Durazzo 1081

Byzantine Tagmata: The Roman Army at Dyrrhachium included Thracian and Macedonian Tagmata, which numbered about 5,000 men.

Battle of Dyrrhachium (October 18, 1081): 1,300 Norman cavalry under the Duke of Apulia Robert Guiscard, were initially repulsed by the Varangian Guards. The Varangian Guard were in turn routed by a counterattack to their flanks by Norman infantry, fled to the sanctuary of a nearby church which the Norman forces burnt down. The Norman knights then charged the Byzantine line again, and caused a widespread rout. First recorded instance of a successful and decisive 'shock' cavalry charge.

DYRRHACHIUM (DURAZZO/ EPIDAMNOS), SIEGE AND BATTLE OF, 1081-2

Dyrrhachium (Durazzo to Italians, Epidamnos to Greeks) was the capital of Illyria, and is modern Durres in Albania. Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond besieged it in 1081 in the Norman attempt at Mediterranean expansion against Byzantium. Guiscard left Otranto with a fleet and army in May 1081. A Venetian fleet allied to the Byzantines to defeat the Normans in June, after the Normans suffered damage in a storm. Guiscard could not blockade from the sea as intended. The siege was an attempt by the Normans to gain safety within. The defence was led by George Palaeologus. The Normans built a belfry, countered by a wooden tower and later destroyed by fire. The defenders used catapults, pitch and Greek Fire. The Normans suffered illness and starvation. Alexius I Comnenus came to the relief. The battle was fought on 18 October. Against the odds the Normans won through using archers and cavalry against the Varangian Guard (including Anglo-Saxon exiles). Guiscard's wife Sigelgaita participated in the ensuing battle, brandishing a spear and helping to rally the troops. 

Alexius was wounded in the forehead but escaped to Ochrid. The Byzantines retreated and Dyrrhachium surrendered on 21 February 1082. Guiscard returned to Italy. Bohemond continued to Larissa where he was defeated by the Byzantines.

Oman, p. 164, reports in detail on this battle because he sees in it the last engagement for 300 years in which actual foot troops like those of Harold at Hastings, and not dismounted knights or simple militia or marksmen, played a role, the last battle between the Anglo-Saxon battle-axe and the Norman lance supported by the bow. 

Robert Guiscard had crossed the Adriatic and was besieging Dyrrhachium (Durazzo). Emperor Alexius moved up with a relief army that also included the Varangians who were in the service of Byzantium. Anna Komnena, 6: 6, describes these men who carried double-edged swords or battle-axes on their shoulders, as well as shields. She recounts that they dismounted from their horses and attacked the Normans in a closed formation. Initially, she reports, they had also thrown the Normans back, even though they did not wait until the mounted archers had worked the enemy over. But in this action they had become separated from the rest of the Byzantine army and were overcome by the Norman horsemen. 

This description does not correspond as closely to the conduct of the thanes at Hastings as it does to the ancient German wedge. For the thanes at Hastings sought to win in a purely defensive action, while the Varangians at Dyrrhachium attacked like the ancient Germans. 

But why did they dismount from their horses? The result shows that they were too bold in their attack. Perhaps it was only a question of insufficient cooperation with the other units of the Byzantine army. But since we are not clearly informed on this point and Anna Komnena is not such a reliable source, this battle can hardly be evaluated from the viewpoint of military history. 

The other sources, too, which report on this battle, particularly the Gesta Roberti Wis-cardi (Deeds of Robert Guiscard), Mon. Germ. SS., 9. 369 ff-, do not provide the answers to those questions.

