Chapter Three
The Conquests of Agellid the Magnificent, 960-1000
Agellid the Magnificent looms over European history. A heroic figure in the Islamic world and a despised despoiler to Christians, his conquest turned the world history and dealt Latin Christendom a blow from which it would never truly recover. When he first ascended to the Sicilian throne in 960 as an eighteen year old he struggled to earn the respect of his nobility, was faced by a substantial Lombard revolt to the West and East of Naples and was threatened by a small scale Italian invasion of Benevento. Facing down these threats, Agellid gained valuable lessons in generalship and statecraft – eliminating his enemies at both court and the field of battle within a few short years.
It was events overseas that launched Agellid’s conquests. In the early 960s the Aghlabid Sultanate collapsed. From the Libyan Desert the Baddid tribe conquered Tripoli and sought to destroy the Sultan’s power. At the same time the Lotharingians launched a bloody campaign against Tunis itself – ultimately capturing the city and destroying the Aghlabid realm once and for all. The fall of Tunis, the greatest city in Islamic Africa, West of Alexandria, and strategically vital to the island of Sicily’s security to a Latin Christian power was a deeply troubling prospect in Palermo. The Lotharingians made matters worse as they ransacked the mercantile quarter of the city in the aftermath of their victory – an area with a very large Sicilian presence.
After a few years of tense peace, the Sicilians invaded Lotharingian Africa in 968. To their surprise, they found the Frankish Kingdom’s defences to be utterly hollow. Exhausted by years of war, facing rebellion in its core territories along the Rhine and close to bankruptcy, the Lotharingian Empire in the Mediterranean was remarkably poorly defended. Tunis fell in 969, and although a truce was agreed that ceded the city and its surrounds to Sicily, the Frankish realm’s territories were not left unmolested. Piracy, raids and border skirmished afflicted the ailing Empire, while the Sicilians dismantled their territories piece by piece in a series of short engagements. Bari was captured in 1972, Kabila – to the West of Tunis – fell in 976, while Sardinia was placed under Sicilian rule in 979.
Having acquired vast new territories, Agellid sought to make common cause with the other great Islamic power of the Western Mediterranean – Spain. The Umayyads had ruled Muslim Spain for centuries, yet it was only during the 10th century that they advanced Northwards and crushed the Latin Kingdoms of Asturias once and for all. Upon the capture of Bilbao in 975 the reigning monarch in Corbuba, Abdullah I, had adopted a new title – Badshah, henceforth being known interchangeably as the Emperor of Spain or Andalusia. With the fall of Christian power in Southern Italy and Northern Spain coming in quick succession, the Latin world was growing deeply concerned by Muslim expansionism. When Spanish forces crossed the Pyrenees to invade Aquitanian ruled Gascony in 978, the neighbouring Frankish Kingdoms sent armies to aid their religious brethren in repulsing the Muslims. It was in this context that Agellid forged his alliance with the Badshah in 980, promising to attack Aquitanian ruled Algiers in an effort to draw Frankish troops across the Sea and relieve pressure of the Spanish.
Agellid’s ambitions were much grander than to act as an adjunct to the Spanish. In 984 he embarked upon a war from which he would never fully escape, crossing over the Apennines to invade the Kingdom of Italy. The Sicilians were initially successful, defeating a number of smaller Italian armies before reaching Ancona and settling into a siege. However, the Christians had moved with unexpected unity and urgency to counter the Sicilian threat. The Pope in Rome had declared the fight in Italy, alongside the battle against the Spanish to the West, to be a great Holy War and called upon all Christian fighting men to defend their brethren. In practical terms, the Papacy encouraged a series of Frankish states to commit men to Italy’s defence and ensured that its own coffers, and those of Venice, were used to recruit mercenary armies that bolstered the King of Italy. With overwhelming numerical superiority, the King Manfred of Italy led a Christian army towards Ancona – forcing Agellid to flee back to the South. Flush with victory the Latins poured into Sicilian ruled peninsular Italy – capturing Capua, Naples, Amalfi, Foggia and Bari by 986. The Christian armies were large and in the few battles in which the Sicilians allowed their forces to be committed to they were defeated.
With the Latins’ ambitions turning towards conquest, they began to divide. The Italians and Venetians moved towards the Adriatic coastline, where they sought to establish their power permanently. Meanwhile, the Franks – under direct Papal leadership – consolidated their grip to the South-West in Capua and around the Bay of Naples. With his enemy divided, Agellid began to make more aggressive manoeuvres – holding both wings of the Christian armies at bay.
The decisive turning point came in 986 at the Battle of Gaeta. Having surprised the Papal led army by bypassing the Bay of Naples and moving towards Rome itself – Agellid met the Latins near Capua. There he won a crushing victory, routing a larger Christian army and seeing Pope Leo VI killed in battle. With their figurehead gone, the defeated Franks began to scatter – either withdrawing from Italy or being hunted down by Muslim forces. Subsequently, the Papacy found itself incapable of restoring itself as a centre of military authority in the conflict. Following this victory, the Sultan wheeled Northwards and defeated the Italians and Venetians at an equally important engagement at Foggia. Although the Italians were not so utterly broken as the Franks had been – they were forced to withdraw back into the Kingdom of Italy itself.
