They no less persistently repudiated the claim, and Charles either could not or would not enforce it, and for the moment was fain to content himself with slighting words and half-veiled threats. Meanwhile the Erembalds and the Stratens were flying at one another's throats. Cattle were being looted, boundaries were being razed, and blood was flowing in torrents. A hurricane of strife had been let loose on the land, and all the efforts of the sower of the wind, now thoroughly afraid at his own handiwork, and clumsily playing the double _rôle_ of peacemaker and partisan, were powerless to quell it. Suddenly, when the turmoil was at its height, Charles was called to France. An intermittent warfare had for years been carried on between the Count of Auvergne and the Bishop of Clermont, and things had at length come to a crisis. The former had made appeal to his liege lord, Duke William of Aquitaine, and the latter, by their united efforts, driven from his See, had now invoked, not vainly, the aid of Louis the Fat, who forthwith summoned his vassals (amongst whom of course was Charles) and set out for Clermont. The Count of Flanders was undoubtedly placed in a very awkward predicament. To leave his realm at the present juncture was to risk revolution, and by staying at home he would certainly estrange his one reliable friend. The civil war at the beginning of his reign, and the famine and pestilence which followed, had sown broadcast misery and discontent, whilst the well-meant but arbitrary measures which Charles had taken for the relief of the poor, especially his edict as to the price of wheat, had alienated the rich, who openly accused him of showing favour to the people at their expense. 'If it be so,' he was wont to reply, 'it is because I know the misery of the poor and the pride of the upper classes,' but, unfortunately for Charles, in his day the classes alone counted, and the classes were in a high fever of suspicion and unrest. The great purveyors of bread-stuffs had been touched in their pockets, the free landholders of the sea-board thought themselves already slaves, the honour of the first family in Flanders had been trampled in the dust. No one was sure that it would not be his turn next. Others besides Bertulph were questioning Charles's right to torment them. The whole land was sick of foreign rule, and men were beginning to whisper in corners of William of Löo. It was probably this last consideration which prompted Charles to obey. If he had failed to do so, his powerful kinsman might have veered round to the side of the legitimate heir, and in that case he would in all probability have lost his county. Charles must have taken a heavy heart with him to Clermont, but his biographers do not inform us that he was in any way disquieted.