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Rh in revolt against the imperial domination. The men of Pavia, mindful of the recent destruction of their city at the hands of the late Emperor, burnt the royal palace; the north Italian princes, in defiance of Conrad, offered their crown first to King Robert of France, then, on his refusal, to William V, Duke of Aquitaine, who accepted it for his son. The duke's only hope of success in the dangerous enterprise he had undertaken lay in keeping Conrad engaged in his own kingdom. With this object he set about organising the opposition in Lorraine, France, and Burgundy; he met Robert of France and Odo of Champagne at Tours, and the French king agreed to carry a campaign into Germany. The combination, so formidable in appearance, dissolved into nothing. Robert was prevented by the affairs of his own kingdom from taking the field against Conrad; Odo, engaged in a fierce feud with Fulk of Anjou, was powerless; William of Aquitaine on visiting Italy found the situation there less favourable than he had been led to expect, and thereupon gave up the project; the dukes of Lorraine, no longer able to count on foreign aid, made their submission to the Emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle (Christmas 1025). After the collapse of the alliance, continued resistance on the part of Ernest was useless; at Augsburg early in the next year, through the mediation of the queen, his mother, he was reconciled with Conrad who, to keep him from further mischief, insisted on his accompanying him on the Italian campaign upon which he was about to embark.

It was a wise precaution, and Conrad would have been better advised had he retained his ambitious stepson in his camp; instead he dispatched him to Germany to suppress the disorders which had arisen there in his absence. Welf, obdurate in his disobedience, had attacked and plundered the lands and cities of Bruno, Bishop of Augsburg, the brother of the Emperor Henry II, the guardian of the young King Henry III, and the administrator of Germany during the king's absence in Italy. Ernest, back among his old fellow-conspirators and acting, no doubt, on the advice of his evil genius, Count Werner of Kiburg, instead of suppressing the rebellious Welf, joined with him in rebellion. The second revolt of Ernest was however as abortive as the first; he invaded Alsace, penetrated into Burgundy, but finding to his discomfiture, in Rodolph, not an ally but an enemy, he was compelled to make a hasty retreat to Zurich, whence he occupied himself in making plundering raids upon the rich abbeys of Reichenau and St Gall. Conrad's return soon ended the affair. Ernest and Welf answered the imperial summons to Ulm (July 1027), not however as suppliants for the Emperor's mercy, but, supported by an armed following, with the intention either of dictating their own