[2] Robert's sobriquet, "Guiscard" (in contemporary Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, closely related to the English archaism wiseacre) is often rendered as "the Resourceful", "the Cunning", "the Wily", "the Fox", or "the Weasel".

[5] In 1038, William Iron Arm and Drogo, the eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville (Seigneur of Hauteville-La-Guichard, a town in Cotentin, Normandy),[6] and elder brothers of Robert Guiscard, arrived in Italy.

[8][2] Anna Komnene gives us a physical description of Guiscard:[a] This Robert was Norman by birth,[9] of obscure origins, with an overbearing character and a thoroughly villainous mind;[10] he was a brave fighter, very cunning in his assaults on the wealth and power of great men;[11] in achieving his aims absolutely inexorable, diverting criticism by incontrovertible argument.

He was a man of immense stature, surpassing even the biggest men; he had a ruddy complexion, fair hair, broad shoulders, eyes that all but shot out sparks of fire.

In a well-built man one looks for breadth here and slimness there; in him all was admirably well-proportioned and elegant... Homer remarked of Achilles that when he shouted his hearers had the impression of a multitude in uproar, but Robert's bellow, so they say, put tens of thousands to flight.

Chronicler Amatus of Montecassino says this was due to Pandulf denying a previous promise that he had made to Robert, which included the gift of a castle and his daughter's hand in marriage.

Drogo, who had just finished a military campaign in Calabria, granted him command of the fortress of Scribla, but Guiscard, dissatisfied, transferred to the castle of San Marco Argentano.

Pope Leo IX formed an anti-Norman coalition in an effort to expel them from the peninsula, but in 1053 he was defeated in the Battle of Civitate by the Norman forces, led by Humphrey, now count.

[2][12] After the treaty of Melfi, Robert engaged in a large series of conquests in southern Italy, mainly in Calabria and Sicily, with the help of his younger brother Roger I.

Robert's brother, Roger, had initially led a tiny force to attack Messina, but he was easily repulsed by the Saracen garrison.

The Byzantines were finally chased off the Italian peninsula, and Robert now focused his attention on the various Lombard independent realms in southern Italy.

Even after it was clear that Raiktor was lying, Robert didn't stop, believing that he himself had the right to rule the Byzantine Empire since Constantine Doukas, son of the real Michael VII, had once been proposed to his daughter Olympias.

Robert returned to the Balkans and reoccupied Corfu and Cephalonia, with the help of Ragusa and other dalmatian cities under the rule of king Demetrius Zvonimir.

Due to his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, Guiscard was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area that had historically followed the Byzantine rite.

This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil.

Although his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy, and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law.

Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more.

Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States.

After the Great Schism of 1054, the polarized religious atmosphere served to strengthen Guiscard's alliance with papal forces, resulting in a formidable papal-Norman opposition to the Eastern Empire.

[7] They had ten children: In the Divine Comedy, Dante sees Guiscard's spirit in the Heaven of Mars, along with other "warriors of the faith" who exemplify the cardinal virtue of fortitude.