Battle of Dyrrhachium (1081): Normans Against Byzantium

The Battle of Dyrrhachium was fought on 18 October 1081 outside the Adriatic port of Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës, Albania) between the Normans of southern Italy under Robert Guiscard and the Byzantine army of the new emperor Alexios I Komnenos. The Normans won decisively, the Varangian Guard was almost wiped out, and the way into the Balkans lay open. The battle began a four-year struggle that shaped Byzantine relations with the Latin West.

Background

In the mid-11th century Norman adventurers had carved out lordships in southern Italy. Robert Guiscard (“the Cunning”) became duke of Apulia and Calabria, recognised by Pope Nicholas II in 1059, and in 1071 took Bari, Byzantium’s last stronghold in Italy. His ambitions now turned east across the Adriatic.

Robert had a pretext. His daughter had been betrothed to Constantine, son of Emperor Michael VII Doukas, before Michael was overthrown in 1078. Robert even produced a man claiming to be the deposed emperor. When Alexios Komnenos seized the throne in April 1081, the empire was exhausted by civil war and the loss of most of Anatolia to the Turks.

The siege

In May 1081 Robert and his son Bohemond crossed to Epirus with an army and fleet, took Corfu and laid siege to Dyrrhachium in June. The city, the western terminus of the Via Egnatia road to Constantinople, was defended by the able general George Palaiologos, a brother-in-law of the empress.

Alexios bought the help of Venice, whose fleet defeated the Norman ships off the coast in the summer of 1081. But the land siege continued, and in August Alexios marched west with every soldier he could gather, including the Varangian Guard, Turkish auxiliaries, Balkan troops and the Serbs of Duklja under Constantine Bodin. Neither army’s size is known with any precision.

The battle

Against the advice of some of his officers, Alexios decided to attack on 18 October. The Varangians, an elite guard of Scandinavian origin that by then contained many Englishmen who had left after the Norman Conquest of 1066, led the assault on the Norman right. Fighting on foot with their great axes, they drove the Norman cavalry and infantry back towards the sea.

Anna Komnene, the emperor’s daughter, records that Robert’s wife Sikelgaita, who rode with the army, rallied fleeing Normans by shouting at them and threatening them with a spear. The story may be embellished, but it is one of the best-known episodes of the battle.

The Varangians had advanced too far ahead of the main Byzantine line. Norman troops attacked them in the flank and cut them off. Some survivors sheltered in a nearby church, which the Normans set alight; most of the guard died. Robert then sent his heavy cavalry against the Byzantine centre. Bodin’s Serbs withdrew without fighting and some of the Turkish allies also left the field. The Byzantine line broke and Alexios, wounded, escaped with difficulty.

Aftermath

Dyrrhachium held out through the winter but was surrendered in February 1082, betrayed, according to Anna, by a Venetian living in the city. The Normans advanced along the Via Egnatia into Macedonia and Thessaly.

Alexios turned to money and diplomacy. He paid the German king Henry IV to attack Pope Gregory VII, Robert’s ally, and Robert returned to Italy in 1082, leaving Bohemond in command. Bohemond defeated Alexios twice in 1082 but was halted at the siege of Larissa in 1083, and his unpaid army melted away.

As a reward for its help, Venice received generous trading privileges in a chrysobull (a golden-sealed imperial decree), usually dated to 1082. These gave Venetian merchants tax-free trade across much of the empire, the foundation of Venice’s commercial power in the East. Robert launched a second invasion in 1084, beating a Venetian fleet off Corfu, but he died of illness on Cephalonia on 17 July 1085. The Norman army withdrew and Dyrrhachium returned to Byzantine control.

Key people

• Robert Guiscard (c. 1015–1085): Norman duke of Apulia and Calabria.
• Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118): Byzantine emperor, only months on the throne at the time (see Alexios I Komnenos).
• Bohemond of Taranto (c. 1054–1111): Robert’s son, later a leader of the First Crusade.
• Sikelgaita (c. 1040–1090): Lombard princess and Robert’s wife.
• George Palaiologos: Byzantine commander of the city’s defence.

Timeline

• 1071, April: Robert Guiscard takes Bari, ending Byzantine rule in Italy.
• 1081, April: Alexios I Komnenos seizes the throne.
• 1081, May–June: The Normans cross the Adriatic and besiege Dyrrhachium.
• 1081, summer: A Venetian fleet defeats the Norman navy.
• 1081, 18 October: Battle of Dyrrhachium; Norman victory.
• 1082, February: Dyrrhachium is surrendered to the Normans.
• 1083: Alexios relieves Larissa and stops Bohemond’s advance.
• 1085, 17 July: Robert Guiscard dies on Cephalonia; the invasion ends.

Why it matters

Dyrrhachium showed the strength of Norman heavy cavalry and the weakness of a Byzantine army rebuilt in haste. The disaster of the Varangian Guard became one of the most famous scenes in Anna Komnene’s history (see Anna Komnene and the Alexiad). Its outcome pushed Alexios into relying on Venetian sea power and Western diplomacy, and it set up a long rivalry with Bohemond that continued during the First Crusade.