902-903 - The Sicilian Campaign
Lambert I: The Sicilian Campaign (August 902-903)
--- Lambert I and Ibrahim II: The Crescent and the Sword, Part 2 (902) ---
After the capture of Taormina, alqayid[1] Ibrahim spent little effort claiming straggler Greek villages in Sicily. His eyes were still on the target – his feat of conquering the whole of Sicily would look meager compared to what was to come. For now, though, Calabria proudly stood in its way, and Reggio at its head.Ibrahim’s victory had showed his net supremacy over the Byzantine army and especially their generals, as well as the religious superiority of Islam – good feelings to boot a military success. The alqayid’s troops were galvanized, stimulated by pious fervor and undying devotion towards their leader. Meanwhile, the Greeks were cowering in fear, fully aware that the tide of Islam was on its way to run them over.
Only one detail preoccupied Ibrahim in any capacity: news that Lambert, king of the Franks, was making his way from Rome to aid his ally. While the alqayid had many battles under his belt, he had never faced a Frankish army, nor heard anything about their tactics beyond their use of overencumbered cavalrymen and occasional employment of archers on horseback – nothing the Greeks hadn’t thrown against him, of course.
After reorganising the mujahideen, Ibrahim crossed the straits in grand fashion, hoping to once again provoke the city’s defenders into an early battle and early victory. The forces deployed in Reggio were however nothing like the people at Taormina – the city’s defender, strategos Michael Charaktos, had seen first-hand Ibrahim’s fearsome tactics there, and was rather unwilling to live through them again.
As such, the Jihad was forced to stop for a siege, since any sort of retreat route from the rest of Calabria would be blocked by an unbroken fort in Reggio – even if Ibrahim hadn’t known better than to ignore this logistical nightmare, he couldn’t afford the morale of his troops to be lowered one bit. While the siege progressed, however, emissaries brought word to the besieged that relief was coming, and his name was Lambert.
…
The army cobbled together by the Emperor of the West was far from as large as the title may have suggested, but it was a sufficient host, especially considering how quickly it had been assembled. Against the Magyars, he had rallied fifteen thousand troops, but he was given plenty of time to do so by their retreating strategy, as well as an excuse to tour the most important cities and vassals of the kingdom. On a relatively short notice of just two or three months, Lambert had convened just short of four thousand.
An upside was that the average quality of these troops was much higher, the levies being nearly outnumbered by professional knights, archers and pikemen. Many among these were mercenaries, hired in the nick of time and promised, on top of their pay, the riches of Sicily for their service. Notably, making up nearly a fifth of the force, a host of seven-hundred Magyars was with the emperor’s army, whose leader was the adventurer Kurszán – the same Kurszán who is mentioned as king of the Magyars alongside Árpád – who had heeded the summons not of Lambert, but of the eastern emperor Leo, who had sent for him and his troops ahead of time.
Despite both having to fight on the same side as their old enemies, the two armies were quickly conciliated under Lambert’s leadership.[A] In the time it took for the warriors to make their way to the foot of the Appennines, they were met by the welcome sight of Greek retinues, but also more news and details on the alqayid’s progress, culminating in a complete, astonishing account of the battle at Taormina.
More than the battle supposedly having been won with the blessing of the Agarene god Allah, what concerned Lambert was the uncertainty of the amir’s numbers – terrified survivors described Ibrahim’s ranks as endless droves, driven by nothing but lust for Christian blood. Four thousand troops, no matter how elite, and even if bolstered by a few hundreds of Greek soldiers, could hardly amount to endless droves. Unnerving as it may be, duty was duty, and if a Byzantine army had almost fended him off, Lambert believed himself more than able to pull through.
By the time Lambert and his troops had reached Cosenza to resupply and prepare to face Ibrahim, the man himself had been bogged down besieging Reggio for a month straight. The city walls had proven more than resilient, and the sheer amount of mujahideen posted outside the city came back to bite the alqayid when any attempt at forcing a reaction from the city’s defenders proved futile.
Certain voices within the army, including Ibrahim’s own grandson Ziyadat-Allah, had meekly started calling for an early return to Sicily to consolidate their positions there – the Caliph would not miss his presence in Baghdad if he delayed it by just a few months – but the general did not budge. Ramadan had begun and ended[Β] during the siege, and the thirty days of fasting did not do much to patch up Ibrahim’s leaking nerves, especially since the necessary rations to make up for it at night ran thinner with every passing week.
