The Norman County of Sicily and Tunis                       

 "He was a youth of the greatest beauty, of lofty stature, of graceful shape, most eloquent in speech and cool in counsel. He was far-seeing in arranging all his actions, pleasant and merry all with men; strong and brave, and furious in battle." - Malaterra on Roger I, the Great Count, Founder of the County of Sicily

Such was the impression that Roger I, founder of the County of Sicily and grandfather to Roger II, left on contemporaries, though he is by and large forgotten today, despite his tremendous achievements in war and peace. The Crusades, those wars waged by Catholic Christendom for the liberation of the Christian East, were not the first counteroffensives against Muslim antagonists, despite popular belief to the contrary. One of the first was the Norman Conquest of Sicily. From bases in Southern Italy, lately shorn by Robert Guiscard from the declining Byzantine Empire, Norman bands commanded by his younger brother Roger, observing the fractious disunity of the island's petty princes and reckoning the great wealth that might be won by ruthless valor, crossed from Calabria in 1061, some five years before another Norman, William the Bastard, also called "the Conqueror", invaded England further North. The Norman invasion, a story of incredible success in the face of overwhelming military odds, lasted thirty years before young Roger, become now the "Great Count", extirpated the last resistance against his claims and established his rule firmly in Palermo.

In the current era, the Normans of Sicily, under the leadership of the Great Count's successor, Simon, and the splendid Roger II, known as the "Leopard", the Sicilian navy asserted itself as the most well trained and best lead maritime force on the Mediterranean, being the very scourge of the Moors and Arabs, paying them back in full for generations of piracy and depredation on the Mediterranean. In campaigns spanning vast distances, Sicilian power has been felt from one end to the other of the Mare Internum. It is rumored that in the mosques of Damascus and Seville, and lately Tunis, that the imams beg God to deliver them from the fury of the Normans, but God in his wisdom has not seen fit to do so.

The Campaigns of Roger II Africanus, Great Count of Sicily

 The Grand Armada: Fired by religious fervor, the young Roger took command of the Sicilian fleet and, rallying with the Prince's Crusade, destroy Islamic shipping from the Syrias to Seville: All Christendom is in awe of his mighty haul of spices, gold, silks, and slaves, all offered up to his noble father, Simon. It is a wonder, given such a great treasure, that the Sicilian fleet, its boughs low in the sun spangled waters of the Mediterranean, managed anchor without loss.

Tunis: Incited by rumors of Tunisian plots and infiltration of neighboring Aragon while seeking to unify Christian maritime strength under his aegis, Roger leads a strike against the one fleet capable of perhaps opposing his own: His uncle, the Emir of Tunis. Ruthless, and somewhat guilty for his aunt's loss, the Sicilian, Venetian, and Aragonese fleet descend like a wolf from the north upon the harbor of Tunis, destroying the Tunisian fleet and stripping it bare of its wealth. Roger, in the eyes of Islam, is not merely dreaded, but accursed, and plots begin to stir against him.

Gibraltar: The Sicilians, having won feudal rights to Gibraltar via marriage of a local notable to Robert, brother to the future Count, strikes fast and hard, landing from the sea and annihlate entrenched Almoravid opposition with ease despite Roger's serious wounding. It is the young conqueror's first success. 

It appeared as certain as Adam's sin would damn all that Roger would crush the Almoravids, marching inland with his gathering allies to liberate Seville if not for the chance intervention of the Hashashin cult. Even as forces marshaled to deploy to Gibraltar, a murderer dispatched from Alamut caught Simon unawares in his palace; he drowns in his own blood. Roger  succeeds his father without challenge; enraged at Tunis for their multifarious plots and their courting of the Hashashin, he entertains offers of alliance with the Almoravids, and, determined to avenge his father's murder, accepts and his nieces suddenly find themselves wed to the Sultan of Andalusia.

Algiers and Kabilya: The Sicilian fleet, having cleared the Bay of Tunis, disembarks Roger and his men at Cheliff. Having reaffirmed his ties with the Sultan of Seville, a doughty and respected ally and liege man, the allied host advances into Algiers to test the arms of the Emir. The Emir, no coward, answers. It pleased Roger to see the Tunisians in battle array, but it is recorded he wept, for he knew he would destroy them all before nightfall. The resulting battle of Adjaccio resulted in the complete annihilation of the Tunisian army - Roger, exulting in his revenge pursued the shattered Arab and Berber host across the African plains, his cavalry in the van wrecking such great slaughter that alone of all the thousands that marched forth from Tunis to confront him, only the Emir himself, disguised as a beggar, his most trusted servants the same, remained to inform his subjects know that the Leopard has feasted and followed not far behind.

In 1155, Roger's star waxed as high as any man in his era could dare imagine and counted himself without arrogance the most accomplished warrior in either Christendom and Islamdom by far. Only the ancient dead, the Guiscard, Caesar and Alexander, Hannibal and Scipio in whose footsteps he followed, did he count as peers - and Zama, he knew, with Tunis, the ruins of Carthage beyond, only some days march from camp. He had seen from his flagship the walls of Tunis and the great wealth within - it remained beyond his grasp, but he knew it well within his grasp. Beyond that one goal so long pursued, he did not know what work he might put his  hand to with all his might, but Jerusalem remained under the infidel's hand: He did not believe it mightier than his own. 

Interregnum: The Sicilian chronicles fall silent, the chroniclers no doubt conscripted and killed in the pleasant lands of Tunis for a time...

Roger never achieved the conquest of Tunis; he died in 1164 after capturing the port, Bone, leaving the county to his nephew Simon II. Prince Hector, son of the Admiral George, as Regent. Under Hector, though a capable soldier, the war effort faltered - the lightning marches a thing of old veterans story's. The war against Tunisia instead became more a contest of will as Egypt threw its weight fully against the discomfited Sicilians even as the Almoravid's crumbled under the sudden assault of Leon and the Reconquista. With the great warrior gone, it seemed that the conquest of Tunis must remain chimaerical fancy. Let us not dwell on the desultory years of conflict - the expeditions to Gefara and Kaiouran, the slaughter of resurgent Tunis' forces outside the walls of Al-Djezair by Sicily's Tuscan allies. 

Without the genius of Roger II, it would not be until the emergence of Jordan de Lench, a younger son newly arrived from Normandy, complimented with the diplomatic efforts of the indefatigable Simon, that a powerful coalition of Sicilians, Tuscans, and Burgundians finally overthrew the Tunis and its Egyptian overlords. However, the city and the Emirate itself would not fall until 1193, nearly fifty years after the war's first salvo. Surveying captured Tunis during his first visit, the Count, not even born when the war first opened, could not wonder if it had been worth it. Despite his uncle's boasts, Jerusalem remained undelivered - the hand of death had proven mightier than that of Roger.

 Still, the Sicilian fleet remained the proudest and most valiant in the Mediterranean, while its army, though small, retained at its core a hard and skilled lot of veterans inured to the privations of the campaign. The vaunted power of hostile Egypt  glowering beyond the scorpion haunted deserts of Lybia did not daunt them, that band of brothers, that few, that happy few whose fathers had faced down all of Islam - and come off the better for it.Perhaps the dream of Roger II was just beginning.