C. The kingdom of Burgundy and its annexation to the Empire.
Rodolph II did not long survive this treaty. He died on 12 or 13 July 937, leaving the government to his young son Conrad, in after years called the Peaceful, and then aged about fifteen at most.
The youth and weakness of the new king were sure to be a temptation to his neighbours. Apparently Hugh of Arles, King of Italy, planned how he might turn the situation to account, for as early as 12 December 937, we find him on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, where he took to wife Bertha, mother of young Conrad and widow of Rodolph II. Soon afterwards, he married his son Lothar to Bertha's daughter, Adelaide. The new King of Germany, Otto I, who in 937 had just succeeded his father, Henry I, could not look unmoved on these manoeuvres. Without loss of time he set out for Burgundy, and, as his biographer tells us, "received into his possession the king and the kingdom." In reality it was a bold and sudden stroke; Otto, cutting matters short, had simply made young Conrad prisoner. For about four years he kept him under a strong guard, taking him about with him on all his journeys and expeditions, and when he released him, at about the end of 942, he had made sure of his fidelity.
Thenceforward the king of Burgundy seems to be no more than a vassal of the German king. When in 946 Otto went to the help of Louis IV[1] d'Outremer, against the aggressions of Hugh the Great, Conrad with his contingent of troops accompanied him. In May 960 we find him at Otto's court at Kloppen in the neighbourhood of Mannheim. Gradually the bonds that unite the king of Germany and the king of Burgundy were drawn closer; in 951 Otto married Adelaide, sister of Conrad, and widow of Lothar, King of Italy; ten years later he was crowned king of Italy at Pavia, and (2 February 962) received the imperial crown at Rome. From this time onward, apparently, he looks upon the kingdom of Burgundy as a sort of appendage to his own dominions; not only does he continue to keep Conrad always in his train (we find him for instance in 967 at Verona), but he makes it his business to expel the Saracens settled at Le Frainet (Fraxinetum) in the district of St-Tropez, and in January 968 makes known his intention of going in person to fight with them in Provence.
Under Rodolph III, son and successor of Conrad, the dependent position of the king of Burgundy in relation to the Emperor, becomes more and more marked. Rodolph III, on whom even during his life-time his contemporaries chose to bestow the title of the "Sluggard (ignavus)," does not seem, at least in the early part of his career, to have been lacking in either energy or decision. Aged about twenty-five at the time of his accession (993), he attempted to re-establish in his kingdom an authority
- ↑ See supra, Chapter IV. p. 79.