Ibrahim’s numbers were hefty, but mostly inexperienced – the vast majority of the army was made up of variably equipped peasants, who had joined their former liege with the intentions of embarking on an armed pilgrimage rather than partaking in the alqayid’s long-winded political project. The elite regiments, made up of his loyal Sudanese abids, dwindled heavily in number due to a sudden wave of dysentery in the Ifriqqiyan camp, an epidemy from which the general himself had just barely scraped by.
A few members of the levy, in a moment of the emir’s illness, had organised a desertion, believing Ibrahim’s health and by proxy his mission to be doomed, but his recovery had spelled their doom. The execution of those who had turned back was another element to dampen the morale of the Moors.
These troubles, though, were completely impervious to outside observation. When Kurszán’s scouts surveyed the city of Reggio from above, all they saw was the largest hostile force in centuries to set foot in the region. The sum relayed to the Christian army – and, through Lambert’s biographer, to us – is of twenty-thousand hardened Moors, whose chants and prayers could be heard from the hills.
The final force assembled in Cosenza, the final stop-over before Lambert and Ibrahim were set to face, was one of roughly five-thousand and six-hundred troops, with a solid chunk of this force – up to twenty-five hundred – comprised of Greek and Magyar auxiliaries. While the cream of the crop of Italian aristocracy had not assembled to face a common foe – as had happened at Gehennae – the names and banners of Atenulf, Martin of Ravenna and the young Boniface III, margrave of Tuscany, were still present with the emperor.
Though thoroughly outnumbered, Lambert’s army held a strategic advantage by virtue of attacking a besieging force. With the aid of a newly-appointed Greek admiral, the promising officer Romanos Lekapenos, the emperor could also count on naval support, meaning the Saracens had nowhere to retreat to. With these key logistical elements in mind, Lambert and his armies arrived to the Aspromonte, a tall mountain at the tail end of the Appennines. Finding a flat location atop the highland, the army settled in for their camp. The day after would be a day of battle.
…
At the break of nightfall, while the soldiers took refreshment in what, for each of them, was liable to be the final meal, a feeble chant made its way to the emperor’s camp. The Italian soldiers could not know it was the voice of their foe Ibrahim, but they heard it distant and booming, resounding in its echoes, speaking a language unknown – the obscure language of the Qur’an.
One of the Byzantine soldiers, whose father had been stationed in Cyprus, the only place on Earth where the Arabs and the Greeks enjoyed some form of harmony, explained that it was the arcane song of a muezzin, calling for acolytes of Islam to pray. To confirm his words, the far away chant was joined by tenths, then dozens, then hundreds and thousands of voices, reverberating over the sea and to the uplands.
The prayers, for as feeble as the sound they made was, had an unnerving effect on the encampment, for their number and for their fervor. That was, until a brave soul hesitantly started singing, to drown out the murmur. He sung an earnest tune, if a tad uncouth – a classic tavern song, in cheery praise of Italian food, Italian weather and Italian women.
The soldier’s gambit paid off, and his cautious voice was soon joined by more voices, and by the song’s second stanza most of the levy and even some of the officers were merrily singing along, in defiance of the ominous prayers. Some of the confused foreign auxiliaries, who had never heard the song and certainly did not understand the lyrics, still found the ingenuity to clap along.
Lambert knew well that soldiers could incur in disciplinary action for much less, but rowdy soldiers with high morale were always better than terrified ants. Not only did the song completely counter Ibrahim’s psychological attack, but through the song, he thought, his army would remember exactly what they were fighting for.[C]
Shortly after the singing from the hills had started, amplified by the echoes of the valley, Ibrahim furiously wrapped up the prayers and sent his army to bed. He knew as much as everyone that tomorrow would be a day of battle, and he refused to spend the night before it listening to a heap of miscreants crooning a moronic carol.
--- Lambert I and Ibrahim II: The Battles of Reggio (September 24th 902) ---
At around seven in the morning on September 24th of 902, both armies had prepared their ranks for a great battle, to decide the fate of Italy and the Christian world. If Ibrahim won, Europe was all but doomed. Both Romes were by now in the alqayid’s line of sight, and the lives of countless innocents were at stake. However, if Lambert prevailed, the battle would have been tantamount to a second Poitiers, a triumph of the cross over the crescent.As such, the speeches held before the battle were not very different in tone. Both sides knew the prizes and the risks, and both generals knew what they were fighting for. Ibrahim went at length to inspire his soldiers, encouraging them to destroy the devils from the hills and fulfil their purpose as Allah’s emissaries, and reassuring them with passages from the Qu’ran.
