Here was a chance for Norman diplomacy, or, as Italians would have called it, ‘cunning’, and the conquerors promptly declared that it had been with the utmost reluctance that they had made war on the Father of Christendom, and begged his forgiveness. His absolution was obtained, and a few years later, through the mediation of Hildebrand, then Archdeacon of Rome and later as Pope Gregory VII, one of the leading statesmen of Europe, a compact was arranged by which the Normans recognized Pope Nicholas II as their overlord, while he, on his part, acknowledged their right to keep their conquests. Both parties to this bargain were pleased: the Pope because he had gained a vassal state however unruly, the Normans since they felt that they no longer reigned on sufferance, but had a legal status in the eyes of Europe. Neither had any idea of the mine of trouble they were laying for future generations. The fortunes of the House of Hauteville, thus established, mounted steadily. William died and was succeeded by a younger brother, Robert, nicknamed ‘Guiscard’ or ‘the Wise’. During his reign he forced both the Greek governor and the independent princes who held the rest of South Italy to surrender their possessions, while he even carried his war against the Eastern Empire to Greece itself. Only his death put an end to this daring campaign. Robert Guiscard, as master of South Italy, had been created Duke of Apulia; his nephew, Roger II, Count of Sicily, who inherited his statecraft and strength, induced the Pope to magnify both mainland and island into a joint kingdom, and thereafter reigned as King of Naples. ‘He was a lover of justice’, says a chronicler of his day, ‘and a most severe avenger of crime. He hated lying ... and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He never persecuted his private enemies, and in war endeavoured on all occasions to gain his point without shedding blood. Justice and peace were universally observed through his dominions.’ Roger II of Naples was evidently a finer and more civilized character than William of England; but in both lay that Norman capacity for establishing and maintaining order that at first seems so strange an inheritance from wild Norse ancestors. Clear-sighted, iron-nerved, an adventurer with an instinct for business, the Norman of the Early Middle Ages was just the leaven that Europe required to raise her out of the indolent depression of the ‘Dark Ages’ that followed the fall of Rome. _Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._