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Rh Saint-Amand and the whole of the country as far as the Lys. But he could penetrate no farther; the Flemings, who were determined not to have the king of France for their immediate sovereign, had proclaimed Count Arnold II grandson of their late ruler, with, as he was still a child, his cousin Baldwin Bauce as his guardian. Negotiations were begun between the king and the Flemish lords. Lothair consented to recognise the new marquess who came and did him homage, but he kept Douai and Arras. It was not long, however, before these two places fell back under the rule of the Marquess of Flanders; certainly by 988 this had taken place. Thus the king had succeeded in checking for a moment the expansion of the Flemish March, but had not in any way modified its semi-independence.

We must also go back to the middle of the ninth century in order to investigate the origin of the Duchy of Burgundy. When the Treaty of Verdun (843) had detached from the kingdom of France all the counties of the diocese of Besançon as well as the county of Lyons, Charles the Bald naturally found himself more than once impelled to unite two or three of the counties of Burgundy which had remained French so as to form a March on the frontiers under the authority of a single count. On the morrow of Odo's elevation to the throne (888) the boundaries of French Burgundy, which in the course of the political events of the last forty years had undergone many fluctuations, were substantially the same as had been stipulated by the Treaty of Verdun. At this time one of the principal counties of the region, that of Autun, was in the hands of Richard called Le Justicier (the lover of Justice), brother of that Boso who in 879 had caused himself to be proclaimed King of Provence. Here also there was need of a strong power capable of organising the resistance against the incessant ravages of the Northman bands, Richard shewed himself equal to the task; in 898 he inflicted a memorable defeat upon the pirates at Argenteuil, near Tonnerre; a few years later he surprised them in the Nivernais and forced them once again to take to flight. We see him very skilfully pushing his way into every district and adding county to county. In 894 he secures the county of Seus, in 896 he is apparently in possession of the Atuyer district, in 900 we find him Count of Auxerre, while the Count of Dijon and the Bishop of Langres appear among his vassals. He acts as master in the Lassois district, and in those of Tonnerre and Beaune, and is, it would seem, suzerain of the Count of Troyes. Under the title of duke or marquess he rules over the whole of French Burgundy, thus earning the name of "Prince of the Burgundians" which several contemporary chroniclers give him.

At his death in 921 his duchy passed to his eldest son Raoul in the first place, then, when Raoul became King of France (923), to his second son, Hugh the Black. The latter, for some time, could dispose of considerable power; suzerain, even in his father's lifetime, of the