, the fields
of Cannae were bedewed a second time with the blood of the Africans, and
the sovereign of Rome again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and
Tarentum. A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands
the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations
provoked the resentment, and conciliated the union of the two emperors.
An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian, the
first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson of Charlemagne; and each
party supplied the deficiencies of his associate. It would have been
imprudent in the Byzantine monarch to transport his stationary troops
of Asia to an Italian campaign; and the Latin arms would have been
insufficient if his superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the
Gulf. The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks,
and by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of
four years, the Arabian emir submitted to the clemency of Lewis, who
commanded in person the operations of the siege. This important conquest
had been achieved by the concord of the East and West; but their recent
amity was soon imbittered by the mutual complaints of jealousy and
pride. The Greeks assumed as their own the merit of the conquest and
the pomp of the triumph; extolled the greatness of their powers,
and affected to deride the intemperance and sloth of the handful of
Barbarians who appeared under the banners of the Carlovingian prince.
His reply is expressed with the eloquence of indignation and truth: "We
confess the magnitude of your preparation," says the great-grandson of
Charlemagne. "Your armies were indeed as numerous as a cloud of summer
locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings, and, after a short
flight, tumble weary and breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk
after a feeble effort; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice; and
withdrew from the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian
subjects of the Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why were
we few? Because, after a tedious expectation of your arrival, I had
dismissed my host, and retained only a chosen band of warriors to
continue the blockade of the city. If they indulged their hospitable
feasts in the face of danger and death, did these feasts abate the vigor
of their enterprise? Is it by your fasting that the walls of Bari have
been overturned? Did not these valiant Franks, diminished as they were
by lan