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Rh there being no one capable of assuming the Carolingian heritage in its entirety, the state of things was being reproduced which had formerly resulted from the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Such seems to have been the idea which actuated the electors assembled at St Maurice d'Agaune; and Rodolph, without forming a very precise estimate of the situation, left the western kingdom to Odo and the eastern to Arnulf, and set to work at once to secure for himself the former kingdom of Lothar II in its integrity.

At first it seemed that circumstances were in the new king's favour. Accepted without difficulty in the counties of the diocese of Besançon, Rodolph proceeded to occupy Alsace and a large part of Lorraine. In an assembly which met at Toul the bishop of that town crowned him king of Lorraine. But all his supporters fell away on the appearance in the country of Arnulf, the new king of Germany, and Rodolph, after in vain attempting to resist his army, had no choice but to treat with his rival. He went to seek Arnulf at Ratisbon, and after lengthy negotiations obtained from him the recognition of his kingship over the Jurane duchy and the diocese of Besançon, on condition of his surrendering all claims to Alsace and Lorraine (October 888). Thus by force of circumstances the earlier conception of Rodolph's kingship was taking a new form; the restoration of the kingdom of Lorraine was no longer thought of; a new kingdom, the "kingdom of Burgundy," had come into being.

It was only with reluctance that Arnulf had recognised the existence of this new kingdom. A Caroling, though illegitimate, he might seem to have inherited from Charles the Fat a claim to rule over the whole of the former empire of Charlemagne. Not satisfied that Rodolph should have been forced to humble himself before him by journeying to Ratisbon to seek the confirmation of his royal dignity, he attempted to go back upon the recognition that he had granted. In 894, as he was returning from an expedition to Lombardy, he made a hostile irruption into the Valais, ravaging the country and vainly attempting to come to close quarters with Rodolph, who, a few weeks earlier, had sent assistance to the citizens of Ivrea, a town which the king of Germany had been unsuccessfully besieging. Rodolph took refuge in the mountains and evaded all pursuit. Nor could Zwentibold, Arnulf's illegitimate son, who was sent against him at the head of a fresh army, succeed in reaching him. The dispossession of the king of Burgundy was then resolved on, and in 895 in an assembly held at Worms, Arnulf created Zwentibold "king in Burgundy and in the whole of the kingdom formerly held by Lothar II." But these claims were not prosecuted; Rodolph maintained his position, and on his death (25 October 911 or 912) his son Rodolph II succeeded unchallenged to his kingdom.

Germany, indeed, since the death of Arnulf in 899 had been struggling in the grip of terrible anarchy. Conrad of Franconia, who in 911 had