Byzantine Military: Siege of Bari - Normans vs Byzantines in Italy

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Siege of Bari - Normans vs Byzantines in Italy

Norman Soldiers.
Thanks to Dargarth.org

The Final Battle

The Byzantines are driven from Italy after

decades of war with the Normans.

The "Accidental" Norman Invasion of Italy

The Eastern Roman Empire rarely caught a break. The Empire was constantly pressed from every side by pagan barbarians, Persians, Muslims or fellow Christians.

The Norman conquest of southern Italy spanned most of the 11th and 12th centuries, involving many battles and independent conquerors.

Immigrant Norman brigands acclimatized themselves as mercenaries in the service of Lombard and Byzantine factions, communicating news swiftly back home about opportunities in the Mediterranean. These groups gathered in several places, establishing fiefdoms and states of their own, uniting and elevating their status to de facto independence within fifty years of their arrival.

Unlike the Norman conquest of England (1066), which took a few years after one decisive battle, the conquest of southern Italy was the product of decades and a number of battles, few decisive. Many territories were conquered independently, and only later were unified into a single state. Compared to the conquest of England it was unplanned and disorganized, but equally complete.

Norman Robert Guiscard
Duke of Apulia and Calabria

The earliest reported date of the arrival of Norman knights in southern Italy is 999, although it may be assumed that they had visited before then.

A serious use of Norman mercenaries took place during a revolt (1009-1022) in southern Italy against the Catapanate of Italy, the regional Byzantine authority.

The rebels used a newly arrived band of Normans sent by Pope Benedict, which combined with the Lombards to battle the Byzantines. A detachment of the elite Varangian Guard was sent to Italy to fight the Normans. The armies met at the Ofanto near Cannae, the site of Hannibal's victory over the Romans in 216 BC, and the Battle of Cannae was a decisive Byzantine victory. A historian wrote that only ten Normans survived from a contingent of 250.

The Normans had no interest in peace. They acted as mercenaries on both sides, they would obtain good terms for the release of their brethren from their captors regardless of outcome.

Slowly the Normans expanded their control over southern Italy. Then the Normans invaded Muslim controlled Sicily in May 1061, crossing from Reggio di Calabria and besieging Messina. The Normans crossed the strait first, landing unseen overnight and surprising the Saracen army in the morning. When Norman troops landed later that day, they found themselves unopposed and Messina abandoned. Over the next 30 years the Muslims were driven out of Sicily.

The Byzantines struck backs under Nikephoros Karantenos,an experienced Byzantine soldier from the Bulgar wars. In 1067, when Constantine X desired to retake the lost cities of Apulia, he sent Karantenos with Mabrikias to Bari. Taranto, Castellaneta, and Brindisi were reconquered from the Normans and a garrison of Varangians was established at the latter under Karantenos.

When the Normans put Brindisi under siege in 1070, Karantenos feigned surrender and then attacked the Normans as they were scaling the walls on ladders. He beheaded a hundred corpses and crossed the sea to Durazzo with the heads, thence shipping them off to Constantinople to impress the emperor.

Karantenos was given the title of strategos of Brindisi.

This was the last sucess against the Normans. In 1068 the Normans turned their attention to Bari, the capital of the Byzantine catapanate.

The Norman Conquest of Italy
Normans were hired as mercenaries by different sides in Italy. Slowly they became more organized and started to create a Norman state by conquering Muslim held Sicily and Byzantine southern Italy.

Norman Cavalry
Thanks to Angelfire.com

A
Castello Normanno-Svevo (Bari)
The castle was built on a former Byzantine fortified site. Bari was the capital of the Catepanate of Italy. The current look and plan of the fortress might be close to the Byzantine floor plan. The castle is surrounded by a moat on all sides, except the northern section, which was bordering the sea and can be accessed from the bridge and the gate on the southern side.

The Three Year Siege of Bari

The Normans had increased their possessions in southern Italy and now aimed to the complete expulsion of the Byzantines from the peninsula before concentrating on the conquest of Sicily, then mostly under Islamic domination.

Large military units were called from Sicily and, under Count Geoffrey of Conversano, laid siege to Otranto to the south of Bari.

