Seventeen hundred and fifty of its citizens were sent by the victors
into slavery in Africa. Greek troops, however, soon retook the city in
a campaign that opened brilliantly in Sicily only to close in swift
disaster; but for five years longer Taormina sustained continual siege,
and when it fell at last, with the usual carnage of its citizens and the
now thrice-repeated fire and ruin of Saracenic victory, we may well
believe that, though it remained the seat of a governor, little of the
city was left except its memory. Its name even was changed to Moezzia.
The Crescent ruled undisturbed for a hundred years, until the landing of
Count Roger, the Norman, the great hero of mediaeval Sicily, who
recovered the island to the Christian faith. Taormina, true to its
tradition, was long in falling; but after eighteen years of desultory
warfare Count Roger sat down before it with determination. He surrounded
it with a circumvallation of twenty-two fortresses connected by ramparts
and bridges, and cut off all access by land or sea. Each day he
inspected the lines; and the enemy, having noticed this habit, laid an
ambush for him in some young myrtles where the path he followed had a
very narrow passage over the precipices.
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