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The oath taken by Robert Guiscard on this occasion bound him to be the devoted defender of the pontificate. He now became a friend indeed. A hasty retreat saved the forces of Henry from the impending danger. The Pope returned in triumph to the Lateran. But within a few hours he heard from the streets the clash of arms and the loud shouts of the combatants.
Robert Guiscard, Duke of Normandy, who had won for himself a principality in lower Italy, now marched to the relief of his friend Gregory, stormed and took the city at the head of his Norman freebooters, and at once began the work of pillage, in disregard of Gregory's remonstrances. The result was an unusual one.
They were in the army sent from Constantinople to conquer that island, and seeing how goodly a land it was they aided in its final conquest, which was made by Robert Guiscard, a noble of Normandy, whose son Roger took the title of "King of Sicily and Italy."
That very night the unsuspecting Guiscard was seized by his sovereign’s orders and thrust into a foul dungeon of the palace, whither Tancred himself descended to question his prisoner and to reprove him violently for his base ingratitude.
The aqueducts were destroyed by Vitiges, who ruined the Campagna; the palace of the Caesars was ravaged by Totila; then there had been the Lombard sieges; then Robert Guiscard and his Normans had burnt the city from the Antonine Column to the Flaminian Gate, from the Lateran to the Capitol; then it was sacked and mutilated by the Constable Bourbon; again and again it was flooded by inundations of the Tiber and shattered by earthquakes.
But I should say a few words about Bohemund's parentage, and about the steps by which he proceeded to this position of honor. Robert, whose surname we have given as Guiscard, was from Normandy, and was born to a family of no great distinction. He went from there to Apulia, but whether he left his native land voluntarily or was driven from it I don't know.
The son of Guiscard was lodged and entertained, and served with Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed through the gallery of the palace, a door was carelessly left open to expose a pile of gold and silver, of silk and gems, of curious and costly furniture, that was heaped, in seeming disorder, from the floor to the roof of the chamber.
Emily Guiscard would have Sir James Danvers and Lord Coltshurst as neighbors, and Mary her uncle, the Duke's brother, a widower, Lord Charles Montfitchet, and his son, "Young Billy," the Glastonbury heir Lady Ethelrida was the Duke's only child. At a quarter before eight Francis Markrute went up to his niece's sitting-room.
Plundered by Alaric, and finally ruined by Robert Guiscard, when he burnt the city, it became a fortress under the Colonna, and is included, with the fortress of Monte Citorio, in a transfer of property made by one member of the family to another in the year 1252.
"The truth is, M. Marston, as Guiscard says, we have lost time, though it is no fault of ours, and I observe, from these papers, that the enemy availed themselves of the delay, by bringing up strong corps from every point.
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