Robert Guiscard
Robert Guiscard, the Cunning, was the sixth son of Tancred de Hauteville, who came to southern Italy in 1047 as a landless knight, lived as a brigand in Calabria, took the Norman county of Apulia from his half-brothers, was invested by the pope in 1059 as Duke of Apulia, Calabria and, in advance, Sicily, and in the next twenty-five years drove the Byzantines out of Italy, took Palermo with his brother Roger, sacked Rome to rescue the pope who had once excommunicated him, and died invading the Byzantine Empire itself. Anna Komnene, the emperor's daughter, who hated him, described him as tall, fair-haired, with a voice that put armies to flight, and a tyrant by nature. His brothers William Iron-Arm, Drogo and Humphrey had been counts of Apulia before him, and when Humphrey died in 1057 Robert took the county over the heads of Humphrey's sons. Pope Leo IX had marched against the Normans in 1053 and been captured by them at Civitate; Nicholas II made peace instead, and at Melfi in 1059 recognised Robert as duke in exchange for an oath of fealty, which made the Normans the papacy's army against the empire for a century. He took Reggio in 1060, sent Roger into Sicily, besieged Bari, the last Byzantine city in Italy, for three years and took it in 1071, and Palermo the next January. Salerno, the last Lombard principality, fell to him in 1077. Gregory VII excommunicated him three times for taking papal lands and then, needing him against Henry IV, absolved him in 1080, and in 1084, when Henry held Rome and the pope was besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo, Guiscard came north with thirty thousand men, including his Sicilian Muslims, drove the emperor out, and let the army burn the city from the Lateran to the Colosseum; Gregory left with him and died at Salerno. The Byzantine war had begun in 1081 with a landing at Durazzo, where he beat Alexios Komnenos in the field, and it was resumed in 1084. He died of fever on Cephalonia in July 1085 with his fleet in the harbour, and the Normans went home. His epitaph at Venosa calls him the terror of the world.
- Lived: 1015 CE – 1085 CE
- Nationality: Norman
- Roles: duke, ruler, conqueror
