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Rh to Henry and assisted Charles in the campaign of the following year. Fighting was however averted: on 7 November 921 the two kings met in a boat anchored in the middle of the Rhine at Bonn. There a treaty was concluded: Henry was formally recognised as king of the East Franks, but Lorraine remained dependent on the Western Kingdom.

During the next years France was immersed in the throes of civil war. First Robert, the younger son of Robert the Strong, and on his death his son-in-law, Raoul (Rudolf), Duke of Burgundy, was set up as rival king to the helpless Caroling, Charles the Simple, who spent most of the remainder of his life in close captivity at Péronne. In the midst of this anarchy Henry sought his opportunity to wrest Lorraine from the Western Kingdom. Twice in the year 923 he crossed the Rhine. In the spring he met Robert and entered into some compact of friendship with him, probably at Jülich on the Roer; later in the year, at the call of Duke Gilbert, who had again changed sides, he entered Lorraine with an army, captured a large part of the country, and was only checked by the appearance of Raoul (Robert had been killed at Soissons in the previous June) with considerable forces. No battle took place, but an armistice was arranged to last until October of the next year and the eastern part of Lorraine was left in Henry's possession. The state of affairs in Lorraine was less favourable to Henry when in 925 he once more crossed the Rhine. Raoul had won a large measure of recognition among the inhabitants and Gilbert, always to be found on what appeared to be the winning side, had come to terms with him. Henry however met with surprisingly little opposition on his way. He besieged Gilbert at Zülpich, captured the town, and soon made himself master of a large portion of the land. Gilbert had no choice but to accept the overlordship of the Saxon king. He was reinstated and was attached more closely to Henry's interests in 928 by receiving his daughter Gerberga in marriage. Raoul bowed to the inevitable: henceforward Lorraine was an integral part of the East Frankish dominion.

In the first six years of his reign Henry had achieved much. He had succeeded in making his authority recognised in the southern duchies and added Lorraine to his kingdom. Content with this recognition he did not seek to interfere further in the affairs of the duchies. It was his policy throughout to leave the administration in the hands of the dukes. Bavaria, as far as we know, he never so much as revisited: Swabia was less isolated, for after the death of Burchard, Herman, a cousin of the Franconian Everard, married his widow and succeeded to the dukedom. The family connexion inevitably brought Swabia into closer relations with the central power.

Henry's own activities were confined almost entirely to Saxony and Thuringia. The weakness of his predecessors had encouraged the audacity of the restless and barbarous neighbours to the north and east of Germany. The Danes ravaged the coast of Frisia: the Wends,