The next move was the arrival of Robert Guiscard, with a large corps, who laid siege to the Byzantine city of Bari on 5 August 1068. Within the city there were two parties: one wanting to preserve allegiance to the Byzantine empire, and another that was pro-Norman. When the Norman troops neared, the former had prevailed and the local barons shut the city's gates and sent an embassy to emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in order to seek military help. The negotiations offered by Robert were refused.

Otranto fell in October, but at Bari the Norman attacks against the walls were repeatedly pushed back by the Byzantines. Robert decided to blockade the city's port with a fortified bridge in order to thwart any relief effort. The Byzantines, however, destroyed the bridge, and managed to maintain a link with their homeland.

Byzantine New Varangian Guard at the Abbey Medieval Festival 2012

Romanos IV named a new catepan, Avartuteles, and provided him with a fleet with men and supplies for Bari. The Byzantine fleet arrived at the city in early 1069, but in the meantime a Byzantine field army was defeated by the Normans, who occupied Gravina and Obbiano. Robert did not return immediately to Bari, and in the January 1070 he moved to Brindisi to help the Norman forces then besieging that coastal fortress. Brindisi capitulated in the autumn of 1070.

The situation in Bari was then critical, and the population suffered from famine. Avartuteles plotted to have Robert assassinated, but the Byzantine patricius Byzantios Guideliku failed. A delegation of citizens asked the catepan to improve the city's defence, or otherwise surrender it to the Normans. Avartuteles played for time, sending another embassy to Constantinople. He obtained the arrival of a fleet with grain in Bari. When the grain ran out, a group of citizens again asked the catepan to beg the emperor to send an army as soon as possible.

Romanos IV, whose generals had been repeatedly defeated by the Normans, and with few free troops to dispatch, sent twenty ships under the command of a Gocelin, a Norman rebel who had taken shelter in Constantinople. Stephen Pateran, appointed as new catepan of Italy, came with him. However, the Normans intercepted the Byzantine ships off Bari and scattered them. The Norman sailors identified Gocelin's ship and, despite the loss of 150 men, finally captured it; Stephen was instead able to reach Bari. He soon recognized that the defence had become impossible; a local noble, Argyritsos, was sent to negotiate with the Normans. The latter offered acceptable conditions, and Bari surrendered on April 1071.

Aftermath

Stephen Pateran was initially imprisoned, but was later allowed to return to Constantinople with other Byzantine survivors.

With the fall of Bari, the Byzantine presence in southern Italy ended after 536 years. Emperor Manuel I Komnenos tried to reconquer southern Italy in 1156-1158, but the attempt turned into a failure.

At the same time Byzantine Bari was falling to the Normans, the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was fighting for his life during the disastrous Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia. For losing the battle Romanos was cruelly blinded on June 29, 1072 and then sent into exile to Prote in the Sea of Marmara. Without medical assistance, his wound became infected, and he soon endured a painfully lingering death.

A
Bari, the capital of the Catapanate of Italy
The approximate territorial extent of the Catapanate of Italy (in yellow).
.
The themes of Calabria, Longobardia and Lucania together formed a larger military province - the Catepanate of Italy. The Catepan (military governor) coordinated the local Roman armies of the three themes to defend Italy.

Results of a Norman Victory
The Byzantines are driven out of Italy and into the Balkans. The Norman Duchy of Apulia and Calabria is created. The Normans continue their war against the Muslim Emirate of Sicily.

Norman infantry advancing up a hill.
Thanks to Oocities.org

(Battle of Cannae) (Norman conquest of southern Italy) (Bari)

(Catepanate of Italy)

2 comments:

Unknown said...: 1) Do you think the campaign here weakened the Byzantine's capabilities at Manzikert a few years later?
2) Did the Great Schism encourage the Normans to attack at all?; October 10, 2015 at 7:55 AM
Gary said...: Bari surrendered April of 1071. Manzikert happened August, 1071.

Naturally all events are connected. Bari would have been a drag on the treasury to a degree.

The Emperor marched east to Manziket with 50,000+ troops. But he put only a small number of troops into Italy.

I suspect the Byzantines thought Italy to be a waste of time, a lost cause at this point. Defending what was left was more a matter of pride than military necessity.; October 11, 2015 at 8:23 PM

Justinian The Great and Theodora

Emperor 527 to 565. Justinian was the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as a first language. Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". His general Belisarius conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, extending Roman control to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the Empire after more than half a century of barbarian control. The prefect Liberius reclaimed most of southern Iberia, establishing the province of Spania. Under his rule there was a uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many modern states. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia.