BOHEMOND OF TARANTO, PRINCE OF ANTIOCH (1050-1111)

Prince from 1098 through the First Crusade, the son of Robert Guiscard and Alberada. Anna Comnena described the impact on the Byzantine court (and herself) of the tall, muscular, stooping, blond Norman. He fought for his father against the Byzantines in the unsuccessful attack on Albania in 1081. His younger brother Roger received the Apulian lands, and Bohemond inherited little. On the First Crusade, leading the Normans from Sicily, he fought at Dorylaeum and Antioch. The author of the Gesta Francorum was probably in his retinue. Bohemond founded the principality of Antioch despite Byzantine claims, but by the Treaty of Devol in 1108 recognised Byzantine overlordship. He was captured by the Turks near Aleppo in 1100 and imprisoned in Anatolia until ransomed in 1103. He was defeated by the Turks at Harran in 1104. He returned to the west in 1106, seeking reinforcements, and married Constance daughter of Philip I of France. With a new force Bohemond besieged Durazzo from 1107 but failed to take it. He returned to Italy and died in Apulia. His nephew Tancred and then his own son Bohemond II succeeded to Antioch.

ALEXIUS I COMNENUS, BYZANTINE EMPEROR (1048-1118)

Emperor from 1081, restoring much imperial territory. He was emperor during the First Crusade and the hero of his daughter Anna Comnena's Alexiad. His wife was Irene. He commanded armies before becoming emperor and was an able diplomat. He succeeded through a coup against Nikephorus III. He faced attacks on Byzantine territory by the Italian Normans under Robert Guiscard, including an attempt on Durazzo that was held off. He defeated the Pechengs at Levunium. He employed Turkish mercenaries and allied with Venice, to whom he granted privileges. Alexius recovered territory in Europe. He rebuilt the navy, regaining Crete and Cyprus. He manoeuvred the Franks on the First Crusade through his territory and into Asia Minor. As a result of the Crusade's success he recovered much of Anatolia from the Turks. He received some recognition from the new crusading states. His son John II succeeded.

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Arab Muslim raiding in the Atlantic and North Atlantic

While on convoy duty in the Mediterranean, Captain John Kempthorne in the ‘Mary Rose’ was attacked by seven Algerine corsairs. With the help of only a ketch, the ‘Roe’, they were none the less repulsed and the whole convoy saved.

This well-finished drawing is based on Hollar’s etching of the incident in Ogilby’s ‘Africa’ (1670), though the drawing has more smoke and the ships are more accurate. It has a high horizon and in the centre middle distance shows a port-broadside view of the ‘Mary Rose’. On her port bow is a pink (copied from the incorrect etching) and the ‘Hamborough’ frigate. On her beam is a Scotch merchantman and, on her quarter, the ‘Roe’. In line to starboard are six of the Algerines, the ‘Half Moon’, ‘Orange Tree’, ‘Seven Stars’, ‘White Horse’, ‘Hart’ and ‘Golden Lion. In the left foreground is a French merhantman and in the right distance the Algerine ‘Rose Leaf’ pursuing a prize that was cast adrift.

  

After expulsion of the Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula in the 15^th Century, Moslems frequently raided the coasts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, France, England, Ireland, and Iceland and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Cyprus, sacked their towns and carried their inhabitants back to North Africa, where they were enslaved because they were 'infidels.

The Barbary pirates of North Africa were sometimes called "Turkish corsairs". Operating out of North Africa they were the terror of the Mediterranean (and elsewhere...a Lutheran preacher and his family were once abducted from Iceland) for several centuries. They raided European shipping and even coastal Europe, and at one point, collectively had one million European slaves (many lighter-skinned North Africans are supposedly their descendants). The Catholic Church had a specific order dedicated to ransoming prisoners; one famous prisoner of the pirates was Cervantes.

Due to their usefulness as potential military allies, most European states preferred to pay them not to bother their shipping. It took two wars in the early 1800s for them to stop molesting US shipping; the Europeans paid tribute until the 1830s. However, increasing international intolerance of piracy and European conquest of Northern Africa put an end to their shenanigans.

Their apogee was in the early 17^th Century. Between 1616 and 1642, fourteen Cornish ships were brought into Algiers alone -- out of a total of eighty-four owned in the county in 1626.

1627 raids against Iceland which took 300+people.

