Lambert I: To Fight the Unbeatable Foe (899-900)
--- Lambert I: Rallying the Troops (July-October 21st 899) ---
From the inception of Lambert’s regime, though Pavia had maintained its position as his capital, the emperor’s residence had been unofficially set in the imperial seat par excellence, Rome. It was not until July of 899, though, that – with the usual counsel from his mother and his other courtiers – the sovereign had decided to move out of the Apostolic Palace, one of the Pope’s secondary residences, and create his own manor in the Eternal City, to exert better control over the metropolis’s rising aristocracy.
Choosing where to build a palace in Rome was ten times more difficult than in any other city; aside from the overlapping territorial claims within the Pope’s capital and ruined, classical-era buildings scattered throughout – characteristics which ensured ludicrous amounts of money, time and effort would be spent before the first bricks were on the ground, but not unique to Rome – what mattered most about the location of a new residence was the relative distance to certain families and their own.
Fortunately, Rome partially made up for this problem by boasting seven natural points of interest for these families: the seven hills, which had defined the city since its founding. Lambert’s choice had fallen between the veritable Quirinal and Viminal hills, where the majestic ruins of Diocletian’s baths, burning memory of Rome’s not-so-distant past as epicentre of the world, though plagued by disrepair, infested by peasants and lugubrious in appearance, could still put every nobiliary tower in Rome to shame. According to Ripaldo’s chronicle, Lambert, fuelled by a desire to rekindle the spirit of the empire by revitalizing its symbols one by one, had envisioned turning the ruined baths into the imperial residence as soon as he’d set foot in Rome; the building was relatively intact compared to the other colossal works from the imperial era, and larger than any other – clocking in at thirteen hectares, as a residence it would’ve humbled everything else in Italy, except perhaps the royal palace in Pavia.
Getting the worksite up and running would be the most difficult part of the construction. As alluded to earlier, after 537, when the cutting of the aqueducts during the Siege of Rome had rendered them useless, Diocletian’s baths had slowly become the home of several peasant families; moreover, noble families had started using parts of the megastructure as stables for their horses. Lambert was well-acquainted enough with Roman politics to know that stepping on so many toes at once would result in rather dire consequences, especially if his enemies in the city took the opportunity to rally the masses against him. For the time being, while he filibustered with the bath’s inhabitants, but unwilling to return to John as a guest, the emperor found a temporary residence in the benedictine monastery of Saint Lawrence.
Coincidentally, August 10th – which would thereafter enter history as the day of the battle of Ruinae Feltriae, as the first encounter between the Empire and the Magyars – was also Saint Lawrence’s day; legend would have it that the Unroch IV of Friuli’s envoys, bearing news of the crossing of the Alps by unknown forces, arrived in the middle of a celebration tied to the saint, which involved the distribution of bread and ham to the poor of Rome, and found the emperor himself handing out viands with the monks.
Seventeen days had passed since the formidable Magyars had crossed the Alps. Though the duke of Friuli’s messengers could not have known the grisly fate their liege had just incurred in, they still managed to stir up worry in the imperial court. They bore grave news especially to Lambert, as his uncontested rule was still at its very inception: a host of mysterious equestrians ransacking the kingdom risked ending it all before his eyes, unless he stopped them. The sudden apparition of an invading army came as a real shock to no one, as most of Lambert’s counsellors had Arnulf of Carinthia’s expeditions from just years prior fresh in their memory, but what upset them was the unknown nature of the threat. Very few had heard of the Hungarian horde up to that point, and those who did knew that and nothing more. How could their emperor keep up his streak of victories against a completely unknown foe?
After spending the rest of the day in isolation and prayer, early in the morning the next day the emperor pledged, that he would extirpate the invaders “in nomine Domini et Papae, de terra quam primus benedixerat et secundus ei concessit” (“in the name of God and the Pope, from the land the former had blessed and the latter had granted him,” from Ripaldo). In the following weeks, as more reports reached Rome of cities ravaged, Lambert summoned troops from across the south, along with his vassals, so that they could follow him to Pavia and prepare to strike against the foreign scourge.
