Hugh the Great was rewarded by the renewal in his favour of the title ‘Duke of the French,’ which had already been borne by his father Robert in the days of Charles the Simple. This title suggested a power, half military and half national, analogous to that held by the dukes of the nations in Germany. [Sidenote: The Duke of the French.] But if this were the case, Hugh’s power as duke would have probably been restricted to ‘Francia,’ a region which, in common speech, was now limited to the Gaulish regions north of the Seine. It is not clear, however, that the power of the Duke of the French had any territorial limitation other than that of the limits of the West Frankish kingdom as prescribed by the treaty of Verdun. Wherever Louis ruled as ‘king,’ Hugh wielded authority as ‘duke.’ He was a permanent prime minister, a mayor of the palace, a justiciar of the Anglo-Norman type, rather than a territorial duke. Indeed, Hugh’s chief domains were not in ‘Francia’ at all. Despite his possession of Paris, his chief fiefs were still in the cradle of his house, the district between the Seine and Loire, to which the term Neustria was now commonly applied. Here his authority stretched as far westwards as the county of Maine, which he had obtained in his youth from the weakness of Rudolf of Burgundy. Moreover, in the lack of all central royal authority, half the chief vassals of the north had thought it prudent to commend themselves to the mighty lord of Neustria, and, with the Duke of Normandy at their head, had become his feudal dependants. Hugh was no longer simply a great feudatory. Even in name, he was the second man in Gaul. In fact, he was a long way the first. The last Carolingians were in no wise puppets and do-nothings like the last Merovingians. Louis IV. proved a strenuous warrior, with a full sense of his royal dignity. He ruled directly over little more than the hill-town of Laon and its neighbourhood, but he did wonders with his scanty resources. He married a sister of Otto the Great, and with German help was able to press severely his former patron. But Otto soon withdrew beyond the Rhine, and Louis, deprived of his help, and ever planning schemes too vast for his resources, was soon altogether at Hugh’s mercy. In 946 he was driven out of Laon: ‘the only town,’ as he complained, ‘where I could shut myself up with my wife and children, the town that I prefer to my life.’ In his despair he laid his wrongs before King Otto and a council of bishops at Ingelheim. Hugh prudently yielded before the threatened thunders of the Church. He renewed his homage to King Louis, and restored Laon to him. ‘Henceforth,’ says the chronicler, ‘their friendship was as firm as their struggles had formerly been violent.’ When Louis died suddenly in 954, his thirteen-year-old son, Lothair, was chosen king through Hugh’s influence. Two years later the great duke died.