The first Section gives 127 years of Carlovingians till 879, when we enter upon the important era of the Kings of Arles and Burgundy, and the beginning of Provence as an independent territory.
Kings of Arles of the 1st Race, Kings of Arles of the 2nd Race, Kings of Arles of the 3rd Race,
Book III. treats of the "Kings of Arles (without property in Provence or Burgundy)."
Section I.--Kings of Arles, high sovereigns, relatives, and heirs testamentary of Rudolph the last King of Arles and Burgundy.
Section II.--Kings of Arles calling themselves high Sovereigns "en qualité d'Empereurs estimant que ce royaume a esté uny a l'Empire."
There were 254 years of this dispensation, and among these rulers occur the names of the Emperor Lothair II., Frederick Barbarossa, and so forth.
Then comes the division into "Fiefs of the Kingdom of Arles."
1st Fief. The County of Arles from the Durance to the sea.
3rd Fief. The County of Venaison or of Avignon.
8th Fief. The Sovereign Principality of Meurgues (Monaco), the County of Grignan, the Barony of Les Baux, of Castellane, &c.
All this wide territory constituted the ancient Kingdom of Arles.
Book IV. treats of the Counts Proprietary and Hereditary from 910 until Provence is reunited to the Crown of France (1481). To these the Sieur de Bouche devotes many of his formidable Sections. There are long lines of Bozons and Rothbolds of the 1st Race, and of Raimonds and Raimond Berengers Counts of Catalonia and of Barcellona and Kings of Aragon--beings of a most strange personal appearance if one may judge by the quaint old engravings which head each of the Sieur's Books of Chapters. They stare out of their medallions with a grotesque expression of royal blankness combined with a dull, obscure form of indignation which speaks ill for the "agréments" of the post of ruler of Provence in the later Middle Ages. The complication of names and races and titles is almost hopeless at this period. Even our dauntless author says wearily, "nous sortons d'un lieu fort nuageux pour entrer dans un plus tenebreux."
There are three different genealogies of the Counts of the 1st Race, and very little seems to be known of the Counts themselves with the exception of William I.