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Rh always gained without resistance. A brief remark of an annalist draws attention in 925 to a revolt of the inhabitants of the Bayeux country, and doubtless more than once the Normans, whose newly adopted Christianity suffered frequent relapses into paganism, must have found difficulty in assimilating the populations of the broad regions placed under their rule. The assimilation, however, took place rapidly enough for the Norman duchy to be rightly ranked, at the end of the tenth century, as one of those in which centralisation was least imperfect.

On all sides, indeed, the rulers of the marches or duchies, the formation of which we have been tracing, saw in their turn the crumbling away of the authority which they had been step by step extending, and the dissolution of the local unity which they had slowly and painfully built up. How, indeed, could it have been otherwise? No duke had even succeeded in acquiring the immediate possession of all the counties included within his duchy. The counts who co-existed with him, had originally been subordinate to him, but this subordination could only be real and lasting if the authority of the duke was never for a moment impaired. On the other hand, when by chance the duke held a large number of counties in his own hands, he was obliged, since he could not be everywhere at once, to provide himself with substitutes in the viscounts, and it was in the natural course of things that these latter should make use of circumstances to consolidate their position, often indeed to usurp the title of count, and finally to set up their own authority at the expense of their suzerains.

Such was the final situation in the March of Neustria. The most enterprising personage there was the Viscount of Tours, Theobald (Thibaud) the Trickster, who made his appearance very early in the tenth century, and gradually succeeded first in getting himself recognised throughout his neighbourhood, then, before 930, in laying hands on the counties of Chartres, Blois and Châteaudun, thus shaping out for himself within the Neustrian March, a little principality for which he remained in theory a vassal of the Duke of the Franks, while day by day he was emancipating himself more and more from his vassalage. His son Odo I (Eudes) (975-996) actually attempted to shake it off: in 983, having become joint lord of the counties of Troyes, Meaux and Provins, which had fallen vacant by the death of Herbert the Old, he took up an independent position and treated directly with the king, over the head of the duke, Hugh Capet, whose suzerainty over him had become quite illusory. A more effective overlordship was preserved even at this time by the Duke of the Franks over the county of Anjou, but here again his immediate lordship had ceased, having passed to the viscount, who about 925 had become count. Slowly and unobtrusively the petty Counts of Anjou worked to extend their own rule, hampered by the neighbourhood of the turbulent Counts of Blois. With rare perseverance Fulk the Red