The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1908]
[Footnote 100: The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castille, Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created by their sword; the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary alone was honored or debased by a papal crown.]
[Footnote 101: Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and independent coronation, (A.D. 1130, May 1,) which Giannone unwillingly rejects, (tom. ii. p. 137 - 144.) This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious character of Messina, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 340. Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468.)]
[Footnote 102: Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans (says Cinnamus, l. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ignorant of the use of trumpets. Most ignorant himself!
Note: Cinnamus says nothing of their ignorance. - M]
As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St. Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross, and he accomplished with ardor a vow so propitious to his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens: the Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their strength they contended with the decline of an African power. When the Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a gift of his royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his palace with its sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers. The Zeirides, ^103 the descendants of Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude to a distant benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now fainting in their own weakness. On the side of the land, they were pressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco, while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and Franks, who, before the close of the eleventh century, had extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the first arms of Roger, the island or rock of Malta, which has been since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli, ^104 a strong and maritime city, was the next object of his attack; and the slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females, might be justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves. The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the country, and Mahadia ^105 from the Arabian founder: it is strongly built on a neck of land, but the imperfection of the harbor is not compensated by the fertility of the adjacent plain. Mahadia was besieged by George the Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one hundred and fifty galleys, amply provided with men and the instruments of mischief: the sovereign had fled, the Moorish governor refused to capitulate, declined the last and irresistible assault, and secretly escaping with the Moslem inhabitants abandoned the place and its treasures to the rapacious Franks. In successive expeditions, the king of Sicily or his lieutenants reduced the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia, Bona, and a long tract of the sea-coast; ^106 the fortresses were garrisoned, the country was tributary, and a boast that it held Africa in subjection might be inscribed with some flattery on the sword of Roger. ^107 After his death, that sword was broken; and these