1629 Barbary Coast pirates (navy) attacked the Faeroe Islands and took some 30 women as slaves.

1630 raid against Weston-super-Mare

1631 sack of Baltimore (i.e. Baltimore, Ireland) and took 109 captives.

The Isles of Scilly which lie about thirty miles off the south west tip of England were raided. They are strategically important as they hold the weather gage for the English Channel.  Traditionally they had been rented from the monarch by the Godolphin family for ten pounds per year although the rent had been paid in puffins, a bird very prolific on the islands and said to be such a delicacy that it had been classified as fish so that it could be eaten on Fridays.

It was as late as 1636 that Sir Francis Godolphin, his brother and their wives were captured and killed by what contemporary reports called 'Turkish pirates'. This was a generic term to cover Turk, Moors and Algerians who were frequently seen off the Isles, though their traditional prey had become the fishing fleets returning from Newfoundland. Their activities only ceased in 1816 when a combined fleet of English and Dutch ships destroyed Algiers.

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In that age the technological dependence upon the wind made it quite possible for single ships or even a handful of ships sailing together to evade interception or even detection. A prevailing wind moving inshore that would pin the defenders' ships in port could still be used by hostile ships at sea to descend upon undefended parts of the coast. In just one instance, John Paul Jones was able during the American Revolution to sail around the British Isles in a single ship, even carrying one attack in Ireland to within sight of Carrickfergus Castle and the town of Belfast itself. The pirates of Algiers used vessels equipped with lateen sails rather than square sails, enabling them to sail closer to the direction of the wind than the European vessels with their square rigs.

The problem lies in the understanding of "maritime power" in relation to the technology of the time. In the 16th and early 17th Century, "command of the seas" was not even worth considering in the context most people refer to it from the Napoleonic period to modern times. In his seminal work, "The Influence of Sea Power on History", Alfred Thayer Mahan dismisses the period entirely. Difficulties in accurate longitudinal measurement (centered around accurate timekeeping), limitations in ship and sail design in relation to the wind, poor food preservation and cost of maintaining a navy prevented a continuous 'at sea' capability by the world's navies until very late in the 17th Century, if not the 18th Century.

Witness the actions of the English fleet in the months prior to the sailing of the Armada in 1588. Despite the fervent pleas from captains Howard, Hawkins and Drake, for Elizabeth to keep the fleet in port and with skeleton crews until the very last possible moment, primarily due to the cost and difficulty of keeping it at 'battle readiness' for an attack they knew was eventually coming. Even when it became apparent the battle was won in the weeks after the last combat at the Gravelines, she put the ships to port and released as many crews as possible. The crown simply lacked the wherewithal to maintain such a force beyond the time of crisis.

The Spanish themselves could not hope to assemble the Armada without purchasing and contracting merchant ships for the temporary purpose of the invasion. They even "conscripted" an entire squadron from the Genoese and used the captured galleons of the Portuguese fleet in the enterprise. For Phillip II the worst tragedy of the Armada was not the missed opportunity, nor the combat losses, nor the loss of men. What really galled him were the costs incurred in the extended time it took to assemble, outfit and prepare the fleet and the disastrous replacement and repair costs of the ships once they returned.

This was just for major fleet action. Coastal raiders, navigating by hugging the coast and landing in essentially a 'snatch' operation, would be almost unmolested. This is why the coast of the Mediterranean is dotted with watch towers and small forts. Sea power through the Renaissance was never enough to stop raiders. When they moved into the Atlantic, it was more in response to the relative "cost" of raiding the minimally fortified coastline of the Med than the nearly defenceless coastlines mentioned above. Additionally, since the increase of trade with the new world and Far East increasingly became an Atlantic endeavour, it only stands to reason that the pirates, corsairs and raiders would 'follow the money' out of the Med and into the Atlantic.

It may have also been a "peace dividend" of sorts. The principle source of slaves for the Turks, Christian and Pirate navies of the Med were the captured sailors and soldiers in naval battles, either fleet or small squadrons. As the Turkish Empire receded and the maritime operations of the Med decreased, the supply of fresh slaves decreased dramatically.

