However, the domination of the imperial German church did not succeed in breaking entirely the resistance of the local Lotharingian princes. Those princes had no affection for the Emperor, their overlord; they could not forget their old national dynasty, the Carolingians, who belonged to the country and were not foreigners, as were the German emperors. The people of Lotharingia supported those local dynasties which claimed descent from the old Carolingian national stock; the castles of the local counts of Hainaut, Louvain, and Limburg became centers of political influence, whose object was to check the domination of the feudal German lord. Since the tenth century the local houses of Hainaut and Louvain, of Namur and Luxemburg, had attempted to organize their political power. In the last quarter of the eleventh century, the Germanization of Lotharingia broke down as a result of the so-called “Struggle for the Investitures,” whereby the power of the Emperor over the church in Germany was destroyed. The bishops of the Empire, having to choose between loyalty to their feudal lord and obedience to the pope, were no longer political servants of the Emperor. The downfall of the imperial church meant the end of its influence in Lotharingia. The local princes threw off the feudal yoke and practically divided the whole of Lotharingia among themselves. And thus was witnessed the end of that large imperial province that for so long had covered the western frontier of Germany between the Rhine and the Scheldt. We hear no more of Lotharingia: another name appears in Belgian history, namely, Brabant. It was the Duke of Brabant, of the local house of Louvain, who, from this time on, gradually extended his political influence over the former Lotharingia, in that part of Belgium lying east of the Scheldt. The German Emperor was now no more the lord of the Lotharingian princes: he was henceforth regarded as an ally or as an enemy, according to the circumstances. The Lotharingian principalities no longer played a part in events occurring on the other side of the Rhine; they no longer sent soldiers to the feudal imperial army; they followed the emperors no more in their expeditions against Italy; and, in the Lotharingian literature, there is to be found hardly a suggestion of a recollection of the existence of the Emperor. From the middle of the twelfth century on, the national life of the eastern part of Belgium displayed more and more cohesion and individuality; little by little it broke down the geographical barrier of the Scheldt that the Treaty of Verdun had erected between Lotharingia and Flanders.