Weis' "Ancestral Roots . . ." (146:16). He was Marquis of Friuli beginning in 874. After the death of KING LOUIS II in 875, LOUIS' two uncles, CHARLES THE BALD of France and LOUIS THE GERMAN, competed for the upper hand in Italy. Berenger was a supporter of LOUIS. In the mid 880s, while Charles the Fat was Emperor and the ruler of Italy, Italian politics was dominated by feuds between Berenger, who was Charles' chief supporter, and Liutward, bishop of Vercelli.
When Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, the Italian magnates elected Berenger as their king. He was supported by the pro-German faction. The fact that he was a Carolingian by maternal descent was a major factor in giving substance to his claim to the throne.
In 889, Berenger's chief rival, GUY III, MARQUIS OF SPOLETO, with the support of the pro-French nobles, was able to be elected king, thus deposing Berenger, who retreated to his home province of Friuli. The emperor ARNULF invaded Italy from Germany in 894. His excuse was support of Berenger, but in reality, he wanted to bring Italy under his own rule. GUY died in this same year and ARNULF again invaded Italy in 895-6. ARNULF was forced to return to Germany after suffering a stroke. This left Berenger and GUY's son, Lambert, in contention for the Italian throne.
Lambert died in 898, leaving Berenger as sole king. The year 898 also marked the first invasion of Italy by the Hungarians. Their invasions continued until the mid 950s. About this same time Arabs began to launch attacks on Piedmont from their strongholds in Provence. In 40 years of campaigning Berenger failed to win even one battle. His army was annihilated by the Hungarians.
In 900, the nobles of northwest Italy, led by ADALBERT, MARQUIS OF IVREA, revolted and elected LOUIS OF PROVENCE (i.e. KING LOUIS III) as king. In 905 Berenger captured and blinded LOUIS and was able to rule unopposed as king of Italy until 922. He was crowned as emperor, but confined his interests to Italy.
In the words of Chris Wickham in his book, "Early Medieval Italy": "Berengar was the fulcrum between royal power and royal impotence. Before 902 a lucky king might have re-established the centralised state of LOUIS II. From 902 onwards, though, in some hundred surviving diplomas, Berengar alienated away fiscal land, fortifications, rights over town walls, juridicial powers, tolls, and other immunities, as outright grants, on a larger scale than any Italian king in history. It has been quite credibly claimed that under Berengar the public institutions of the state were so weakened that no future king would be able to re-establish them."
It was because of his inability to protect his subjects from the ravages of the Hungarians that Berenger had to transfer these powers to them. In 920 Berenger enlisted Hungarian mercenaries into his army. This caused the magnates of the nortwest to rise in defiance. They invited KING RUDOLF II OF BURGUNDY to assume the throne of Italy. RUDOLF defeated Berenger at Fiorenzuola in 923. The next year the Hungarians burned Pavia, Italy's capitol city. Shortly thereafter Berengar was assassinated.