that the kingship was a divine institution.  They proclaimed that the office of king was made by the gods, or in Christian nations, by God, and that it was the divine will that the people of the nations should be ruled by kings.  The great Roman orator, Cicero (Sis’ero), in a speech delivered in the year 66 B.C., referring to people who lived in kingdoms, says that the name of king “seems to them a great and sacred thing.”  This same feeling has lasted through all the ages down to the present time, and the majority of the people in European kingdoms, even among the educated classes, still look upon a king as a superior being, and are made happy and proud if they ever have a chance to do him a service of any sort.

Questions for Review

 1.  Why was it that in barbarian tribes there was no private ownership
    of land?
 2.  What is meant by saying that government was based upon the consent
    of the governed?
 3.  Was there anything besides love of plunder that induced the German
    tribes to move southward?
 4.  Explain the beginnings of slavery.
 5.  Explain the value of armor in early times.
 6.  What is meant by the “Dark Ages”?
 7.  What is meant by saying that the fighting men were parasites?
 8.  When the first kings were chosen was it intended that they should
    be rulers for life?
 9.  Is it easy for a man in power to retain this power?
10.  Why is it that most Europeans bow low before a king?

CHAPTER IV

  Master and Man

The land is the king’s.—­He lends it to barons.—­Barons lend it to knights and smaller barons.—­Smaller barons collect rent for it from the peasants.—­A father’s lands are lent to his son.—­Barons pay for the land by furnishing men for the king’s wars.—­No account is taken of the rights of the peasant.—­The peasant, the only producer, is despised by the fighting men.—­If a baron rebels, his men must rebel also.—­Dukes against kings.—­What killed the feudal system.—­Feudal wrongs alive today.

When one great tribe or nation invaded and conquered a country, as the Ostrogoths came into Italy in the year 489 A.D., or as the Normans entered England in 1066, their king at once took it for granted that he owned all the conquered land.  In some cases, he might divide the kingdom up among his chiefs, giving a county to each of forty or fifty leaders.  These great leaders (dukes or barons, as they were called in the Norman-French language, or earls, as the English named them) would in turn each divide up his county among several less important chiefs, whom we may call lesser or little barons.  Each little baron might have several knights and squires, who lived in or near his castle and had received from him tracts of land corresponding in size, perhaps, to the American township and who, therefore, fought under his banner in war.