Osmond Drengot

Norman adventurers had begun a prolonged and haphazard migration to Sicily and southern Italy early in the eleventh century, serving the local nobility as mercenaries fighting the Arabs.

In 999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, pilgrims returning from Jerusalem had called in at the port of Salerno, when a Saracen attack occurred.

The Normans had fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar III had begged them to stay, but they had refused and instead offered to tell others back home of the prince's request.

The Lombard nobleman Melus and his brother-in-law Dattus had rebelled against Constantinople in 1009 and quickly taken Bari itself, and Ascoli and Troina the following year, but the new catepan, Basil Mesardonites, had gathered a large army.

When Bari fell on June 11, 1011, Melus had fled to the protection of Prince Guaimar III of Salerno and Dattus to the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino, where the anti-Greek monks, at the insistence of Pope Benedict VIII, had given him a fortified tower on the Garigliano.

Melus' family, however, had been captured and carted off to Constantinople.

According to the Norman chronicler William of Apulia, Melus had gone to the shrine of Saint Michael at Monte Gargano in 1016 to intercept some Norman pilgrims.

There he had petitioned Rainulf Drengot and a band of Norman exiles to aid in his rebellion, assuring them of the ease of victory and the abundance of spoils.

By 1017, Norman adventurers are already heading south.

Osmond Buatère, according to some sources, or his brother Gilbert, according to others, had in 1016 killed one William Repostel, a relative of Duke Richard II of Normandy, in revenge for his sleeping with one of Osmond's daughters.

The duke had pardoned his life, but exiled him.

Osmond and his four brothers—Gilbert, Asclettin, Ralph, and Ranulf—travel to the Mediterranean to assist the Lombards in their revolt against imperial pretensions.

The Normans join with the Lombard forces under Melus at Capua and march into Apulia immediately, trying to catch the imperial forces off-guard.

Successful in an encounter in May on the banks of the Fortore against forces sent by the katapano Leo Tornikios Kontoleon, they have seized all the territory between the Fortore and Trani by September and are ravaging Apulia; in October, however, they experience a stunning reverse.

The new katepano, Basil Boiannes, appointed in December 2017, has garnered a massive force of reserves and a contingent of the famed Varangian Guard from Emperor Basil II.

He meets the Norman and Lombard hosts on the Ofanto at the site of the famous defeat dealt the Romans by Hannibal in 216 BCE: Cannae.

This second battle of Cannae is a disaster both for the Normans and for the Lombards.

Of the two hundred and fifty Norman knights under Gilbert's command, Gilbert himself, along with Osmond, die in the battle: only ten knights survive.

The Lombard leaders flee: Melus to the "Samnite lands" (Amatus) of the Papal States and Dattus to Montecassino and the tower again.

Melus will continue wandering through south and central Italy and finally northwards to Germany, ending up at the imperial court of Henry II in Bamberg.

Though greatly honored (he receives the empty title Duke of Apulia from the emperor), he will die a broken man only two years later, just after Pope Benedict arrives in Bamberg at Eastertide to discuss a response by the Western Empire to Constantinople’s victories.

He will be given a lavish funeral and an ornate tomb in the new Bamberg Cathedral by his old ally, the emperor.

His son Argyrus will carry on the struggle for Lombard independence in Apulia after his return from imprisonment in Constantinople.