The Sicilians followed in pursuit and cut off the largest part of the Italian army in Tuscany – forcing it into the walled city of Florence and bringing it under siege. From 986 until 988 the Italians in Florence held out, desperately waiting for reinforcements to arrive from the North. They never came. At the onset of Winter in 988 a 10,000 strong Italian army surrendered Florence to Agellid’s army – and with it gave the Sicilians unchallenged authority over central Italy.
With the Kingdom of Italy creaking towards total collapse, Agellid swung Northwards to the begin the siege of Pavia, its capital city. With defeat appearing certain, King Manfred of Italy received news of an unexpected source of potential salvation. The Bavarians, who had fought a series of wars with Italy in previous decades and had thus far refused to lift a finger to aid them, had crossed the alps with a large army – agreeing to make common cause against the Muslim invaders. At the Battle of Bobbio in 989, Agellid led a Sicilian host against a combined Bavarian-Italian army – and won another crushing victory. The Bavarians suffered heavy losses and chose to flee back across the Alps, meanwhile, King Manfred of Italy was killed on the field of battle alongside much of the cream of Kingdom’s nobility. Following Bobbio, Agellid marched unmolested into Pavia and the leaderless Kingdom collapsed.
Agellid claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula, and was able to reach agreements with much of the Italian nobility – allowing them to retain their lands, wealth, privileges and even religion in exchange for their loyalty to his authority. This led to most of Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Liguria accepting Sicilian power whilst the areas around the Adriatic, supported by Venice, and Latinum, supported by the Papacy in Rome, fought on. Battles against these holdout territories, and periodic Christian rebellions, would absorb Agellid’s attentions for years. However, in the early 990s it appeared as if the conflict was beginning to wind down. Following the defeat of the Adriatic Italian lords the Venetians agreed to a truce in 991, the following year the long running conflict between Spain and Aquitaine ended with Spain’s annexation of Gascony, finally in 993 the Sicilians stormed into Rome itself.
While the mighty Byzantine Empire had remained neutral in the battle for Italy to this point, the Islamic conquest of the eternal city, and resulting expulsion of the Roman Pontiff, proved too much for the Greeks to accept. Following an ultimatum that demanded that Rome be ceded to them, the Byzantines declared war in late 993 and invaded Southern Italy with some 20,000 men – tearing through the defences of Agellid’s war weary state. The fall of Rome caused an even greater uproar in the Latin West. With the Papacy relocating to the city of Aachen along the Rhine, he called for a Crusade to liberate Italy from the Muslim rule. Despite the exhaustion from the wars in Italy and Gascony, this call was answered widely in Europe and a large army under the leadership of the King of Aquitaine crossed the Alps and began to overwhelm the Po Valley.
With large armies threatening Sicily’s Empire from both North and South, the state came dangerously close to collapse as it took on large debts to continue to finance a seemingly endless war effort. However, fate favoured the Muslims as the defeated the Latins in very fortuitous circumstances. In the summer of 995 the Sicilians and Crusaders fought a series of indecisive battles in Lombardy, yet at the Battle of Bergamo King Ogier of Aquitaine was captured by the Muslims. The King then reached an agreement with the Sicilians, withdrawing his armies from Italy in exchange for his freedom. With Ogier’s general ship, authority as a leader and the strength of his armies – the Crusade petered out before the end of the year.
The battle against the Byzantines was much lengthier and more costly. A series of cities and fortresses in the South were lost in the first three years of the war. Only with victory in the North was Agellid able to bring the full force of his armies to bear against them – turning the tide and beginning the slow process of pushing the Greeks back to their Italian footholds in Calabria and Lecce. After much loss of life and treasure, the Byzantines agreed to a truce in 998. Following this treaty, which brought peace to Sicily for the first time in fourteen years, Agellid had himself crowned Emperor in an elaborate ceremony in Palermo.
Yet just two years later his life was cut to a premature end. The eldest son of Manfred of Italy had managed to escape from the chaos that followed his father’s death at the Battle of Bobbio and avoid conquest by the Sicilians – establishing a realm with Venetian support in Carinthia. In 999 Prince Cuccio launched an invasion of Italy, hoping the nobility would rise up to support him. He was to be disappointed. The nobles remained unmoved and Agellid led his army North to crush Cuccio. Yet the great conqueror was cut down in the midst of the very battle that defeated the Prince’s invasion – bringing the greatest reign in Sicilian history to an abrupt end.
Agellid’s victories had upturned the balance of the European and Mediterranean worlds. One of Christendom’s strongest Kingdoms had been destroyed, the Papacy expelled from his home for half a millennium and a new Empire had been created in the heart of the Mediterranean that could rival any other in its size, wealth and power.
