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. 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 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 a
new dominion; and the four places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and
Tarentum, were alone saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes.
From this aera we may date the establishment of the Norman power, which
soon eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa. Twelve counts were chosen
by the popular suffrage; and age, birth, and merit, were the motives of
their choice. The tributes of their peculiar districts were appropriated
to their use; and each count erected a fortress in the midst of his
lands, and at the head of his vassals. In the centre of the province,
the common habitation of Melphi was reserved as the metropolis and
citadel of the republic; a house and separate quarter was allotted to
each of the twelve counts: and the national concerns were regulated
by this military senate. The first of his peers, their president and
general, was entitled count of Apulia; and this dignity was conferred
on William of the iron arm, who, in the language of the age, is styled a
lion in battle, a lamb in society, and an angel in council. The manners
of his countrymen are fairly delineated by a contemporary and national
historian. "The Normans," says Malaterra, "are a cunning and revengeful
people; eloquence and dissimulation appear to be their hereditary
qualities: they can stoop to flatter; but unless they are curbed by the