Bohemond of Taranto

Crusader and Conqueror

Georgios Theotokis

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781526744289
• eBook ISBN: 9781526744296
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

"A brilliant picture of a great medieval warrior and crusader, clear and concise, which brings to life the whole Mediterranean world in an age of crisis" (John France, author of Perilous Glory).
Bohemond of Taranto, Lord of Antioch, was the unofficial leader of the First Crusade. A man of boundless ambition and inexhaustible energy, he was one of the most remarkable warriors in medieval Mediterranean history. While he failed in his quest to secure the Byzantine throne, he succeeded in founding the most enduring of all the crusader states. In this authoritative biography, Georgios Theotokis presents a detailed portrait of Bohemond as a soldier and commander.
Covering Taranto's contribution to the crusades, Theotokis focuses on his military achievements in Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and Anatolia. Since medieval commanders generally receive little credit for their strategic understanding, Theotokis examines Bohemond's war-plans in his many campaigns, describing how he adapted his battle-tactics when facing different opponents and considering whether his approach to war was typical of the Norman commanders of his time.

Chapter 1

Early Life and Kin Dynamics

A Portrait of Bohemond

Now the man [Bohemond] was such as, to put it briefly, had never before been seen in the land of the Romans, be he either of the barbarians or of the Greeks (for he was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and his reputation was terrifying). Let me describe the barbarian’s appearance more particularly – he was so tall in stature that he over-topped the tallest by nearly one cubit, narrow in the waist and loins, with broad shoulders and a deep chest and powerful arms. And in the whole build of the body he was neither too slender nor over weighted with flesh, but perfectly proportioned and, one might say, built in conformity with the canon of Polycleitus. He had powerful hands and stood firmly on his feet, and his neck and back were well compacted. An accurate observer would notice that he stooped slightly, but this was not from any weakness of the vertebrae of his spine but he had probably had this posture slightly from birth. His skin all over his body was very white, and in his face the white was tempered with red. His hair was yellowish, but did not hang down to his waist like that of the other barbarians; for the man was not inordinately vain of his hair, but had it cut short to the ears. Whether his beard was reddish, or any other colour I cannot say, for the razor had passed over it very closely and left a surface smoother than chalk; most likely it too was reddish. His blue eyes indicated both a high spirit and dignity; and his nose and nostrils breathed in the air freely; his chest corresponded to his nostrils and by his nostrils . . . the breadth of his chest. For by his nostrils nature had given free passage for the high spirit which bubbled up from his heart. A certain charm hung about this man but was partly marred by a general air of the horrible. For in the whole of his body the entire man shewed implacable and savage both in his size and glance, methinks, and even his laughter sounded to others like snorting. He was so made in mind and body that both courage and passion reared their crests within him and both inclined to war. His wit was manifold and crafty and able to find a way of escape [lit. ‘handle’] in every emergency. In conversation he was well informed, and the answers he gave were quite irrefutable. This man who was of such a size and such a character was inferior to the Emperor alone in fortune and eloquence and in other gifts of nature.1

This lengthy and intimate portrait is undoubtedly the best description of Bohemond’s physical appearance that has been saved for posterity, written down some eight-and-a-half centuries ago by the Byzantine princess Anna, the eldest child of the Emperor Alexios Komnenos (r. 1081–1118). She delivered this description of her father’s nemesis in Book XIII, one of the last books of her monumental historical and biographical text, written around the year 1148 and named the Alexiad after her father. But although Bohemond appears in Anna’s work as early as Book IV, by the time the historian evidently thought it was time for her to deliver this detailed picture of her villain-hero, the Norman had already submitted to her father’s envoys on the outskirts of the Illyrian port-city of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës in Albania).

What immediately follows the portrait of Bohemond is the famous Treaty of Devol (Diabolis), drawn up in September 1108 between the Norman and Alexios, under the terms of which ‘second pact’ [following Bohemond’s formal submission to Alexios in 1097], ‘I [Bohemond] shall become the liege-man of Your Highnesses [Alexios and John Komnenoi].’2 Therefore, in this contest between the two great antagonists, Anna leaves no doubt as to who eventually triumphed over whom, and through her desire to magnify her father’s political and, more importantly, military success over this imposing barbarian in the eyes and ears of her audience, she ingeniously chose to place the physical description of the Norman count immediately after his defeat and surrender to the true hero of her work, her father.

It is not until he becomes a crusader in the summer of 1096 that Bohemond draws Anna’s virulent attacks; after that, no colours are too dark for painting him! However, he is not the only westerner to incur the princess’s sarcastic, derogatory or downright hateful comments. The Latin peoples of the West, who are called indiscriminately Latins, Franks or Celts, are all ‘barbarians’ as far as she is concerned. Anna ascribes to them numerous unpleasant attributes: they are ‘shameless

and reckless

’, but they are also ‘greedy of money

’, and ‘immoderate in everything they wish’, and this – naturally – made them ‘unstable and easily led’.3 This implies that the Franks would change sides even during battle to serve the highest bidder, thus discarding any previous agreements with former allies.4

Nevertheless, Anna admits on several occasions that the Franks were brave and daring, though untamed and undisciplined, especially when on horseback.5 Their impetuous nature and lust for battle and bloodshed, along with other characteristics like their ‘hot-headedness