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French Conquest of Corsica

The French Conquest of Corsica took place during 1768 and 1769 when the Corsican Republic was occupied by French forces under the command of the Comte de Vaux.

France acquired the island of Corsica from the Genoese Republic with the Treaty of Versailles in 1768. Genoa still claimed ownership of the island, although since 1755 Corsicans had achieved virtual independence. After abandoning any hope of recovering Corsica by force, the Genoese chose to sell their rights over the island to France who were keen to gain new territory to replace territory lost during the Seven Years' War.

France's initial offensive failed after a significant defeat was suffered at the Battle of Borgo in October 1768. France despatched large numbers of reinforcements, swelling the size of their army there to 24,000. The Corsican army suffered a major setback at the Battle of Ponte Novu and the French forces soon overran the island although Corsican forces were not completely subdued until the following year and sporadic outbreaks of rebellion continued.

The French invasion triggered the Corsican Crisis in British politics. Although they sent secret aid to the Corsicans the British government chose not to act to prevent the island's occupation. The leader of the Corsican Republic, Pasquale Paoli, went into exile in Britain where he remained until the French Revolution allowed him to return to Corsica. British troops subsequently intervened in Corsica between 1794-1796, where they created the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, and in 1814 when they agreed the Treaty of Bastia. Following the Congress of Vienna control of the islands were returned to the restored French monarchs.

Battle of Borgo

The Battle of Borgo was a battle between Corsican and French forces over control of the town of Borgo on 8 October 1768.

Prelude

In October 1768, Pascal Paoli tried to recapture U Borgu (Borgo), where a French force of 700 men under De Ludre was entrenched awaiting reinforcements. During this time. Pascal Paoli ordered his entire force to march on Borgo, whilst Clément Paoli kept a watch on Pascal's rear to prevent Grand-maison from descending from Oletta, where he had taken refuge. The main roads between Bastia and Borgo were also kept under surveillance by the Corsicans. The Marquis De Chauvelin learned of the fate awaiting his countrymen and sent Grand-maison towards Borgo. De Marbeuf and Chauvelin left Bastia with 3,000 men to join the force in Borgo. De Ludre and his 700 men entrenched themselves in Borgo awaiting the assault. Paoli inspired his troops by telling them "Patriots, recall the Corsican Vespers, when on this very spot you destroyed the French. The honour of the fatherland and public liberty today need all your valour. Europe is watching you.".

Course

Battle commenced on the morning of 8 October 1768 and lasted ten hours. Grand-maison tried in vain to defeat Clément Paoli and his men. Marbeuf and Chauvelin thought it best to retreat and De Ludre surrendered. 600 were dead, 1000 wounded and 600 taken prisoner, whilst 3 bronze cannon, 6 other cannon, a mortar, 1,700 fusils and other munitions were captured by the Corsicans. Louis XV of France was surprised by the defeat and even thought of making no further armed attempts to incorporate Corsica into France, but the Duc De Choiseul made every effort to continue the war and repair the damage the defeat had done to his reputation.

Battle of Ponte Novu

The Battle of Ponte Novu took place on May 8 and 9 1769 between royal French forces under the Comte de Vaux, a seasoned professional soldier with an expert on mountain warfare on his staff, and the native Corsicans under Carlo Salicetti. It was the battle that effectively ended the fourteen year-old Corsican Republic and opened the way to annexation by France the following year.

The Corsican commander-in-chief, Pascal Paoli, was trying to raise troops in the vicinity but was not present in person. He trusted the defence to his second-in-command, Salicetti. His forces included a company of Corsican women under a female captain named Serpentini.

Ponte Novu is a Genovese bridge over the Golo River in north central Corsica in Castello-di-Rostino commune. The battle opened the route through the rugged mountains to the Corsican capital of Corte. The battle is important as it marked the end of the Corsican War and paved the way for the incorporation of Corsica into France.

