In 1061, a handful of Norman mercenaries, led by the son of a noble family from Hauteville-la-Guichard, a small village in the Normandy bocage, set foot on the Sicilian coast. Roger de Hauteville and his troops had been commissioned by the Pope to reconquer the island from the Arabs, who had seized it in 831. It took these fearsome warriors thirty years to achieve their goal, but when they finally entered Palermo in 1071, their leader became an enlightened ruler. His son Roger II of Hauteville, his granddaughter Constance and his great-grandson Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, who would become one of the greatest rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, would perpetuate and complete his work.