On September 1st, among the various barons and counts of the realm, the best known as undoubtedly the prince of Capua and Benevento, Atenulf the Great, but other names made their impact, such as Atenulf’s own rival, the elderly Docibilis of Gaeta, and count Pepin of Marsica – himself a great-grandchild of Charlemagne. Some sources report that a Saracen mercenary captain offered his men to Lambert, but that the emperor scornfully refused[A]. At the head of this contingent, presumed to be six-thousand strong, Lambert then made way for the stronghold of the north, Pavia; over the course of twenty days, the emperor’s host was joined by other hosts and other commanders, such as Lambert’s regent in Lombardy, his summus consiliarius Radalt, or the Supponid scions Vifred of Piacenza and Unroch of Parma. Many of the retinues, however, also came from the powerful dioceses of the north: Bologna, Modena and Ravenna all made their contributions. To top this off, Lambert’s army was welcomed in Pavia by the final great feudatory; Adalbert, heir to the margraviate of Ivrea, representing his elderly father Anscar. The combined forces resulted in an army of around fifteen thousand men, with some of the most powerful men in Italy (and, by extension, in Europe) steering its helm. As Lambert had been informed, the lone absentee, Unroch of Friuli, had a more than solid excuse for his non-attendance.
The report of the events at Ruinae Feltriae, relayed by the noble Ripaldo – sole survivor of the gruesome ordeal – confirmed most of Lambert’s fears about the invaders; the fighting style of the Magyars was unlike anything he had faced before, reminiscing of a cat and mouse game more than a proper battle. Even still, there were good news: putting together all the reports of their activity, the enemies that had seemed like a larger-than-life threat of uncountable demons, upon further inspection, could number no more than four or five thousand troops – at best, a mere third of the force the emperor and his vassals had amassed. It could not be ignored that the Magyars had proven effective at dispatching a larger battalion, but Lambert did at least feel confident in his numerical superiority.
After days of planning, it was concluded that the battle would have to be fought somewhere along the via Postumia, as the raiders had likely set up camp somewhere past the Adige River; the end of the war couldn’t wait for long, as reinforcements could arrive at any moment, so the battle would have to be fought in November at the latest; and most importantly, the sooner the Magyars were out of the country, the better. Before long, at most two weeks after his arrival in Pavia, the army was set in motion, making stops in Piacenza, Cremona, Verona – where Lambert confirmed Adelard, the city’s bishop, who had been duke Berengar’s chancellor and had temporarily taken the reins of Friuli after Unroch IV’s death, in his duties – and finally in Vicenza, in which “Hungarorum equorum resonabat hinnitus” (“echoed the neighing of the Magyar horses,” from Ripaldo).
Having travelled much further than they had anticipated without once encountering the reavers – but always news of their raids – Lambert’s commanders concluded that the Magyars had been running away from them up until that point, meaning they wanted to be caught up to. Though he did prefer a great military victory over a stratagem to get the enemy to leave unscathed, Lambert was convinced by Radalt to end the pursuit, at least temporarily; the army was stationed along the Tesina river, just eight miles from the Brenta river, where the Magyars had set up camp.
To the Magyars, who had kept tabs on the Italian army’s movements, this indecisiveness was all but welcome. Though it meant the enemy feared them, that very fact rendered the Hungarian host’s grand strategy ineffective: a scared army would not indefinitely give chase to its enemy, especially if they suspected foul play. Attacking now was not an option, as it would surely result in a gruesome end to the expedition, so it was up to Gyula, the leader of the raiders, to make the choice: cutting the host’s losses and leaving the peninsula behind or contriving a scheme to set the cards back in his favour.
By dawn of October 21st, after three days of stalling, fate played its cards: a thick fog had enveloped what was to be the battlefield of the final great battle of the 9th Century, and though the mist was spread out across the Veneto, it was concentrated in the strip of land between Vicenza and Camesano, neatly surrounding the Italian army before it had even awakened. This was the opportunity to turn the tables Gyula had been waiting for. If the Latins wanted a terrifying foe, that was exactly what they were going to get.
In a little less than two hours, the Magyars slowly and quietly closed the distance between their camp and Lambert’s. When they were within striking distance of the Tesina river, Gyula broke the silence with a loud order, succeeded by a blow of the war horn. The Magyar warriors lined up along the battlefield, each with a nocked arrow, at the right distance that they could be heard but not seen clearly by the Italians. The tactic was effective: Ripaldo writes that, shielded by the mist, the already fearsome Hungarians appeared like an army of demons.
Within this intimidating show, however, lied Gyula’s first mistake: giving away the element of surprise. The Magyars had anticipated fighting a defensive battle, along the turbulent shores of the Brenta, but Gyula’s strategy forced them into a battle on the offensive, fought over the shallow, muddy bed of the Tesina. After a first moment of shock, while the Italians hurriedly prepared for the battle, Radalt sent word to the rest of the army that the Magyars had finally chosen to attack.