’ and ‘eagerness

’ for glory which made them ‘uncontrollable

’, all of these bear down to one of the three distinct components of ethnicity in the Middle Ages; the first two were the idea of a nation’s common descent (usually going back to a mythical figure), followed by a shared language, but I will not elaborate on these two here; the third one was that each people had its own distinct characteristics, both physical and mental, and this is a fundamental idea behind the formation of the notion of the ‘invincibility’ on the battlefield of the Frankish and Norman nations.6

In the Middle Ages there was a widespread belief that physical appearance was transmitted by heredity, which in turn was determined by climactic and geographical factors. In fact, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (written in the early seventh century AD), the first work of ‘universal knowledge [summa]’, was the standard medieval work of reference for the creation and sustenance of ideas relating to the character of races: ‘The Saxon people . . . are accomplished in strength and agility. Whence they were named [i.e. from saxosus, ‘stony’], because they are a hard and very powerful kind of people, standing out above the other piratical tribes.’7 Two centuries earlier, Vegetius’ Epitoma Rei Militaris (written in the early fifth century) was the first Roman military treatise that offered a view of foreign warriors, in which the division of the Roman army’s recruits was geographical rather than sociological:

Or with what success would their [the Romans’] small size have been opposed to the prodigious stature of the Germans? The Spaniards surpassed us not only in numbers, but in physical strength. We were always inferior to the Africans in wealth and unequal to them in deception and stratagem. And the Greeks, indisputably, were far superior to us in skill in arts and all kinds of knowledge.8

The aforementioned ideas were adopted and elaborated by later medieval historians contemporary with the Norman expansion in the south, such as Orderic Vitalis, Geoffrey Malaterra and Amatus of Montecassino.9 Yet these stereotypical views of the ‘characters’ of nations have a much older origin, as they follow the same principle outlined by Tacitus in his Germania (first century AD) and Hippocrates on his climatic theory of human nature (around 400 BC).10

Geoffrey Malaterra promoted the introduction of clichés about Norman prowess that were universally accepted by his Latin contemporaries. He, along with William of Apulia, did his utmost to elaborate the Italo-Norman ‘warlike nature’, with characteristics such as energy (strenuitas), fierceness or martial spirit (fierte), boldness (hardiesce) and valour (vaillantize)11 playing a fundamental role in shaping the identity of these newcomers to Italy.12 Two examples from the Norman campaigns in the Balkans between 1081 and 1083 portray the Norman clichés of valour and boldness in facing great danger:

His [Robert Guiscard] army did not consist of more than ten thousand troops, but he relied more on the valour than on the numbers of his soldiers to strike the enemy with terror, in his invasion of Greece renowned for its warlike character since the times of Adrastus and Agamemnon.13

For the duke [Robert Guiscard] was extraordinarily bold and determined in military matters, and this was abundantly clear to many of the army, even if all the rest kept it quiet. It could in particular undoubtedly be realized from this fact; that he dared to undertake a war with only a small force against so populous an empire and an emperor so well provided with troops, against so many thousands of enemies, and he expected to defeat them. (Those who were present during this affair have testified that he had with him no more than 1,300 fully armed knights).14

Equally significant for the Norman invaders was their resourcefulness, as adaptation to the new geo-political environment in Italy proved crucial for their Mediterranean expansion in the eleventh century, literally matching the term ‘soldiers of fortune’. William of Apulia sets the tone here:

Although he [Robert Guiscard] knew the bravery of his soldiers, he wanted no rash undertakings. Not only had he been told of the vast numbers of the enemy but he knew nothing of the sort of men they were. So he sensibly counselled his people to be cautious, and prepared for every possible eventuality.15

In direct relation to their resourcefulness, the Normans are often depicted as crafty and opportunistic, seeking the perfect opportunity to desert their former allies in order to achieve their goals by ‘any means’, chivalric or unchivalric:

But, realising how stingy the prince of Capua was, they [the Normans] abandoned him and changed sides to enter the employ of the prince of Salerno. He received them as was fitting, because their military reputation had already made them extremely well known throughout Apulia, and particularly since they had deserted the prince his enemy and joined him. Their loyalty to him was encouraged with generous gifts.16

Writing about the Norman invasion of the island of Sicily in the early 1060s, Malaterra further notes that: ‘Seeing their enemies facing their army on the other shore and no prospect of doing anything, Count Roger resorted as was his custom to cunning proposals, as if he had read, ‘‘What is to be done? Success falls to the crafty weapons.’’’17

But what particularly distinguished the Normans in the military ‘arena’ of medieval European warfare was their strenuitas – energy in the field – which is a characteristically Norman quality that differentiated them from their ‘effeminate’ enemies, like the Greeks and the Lombards:

In this province there is a city called Coutances, and in its territory there is a village named Hauteville; called thus not so much because of the height of any hill upon which it is situated, but rather, so we believe, as an omen predicting the extraordinary fortune and great success of the future heirs of this village, who with the help of God and their own dynamism [strenuitas] raised themselves step by step to the highest of ranks.18

Therefore, coupled with the power of Divine Providence and Fortune, which are ever-present in all contemporary historical accounts of Norman expansion, it was their energy that guided them out of their ancestral places in northern France and into southern Italy. And in the Latin accounts of the time, this proces...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Plates
• Introduction
• 1. Early Life and Kin Dynamics
• 2. The Norman Invasion of the Balkans, 1081–83
• 3. The Norman Invasion of the Balkans, 1082–84
• 4. The Interlude Period, 1085–97
• 5. The Crusader – From Italy to the City
• 6. The Crusader – Conquering Antioch
• 7. Lord of Antioch
• 8. Back to Europe
• Epilogue: Death and Heritage
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Plate section