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Rh which, owing to the increasing strength of the nobles, was becoming daily more precarious. A terrible rebellion was the result, against which all the king's efforts broke helplessly. Incapable of subduing the revolt, he was obliged to have recourse to the German sovereign. The aged empress, Adelaide, widow of Otto I and aunt of young Rodolph III, hastened to him in 999 and journeyed with him through the country, endeavouring to pacify the nobles.

At the end of the same year, 999, she died, and hardly had two years passed when the Emperor Otto III followed her to the grave (23 January 1002). Under his successor, Henry II of Bavaria, German policy soon shewed itself aggressive and encroaching. In 1006 Henry seized the town of Basle, which he kept for several years; soon afterwards he exacted from Rodolph an oath that before he died he would name him his heir, and ten years later events occurred which placed the king of Burgundy completely at his mercy.

For reasons which are still to some extent obscure, the "Count of Burgundy," Otto-William, and a large group of the lords had just broken out into revolt against Rodolph. In his character of "count of Burgundy" Otto-William was master of the whole district corresponding to the diocese of Besançon, and as he held at the same time the county of Mâcon in the kingdom of France, and was brother-in-law of the powerful bishop Bruno of Langres, and father-in-law of Landry, Count of Nevers, of William the Great, Duke of Aquitaine, and of William II, Count of Provence, he was the most important person in the kingdom of Burgundy. As a contemporary chronicler Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg, says while the events were yet recent, "Otto-William" though "nominally a vassal of the king" had a mind to live as "the sovereign master of his own territories."

The dispute broke out on the occasion of the nomination of a new archbishop to the see of Besançon. Archbishop Hector had just died, and immediately rival claimants had appeared, Rodolph seeking to have Bertaud, a clerk of his chapel, nominated, and Count Otto-William opposing this candidature in the interest of a certain Walter. The real question was, who was to be master in the episcopal city, the king or his vassal? Ostensibly the king won the day; Bertaud was elected, perhaps even consecrated. But Otto-William did not submit. He drove Bertaud out of Besançon, installed Walter by force, and, as the same Bishop Thietmar relates, carried his insolence so far as to have Bertaud hunted by his hounds in order to mark the deep contempt with which this intruder inspired him. "And," adds the chronicler, "as the prelate, worn out with fatigue, heard them baying at his heels, he turned round, and making the sign of the cross in the direction in which he had just left the print of his foot, let himself fall to the ground, expecting to be torn to pieces by the pack. But those savage dogs, on sniffing the ground thus hallowed by the sign of the cross, felt them-