Chapter Eighteen: In Which A Duke Does Battle
Dozens of flint-hard Norman eyes followed the three Hammadid envoys as they were traversing the sun-flooded courtyard to where Bohemond’s throne-like seat had been placed. King Hashmaddin had sent an officer to lead his embassy, and from Serlo’s place immediately to the right of his cousin’s regal chair both the mail-clad fighting man and his two companions in civilian dress seemed confident enough. And why not indeed, the Duke of Leptis Magna thought. The Norman advance had been smooth and successful, but Hashmaddin had not yet been beaten in a major battle.
After the fall of Mahdia, the eight thousand strong Norman main host had immediately advanced upon the large and prosperous city of Kairwan in the interior. Bohemond had conquered the town already once twelve years ago, but had lost it again after not quite two years, and now he was determined to retake it. The Normans had found the immense city to be defended by no more than a citizen militia, and they had soon learned why: King Hashmaddin, reluctant to risk confrontation with formidable Bohemond before his own armaments were complete and his host fully assembled, had ordered Sheik Jawhar Hamid, the town’s governor, to bring Kairwan forces north, to the staging fields near Tunis. The Hammadids had not thought it possible that the Normans would overrun the towns of Sfax and Mahdia so quickly and then advance upon Kairwan with barely a day of rest. That the Norman host should appear before Kairwan already by mid-May, merely six months after crossing into Hammadid territory, had greatly upset Hashmaddin’s careful and methodical strategy.
Nonetheless he had been unwilling to change it and had refused to come to Kairwan’s aid and to meet the Normans in battle before his own forces were fully assembled. But Kairwan’s governor Sheik Jawhar had been unable to sit by idly while his town was conquered. Against his King’s orders he had taken his two thousand five hundred warriors south again, not to do battle with the three times as large Norman host before Kairwan, but merely to pester the besieging forces with highly mobile Muhammadan warfare and to delay the siege until King Hashmaddin might arrive with the full Hammadid host.
But Jawhar hadn’t reckoned with the experience in this kind of warfare Serlo had gained in long years of fighting elusive desert nomads. With his critical help Bohemond had devised a tactic to utilize the Norman numerical superiority to lure Jawhar into a net flung far across the countryside. The plan had been quite similar to Serlo’s ambush of the rebels at the oasis of Ghomrassen, only on a much larger scale. When Norman contingents had completed their miles-wide encircling sweeps into his army’s back, Sheik Jawhar had suddenly realized that his enemy had learned to deal with his people’s highly mobile way of fighting and was interdicting it. The Hammadid commander had ordered the retreat just in the knick of time to avoid complete encirclement and had thus saved four fifths of his host.
Jawhar had thus learned that the Normans were now able to counter the Berber way of fighting, and he had to concede that his army was much too small to stand a chance against the Christians in open battle. Accepting the futility of futher delaying action against the Normans he had retreated north, to rejoin his King at Tunis, and had left Bohemond to besiege Kairwan unmolested. After five more weeks of resistance the town had finally lost hope that a relief force would arrive in time to save them and had thrown their gates open to the Normans. For the second time, Bohemond had taken possession of Kairwan.
Throughout this time, Bohemond had treated Serlo with cordial courtesy, never once bringing up the matter of his involvement in the plot. The Normans had applauded the the King’s leniency in having his wife merely seized and confined to a nunnery, and they hailed the Duke of Leptis Magna’s apparent loyalty. It made Serlo sick when he thought about it. He was a man torn. It upset him how he had allowed himself to be used not only by his cousin, but also by Sancha, of all people, but at other times he loathed himself for failing both his liege and Sancha. And he was revolted by how his fellow barons used to praise his virtue and his honour. Serlo had found work to be the best remedy for his troubled mind and had immersed himself deeply in the campaign, labouring from dusk till dawn, taking on even minor task himself and plunging recklessly into the thick of fighting whenever the opportunity presented itself.
While Hashmaddin’s envoys and his cousin greeted each other by means of translators, Serlo cast a look around the colourfully tiled, collonaded courtyard. Ten years ago this stately enclosure had run red with the blood of the Norman defenders under Ranulph de Montbray, but now it was once again lavishly decorated with Norman banners, and a host of rapacious Christian lords were arrayed to witness their conqueror-king’s negotiations with the Muhammadan embassy. Serlo knew them all, but those he was close to became fewer with every passing year. A new generation of barons was coming into power, men to whom Normandy was either only a distant memory of early childhood or who had been outright born in the south.