While the Greek general’s words of inspiration may have followed a similar pattern, Lambert took a different approach, nearly dropping the religious angle and instead inducing his soldiers to keep in mind what they were protecting. It is said that the emperor was in great spirits before the battle, even asking one of his officers to teach him the tune they had sung the night before. Kurszán’s speech to his Magyars was also rather different, pushing his men to remember what they were fighting for – the wealthy prize in Sicily.
With all three Christian armies more or less spurred and ready for combat, emperor Lambert declared that the battle had started, raised his sword and led his troops down the hill, ready to relieve Reggio and the whole of Christendom from their scourge and his crew.
Defending a besieging position while also maintaining a siege is not an easy task, even for as large a force as Ibrahim was fielding. While a select few of his elite soldiers guarded the mainland exits, the alqayid was most worried about the city’s open flank – the port it was built around, which the Greek admiral’s ships had pulled into.
It was then that the general enjoyed one final stroke of luck, because it was then that his fleet, which he had sent to Palermo after crossing the straits of Sicily, to replenish it with fresh sailors and fresh arms, suddenly reappeared in the sea before Reggio, a full day in advance. The fleet’s admiral, Muhammad ibn Fadhl, had hoped upon departure to find Reggio taken and dock his ships there, as he had already taken the initiative to harass the Byzantine fleet’s rearguard near Catania and scored a minor victory there.
As a result of that scuffle, the Moorish fleet was not in top shape, but it was still more than functional enough to stand on its own against the ships at the disposal of Romanos. Shrewdly, though, the admiral did not leave the port, simply pointing his fleet outside and creating an impenetrable wooden wall for the Saracens.
Ibrahim was not fully aware of this development, however, as all he and his troops could see was his admiral’s naval barrage. Emboldened by this, the army of mujahideen turned behind them, where the Frankish king’s ranks had been deployed. With him, Ibrahim recognised a Greek division, as well as archers on horseback. Wallowing in the notion that the most powerful Christian ruler had brought with him such a small division, the alqayid barked an order to line up at his divisions and mounted his horse, ready for the final battle.
The armies clashed on the open fields at the foothills of the Aspromonte. Ibrahim’s army rumoured like a single, chaotic organism, a swarm of men and swords, such that Lambert’s troops were immediately forced on the defensive. The only detachment to find immediate success was unsurprisingly the Magyar regiment, making more victims out of the abids with their feigned retreat technique – as it turns out, the speed variance between a Magyar horse and an Arabic horse is flattened when both are compared to the speed of an arrow.
Though they mowed through the levy of footmen, the mujahideen were eventually kept at bay by the power of the Leonine kataphraktoi – modernised units, bearing the heritage of the Roman cataphractarii. The few units the Greek generals possessed were strategically placed in a wedge formation behind the Christian army, to prevent them from having to engage with the Arabic cavalry.
The Greek cavalry pulled ahead and bashed into the side of the moorish formation, in a weak point softened by the Ifriqqiyan army’s overstretched nature, and now it was their turn to mow, trotting amidst the enemy and smashing soldiers with a mace. This unorthodox tactic was then emulated by the heavy Carolingian cavalry, spearheaded by the emperor, with lesser but overall surprisingly effective results.
The strategy was now clear; while the Greek and Latin heavy cavalry ate away at the central flank’s sides, the infantry made their progress, eventually cutting the battle in two – a Greek front, led by the Byzantine general, and a Frankish front, led by the emperor. The Moorish army’s casualties meant the two sides were now numerically evenly matched, but Ibrahim saw that there was still hope.
If the battles could be conjoined again, the alqayid realised on the fly that the Christian troops, led astray by their hybris, had pushed deep enough that they were liable to remain completely surrounded, easy pickings even for his sapped troops. He just needed them to push a little bit further.
Once again a chant echoed in the valley of the Aspromonte – a chilling call, rising above the clamour of the battle. With hoarse voice, Ibrahim began reciting a passage from the Qu’ran – a line from the sura[2] on the Hajj, promising that God will reward the righteous, and that Muhammad will triumph. The mujahideen collected themselves and began chanting in unison, repeating the holy words and fighting back against the Christian armies.
