Thenceforward, besides, Arnulf was no longer dangerous. The Carolingian party was finally destroyed. Charles of Lorraine had been several years dead; his son Louis had, it would appear, met with a like fate, or was languishing forgotten in his prison at Orleans; the other two sons, Otto and Charles, had gone over to the Empire (the first in the character of Duke of Lower Lorraine), and no longer had any connexion with France. From this quarter, then, the Capetian had nothing to fear. A fresh revolt of Asselin, the same Bishop of Laon who had so flagitiously betrayed Arnulf, was soon crushed. Only the Papacy refused to be won over as easily as Robert had calculated; as the king refused to separate from Bertha, Gregory V pronounced the anathema against him. But when Gerbert succeeded Gregory V, under the name of Sylvester II (April 999), relations with the Papacy improved, and Robert, to whom Bertha had borne no children, before long separated from her in order to marry Constance, daughter of William I, Count of Arles, and of Adelaide of Anjou (circa 1005).
The period of early difficulties was over. But the position of the monarchy was pitiable. From the material point of view, it was limited to the narrow domain which, after many infeudations, remained to it of the heritage of the Carolingians and the March of Neustria. This, in its essence, – not reckoning some outlying possessions, of which the most important was the county of Montreuil at the mouth of the Canche, – consisted in the territories of Paris, Senlis, Poissy, Etampes and Orleans, with Paris and Orleans as chief towns. Within this modest domain the king was only just able to exact obedience; he was unable directly to put an end to the exactions of a petty baron, the lord of Yèvre, who oppressed the Abbey of St-Benoît-sur-Loire with his violence. In the other parts of the kingdom his authority had sunk still lower; the great feudatories openly spoke of him in contemptuous terms; a few years later at the village of Héry in the diocese of Auxerre, almost in his presence, and just after the Peace of God had been proclaimed, the Count of Nevers was not afraid to plunder the monks of Montierender, "knowing well," as a contemporary tells us, "that the king would prefer to use gentle methods rather than force."
The task of Robert the Pious and his successors was to work slowly and unobtrusively, but perseveringly and successfully, to build up afresh the domain and the moral strength of the monarchy which had so greatly declined. The domains were, it is true, not extensive, but a policy of additions and enlargements built up around them a compact and constantly enlarging kingdom. And on the moral side something of the prestige and tradition of the old anointed kings still held the minds of men. The firm but not aggressive rule of the new dynasty skilfully used both sentiment and territorial fact, and did so not only to their own advantage but to that of the land in which they stood for peace and order amid contending vassals.