One of these men and the youngest among those present was Silvester de Hauteville. Even though this surname was never used officially it was an open secret that the King had fathered the boy on carried off Elisa Orsini, and Serlo’s cousin would have been hard pressed to deny it even if he had wanted to. Silvester might be half Italian by his mother, but the fair-haired boy looked more like his father as any of his legitimate half-brothers. Though not yet fifteen Silvester was as tall as a grown man and built almost as powerfully, and underneath the melting chubbiness of youth his features did already show the square jaw and angularity of his father. Serlo looked from young Silvester to his cousin and back again. What would be this bastard son’s fate, and the kingdom’s fate? Bohemond did not display the least intention of elevating his bastard son, but neither had his own father when he himself had been that age, and now he was King. But Bohemond was still in his prime, not yet forty, and would God willing sit many more years on the throne.
Serlo snapped his attention back to the envoys who were now finally talking business. The translator rendered the Muhammadan’s throaty words into comprehensible Norman French: “With speed you have conquered, but you cannot now complete your campaign. You cannot advance past Tunis without taking it, and you cannot take it when it is defended by the ten thousand warriors my King will soon have assembled there.”
King Hashmaddin’s envoy
Despite knowing fully well that the ambassador had given a truthful assessment of the situation, Bohemond smiled with derision and replied: “And so King Hashmaddin expects me to flee back across the sea, quaking in fear of him sitting behind the impregnable walls of Tunis?”
After he had received the translation of the King’s words the envoy scowled and made a lengthy reply, translated thus: “You
will find the walls of Tunis most impregnable, and you will find them strongly defended, Lord King. And while maintaining a host the size of yours so far from your own lands will soon exceed your treasury’s means, my King can supply his army from his own lands indefinitely. Your host will dwindle, and before the summer is up the three thousand men my King has recalled from Egypt will arrive. Then, when your own army is undersupplied and starving and outnumbered by our forces, my King will come over you and drive you from his lands.”
The Hammadid officer waited for Bohemond to make a reply, but the King’s only reaction was a bored glance and an impatient wave of his large hand. Serlo saw that the Muhammadan’s suppressed frustration as he talked again and believed at first that he was annoyed with Bohemond, but when the translator repeated his words in Norman French the Duke realized that it was the message he had to relay that vexed the officer.
“My King wishes to avoid unnesessary bloodshed and the ravages on war being visited upon his fertile country”, were the translator’s words. “If you, Lord King, will not advance any further and pledge to cease hostilities, King Hashmaddin is therefore prepared to recognize your possession of both Mahdia and Kairwan.”
King Hashmaddin’s peace offer
A rush surprised exclamations arose from the throats of the gathered Norman lords, dying down into an excited murmur. Serlo himself could hardly believe it, and Bohemond looked no less surprised. Hashmaddin would cede half the most fertile and populous region of his realm without having fought a battle? Bohemond’s reputation as a warrior was of course formidable whereas Hashmaddin had none at all, but could the Hammadid King be truly as craven as to give away vital parts of his realm just to avoid confrontation? It was hard to believe.
Bohemond sat back in his carved seat and cast a glance at his cousin and his Marshall standing on his left-hand side. In a subdued a voice he said: “What do you make of this, my Lords?”
Serlo stooped a bit to reply in similiarly hushed tones: “Either Hashmaddin’s offer is serious or he is bargaining for time until his troops form Egypt have arrived and is intending to retake Kairwan and Mahdia then. But at any rate the envoy is right. If Hashmaddin mans the mighty fortifications of Tunis we cannot take the town, even though there is no way how the Hammadids can have a full ten thousand men there. It might be politic to accept the offer and to fortify your new lands strongly in preparation of a treacherous assault by Hashmaddin.”
“I concur, my Lord King”, where Charles’ equally subdued words. “With Hashmaddin’s strong army defending Tunis we would have to starve the town into surrendering, and that would take half a year at the very least. The war chests are drainign quickly and cannot sustain a host of the current size in the field for much longer.”
Bohemond nodded once, his face set and grim but breaking into the hint of a grin as he addressed the envoy once more: “King Hashmaddin’s offer is a generous one. But I am not in the habit of accepting alms, what I want for myself I simply take. King Hashmaddin is going to learn this for himself when I come to Tunis and take it from him. You are dismissed.”
Another murmur went through the assembeld Norman barons and captains. Their King had turned down the Hammadids’ generous offer and wouldlead them against the fabled walls of Tunis.
* * *
Two weeks later, by late July, the Norman host from Kairwan was well on his march towards Tunis. Bohemond had given his men time to rest and to recover from wounds sufferd during the assaults on the city, and he had together with Serlo and Marshall Charles reorganized his forces. A thousand men fromMahdia had been transferred to Kairwan to Sfeguard the town from the contingency of a Hammadid surprise attack from the west, and five hundred men had been left behind at Mahdia to retain Norman control of the coastlines. The Norman main host, seven thousand five hundred men strong, was advancing over the mountains towards Tunis, and far to its east a second host of three thousand men, led by the King’s Greek son-in-law Lord Demetrios, was advancing along the coast.
