Italo-norman

Often he is our only source, particularly for Roger's Sicilian campaigns and for Italo-Norman history following the death of Robert Guiscard.

Representing the Italo-Norman perspective we have the anonymous Gesta Francorum and the Historia belli sacri, besides Ralph of Caen's Gesta Tancredi.

Lupus Protospatharius' 'more than 500 knights' reads more realistically, and this number confirms that the Italo-Norman contingent was, indeed, one of the smallest in the crusading army.

Bernard Bachrach, an authority on medieval logistics, has surmised that the Normans used Byzantine nautical technology transmitted by the Normans of southern Italy to construct them,^([ships to transport horses]) but the likelihood of that seems remote, given that the Italo-Normans had not adopted such technology themselves by the time of the Conquest.

Of course, the Italo-Normans were not unique in some of their experiences, as Raymond of St Gilles and doubtless some of his contingent had fought in Iberia, but they were there as 'visiting soldiers'. In southern Italy and Sicily, although the Italo-Normans may have arrived as soldiers, they remained and became a part of its multi-ethnic society.