--- Lambert I: Fluminis Gehennae (October 21st 899) ---
There are two key strategies in the arsenal of Magyarok warlords. The first, the false retreat, was only partially demonstrated at Ruinae Feltriae, as typically the Hungarians would fire arrow after arrow at pursuing armies rather than turn and face them. The second tactic was less stratagem and closer to European warfare: employing all three weapons each Magyar warrior was most accustomed to in rapid succession – the bow, the spear and the sabre, princess of close-quarters combat – the army maximised its efficacy and stunned the enemy. During the Battle of Hell's River (“proelium fluminis Gehennae,” as later chroniclers fancifully dubbed the engagement), more simply known as the Battle of the Tasina, Gyula found the opportunity to effectively employ both tactics.
To kickstart the combat, the Magyars raised their bows and rained a volley of arrows in the Italian camp’s general direction – this being an advantage the fog provided for the Italians during the entire battle. The very brief delay between the apparition of the Magyars and that of their first arrows would already have been enough for the imperial retinue to brace for impact, but the diminished visibility ensured very few darts reached their intended targets.
Next came the charge. After another raucous order resounded through the battlefield, the Magyars readied their lances and spurred their horses. The only obstacle, the river, was crossed with a single jump as five thousand warriors leapt from the mist and pierced into the Italian line: a spectacle beyond any Latin warrior’s comprehension. On impact, the lances pierced through shields, found cracks in the armours, broke many helms, and blinded more eyes.
The physical damage inflicted by the charge was substantial, but Italian morale was damaged even more – the lone attack, combined with the pressure of the battle, was enough to scare off some of the retinues, who left their weapons behind and made for the hills. The Italian centre, where the elite units were concentrated, did hold strong, keeping the Magyars on the very edge of the river. A few horses were toppled by the packed battlefields, and their riders fell into the bed of the shallow river – but where this would’ve meant certain death for the heavily armoured Carolingian knights, most unsaddled Magyars, bound only by leather armour and gaudy vestments, merely unsheathed their sabres, and jumped right back into the fighting. This resourcefulness certainly didn’t help Italian morale, who saw their enemies plummet to their doom and rise to continue the fight.
Just as chilling a presence as the Magyars, however, bore the emperor, whose thundering orders rose above the clamour of the battlefield. Ripaldo relays that Lambert fought as fiercely as a lion, disarming and cutting down every raider unfortunate enough to pick a fight with him. It wasn’t long before the battle devolved, as the flanks gave way and either merged with the centre or dispersed, but again from the mist came a drop of great fortune: the weakness of the Italian flanks, due primarily to the haste with which they had been organised, could normally have easily been exploited by the Hungarian army, but before they could realise this, reinforcements had arrived from north and south, concentrating the rest of the Italian army from spread out camps to the narrow point of the river, turning things once again for the Italians. Reinforcements, however, were coming from both sides of the river, as Gyula had the foresight to leave fresh troops behind, to join the fighting when required. As a result, as the Italian front consolidated again, a second volley of arrows was ready to pierce it.
Contrary to anyone’s expectations, the two armies were evenly matched; without the tactical advantage Gyula had previously hoped to manufacture, Magyar numerical inferiority was even more of an issue than what he'd anticipated. Moreover, though the tactic he did employ had been extremely effective against the footmen and the impressionable retinues, Carolingian armour was built to withstand Normand axes, Lombard and Arab swords. If slashing damage was what the Magyars were looking for, they would not find it at Gehennae.
By Midday, the winning faction was becoming clear; both sides had reported heavy casualties, but the trickle of knights from the other Carolingian camps along the river was something the Magyars couldn’t hope to replicate. The mist was dissipating, which annulled the remaining Magyar advantages. What’s more, Atenulf had pushed the vantage point with a group of his own by crossing the Tesina near Quinto, and now threatened to block the Magyar retreat. When Gyula realised the deck was no longer stacked in his favour, he decided to enact the emergency plan; sounding the retreat, he jumped again across the river, followed by two thousand of his knights – less than half of what he’d started with – and launched the final order of the battle.
