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 conquests 188 THE DECLINE AND FALL A.D. 106871] siege or blockade of Bari lasted near four years.^^ In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger ; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno, an huge stone from the rampart shattered one of his military engines ; and by a splinter he was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari, he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw : a perilous station, on all sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy. ^'^ nisitauan The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples ; and the countries united b)'^ his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.^'^ The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard princi- pality of Salerno, the republic of Amalphi,^^ and the inland dependencies of the large and ancient duchy of Beneventum. Three districts only were exempted from the common law of subjection : the first for ever, and the two last till the middle of the succeeding century. The city and immediate territory of Benevento had been transferred, by gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman pontiff; and, although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of St. Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans. Their first colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua ; and her princes were reduced to beg their bread before the palace of their fathers. The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis, main- tained the popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine empire. -Among the new acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of Salerno,^' and the trade of Amalphi,'''^ may detain for a 53 [Not so long : August, io68 — April, 1071. The best source for the siege is Aini^, V. 27. Immediately before he laid siege to Bari, Robert captured Otranto.] ^'^ Read the life of Guiscard in the second and third books of the Apulian, the first and second books of Malaterra. 5^ The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the exemption of Benevento and the twelve provinces of the kingdom, are fairly exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria Civile, 1. ix. , x., xi. and 1. xvii. p. 460-470. This modern division vyas not established before the time of Frederic II. •''^[Amalfi acknowledged the lordship of Robert (" Duke of Amalfi ") from a.d. 1073. Cp. Heinemann, of. cif. p. 268.] ■■^5 Giannone (torn. ii. p. 119-127), Muratori (Antiquitat. niedii .Evi, tom. iii. dissert, xliv. p. 935, 936), and Tiraboschi (Istoria della Letteratura Italiana) have given an historical account of these physicians ; their medical knowledge and practice must be left to our physicians. Rlienum, 1722, in 4to), the indefatigal)le author has inserted two dissertations, de
 * '" At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry Brenckmann (Trajecti ad