Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/215

 their fellow-warriors, li fortissime Normant of their historian Aimé, the exploits of these brothers are celebrated by the later chroniclers in a way which reminds us less of sober history than of the heroes of the sagas or the chansons de gestes. William of the Iron Arm and Drogo seem to have arrived in the south about 1036 and soon signalized themselves in the first invasion of Sicily and in the conquest of northern Apulia, where William was chosen leader, or count, by the other Normans and at his death in 1046 succeeded by Drogo, who was soon afterward invested with the county by the Emperor Henry III. It was apparently in this year that Robert Guiscard first came to Italy. Refused assistance by his brothers, he hired himself out to various barons until he was left by Drogo in charge of a small garrison in the mountains of Calabria. Here he lived like a brigand, carrying off the cattle and sheep of the inhabitants and holding the people themselves for ransom. On one occasion he laid an ambush for the Greek commandant of Bisignano whom he had invited to a conference, and compelled him to pay twenty thousand golden solidi for his freedom. Brigand as he was, Robert was more than a mere bandit. His shrewdness and resourcefulness early gained him the name of Guiscard, or the wary, and his Byzantine contemporary, the princess Anna Comnena, has left a portrait of him in which his towering stature, flashing eye, and bellowing strength are matched by his overleaping ambition and