Background
Robert Guiscard was born in 1015 in Cotentin, Bretagne, France into the Hauteville family. He was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda.
Robert Guiscard (by Merry-Joseph Blondel)
Robert Guiscard, from the 14th-century manuscript Nuova Cronica.
Robert and his family; Sikelgaita is seated on the right
Portrait by Merry-Joseph Blondel
Robert Guiscard was born in 1015 in Cotentin, Bretagne, France into the Hauteville family. He was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda.
Arriving in Apulia, in southern Italy, around 1047 to join his half brother Drogo, Robert Guiscard found that it and Campania, though they were southern Italy’s most-flourishing regions, were plagued by political disturbances. These regions attracted hordes of fortune-seeking Norman immigrants, who were to transform the political role of both regions in the following decades.
In Campania, the Lombards of Capua were launching wars against the Byzantine dukes of Naples in order to gain possession of that important seaport. In Apulia, William ("Iron Arm") de Hauteville, Robert’s eldest half brother, having successfully defeated the Byzantine Greeks who controlled that region, had been elected count of Apulia in 1042. In 1046 he had been succeeded by his brother Drogo.
When Robert Guiscard joined his brothers, they sent him to Calabria to attack Byzantine territory. He began his campaign by pillaging the countryside and ransoming its people. In 1053, at the head of the combined forces of Normans from Apulia and Campania, he defeated the haphazardly led forces of the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy at Civitate. Because of the deaths of William and Drogo and of his third half brother, Count Humphrey, in 1057, Robert Guiscard returned to Apulia to seize control from Humphrey’s sons and save the region from disgregating internal conflicts. After becoming the recognized leader of the Apulian Normans, he resumed his campaign in Calabria. His brother Roger’s arrival from Normandy enabled him to extend and solidify his conquests in Apulia.
In his progression from gang leader to commander of mercenary troops to conqueror, Robert Guiscard emerged as a shrewd and perspicacious political figure. In 1059 he entered into a concordat at Melfi with Pope Nicholas II. Robert’s plan to expel the Arabs from Sicily and restore Christianity to the island also found favour in Nicholas’s eyes. This expedition into Sicily got under way in 1060, as soon as the conquest of Calabria was completed. Robert Guiscard entrusted the command of the expedition to his brother Roger, but on particularly difficult occasions - example, the siege of Palermo in 1071 - he came to his brother’s aid.
Robert Guiscard continued to expand the small county left by Humphrey into a duchy, extending from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian sea. The capture of Bari in April 1071 resulted in the end of Byzantine rule in southern Italy. He turned next to the neighbouring territories of Salerno, controlled by the Lombards. Instead of fighting them, he dissolved his first marriage and in 1058 married the sister of Salerno’s last Lombard prince, Gisulf II. Hostilities broke out between the two rulers, however, and Gisulf naively tried to bring about a Byzantine counteroffensive against Robert Guiscard. Fearing that the Norman advances into Campania, Molise, and Abruzzi would threaten the papal dominions, Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Robert Guiscard and gave Gisulf considerable military aid. The struggle came to a head when Gisulf, determined to display his power, advanced toward the prosperous city of Amalfi. He responded to the city’s plea for help in 1073 and successfully defended it; in December 1076 he took Salerno from Gisulf and made it the capital of his duchy.
Robert Guiscard was now at the height of his power. During his rise he repressed with an iron hand not only the claims of Humphrey’s sons but also the uprisings of towns and lords that were fretting under the restraints imposed upon them. The harshness with which Robert chose to deal with these rebels was intended to transform a heterogeneous population into a strong state.
When, in 1080, the conflict between church and state over the right to control ecclesiastical personnel and property had become more intense, Robert Guiscard chose to reconcile himself with Gregory VII, entering into the Concordat of Ceprano, which confirmed the commitments of the earlier Council of Melfi. Even the Byzantine court drew closer to him and went as far as trying to establish a familial relationship with Robert. The Byzantine emperor Michael VII, in need of Robert’s help to uphold his unstable throne, married his son, Constantine, to one of Robert’s daughters, Helen. The opposition party, however, deposed Michael and confined Helen in a monastery. To guarantee Apulia against attack from the new rulers of Byzantium, Robert Guiscard wanted the territories on the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula, and he began to build a large navy. Michael’s expulsion and Helen’s confinement reawakened his unappeased spirit of adventure and hastened his long-considered expedition. Now his goal was even more ambitious: to march to Byzantium and crown himself emperor in place of the deposed Michael.
In 1083 Robert Guiscard landed in Epirus with a well-trained army and immediately succeeded in defeating the Byzantines and their Venetian allies. The pope, however, suddenly recalled him to Italy to help him expel the German king Henry IV, who was marching on Rome en route to claiming southern Italy for the Holy Roman Empire. Having returned home and suppressed the revolts of the lords hostile to himself and to Pope Gregory VII, Robert Guiscard moved toward Rome, defeated the pope’s enemies, and escorted him to Salerno in the summer of 1084. Following this success, he returned to his campaign on the Adriatic coast. Robert Guiscard died during the siege of Cephalonia on July 17, 1085.
Robert Guiscard was the most famous of the Norman brothers, members of the Hauteville family, who entered the wars of southern Italy and carved out important principalities for themselves.
Robert Guiscard was married in 1051 to Alberada of Buonalbergo. He was married to Sichelgaita.
Bohemond I (c. 1054 - 3 March 1111) was the Prince of Taranto from 1089 to 1111 and the Prince of Antioch from 1098 to 1111. He was a leader of the First Crusade, which was governed by a committee of nobles. The Norman monarchy he founded in Antioch arguably outlasted those of England and of Sicily.
Emma of Hauteville was a daughter of Robert Guiscard and Alberada of Buonalbergo. According to Ralph of Caen, she married Odo the Good Marquis and had two sons: Tancred and William, both of whom participated in the First Crusade. Tancred became Prince of Galilee and William died in the Holy Land. Her daughter Altrude married Richard of the Principate and was the mother of Roger of Salerno.
Emma was dead by 1126, when Odo's second wife and widow, Sichelgaita, made a donation in her family's memory.
Maud of Apulia (ca. 1060 - ca. 1112) was a member of the Norman D’Hauteville family and a daughter of Robert Guiscard and his second wife Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess, the daughter of Guaimar IV, Prince of Salerno. She was also known as Mahalda, Mahault, Mafalda and Matilda. She was the wife of Ramón Berenguer II, and thus Countess of Barcelona (1078-1082). After her husband’s death, she remarried Aimery I, the Viscount of Narbonne (1086-1108).
Roger Borsa (1060/61 - 22 February 1111) was the Norman Duke of Apulia and Calabria and effective ruler of southern Italy from 1085 until his death.
Robert of Hauteville (c. 1068 - April 1110), called Scalio, was the third and youngest son of Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, and his second wife Sikelgaita. He may have served his elder half-brother Bohemond and his father in their Balkan expeditions of 1084-1085. He was a loyal servant of his eldest brother Roger Borsa, whom he accompanied to Palermo in 1086. He undersigned various documents of Roger's and died in April 1110.
Guy of Hauteville (died 5 July 1108) was an Italo-Norman soldier and diplomat who for a time served the Byzantine Empire.