As the two walls of heathens moved closer and closer together, the fate of the battle seemed to be sealed. Lambert looked over his soldiers, deafened by the chanting Moors, and understood that it was time to employ the secret weapon. The Quranic chant was challenged by the emperor’s thunderous voice, but it was not an order to retreat, nor a word of encouragement. Lambert was singing.
He sung an earnest tune, if a tad uncouth – a classic tavern song, in cheery praise of Italian food, Italian weather and Italian women. A reminder of what his soldiers were fighting to protect.
As one man, Lambert’s troops began singing themselves, raising their voice over the clamour of the battlefield and over the enemy’s weaponised prayers. Reinvigorated, the imperial army took the initiative and successfully fought back the Moors, occupying their side of the battlefield and scaring away much of the vanquished right flank. Then, still singing, they turned back to the Greek side, where Ibrahim was leading the war effort, and marched over to the struggling Byzantine army.
The combined forces were soon able to overpower the remaining Moors, especially after Ibrahim himself, in an attempt to reinvigorate the morale of his army, was caught off guard by an Italian knight and dealt the killing blow. Thus passed away the greatest general of the Arab world, entering the record of ambitious conquerors the likes of Attila the Hun and Alexander.
As soon as he had ascertained to his grandfather’s death, a mournful Ziyadat-Allah called for a retreat. The stragglers fought a desperate last stand to make their way to the beaches, protecting the diving of their comrades into the cold waters of the Mediterranean. Muhammad, witnessing the slaughter, broke his naval blockade and sent forth a detachment of ships to pick up the survivors.
It was then that Romanos sounded his signal and the Byzantine flotilla left the dock of Reggio, disrupting further the Moorish fleet’s battle line. The ships crashed into each other and the fight was taken to the deck, sailor-to-sailor, in a bloody and inconclusive naval battle. Neither fleet prevailed over the other completely, but as soon as things seemed destined to favour the Greeks, Muhammad pulled the plug on the battle and organised a speedy retreat to Sicily.
--- Lambert I: The Sicilian Campaign (902-903) ---
The battles of Reggio were a triumph beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Lambert, Romanos and even Kurszán were welcomed back into the city as saviours. The mad amir’s campaign had been stopped in its tracks, and the culprit essentially executed. Now Lambert made great promises, that he would lead the Greeks and Latins to glory in Sicily and recover it for the glory of Rome.Continuing the campaign into the island only made sense. Taormina, at the very least, had to be recovered, but the defeated army would have been rewarded if the status quo had been restored. The Magyars had been promised loot and the Greeks expected their land back. Not to mention that it would have been a waste to leave a Sicily with no practical defences to their defeated overlords.
When news of the battle reached Constantinople, Leo VI was thrilled to hear of Ibrahim’s defeat and death, especially as even the hardliners of Byzantine isolationism started seeing the benefits of rebuilding their ties with the west. Nicholas, the ecumenical patriarch and Lambert’s most vocal supporter at the Greek court, was however not inclined to celebrations, since at the time he was devoting much of his political power and finesse to prevent Leo’s fourth marriage to his latest lover, Zoe Karbonopsina.
After three days and three nights of celebrations in Reggio, Lambert and his valorous army crossed the straits of Messina in grandiose fashion. After a brief siege, the city capitulated and a rather different type of triumph ensued, as the Magyars pillaged the mosque and took to ransacking the fortress when they were finished there. This episode was the first of many across the island, as the steppe nomads were given free reign to loot every fortress who dared resist the impetuous Christian army.
With Messina captured, the campaign continued along the eastern coastline of the island. Taormina and Catania, the last to resist to Islam, were among the first to fall back under Christian rule. It was in Catania that Romanos Lekapenos temporarily insediated himself, making his first proclamations as official governor of the island – his merits in the routing of the Moorish fleet had not gone unseen at court.
An inconclusive battle occurred at Minau, where Ziyadat-Allah had arranged a defensive outpost to cover the entire Noto valley; by then it was November, but Lambert refused to allow the Moors any chance of reprieval, and settled in for a siege. This proved to be successful, and the siege ended just as the cold winds of December made their early debut – according to legend, Lambert paid a small boy from the nearby countryside to sneak through a crack in the walls and open the city’s gates to his men overnight.
