![]() Upon his arrival, his older brothers were not ready to recognize him as their equal, and so he was at first forced to lead a life not much different from a highwayman’s. Prior to these events, in 1044, a younger halfbrother of the Hauteville Counts of Apulia had arrived in Italy: Robert, who would later come to be called Guiscard – “the Cunning”. He was on friendly and honourable terms with Gaimar and Drogo, but he still forced them to cede him the County of Capua, which he entrusted to a Lombard vasal of his. In the same year, the German Emperor Heinrich campaigned in Campania. ![]() This did not in the least detract from the close relations between the Hautevilles and Count Gaimar, who in 1047 even gave Drogo the hand of his daughter in marriage. In 1046, Count Guillaume died, and was succeeded by his brother Drogo. Gaimar and Rainulf recognized Guillaume’s claim to the County of Apulia, and the three lords continued their close alliance. Guillaume, the eldest brother, became very popular with the Normans in the host, who in late 1042 elected him their Count. Rainulf and Gaimar graced the Hautevilles with the leadership of their host of mostly Norman mercenaries, and in 10 they were instrumental in defeating the Byzantines in three battles and driving them from Apulia and Bari. Both had designs upon Apulia, at this date still Byzantine. The brothers Hauteville fought with great valour, but they were dissatisfied with what rewards they were granted, returning to Italy with a lifelong grudge against the Byzantines.īack in Italy, the Hautevilles were noticed by Count Rainulf di Aversa, a fellow Norman and in league with Count Gaimar of Salerno. From here, the brothers went soon on to earn their living as mercenaries in Sicily, campaigning in the armies of the Byzantine Emperor Michael against the Muslims. In 1038, the three eldest of these brothers, Guillaume, Drogo and Humphrey, arrived in Italy and won a place at the court of Count Gaimar of Salerno, a young Lombard and foremost among the Lombards in southern Italy. ![]() The Hautevilles were no less than twelve brothers, sons of a minor lord from Normandy, Tancrede de Hauteville. This area was the first Norman domain in Italy, but not the most successful one: This was to be established by the family of the Hautevilles. The first tiny Norman lordship in Italy was set up around Aversa, from where the foreigners soon gained possession of fiefs in the County of Capua. That was the situation when in around 1020 the first Normans showed up in Italy, called in variously by the Pope and by local Lombard lords to fight as mercenaries, be it against Muslims, Byzantines, Germans or Lombard. ![]() Byzantine attempts to once again oust the Muslims were in the long run as unsuccessful as German ones. In the following centuries Byzantine power in the west slackened and the German Lombards were able to establish themselves in the south of the Italian peninsula, while Arabs and Berber people from North Africa took Sicily and even crossed over into Italy proper, gaining footholds on the continent. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire the Ostrogoths became masters of these lands for a short time, until they were retaken for the Eastern Roman Empire by Justinian in around 550. Sicily and the southern part of Italy have in antiquity been Greek colonization areas, which later on were to come under Roman and subsequently Western Roman dominion. Foreword: A Short History of Southern Italy
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