The Norman deployment for the assault on Tunis
The King’s plan was audacious. Serlo’s cousin wanted to avoid a drawn-out and prohibitively expensive siege of a well-defended Tunis at all costs, but the same seemed to hold true for Hashmaddin, who was probably mindful of the devastation a siege of Tunis would mean for this most fertile and prosperous part of his realm.Bohemond was playing on this reluctance of his enemy to draw him out of Tunis. To do so, he deliberately offered himself and his main host as a bait. Demetrios Zarides had been instructed to depart from Mahdia late, to delay his advance and to time his arrival at Tunis to be at the very least a full week after the King’s. Seeing the Normans thus divided, King Hashmaddin would sally forth from Tunis to disperse the main host in open battle before Demetrios could arrive with his reinforcements. The tactic was sound, but it had one weakness: The King’s army would actually be outnumbered by Hashmaddin’s forces at Tunis, which by reliable accounts might number as much as nine thousand, and it would be exhausted from the march, whereas the Hammadid troops would be fresh and well-rested. In spite of this the King was nonetheless confident that h would be able to defeat Hashmaddin in an open battle.
* * *
When Serlo and the Norman host were leaving the mountains interior and descending into the lush coastal plain around Tunis it became abundantly clear that Hashmaddin had fallen for the King’s ruse. The Hammadid monarch had already advanced half a day’s march south of his capital and was encamped right across the Norman route of advance, clearly intent on interdicting his enemy access to the fertile coast and affording the Christians no opportunity to recover from the hardships of the march through the summer-dry mountains. Hashmaddin had moved to swallow the bait – now the bait would have to survive.
The Hammadids had chosen their deployment with care and were in control of all substantial supplies of water in the region, whereas the Normans were limited to a few very minor brooks in the mountains. The water was suffiecient for the men, but not enough for the horses, and so the Normans could not afford to dally on the high ground and rest – while the men would grow stronger, the horses would grow weaker. The Norman host camped out in the security of the mountains above Hashmaddin’s forces and held a council of war. All the barons and captains knew perfecty well that their only options were either retreat or advancing with slightly fatigued men into the jaws of well-rested Hammadids who did also enjoy a slight numerical advantage, being estimated at about eight thousand.
A few captains, Marshall Charles most prominent among them, advocated no to fight at such unfavourable odds, but the Serlo and the vast majority of the barons were of one mind with the King. While the Normans were outmatched in regards to footmen, they had the clear superiority in cavalry, especially in knights, who were varyingly estimated to outnumer the Hammadid ghulams by two or three to one. The Hammadids had deployed on ground broken up by many ditches and irrigation channels and thus favouring the infantry over the cavalry, but that also meant that their deployment and entire battle plan had to be rather static if they did not want to lose this protection. In some ways the Hammadid deployment was similar to that of Hashmaddin’s late uncle al-Nasir at Malta some fifteen years earlier. And like at Mdina Bohemond devised a plan to draw out the Hammadids by use of a flanking maneuver of the cavalry.
* * *
Clad underneath his colourful silken tabrad head to toe in mail, the ghulam horseman came at Serlo in full gallop, the African sun glinting off his lance tip, a bright promise of death. No different from Serlo’s own lance tip the Hammadid slave warrior’s wove an unsteady, unpredictable pattern into the air, dancing and bobbing ceaselessly to mislead the enemy as to where it would strike. But Serlo was veteran of many battles, and where less experienced men might have stared in abject terror at their enemy’s lance the Duke’s gaze was fixed firmly on the Muhammadan’s dark eyes – it was the eyes that gave away a man and his intentions, and this man’s intention was clearly on Serlo’s right shoulder. Half a beat of his pounding heart the Duke dropped his shield an inch, inviting the elite cavalryman’s thrust, while he did at the same time array his own lance’s weaving, aiming to strike the ghulam squarely in the shield-protected chest to unhorse him with the sheer force of the impact.
But when the bone-shattering impact came, the Duke’s shield was suddenly fimly in place over his shoulder, directing the murderous force of the ghulam’s lance away by letting its tip slide off harmlessly. Still, the torque impated by the hit was enough to wrench the veteran knight around in the saddle, but sufficient to ruin Serlo’s carful aim. In the very last moment he had lifted his lance ever so slightly and its tip had struck home no more than a mere finger’s breadth above the enemy’s shield’s rim. The Muhammadan had tucked his dusky head deep behind the shield and only just peeked over its protection, and so he took Serlo’s lance straight in the eye, the unstoppable power of the impact forcing it all the way through his skull.
