Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul. These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been. The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger. Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987, and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally admitted. [Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.] Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent. Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king, Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto, and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son of Rudolf II). [Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.] [Sidenote: England.]