skill in ministering to the pseudo-classicism of rustic Saxons.

Each of these Emperors turned his back on Germany at the first
opportunity. Each met in Italy with bitter disillusionment and an
untimely fate.

Otto II, in whose idealism there was a trace of his father's concrete
ambition, planned the conquest of South Italy and Sicily. The scheme was
not impracticable as the Hohenstauffen were afterwards to prove. And in
the year 980 it could be justified as advantageous to the whole of
Christian Europe. A new Saracen peril was impending in the Western
Mediterranean. A new dynasty of Mohammedan adventurers, the Fatimites,
had arisen on the coast of Northern Africa and had made themselves
masters of Egypt (969). Five years before that event they had already
occupied Sicily; in 976 they turned their attention to Italy. The south
of the peninsula was divided between the Eastern Empire and Pandulf
Ironhead, the lord of Capua, who had established an ephemeral despotism
on the ruins of Lombard and Byzantine power. Even he could not face the
Arabs in the open field, and his death (981) was followed by the
partition of his lands and bitter strife among his sons. Unless Otto
intervened it was not unlikely that Italy, south of the Garigliano,
would become a province of the Caliphate of Cairo. Otto, however, was
ill-qualified to be the general of a crusade. His military experience
had been gained in petty operations against the Danes and Slavs, and in
an invasion of France vaingloriously begun but ending in humiliation
(978). Full of self-confidence he led a powerful force into Apulia,
intending to expel first the Greeks and then the Arabs. He captured Bari
and Taranto without difficulty; but he had no sooner entered Calabria
than he allowed himself to be entrapped by the Emir of Sicily. On the
field of Colonne (982) he lost the flower of his army and barely escaped