Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude that in every aspect under which the institution is viewed, and in every epoch that it is taken, its essential character, its moral principle, its real and inherent spirit, and that which constitutes its strength, consists in its being the image, the personification, the presumed interpreter of that single, supreme, and essentially legitimate will which alone holds the right to govern society.
Let us now consider royalty under the second point of view—that is to say, with regard to its flexibility in the vast variety of the parts it has played, and of the effects it has produced. It is incumbent on us to find a reason for it, and to determine its causes.
We have here an advantage, as we can immediately plunge into history, and into our own history too. By a singular concourse of circumstances, it has come to pass that royalty has assumed in modern Europe all the characters under which it has displayed itself in the history of the world. If I may be allowed to use an arithmetical expression, European royalty has been in some degree the multiplicand of all possible species of royalty.
My intention is to take its history from the fifth to the twelfth century, in the course of which it will be made evident under how many distinct phases it presents itself, and to what extent that character for variety, complication, and conflict which belongs to all European civilisation is met with.
In the fifth century, at the period of the great invasion of the Germans, two royalties are before us—the barbarian royalty, and the imperial royalty; that of Clovis, and that of Constantine— each very different in principles and consequences.
The barbarian royalty was essentially elective: the German kings were elected, although their election was not accompanied by the forms to which we are accustomed to attach that idea; they were, in fact, military chiefs, bound to render their power freely acceptable to a great number of companions, who obeyed them as the bravest and ablest. Election, therefore, was the true source of barbarian royalty, its primitive and essential characteristic.
I do not mean to state that even in the fifth century this quality had not been somewhat modified, or that other elements had not been introduced into royalty. The different tribes had had their chiefs for a certain time; some families had raised themselves to more consideration, trust, and wealth than others. This gave a beginning to the hereditary principle; the chief was no longer elected out of particular families. This was the first circumstance of a different order which became associated to the predominant principle of election.
Another idea or element had also previously been infused into the barbarian royalty, springing from religious feelings. We find amongst some of the barbarian nations—for example, amongst the Goths—the conviction that the families of their kings were descended from their gods, or from the heroes whom they had made gods—from Odin, for instance. It is the situation of the kings of Homer, who had sprung from gods or demigods, and under that title were the objects of a sort of religious veneration, notwithstanding the narrow limits of their power.
Such was barbarian royalty in the fifth century, already exhibiting different and fluctuating characteristics, although its primitive principle still prevailed.