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56 to Rome the political opponents whom the Pope had formerly expelled, particularly the celebrated Formosus, Bishop of Porto. So John VIII decided upon another attempt to make the Western Kingdom his ally. After having bought a peace from the Saracens, who were still a menace to the Papal States, he embarked on a Neapolitan vessel and landed at Arles, where Boso, who had returned to his former duchy, and his wife Ermengarde, welcomed him with assurances of devotion and in company with him ascended the Rhone as far as Lyons. After somewhat laborious negotiations with Louis the Stammerer, a council presided over by the Pope met at Troyes, at the beginning of autumn. But there were few practical results attained from the assembly; little was settled, except a few points relating to discipline, and the confirmation of the sentence of excommunication against Lambert, Adalbert, and their supporters. John VIII would have wished to see Louis put himself at the head of another expedition against the enemies of the Holy See, whether rebel counts or Saracens: the king, however, seems not to have had the least inclination for such a course, and John VIII was forced to turn to that one among the magnates who, if only by his connexion with Italy, seemed best fitted to take up the task which the Carolingians refused to accept, namely Boso. It was in his company that the Pope re-crossed the Alps, at the end of the year, calling a great meeting of the bishops and lay lords of Northern Italy to assemble at Pavia. In a letter which he addressed at this time to Engilberga, widow of Louis II, he anticipated for her son-in-law the most brilliant prospects. Ermengarde's husband might look forward to the Lombard crown, perhaps even to the imperial one. But Boso himself did nothing to forward the ambitious views of the Pontiff on his behalf. At Pavia, under one pretext or another, he quitted John VIII and made his way back to Gaul.

Louis the Stammerer, who had concluded a treaty at Fouron with his cousins of Germany for the partition of Louis II's inheritance, and being free from anxiety in that quarter, had just resolved upon an expedition against Bernard, Marquess of Gothia, who had not made his submission at the beginning of the reign and still remained contumacious. But a change came over the situation with the death of King Louis on 10 April 879. The leaders of the party, opposed to the Abbot Hugh and to the magnates actually in power, made use of the event to appeal for aid to the foreigner. At the instigation of one of the Welfs, Conrad, Count of Paris, and of Joscelin, Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Louis of Saxony entered the kingdom from the west to dispute possession of their father's inheritance with Louis III and Carloman the two young sons of Louis the Stammerer. He penetrated as far as