Lambert, galvanised by the victory, gave the order to chase after them, and so began the final phase of the Pugna Gehennae; when the Latins were close enough in their pursuit, the Magyars turned on their horses and started firing arrows at them. Tenths of valid knights were killed, hundreds wounded in the chase; Lambert’s own steed was struck on the side, and he was almost unhorsed, at which point he ordered an end to the hunt. What was meant to be a triumphant victory all-around, through Gyula’s brilliance and a bit of nomadic wisdom, still ended with the Italian knights and their emperor rushing back to their camps, to lick their wounds. The results, however, did not change: the Magyars, for now, were out of Italy. [1]
--- Lambert I: Triumph (October 21st 899 – January 900) ---
The Magyars didn’t go home empty handed. While some loot had to be left behind – partly so the Italians would be satisfied to let them go, and partly because there were thousands less horsemen to bring it along – what they did secure was enough to partially amend to the expedition’s disastrous outcome. By the time they’d made the journey back home, key developments had taken place in European politics: King Arnulf, who had been the ally of the Magyar nation, died on December 8th, and his son Ludwig’s regent, the archbishop Atto of Mainz, was not eager to keep an association with the eastern raiders going, especially given their recent defeat. In a way, this was fortunate, as it would allow the Magyar king Árpád to enact the last phase of his migration plan by directly attacking the weakly defended border-region of East Francia, Pannonia, as he’d recognised it as the destination of the long migration westward of his people. It took months, but the region would fall under Magyar hands by the halfway point of 900.
If the unsuccessful ‘invasion’ of Italy by Gyula’s Magyars resulted in a geopolitical upswing, the effects of the victory on Lambert and Italy were much more direct. On its way back to Pavia, the victorious army was welcomed with a triumph at every step of the way. It wasn’t a bloodless victory, of course; of the 15,000 who had departed from Pavia in September, less than 12,000 survived the battle, and a third of these had done so by deserting the battlefield. Among the prominent casualties, Gaeta mourned for weeks on end their beloved hypatios Docibilis, who had fought valiantly during the battle, but had eventually been cut down. More than two-hundred men of noble birth were killed at Gehennae, a third of them during the final pursuit.
After a day of dignified military funerals, the celebrations of the victory in Pavia lasted for three whole days, before Lambert’s departure back home. In his munificence, the emperor granted curtes, confirmed duties, invested knights and gave out amnesties to the city’s criminals. The victorious procession eventually whittled down to the emperor’s own host, but this didn’t diminish the triumph Lambert would enjoy in Rome itself. According to Ripaldo, the emperor was paraded in the streets with laurel resting on his head, bringing back broken Magyar lances and helms looted from their defeated knights as trophies. At the end of this procession, Lambert met with Pope John IX, who publicly congratulated the emperor for his victory against the Satan’s emissaries.
By December, shortly after the news were broken to Rome that the false emperor, Arnulf, had perished across the Alps, two envoys came to the eternal city from Árpád, king of the Magyars, to decide on the peace. By the Hungarian king’s magnanimity, he promised not to seek revenge on the Italians if their emperor promised to follow suit and offered them a truce of ten years to boot. The envoys were received respectfully by the emperor, who agreed to their demands and sent his regards to Árpád. This wouldn’t necessarily be the end of hostilities between Italians and Magyars, or even between Lambert and the Magyars, as new border raids are reported between Árpád’s death in 907 and the early 910s, but it is worth noting that the Italian emperor and the Hungarian king did share further correspondence after this. Some speculate that Lambert accepted to take on the alliance that had been Arnulf’s, but no sources would confirm this.
At the start of the new century, Lambert could now boast to have been the first to stop the relentless raiders from the east. It’s no coincidence that more letters addressing him as emperor rather than king start appearing only after this point. In 900, Lambert would be twenty years old; the greenhorn boy-king had become a man, described as tall, winsome and fair-haired, “caput corona dignum” (“a head worthy of the crown”). He had fought, he had persevered and he hadn’t faltered. Who could dare to challenge him yet?
Footnotes
Canon
[A]: If this story were to be true, the chieftain in question would presumably be the one in charge of the Muslim settlement at the mouth of the Garigliano river.
Not Canon
[1]: I racked my brain for weeks trying to find a way to have the Italians win without making it seem easy for them or making the Magyars seem incompetent; I think I’ve found the right balance.
His grandfather was emperor Louis the Younger, which just about legitimizes his right to rule there. There may be enough of a chance for him to try and conquer Italy, at which point not even being Charlemagne's godson would spare him Lambert's wrath.
