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The boot being the boot of southern Italy...that bit that juts out.
This is a tale of learning and woe. Read on if you want to be bemused at a noobs stupidity...or, as I'd prefer to call it, a duke's mistakes. It's not all that though. I'm getting better at the game and I thought I'd transcript my firste xperiences of CKII in to my first AAR. I hope people enjoy the read, and feel free to add comments.
I wake in a haze. My broken body lies bloody on a mound in Sicily. Hordes of scimitar wileding muslims rampage over me, headed for cities, my wife, my children. The King of England and my sons lie between them and their goal. My only joy is the look on their faces when they see a horizon filled with row upon row of heavy horse.
My name is Robert d'Hautville, duke of Apulia, and thankfully it is all but a nightmare. The threat is real, but contained for now. My children are tucked up safely in their beds and my wife lays beside me, deep in her dreams. It is 1066, in the year of our Lord. My realm stretches from the borders of the Papacy to the shores of the Mediterranean and on to the great isle of Sicily. This is the duchy of Apulia, a realm of justice and a beacon in the eye's of our Lord.
To the north lies the Papacy and the vast lands of the Holy Roman aglomerate states. To the east, across the seas, lie the lands of Byzantium from whose weary bodies my forefathers took these sacred lands. To the south lies the treasured isle of Sicily and the evil horde of heretics along the shores of Africa. My life's quest was to unite a patchwork of Norman families surrounding my lands in to an army of God, capable of sweeping through the infidel ranks and purging this world of evil. May my reign be long and my conquests make me strong in the eye's of my Lord. For Apulia!
Part 1 - The reign of Robert, duke of Apulia, 1057-13th July 1092
taken from A Norman History Of Europe by Anton Nagain*
Family Cares
Robert d'Hautville** was a family man and a man preoccupied with keeping the baronies of his lands in the hands of Normans with close family ties. Some might say it was his downfall and kept his enemies too close. Others might say it is indeed best to keep one's enemies within striking distance. Where as some lords might, too, have a disdain for their illegitimate kin, Robert had a fondness for his. One of his more unusual acts was to hand over the county of Taranto to his bastard son, Behemond, in 1074. This was an act that would give the German house of von Rheinfelden a direct claim to a valuable part of Robert's lands. Perhaps Robert was so healthy in pride for his family that he felt he could deal with the claims of a powerful German family and the associated might of the Holy Roman Empire. The deed never came to fruition within Robert's lifetime so he would never know the outcome of his own sense of family honour.
Much of Apulia was divided out in to the hands of Robert's brothers and his sons as they came of age. The southern lands of Calabria belonged to Roger d'Hautville, Robert's long time martial advisor, and he became the portcullis between his brother and the muslim hordes of Sicily and the North African coast. The first taste of the strength of this barrier came in 1067 with a vast raiding party sent by Sheik Mohammed of Palermo into Apulian lands. Roger stood firm in the county of Messina and his brother's army drove the Palermitani back to whence they came.
Robert had been firmly victorious and this gave him a powerful hand with which to drive in to Sicily and vanquish the island in the name of the Lord, once and for all. In 1073 Robert invaded and conquered the coastal county of Trapani. In a typical act of honour gave control of the Bishopric of Trapani to his brother, William, a pious man with a deep faith in the Lord.
A Man Divided By Conquests
Robert was not a uniform man, and he switched his attentions back to amalgamating the independent states of southern Italy after the victory in Sicily. Many will argue that the victory over Palermo and the sacking of Trapani had made the lands safe and he could leave his brothers to guard them whilst he took care of Apulia. Roger of Reggio had a firm grip on the toe of Italy and the way was barred for any muslim invasion. Robert had time to firm up his own lands in preparation for securing Sicily in future years. He turned his attention to the counties of Taranto and Napoli. The lord of Taranto, count Abelard d'Hautville, had been plotting and scheming for control of Apulia and Robert took exception to this in late 1073. He deposed Abelard and, as stated earlier, placed his own bastard son in control of the county.
