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Rh of Rodolph II and Louis the Blind. Again it is Hugh of Arles who opens communications with Rodolph and concerts with him a common plan of action against the dreaded barbarians. The two princes joined their forces to stay the course of the robber bands by penning them up in a defile, whence, however, they escaped. Hugh and Rodolph together pursued them to the Rhone and drove them into Gothia.

This concord between Hugh of Arles and King Rodolph was not to be lasting. We have already seen how Rodolph, called in by the lords of Lombardy and crowned king of Italy in 922, had the very next year been abandoned by a large number of his supporters who had offered the kingdom to the Marquess of Provence. The latter had then come into collision with Berengar's troops, and had been obliged to pledge himself to attempt nothing further against him. But when in 926 Rodolph definitively withdrew from Italy, Hugh embarked from Provence and landed near Pisa. In the beginning of July 926, at Pavia, he received in his turn the crown which he was to succeed in retaining for twenty years without encountering any rival of importance.

About a year later Louis the Blind died. Of his children only one seemed capable of reigning, Charles Constantine, often held illegitimate ; he was Count of Vienne, a district which he had been virtually ruling since the departure of Hugh. But the new king of Italy, who was still all-powerful in the kingdom of Provence, was not disposed to favour him. For several years this state of uncertainty prevailed, and charters were again dated either by the regnal year of the dead sovereign, or, according to a formula widely used in times of interregnum, "God reigning, and a king being awaited."

About 933 events occurred which cleared up the situation. "At this time," says the Lombard historian Liudprand, "the Italians sent into Burgundy to Rodolph's court to recall him. When King Hugh heard of it, he despatched envoys to him and gave him all the lands that he had held in Gaul before he ascended the throne, taking an oath of King Rodolph that he would never return to Italy." This obscure passage is our only source of information as to the agreement arrived at between the two sovereigns. What was its exact purport it is impossible to say, but the whole history of the succeeding years goes to prove that the cession then made consisted of the sovereign rights which Hugh had practically exercised for many long years in the dominions of Louis the Blind. It amounted, in fact, to the union of the kingdom of Provence with that of Burgundy.