crown of Lombardy.

Brides, by their very nature, have always provided a rich field for speculation and gossip—royal or imperial ones most of all. But few have ever caught the imagination of their subjects as Constance did. Not that there was anything particularly romantic about her: she was tall and fair-haired and, according to at least one source,
²
beautiful; but at thirty-one she was also eleven years older than her husband— by the standards of her day, a middle-aged woman. What intrigued people was her power, her wealth, and above all the mysterious seclusion in which she was said to have passed her early life, a seclusion which quickly gave rise to the rumour that she had actually taken the veil in her youth and had left the cloister only when reasons of state gave her no alternative. This theory was to gain more and more credence as the years went by; little more than

¹
 
S. Ambrogio is still there, and still the most beautiful building in Milan. It was founded by St Ambrose in
a.d.
386,
and despite a good deal of subsequent reconstruction—notably after the bombing of August
1943—
still looks substantially the same as on the day of Constance's marriage. Visitors are implored not to miss the little fifth-century chapel of S. Vittore in Ciel d'Oro, refulgent with contemporary mosaic, tucked away in the south-east corner.

²
Godfrey of Viterbo.