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 FEUDAL STATES OF EUROPE 271 candidate for the Italian crown in 1024 in opposition to Conrad II of Germany, and for that of the Kingdom of I Aries in 1032. Five years later he was slain in an attempt to capture Aachen while Conrad was absent in Italy. In 11 52 I Blois and Chartres passed to a younger son and Champagne again became a distinct state by itself. The Counts of I Champagne did not develop a strong centralized govern- ment, perhaps owing to a number of minorities and of regencies by widows. But they have left us a valuable specimen of a feudal register. This book, covering the fifty I years from 11 72 to 1222, illustrates admirably the intricate and complicated personal relationships of feudalism. It contains lists of all their vassals, two thousand and seven- teen in number in 1172, and states the services owed by each. Of them one hundred and fifty-eight were also vas- sals of some eighty-five other lords, while the Count of Champagne himself held the twenty-six castellanies which composed his state from ten different suzerains ; namely, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of France, the Duke of Burgundy, two archbishops, four bishops, and an abbot. South of Champagne was the Duchy of Burgundy, ruled by a collateral line of the Capetian family. The dukes had I few domain lands of their own and little author- Burgundy ! ity over the local nobility, while the Burgundian Rhone 6 bishops held their fiefs directly from the king, Valley and the great abbots claimed to be answerable only to the pope. After the Kingdom of Aries came to an end in 1032, I the regions from the Rhone to the Alps were nominally parts of the Holy Roman Empire, but really broke up into a number of independent lordships, — among them, Franche Comte or the Free County of Burgundy, located east of the duchy, Savoy, Dauphine, and Provence. The regions south of the Loire differed from northern France in language, geography, race, and the entire life and spirit of the people. In literature, art, and trade Southern they were more closely connected with the Med- France iterranean, with Constantinople, and with Italy and Spain.
 * Their architecture shows Byzantine influence; their Ian-