ful; and five hundred
knights, or warriors on horseback, were enrolled by Arduin, the agent
and interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces, governor
of Lombardy. Before their landing, the brothers were reconciled; the
union of Sicily and Africa was restored; and the island was guarded to
the water's edge. The Normans led the van and the Arabs of Messina felt
the valor of an untried foe. In a second action the emir of Syracuse was
unhorsed and transpierced by the iron arm of William of Hauteville. In a
third engagement, his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty
thousand Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labor of the
pursuit: a splendid victory; but of which the pen of the historian may
divide the merit with the lance of the Normans. It is, however, true,
that they essentially promoted the success of Maniaces, who reduced
thirteen cities, and the greater part of Sicily, under the obedience
of the emperor. But his military fame was sullied by ingratitude
and tyranny. In the division of the spoils, the deserts of his brave
auxiliaries were forgotten; and neither their avarice nor their pride
could brook this injurious treatment. They complained by the mouth of
their interpreter: their complaint was disregarded; their interpreter
was scourged; the sufferings were his; the insult and resentment
belonged to those whose sentiments he had delivered. Yet they dissembled
till they had obtained, or stolen, a safe passage to the Italian
continent: their brethren of Aversa sympathized in their indignation,
and the province of Apulia was invaded as the forfeit of the debt. [22]
Above twenty years after the first emigration, the Normans took the
field with no more than seven hundred horse and five hundred foot; and
after the recall of the Byzantine legions [23] from the Sicilian war,
their numbers are magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men.
Their herald proposed the option of battle or retreat; "of battle," was
the unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their stoutest warriors,
with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the Greek
messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult was concealed
from the Imperial troops; but in two successive battles they were more
fatally instructed of the prowess of their adversaries. In the plains of
Cannae, the Asiatics fled before the adventurers of France; the duke of
Lombardy was made prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in