Voltaire, in his Précis du Siècle de Louis XV, admiringly wrote about the battle: "The principal weapon of the Corsicans was their courage. This courage was so great that in one of these battles, near a river named Golo, they made a rampart of their dead in order to have the time to reload behind them before making a necessary retreat; their wounded were mixed among the dead to strengthen the rampart. Bravery is found everywhere, but such actions aren't seen except among free people."

Strategy

The French Strategy

The French strategy was to disembark at Bastia, follow the current course of Route N193 (built over the old road) up the Golo River valley and over the passes to Corte, seizing the strategic center of Paoli's political power.

The Corsican Strategy

The Corsican strategy was to block the passage at Ponte Novu, a choke point where the road had to cross the river on the bridge. To do this Paoli stationed substantial forces on either side of the bridge. Gaffori was posted to the north above the road at Lento and Grimaldi at Canavaggia. These forces were intended to prevent a build-up before the bridge. To that end the militia was placed on the road before the bridge as well. Paoli had his headquarters at Rostino above the bridge.

Tactics

Tactically the battle was something less than a model. Different historians give rather different pictures of the battle, but there are some elements in common. The bridge was actually being held by a unit of Prussian mercenaries which formerly had worked for the Genoese but whom Paoli had managed to employ once the Genoese no longer needed their services. Though working for Paoli, this unit opened fire on Corsican troops trying to retreat over the bridge under pressure from the French. A slaughter resulted from the crossfire, the river ran red and the rest of the Corsican army retreated in disorder. Bodies began showing up downstream.

The circumstances under which the Corsicans were trying to cross the bridge and the reasons why the Prussians opened fire and continued with a sustained fire are not clear. The accounts vary on this point but the courage and loyalty of the Corsican troops and their officers are clearly in question, with a suggestion of divisiveness regarding the French. Politically Corsica was not of one mind (as it is not today). Paoli found it necessary to enforce unity by burning the farms and executing the relatives of dissidents to Corsican rule, and everywhere the French were rewarding the cooperation of the Corsicans.

In the most flattering account, the Corsicans began the attack, splitting their forces to send 2000 men across the bridge against a much superior force, hence their reputation for bravery. Discovering the unwisdom of their choice they attempted to retreat across the river but for an unknown reason were met by the volley fire of the Prussians. Apparently the shooters believed they were stopping an unauthorized retreat. Fortifying themselves as best they could the majority of the 2000 died in the crossfire. Seeing their defeat the confused troops on the other side retreated in disorder hunted by the French.

A less flattering version accuses Grimaldi of treachery and Gaffori of cowardice. Grimaldi, it asserts, was paid by the French to take no action and Gaffori feared to do so alone. Seeing the French come up with fixed bayonets the militia before the bridge ran for their lives, attempted to force the bridge and were fired upon by the Prussians in self-defense.

The stories are not compatible but Napoleon himself testified to the defense behind the rampart of the slain before the bridge and he is known to have gone over the battlefield with Paoli in 1790. One can only presume that Paoli had stationed his best and most loyal troops along the opposite bank and that, seeing the rout, they ran forward over the bridge to rescue the situation. This possibility places the Prussian unit in a very bad light. There appears to be no possibility, in this version, that they kept up a sustained fire by mistake, but evidence of collusion with the French, though a logical circumstance, did not survive.

Paoli at his headquarters was then faced with a general rout. It must have been at this time that the coat he brought to England, if genuine, was shredded by French musket balls. Militarily it is striking that he did not tour the front line or station himself behind it as did both Napoleon and Wellington in all their battles. The more inexperienced troops were left to feel that they were acting on their own. In summary, it is probably safe to say that Corsica was not sufficiently unified for Paoli to make an effective defense, his top officers defected, his troops undirected lacked motivation, and he relied on probably disloyal mercenaries to save the day; he faced numerically superior skilled French veterans and professional officers.