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Rh Godfrey's ally Prince Raynald, who was uncle of Henry's queen and son of Count Otto-William, the former head of the anti-German party. When Henry now approached Burgundy, Raynald along with the chief of his partisans, Count Gerald of Geneva, personally made submission to him. Thus died out the last flicker during Henry's life of Burgundian opposition to union with the Empire.

Henry took Burgundy on his way to Augsburg, where he arrived in February 1045, and whither he had summoned the Lombard magnates to discuss with them the affairs of Italy. He kept Easter at Goslar. Here, not wishing to set out for the East without taking steps to protect the West from Godfrey, he handed over to Otto, Count Palatine in Lower Lorraine, his mother's native duchy of Swabia, which he himself had held since 1038.

Otto's mother had been the sister of Otto III. His family was widespread and illustrious. His aunt Abbess Adelaide of Quedlinburg and Gandersheim, and his brother Archbishop Herman of Cologne (who won for that see the right to crown the king of the Romans at Aix) were among Henry's truest friends. His sister, Richessa, had been daughter-in-law of Boleslav the Mighty; his nephew, her son, was Casimir, Duke of the Poles. Another nephew, Henry, succeeded Otto in the Palatinate, and within a year was regarded by some as a fit successor to the Empire. Yet another nephew was Kuno, whom the king first raised to the Bavarian dukedom and afterwards disgraced. The youngest sister, Sophia, about this time succeeded her aunt as Abbess of the important Abbey of Gandersheim; a niece, Theophano, was Abbess of Essen.

Otto himself had been one of the chief of those in the disputed duchy whose loyalty to Henry had drawn upon themselves the vengeance of Godfrey at the beginning of the year. His appointment now to the duchy of Swabia, so long left without a special guardian, and neighbour to Lorraine, recalls the appointment, when trouble threatened from the Magyars, of a duke to Bavaria, neighbour to Hungary. He ruled his new duchy, to which he was a stranger, with success and satisfaction to its people; not, however, for long, for within two years he was dead.

One more step Henry took for the protection of the West from Godfrey. For such (viewed in the double light of Henry's general policy of strengthening the local defence against Godfrey rather than leading the forces of the Empire against him, and of Godfrey's policy of winning the neighbours of Lorraine to his cause) must be considered the grant in this year of the March of Antwerp to Baldwin, son of Count Baldwin V of Flanders. The grant of Antwerp, however, instead of attaching Baldwin to the king's party, increased the power of a future ally of Godfrey's.