Finally, one day there would come to several tribes which had treaties with each other a common danger, such as an invasion by some horde of another race or nation.  Common interest would drive them together for mutual protection, and the chief of some one of them would be chosen to lead their joint army.  In this way, we find the fifteen tribes of the Belgians uniting against the Roman army led by Julius Caesar, and electing as king over them the chief of one of the tribes “on account of his justice and wisdom.”  Five years later, in the year 52 B.C., we find practically all the inhabitants of what is now France united into a nation under the leadership of Vercingetorix (Ver sin jet’o riks) in one last effort to free themselves from Rome.  Five hundred years later, the Romans themselves were driven to join forces with two of the Germanic tribes to check the swift invasion of the terrible Huns.

In some cases, these alliances were only for a short time and the kingships were merely temporary.  In other cases, the wars that drove the tribes to unite under one great chief or king lasted for years or even centuries, so that new generations grew up who had never lived under any other government than that of a king.  Thus when the wars were ended, the tribes continued to be ruled by the one man, although the reason for the kingship had ceased to be.  In the days of the Roman republic, from 500 to 100 B.C., when grave danger arose, the senate, or council of elders, appointed one man who was called the dictator, and this dictator ruled like an absolute monarch until the danger was past.  Then, like the famous Cincinnatus, he gave up the position and retired to private life.  The first lasting kingships, then, began, as it were, by the refusal of some dictator to resign when the need for his rule was ended.

By this time, the custom of choosing the son of a chief or king to take his father’s place was fairly well settled, and it did not take long to have it understood as a regular thing that at a king’s death he should be followed by his oldest son.  Often there were quarrels and even civil wars caused by ambitious younger sons, who did not submit to their elder brothers without a struggle, but as people grew to be more civilized and peace-loving, they found it better to have the oldest son looked upon as the rightful heir to the kingship.

As kingdoms grew larger, and more and more people came to be busied in agriculture, trade, and even, on a small scale, in manufacture, the warriors grew fewer in proportion, and people began to forget that the king was originally only a war leader, and that the office was created through military need.  They came to regard the rule of the king as a matter of course and stopped thinking of themselves as having any right to say how they should be governed.  Kings were quick to foster this feeling.  For the purpose of making their own positions sure, they were in the habit of impressing it upon their people