Try, try and try again

Yesterday – my usual pinpoint timing – was the anniversary of the battle of Dyrrhachium in 1081, where the Romans under Alexios I were defeated by Robert Guiscard's Normans. The battle swung on the massacre of the Varangian Guard, mainly composed of English exiles.

Much of our information on the battle comes from the pen of Anna Comnemna, Alexios's daughter. There is a suspicion that she hung the English out to dry, and blamed them for the defeat to excuse her father's failure. According to Anna, the Guard rushed forward too eagerly to get at the Normans – perhaps to avenge Hastings – and ended up isolated:

“Meanwhile the axe-bearing barbarians and their leader Nabites had in their ignorance and in their ardour of battle advanced too quickly and were now a long way from the Roman lines...”

Tired out, the Guard were surrounded and massacred by Norman cavalry. The survivors fled to take refuge in a nearby chapel, but the Normans set it on fire and burnt them alive. Some must have survived; their leader, Nabites, turned up later fighting the Pechenegs. Nabites is not an Anglo-Saxon or Greek name, though he might have been Scandinavian. One suggestion is that it is formed from a nickname such as 'Near-Biter'.

Guiscard then unleashed his knights on the rest of the Roman army. It seems Alexios was ignorant of the sheer power of the Norman charge, which smashed his divisions all to pieces. Anna describes him fighting 'like an impregnable tower', but admits he was forced to run away. She puts a gloss on this by claiming he ran away like a hero, cutting down any Norman who got in his way.

In reality the emperor had suffered a terrible beating. But, much like Robert de Bruce and his pet spider, Alexios would try, try, try again. Almost twenty years later he got his revenge when Guiscard's son, Bohemund, came to attack Dyrrhachium with another horde of Normans. This time Alexios avoided battle and blockaded the invaders until plague and famine forced them to submit.
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