 Endless disputes over succession as well as over borders led to continual friction between the secular rulers and the Church of Reims.Even the Counts of Veldenz, who from 1072 to 1444 ruled as two separate lordly families, who held considerable power in the Rutsweiler area and who bore responsibility for security in the "Remigiusland" as "Schutzvögte", were no exception to this general rule.Their quest for broadened power eventually brought them the "Schultheißerei" of Reichenbach, to which Rutsweiler then belonged, in the form of an Imperial pledge.