ginning to lift up its head after the ignominy of Theodora and
Marozia, and the Lombard power was slowly dissolving upon its
ill-established foundations, the Norman adventurers pursued a policy
which, however changeful, was invariably self-advantageous. On
whatever side they fought, they took care that the profits of war
should accrue to their own colony. Quarrel as they might among
themselves, they were always found at one against a common foe. And
such was their reputation in the field, that the hardiest soldiers
errant of all nations joined their standard. Thus it fell out that
when Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces to wrest the eastern
districts of Sicily from the Moors, they returned, upon an insult
offered by the Greek general, to extend the right hand of fellowship
to Rainulf and his Normans of Aversa. 'Why should you stay here like
a rat in his hole, when with our help you might rule those fertile
plains, expelling the women in armour who keep guard over them?' The
agreement of Ardoin and Rainulf formed the basis of the future
Norman power. Their companies joined forces. Melfi was chosen as the
centre of their federal government. The united Norman colony elected
twelve chiefs or counts of equal authority; and henceforth they
thought only of consolidating their ascendency over the effete races
which had hitherto pretended to employ their arms. The genius of
their race and age, however, was unfavourable to federations. In a
short time the ablest man among them, the true king, by right of
personal vigour and mental cunning, showed himself. It was at this
point that the house of Hauteville rose to the altitude of its
romantic destiny. William Iron Arm was proclaimed Count of Apulia.
Two of his brothers succeeded him in the same dignity. His
half-brother, Robert Guiscard, imprisoned one Pope,[1] Leo IX., and
wrested from another, Nicholas II., the title of Duke of Apulia and
Calabria. By the help of his youngest brother, Roger, he gradually
completed the conquest of Italy below the Tiber, and then addressed
himself to the task of subduing Sicily. The Papacy, incapable of
opposing the military vigour of the Northmen, was distracted between
jealousy of their growing importance and desire to utilise them for
its own advantage.[2] The temptation to employ these filial pirates
as a catspaw for restoring Sicily to the bosom of the Church, was
too strong to be resisted. In spite of many ebbs and flows of
policy, th