I've recently played an AoE2 campaign revolving around the Hautevilles and the Norman conquest of Italy. I know these games take a lot of historical liberties, so I scoured Wikipedia and found very little practical information as to how they actually managed to form an army capable of conquering portions of Italy in the first place. They make it seem like there was a gigantic Norman block party in Southern Italy and all of a sudden they were all unified and capable of conquering some pretty substantial powers, albeit deteriorating and divided.
I understand that they were preying on weakened states and playing off of rival lords / emirs as mercenaries, a common historical theme for conquering. What I do not understand is that usually this occurs with either a central state or a relatively close proximity. The Normans in this case have neither. For distances long as from Normandy to Sicily, you usually see it only with nomadic tribes, which makes sense considering the steppe but this isn't a great example due to the usage of boats. This was also prior to the crusades so it takes situations like the formation of Portugal out of the window.
My question boils down to this. How did a group of Norman mercenaries from the minor nobility find an army large enough to conquer all of southern Italy. Wikipedia and other sources make it seem like ~ a generation of Norman travelers to Italy was enough to field an army and conquer Italy. How many minor duke princes were there in Normandy? Thousands? Did they bring all of their money along with them and bolster their army with mercenaries, even though they themselves in the beginning were mercenaries? I'm just super confused as to how a people with literally only cultural and familial ties managed to conquer such a large area despite it being so far away from their homeland.
Hopefully I didn't make too many terrible assumptions / inaccuracies, and thanks for any responses.
So the first thing was that the Normans of the 11th century were particularly prominent in the mercenary game where ever there was a significant amount of conflicts and not just in Italy. The pop up in a lot of places, some where they stuck around for a fair while like in Ireland or with men like Bohemond who was a mercenary turned Crusader carving out his principality of Antioch and others where their presence didn't leave as deep a mark like in Iberia. So you know, they got around.
To explain this a little firstly unlike in some other parts of Europe the Normans primarily practiced Patrilineal primogeniture which probably increased that chance that younger sons who might find little that they'd be able to inherit to call their own would go off to seek their fortunes a different way. And to stereotype the Normans and those who would become mercenaries a little they had a tendency to be ruthless and pragmatic meaning they didn't have too many qualms about fighting as mercenaries and they tended to produce both some aggressive and some high quality cavalry. So they were willing to be mercenaries and there were some good Norman mercenaries around. They were attracted to southern Italy because it was a fractured region specifically, as Byzantine control of southern italy was weakening again. Southern Italy was a web of the retracting Byzantine controlled lands which were beginning to lose control over some of their traditional vassals as well as a few small independent italian states emerging and small Lombard states. All of these were in competition and as small states often do in such times they sort mercenaries to bolster their forces and the Normans were willing and good.
As a result of this mercenary work they gained their own permanent holdings in Southern Italy as part of their payments and over time swelled in numbers as the successes of earlier mercenaries brought more Normans to the region. Additionally these lands provided a stable source of wealth, a base of operations and a population from which they could draw levee infantry from to back up their own heavy cavalry on which they relied in addition to the fact that their successes and the wealth their gained from successful mercenary work and land allowed them to bring mercenaries of other nationalities under their commands.
So when the Byzantine forces in the region made a failed attempt at invading the Emirate of Sicily the Normans smelled blood and took opportunity of the weakened Byzantine power to pursue their own. Their initial victories in this vein allowed them to expand their lands in the region and eventually won them Papal recognition more or less at sword point.
While the Normans were often out numbered armies of this period were often not especially large, usually under 10,000 all things considered, and the Norman's heavy cavalry tactics were much better trained and equipped than many of the troops they opposed.
How many minor duke princes were there in Normandy? Thousands?
Did they bring all of their money along with them and bolster their army with mercenaries, even though they themselves in the beginning were mercenaries?
A lot of these men weren't terribly wealthy by the standards of the Dukes and kings of Europe when they left Normandy but the Normans spent a few decades there building up their wealth and power in the region by their work as mercenaries. While they used these to bring other troops under their command later on it was still as best we can tell really built on that core of Norman knights who made up much of the armies.
The Normans had been well-ingrained in the social and political hierarchy of Southern Italy for over a generation by the time conditions were ripe for them to seize the reins of power in the Principality of Salerno (a principality whose resurgence they had in great part participated in themselves) after having led Salernitan efforts to take advantage of internal divisions within the Emirate of Sicily to conquer and immediately afterwards set up a centralized, efficient, and powerful government based on the Island.
I wrote this answer some two years ago narrating the Norman's ascendancy in Southern Italy, which you might be interested in.