ABSTRACT
The Hauteville brothers’ leadership was never entirely accepted by their fellow Normans. Drogo’s succession to William the Iron Arm had been challenged by Count Peter son of Amicus in 1045/6, and William of Apulia suggested that Peter’s lordship in the coastal plain of northern Apulia around (but not yet including) Trani was actually wealthier than were the possessions of Drogo and his brother Humphrey at that time. 1 Nor did his defeat then remove Count Peter’s ambitions, for soon after Guiscard had succeeded his half-brother Humphrey as leader of the Apulian Normans and while he was busy extending his conquests in Calabria, Peter seized Melfi, the Normans’ first conquest in Apulia, and very much the centre (and probably the symbol) of the Hautevilles’ lordship: ‘the most outstanding of all the towns of the county and its premier seat’ (it was there, a few months later, that Guiscard was to marry Sichelgaita). Amatus indeed recorded that Count Peter ‘had great envy of Robert and tried to damage him in any way he could’. Guiscard moved quickly to blockade Melfi, soon drove his rival out and forced him to sue for peace. 2 But Count Peter and his powerful family remained a major obstacle to the consolidation of Robert’s rule in Apulia.