With Minau – later duly ransacked by the Magyars – under his belt, Lambert pushed through to Syracuse. Once the crown jewel of Sicily, the city had never fully recovered from the brutal sack it endured in 878. The mainland portion of the town was almost completely uninhabited, and the urban centre had shrunk down to just the island of Ortigia. The emperor – concerned about the logistics of besieging a small island – was relieved to find that part of the city also devoid of resistance, as Ziyadat, who had entrenched himself there, had fled Sicily altogether shortly after Minau had fallen.
Since the city had been bereft of its bishop for more than thirty years, the army’s resident canon had the honour of officiating Christmas mass in the city’s ruined cathedral, with the near entirety of the four-thousand strong population attending alongside the emperor and his army.
902 concluded with the entire eastern coastline of the island now back under Christian control. After a campaign of barely four months, Lambert had succeeded in what four decades of Byzantine generals had been too scared to attempt. Spending the winter in Ortigia, the emperor was far from idle, employing much of his time in overseeing the first steps of Syracuse’s return to form and writing letters.
He mostly wrote to Rome, informing Leo V and the aristocracy that he was, in fact, very much alive. His mother Ageltrude had designated herself as regent there, whilst her new husband – Eugenio dal Monte, a noble from Ascoli who had aptly filled the power vacuum left by Alberich – took care of the government of Spoleto. Lambert wrote there conscentiously, requesting accounts of his palace’s construction, the general happenings in Rome and, in one instance, even sending out a small list of candidates he would potentially have endorsed for Saint Peter’s throne, should the ruling pope die whilst he was away. He also wrote a few letters to Constantinople, updating emperor Leo on his progress thus far and notifying of his intentions to marry princess Anna as soon as his campaign was over.
In late winter, likely between the final days of February and the first of March, Lambert left Syracuse a changed city, characterised once again by the optimism of a growing town. It was no sprawling metropolis yet, far from it, but the day of his arrival on December 7th was commemorated for years following his departure, as the end of the city’s little dark age.
The second phase of the campaign was far more straightforward; Lambert marched west and captured Modica, consolidating his hold on the Noto valley. In April he was in Agrigento, but as in Syracuse there was more history than city to speak of. After a brief stop there, the emperor found more glory at Sciacca, the first true siege since the capture of Minau, as the city’s already ingent Arabic population put up a serious fight for its defence.
After the resulting siege and another thorough sack, Lambert finally had to bid farewell to the Magyars. Kurszán and his horsemen travelled through the then nearly uninhabited interior of the island, finally reaching Catania, where they embarked on Greek ships and made their way back to their homeland with the help of governor Lekapenos. Romanos, just as unhappy with leaving all the glory to Lambert as Eustathios had been, decided that it was time to contribute to the campaign himself. Though he was an admiral, he also had plenty of experience as a foot soldier and an officer on the mainland, meaning he had no qualms leaving his post in Catania at the head of a respectable army, with the destination being Palermo.
The race towards the city, dotted by sieges and skirmishes, did not go unnoticed for the city-dwellers themselves, and since Palermo was the only metropolis on the island, it was imperative for them that it should stay that way. After the fall of Qurliyum and Kalesa, the two key fortresses for the defence of the city, the local governor, that same Muhammad ibn Fadhl whose fleet had been present at Reggio, decided to come to terms with both armies.
After Lambert promised not to pillage the city and Romanos agreed to adopt some manner of religious tolerance for the city’s inhabitants, only then did Muhammad abandon the city – and, in truth, all of Sicily – to its destiny. Lambert’s welcome in the city could hardly call itself as such, as conquered cities rarely hold much love for the one conquering them. Still, with Palermo in Lambert’s hands, in August of 903, scarcely a year after Sicily had become fully Muslim, it was now once again under the cross.
Footnotes
Canon[A]: Even contemporary sources disagree on the matter, mostly acknowledging Kurszán’s respect towards the man who had bested his kin but either citing his supposed conversion to Christianity or bringing up the old rumour of Lambert’s truce with the Magyars developing into a fully-fledged alliance.
[Β]: Ramadan 291: Aug 5th-Sep 5th 902
[C]: Only the Greek officials were not impressed, as the Byzantine account is the only one in which the tune is associated with the following victory with a “despite” rather than a “due to.”
Non-canon
[1]: Meaning commander.
[2]: Meaning chapter.