Robert then turned his attention to the county of Napoli, a strong port on the west coast of Italy. He sacked Napoli in 1080 and, chiefly because he had no worthwhile family without titles, he kept the lands for himself. He then turned his attention back to Sicily, in turn invading and conquering the counties of Girgenti, Siracusa and Palermo by the summer of 1086. He was now lord of much of the southern lands of Italy and controlled the entire island of Sicily. All that stood between him and his ultimate aim of a d'Hautville controlled Kingdom of Sicily were the independent states of Capua and Salerno. Capua was the gateway to Rome and Salerno was an allied land that had aided him conquering of Sicily in the decades previous. Whether it was time and resources, or simply the nature of Robert to care for family (his sister was the countess of Salerno), he never conquered either province before his death in 1092. The Kingdom of Sicily was never formed in his lifetime, or at least not in name.
Outside of his own realm Robert was a strong diplomat, forging beneficial alliances of marriage with the princesses of Europe. He had a strong relationship with the Byzantine princes of house Doukas and participated in their struggles with the Byzantine Emporer of the 1070s. Further north he maintained strong ties with house Arpad of Hungary, his youngest son betrothed to Princess Katalin before his death. His eldest son and heir was Roger d'Hautville and Robert had been careful with his own signet of future succession. Much against his nature he had given him no titles, but had married him into house de Savoie thereby gaining a claim to lands in the Holy Roman Empire. Whether he could ever have achieved any success with these claims is likely a wild dream, but his son and succession were safe and he had allies in Germania. By far his strongest alliance was with King William of England though. His daughter, Elizabeth, married Prince Robert de Normandie and became Queen consort of England on Robert's succession to the throne of England in 1089. Robert lived to see his own daughter become Queen of one of the greatest kingdoms of medieval Europe, and I feel that must have been a fact which gave him a great pride.
You might say that pride was well placed as King William had come to the aid of Apulia in the conquest of Sicily and our Robert had returned that act of friendship in helping William to fight back a Saxon rebellion in the early 1090s. It was that war that many will say eventually cost Robert d'Hautville his life. In a turn of events that cynics might call a lack of tactical nuance, Robert's army found itself surrounded by a number of Saxon armies in the Forest of Dean. Cut off from his English allies his army was massacred. It took him a year to get what was left of his men back to the sanctuary of the Dorset coast and his waiting ships. By that time he had less than a dozen men at his arm and had been severely crippled himself. My telling of the events is that Robert was a proud family man. He cared for his daughter to such an extent that he would have gone to great lengths to secure her safety, and in turn that of his family by marriage, the de Normandies of England. He put himself in a precarious situation through loyalty and family pride.
In all events he died less than six months later from fever and Roger d'Hautville succeeded to rule the duchy of Apulia. Only time would tell if he was as proud a family man as his father was, or whether he would take a different path in the eyes of history and of his Lord saviour.
~~~
But that is a story for another day. Part Two will follow the life of Roger d'Hautville, duke of Apulia and husband of the claimant of the duchies of Piemont and Bern. Will Roger press claims on the Holy Roman Empire? How will he fair against the massed armies of the muslim north coast of Africa? Will his brother-in-law, the King of England, come to his aid? Will his brother's marriage into house Arpad bring any gain to Roger?
* That's the name I make up from my handle...it's my pen name, if you like.
** I'm actually unsure what family name to use. I am of house d'Hautville but I know, from history texts, that he was Robert Guiscard. If anyone can inform me of how that works I'd be grateful. I have a limited knowledge of heraldry, if indeed that is heraldry, but a fascination for history.
*** The painting is actually "Les Normands en Sicile" by Prosper Lafaye, circa 1860. It depicts Roger, brother of Robert, at the battle of Cerami in 1061. I just thought it fit nicely with my AAR.
Duke Robert was called "Guiscard" as a nick-name. It meant "the fox" or "the crafty." The nick-name was given him by the people of southern Italy due to the various schemes he hatched to gain control of the region.
Thank you Count Coleman. So what we would now call his surname was indeed d'Hautville? I did a bit of reading (only Wiki) and Hautville is taken from the family forefather, Hialt, who settled in Normandy in 920; the Village of Hialt.