For a grotesque instant, the ghulam’s unhorsed corpse dangled by its mangled skull from Serlo’s lance, then its armoured weight tore the shaft from the Duke’s hand. Amid the mad whinnying and the poundng hoovebeats, the clash of impacts and the screams of death and triumph Serlo slipped his horseman’s axe free from his saddle bow. The naked teror preceding every charge had fallen away from him and he was now firmly in the grip of the mad rush and the elation of battle. Swinging his axe, Serlo spurred his destrier mercilessly forward, right into the thick of the fray.
It had been the King’s Marshall who had opened the Battle of Tunis. Upon his liege’s command Charles had led the almost one thousand light horsemen, in part Norman squires and in part Muhammadan mercenaries, against the light Berber horsemen Hashmaddin had concentrated on his left flank to guard it against encirclement. The free-whelling battle of the horsemen had raged fro quite some time, but it had eventually become apparent that the superior numbers of the Normans and the bravely inspiring leadership of their Marshall would triumph over the many centuries of Berbers’ tradition as light horsemen.
King Hashmaddin could not have let the battle on his left flank be lost, as any such occurrence would have exposed his entire army to encirclement by the Normans, and so he had committed himself and his ghulam heavy horsemen to reinforce his crumbling flank. Hashmaddin had charged at the Norman light horse, and Bohemond and all his knights, Serlo among them, had in turn charged at Hashmaddin. With the knights thus engaged, the Hammadid infantry had finally surged forward at the Christian footmen. If Hashmaddin could hold his left flank long enough, his rested, professional and well-equipped infantry would carry the field.
The sound of a horn bellowing penetrated dimly into the deep throes of Serlo’s battle fury. The Duke broke off his pursuit of the fleeing ghulam and sharply reined in his foaming roan stallion. He cast a look around the fields ploughed by many thousands of hooves. Everywhere, other Christian horsemen were coming to as well, breaking off their individual pursuits of the routed enemy. Serlo realized that they had pushed the Hammadid horse back and had then broken them completely. The standard of Hashmaddin was nowhere to be seen, and everywhere infidels were in madcap flight. Some distance to his right the Duke make out the bulky frame of his royal cousin through the clouds of upturned dust, rallying his men to his banner.
King Bohemond rallying his men during the Battle of Tunis
Serlo cantered his exhausted warhorse over to the King, more and more of his own vasslas falling in all around him. As usual, not all of the hot-headed, battle-lusty Normans had heard the rallying call or deemed to heed it, but within a few short minutes hundreds of knights had gathered around the King’s standard all the same. All around the assembling knights the trampled fields were littered with dead or dying men and horses, the agonized screams from throats both human and beastly drowning out the din of the distant footmen’s clash. The line of the fighting infantry was distant, details of how which side was faring obscured by dust and the haze of the August heat, but no matter who might be winning at the moment the real decision was only to come, with ranks of iron-clad Norman knights about to charge into the backs of the Muhammadans.
* * *
The Battle of Tunis had ended in a great and glorious victory for the outnumbered and weary Normans. The Hammadid army had been broken and scattered, full half of them remaining either on the field right away or else being slain by Norman horsemen pursuing them over many miles.
Some of the broken enemies had made it back into the deceptive safety of Tunis, but many, King Hashmaddin among them, had fled west, where they hoped to regroup and to raise new fighting men to eventually strike against the Normans anew. This should turn out to be a hollow, idle hope – no other Hammadid army large enough to challenge the Normans could be raised. Instead, Lord Demetrios did arrive with his three thousand men of reinforcements, and the almost ten thousand Normans did lay siege to Tunis.
Even now, with the wealthy Hammadid capital bereft of the majority of its defenders, the siege of a city as strongly fortified as Tunis was a drawn-out affair, and taxing for the King’s already strained treasury. It had only been with some difficulty that Bohemond had manged to raise sufficient funds to sustain the siege at all.
After two long months of preparing the assault on Tunis a mine dug underneath it had finally collapsed a stretch of the wall and allowed the Christians access into the city. In a long day and night of bloody street fighting the Normans had eventually carried the prosperous Hammadid capital.
Bohemond would have liked nothing better than to continue his conquests, but his treasury was already more than depleted, and on top of everything else armed native rebellions were once again springing up all across Leptis Magna, requiring immediate attention. Gnashing his teeth in anger and vowing in private that the Hammadids should not yet have seen the last of him, Bohemond did therefore send to King Hashmaddin for peace. With his army shattered at Tunis, the Hammadid King had little choice but to accept Bohemond’s demands and to cede the Normans the richest parts of his realm in exchange for the much-needed peace.
The Norman kingdom at the very end of 1096
