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Updated: August 29, 2024
Guiscard came with a horde of Turks and heathen, pillaged Rome, and set it on fire. That was shameful of the Pope, who now fled with Guiscard to Salerno which was his Canossa. But he was also still cruel enough to stir up Henry's sons against their father. Then the great Gregory died in banishment, and Rome was extinct. Rome is no more, but Jerusalem shall be.
The breaches being now practicable, and preparations made for a general assault, count Guiscard the governor capitulated for the town on the fourth of August; and the French retired into the citadel, against which twelve batteries played upon the thirteenth.
And it is some slight consolation to the sad ending of the story to learn that Tancred did at least carry out his daughter’s dying entreaty, for the bodies of Ghismonda and Guiscard were duly laid in one grave amidst the pomp of religion and the cold comfort of a public mourning. But the sun has long since sunk below the horizon, and the chill dews of night are falling round us.
A less scrupulous author would not have destroyed the manuscript of Robert Guiscard because he could not keep throughout its action the splendid promise of the first act. His works are usually marked by rare logical and artistic consistency.
As for the 'Coromania' it seems to have disappeared after the devastation of Monti by Robert Guiscard in 1084, and the general destruction of the city from the Lateran to the Capitol is attributed to the Saracens who were with him.
Meanwhile Hildebrand secretly sent swift riders to Apulia, calling on Robert Guiscard for help, and still the nobles were faithful to him, and though Henry held the bridges, they were strong in Trastevere and the Borgo, which is the region between the Castle of Sant' Angelo and Saint Peter's.
The expedition to France was immediately postponed, and sir Cloudesley Shovel was ordered to make the best of his way to Lisbon, there to take such measures as the state of the war in Spain should render necessary. Guiscard and his officers being set on shore, the fleet sailed with the first fair wind, and towards the latter end of October arrived at Lisbon.
From a city, where he was now hated, and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end his days in the palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the vanity of Guiscard with the hope of a Roman or Imperial crown; but this dangerous measure, which would have inflamed the ambition of the Norman, must forever have alienated the most faithful princes of Germany.
But so intense a fear did the victor of Durazzo inspire, that the terrified Emperor without waiting to give combat fled headlong together with his anti-pope from the Holy City, where Guiscard was received with acclamation. “Thus, in less than three years,” remarks Gibbon, “the son of Tancred of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the Pope, and of compelling the two Emperors of the East and West to fly before his victorious arms.” Guiscard’s triumphal entry into Rome was however marred by scenes of violence and scandal, due to the conduct of the Saracen troops which his brother, the great Count Roger of Sicily, had brought to assist the enterprise.
But despite her reputation for cruelty and even for murder, Sigilgaita was a faithful wife and a brave woman, with a character not unlike that of our own Queen Margaret of Anjou; and it seems strange that so devoted and well mated a pair as herself and Robert Guiscard should be separated in death, he at Venosa and she in the cathedral of her husband’s foundation.
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