Tedald, were already on their way to join the duke, when Ardoin with superior forces threw himself between the allies, occupied Verona, and seized the mountain passes beyond. A few days later he made a surprise attack upon the enemy in the valley of the Brenta, and routed them with heavy loss. This victory for the time made Ardoin's authority secure.
Only a few weeks after Lombardy had thus asserted its independence, Bohemia was severed from Germany. Boleslav Chrobry (the Mighty), since succeeding his father Mesco as Duke of Poland in 992, had built up a powerful Slav monarchy beyond the Elbe. The various tribes occupying the plains watered by the Oder, the Warta, and the Vistula were united under his rule; he was allied by marriage with the neighbouring princes of Bohemia, Hungary, and Kiev; by the indulgence of the late Emperor he had been relieved of the annual tribute due to the German crown. Through Otto also he had secured from Pope Sylvester II the ecclesiastical independence of his country, with the establishment of Gnesen as a metropolitan see. Only in his vassalage to the Empire was there left any sign of political subjection. Now Boleslav saw an opportunity for enlarging his dominion in the West and achieving full independence. He overran the whole of the East Mark, or Mark of Gero, as far as the Elbe; then, turning southwards, he seized the towns of Bautzen and Strehla, and with the aid of its Slavonic inhabitants gained possession of the city of Meissen itself. Pushing westwards, he occupied the mark of Meissen as far as the White Elster, securing it with Polish garrisons. He had thus mastered all the territory known later as the Upper and Lower Lausitz, and the Elbe had here ceased to be a German river. Then Boleslav appeared at the diet of Merseburg to make sure of his conquest. But his offer to Henry of a large sum for the retention of Meissen was rejected: and Gunzelin, brother of the late Eckhard and half-brother of Boleslav, was invested by the king with the mark of Meissen, while Boleslav himself was allowed to keep only the districts to the east of the Black Elster.
Thenceforth the Polish duke became Henry's determined foe. He found support at once in German disaffection. The Babenberg Henry of Schweinfurt, Margrave of the Nordgau, hitherto a staunch adherent of the king, claimed investiture with the duchy of Bavaria as the promised reward for his aid in the succession contest. Incensed by the king's hesitation in granting the request, the margrave now made common cause with Boleslav, whose own wrath was further inflamed by an assault made upon himself and his followers, though without the privity of the king, on their departure from Merseburg.
And the opportunity soon came to Boleslav for revenge. In Bohemia there had ruled for the last three years, as a tributary of the German crown, his cousin and namesake, Duke Boleslav the Red, a tyrant whose jealousy had sent his half-brothers, Jaromir and Udalrich, with their mother, into exile, and whose cruelty now impelled his subjects to drive him out and to set up his kinsman Vladivoi as duke. While Vladivoi, to
