He kept Christmas (1041) at Strasbourg amid a brilliant gathering of princes; and when immediately afterwards he entered Burgundy, it was at the head of armed vassals. We are told by Herman of Reichenau that the Burgundian nobles made submission, that many were brought to justice, that Henry entered Burgundy, ruled with vigour and justice, and safeguarded the public peace; finally Wipo tells us that "he ruled Burgundy with magnificence."
Some notion of the state of the land before Henry's arrival may be gathered by the history of the archdiocese of Lyons. Here Archbishop Burchard, characterised by Herman of Reichenau as "tyrannus et sacrilegus, aecclesiarum depraedator, adulterque incestuosus," and moreover strongly anti-German, had been cast into prison and chains by Conrad in 1036. The city was then seized upon by a Count Gerard, who, desirous it would appear of playing at Lyons the part played by the "Patrician" at Rome, thrust into the see of Lyons his son, a mere boy. This boy later secretly fled, and since then Lyons had contentedly lacked a bishop.
The filling of the see thus left vacant was one of Henry's first cares in Burgundy: at the recommendation of the Cluniac Halinard of Dijon, who refused the sacred office for himself, it was given to a pious and learned French secular priest, Odulric (Ulric), Archdeacon of Langres. That the peace and order enforced under Henry were after all but comparative may be judged from the murder of Odulric himself only a few years later. There was much to attract Henry in Burgundy; for side by side with its lawlessness and violence were the strivings for peace and holiness embodied in the "Treuga Dei" and in the austerity of Cluny and its monasteries. Henry's approbation of Cluniac ideals is evident, and throughout his whole life he shews real ardour, almost a passion in his striving to realise throughout the Empire that peace founded on religion, upon which the Treuga Dei, if in somewhat other fashion, strove to insist locally.
After some six weeks in Burgundy, he must have heard at Basle on his way back of the havoc played among the Bavarians on the frontier, a week earlier, by the new King Obo of Hungary and his raiders. Henry, himself the absentee duke of the unfortunate duchy, at once handed it over (without waiting, as it would seem, for the formality of an election, as right was, by the Bavarians) to Count Henry of Luxemburg, who was akin to the last Duke Henry of Bavaria, and nephew to the Empress Kunigunda, wife of Henry II. Trusting to the vigour of the new duke to protect Bavaria for the time being, Henry next, a few weeks later, summoned all the princes, including of course Eckhard of Meissen, to Cologne, there to decide upon further steps to be taken with regard to Hungary. They unanimously declared for war.
Some four or five months elapsed before the expedition was launched. From Würzburg, at Whitsuntide, Henry strengthened his hold on
