CHAPTER IV _The Making of the Duchy of Brabant_ In obtaining legal recognition of his right to the county of Louvain, Lambert I., as we must now call him, had accomplished something, but the house of Long Col had not yet realised, nor was it ever to wholly realise, the darling dream of its ambition--the establishment in Lotharingia of an independent realm, although that cherished wish did, in later days, receive some measure of fulfilment: in their long contest with the Empire the triumph of the barons was presently assured, and with the title of Duke the Counts of Louvain at last obtained practical independence. It was on the Church, as we have seen, that the emperors mainly relied for the maintenance of their authority in Lotharingia, and by a strange irony of fate it was to the Church that the overthrow of that authority was in great measure due. Not that the bishops belied their trust: against tremendous odds they held the fortress which had been confided to their keeping for over a hundred years, and only at last surrendered when their master's breach with the papacy gave to his turbulent vassals what had before been lacking to them--a legitimate excuse for rebellion. Given the conjunction of events, no other issue was possible. The bishops had no choice: the quarrel concerning investiture broke the back of imperial rule. Amongst the clergy the monks alone had succeeded in endearing themselves to the native population, and the power which they wielded was immense. The bishops--learned, capable, God-fearing men as most of them undoubtedly were, had never been able to gain the confidence of the people: save to the higher clergy, whom they had formed, and to a handful of the lay aristocracy who had received their education at Liége or Cologne, they were almost unknown to them. It could hardly have been otherwise, they were strangers in a strange land, they were the standard-bearers of order amid a barbarous people, whose lawlessness filled them with horror and contempt, and of whose very language they were in many cases ignorant. Well might they bewail their lot in the words of Tetdon of Cambrai, for a moment cast down at the hopelessness of the task before him, 'O wretched man that thou art, in vain didst thou quit thy native land for this land of savages!'