Maurice

Emperor from 582 to 602. A prominent general in his youth, Maurice fought with success against the Sassanid Persians. Once he became Emperor, he brought the war with Persia to a victorious conclusion: the Empire's eastern border in the Caucasus was vastly expanded and for the first time in nearly two centuries the Romans were no longer obliged to pay the Persians thousands of pounds of gold annually for peace. Maurice campaigned extensively in the Balkans against the Avars – pushing them back across the Danube by 599. He also conducted campaigns across the Danube, the first Emperor to do so in over two hundred years. In the West, he established two large semi-autonomous provinces called exarchates, ruled by exarchs, or viceroys, of the Emperor. Maurice established the Exarchate of Ravenna, Italy in 584, the first real effort by the Empire to halt the advance of the Lombards. With the creation of the Exarchate of Africa in 590, he further solidified the empire's hold on the western Mediterranean.

Heraclius

Emperor 610 to 641. Heraclius' reign was marked by several military campaigns. The year Heraclius came to power the Empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Heraclius immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Sassanid Persians. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Byzantines; the Persian army fought their way to the Bosphorus. However, because Constantinople was protected by impenetrable walls and a strong navy, Heraclius was able to avoid total defeat. Heraclius drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh. Soon after his victory he faced a new threat of the Muslim invasions. In 634 the Muslims invaded Roman Syria, defeating Heraclius' brother Theodore. Within a short period of time the Arabs would also conquer Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt.

Irene of Athens

Irene of Athens Byzantine Empress Regnant from 797 to 802. Prior to becoming Empress regnant, Irene was empress consort from 775 to 780, and empress dowager and regent from 780 to 797. It is often claimed she called herself basileus 'emperor'. In fact, she normally referred to herself as basilissa, 'empress', although there are three instances of the title basileus being used by her. Irene was born to the noble Greek Sarantapechos family of Athens. She married Leo IV in 769. Upon Leo's death she became regent for the future Constantine VI. Irene was almost immediately confronted with a conspiracy against her close to home and in Sicily. Irene withstood an invasion by a large Arab army. She subdued the Slavs of the Balkans and laid the foundations of Byzantine expansion and re-Hellenization in the area. Irene's most notable act was the restoration of the Orthodox veneration of icons (images of Christ or the saints). Pope Leo III, who needed help against enemies in Rome and who saw the throne of the Byzantine Emperor as vacant (lacking a male occupant), crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800.

Nikephoros II Phokas

Emperor from 963 to 969. His brilliant military exploits resulted in the conquest of Cilicia and the re-conquest of the island of Cyprus from the Muslims. He conducted raids into Upper Mesopotamia and Syria. In the West he lost Sicily completely to the Muslims and faced Magyar raids deep into the Balkans. He was assassinated in his apartment on December 11, 969. On the night of the assassination the Empress Theophano suspiciously left the Imperial bedchamber, leaving the doors unbolted. General John Tzimiskes entered, killed the Emperor, and then declared himself Emperor. It was thought the General and the Empress had been lovers.

Basil II - The Bulgar Slayer

Emperor 976 to 1025. Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontier, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed by later authors as "the Bulgar-slayer" by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests four centuries earlier.

John II Komnenos and Irene of Hungary

Emperor from 1118 to 1143. The greatest of the Komnenian emperors. In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the Holy Roman Empire in the west, decisively defeated the Pechenegs in the Balkans, and personally led numerous campaigns against the Turks in Asia Minor. John's campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the east, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula. In the southeast, John extended Byzantine control from the Maeander in the west all the way to Cilicia and Tarsus in the east. In an effort to demonstrate the Byzantine emperor's role as the leader of the Christian world, John marched into Muslim Syria at the head of the combined forces of Byzantium and the Crusader states.

Constantine XI Palaiologos

The Last Emperor of the Romans 1449 to 1453. Constantine faced the siege of Constantinople defending his city of 60,000 people with an army only numbering 7,000 men against an Ottoman army of over 80,000. He personally led the defense of the city and took an active part in the fighting alongside his troops in the land walls. At the same time, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain the necessary unity between the Genovese, Venetian and the Greek troops. When the city fell to the Turks he tore off his imperial ornaments so there would be nothing to distinguish him from any other soldier and led his remaining soldiers into a last charge where he was killed.