280

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

farther attempts to disturb the tranquillity of the empire. Notwithstandingthese spirited efforts, the Grecian or Constantinopolitan army displayed such amotley mixture as could scarcely be expected to promise success. Its strengthis said to have principally consisted of Varangians and Scandinavians, of rawlevies hastily collected, of the garrisons of various towns in Asia Minor andAnatolia, which of necessity became immediately abandoned to the Turks, andlastly, of a corps of adventurous exiles, or emigrants, who, strange to relate,had traversed the ocean from the extremity of Britain, for the purpose ofserving under the banners of the Emperor of the West.

“ Under the yoke of the Norman conqueror, (observes Mr. Gibbon) the Danesand English were oppressed, and united a band of adventurous youths, resolvedto desert a land of slavery : the sea was open to their escape, and in their longpilgrimage they visited every coast that afforded any hope of liberty or revenge.They were entertained in the service of the Greek emperor, and their firststation was in a new citv on the Asiatic shore ; but Alexius soon recalled themto the defence of his person and palace, and bequeathed to his successors theinheritance of their faith and valour. The name of a Norman invader revivedthe memory of their wrongs, they marched with alacrity against the nationalfoe, and panted to regain in Epirus the glory which they had lost in the battleof Hastings.”

Superior as was the army of his foes, the intrepid mind of Robert shrunk notin dismay from the contest; and as a proof that he was determined to obtainvictory, or perish in the attempt, the few vessels which still remained to himafter the former defeat of his fleet, were, with the full approbation of his fol-lowers, consigned to the flames. Desperate was the situation of the Normans,and nothing short of the greatest exertions the human mind and frame wascapable of making, could possibly save them, for their numbers, which weredestined to oppose the immense army of the empire, were reduced to fifteenthousand men. In addition to these fearful odds, the battle no sooner com-menced, than the Lombards and Calabrians ignominiously turned their backs.They fled towards the river, and the sea, but the bridge had been broken downto check the sally of the garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetiangallies, which played their destructive engines among the disorderly throng.The fate and discomfiture of the Normans was, however, arrested under all thismighty pressure by a woman. The wife of Robert, forgetting the natural timidityof her sex, with a heroism that perhaps was never surpassed, fought by the side

t)f