the best leader in war. Often, no doubt,
when a chief had lost a battle and the majority of the tribe had lost
confidence in him, he resigned and let them choose a new chief. (For
the same reason we frequently hear today that the prime minister, or
leader of the government, of some European country has resigned.) In
spite of the fact, then, that the chief was stronger than any other
man in the tribe, if the majority of his warriors had combined against
him to put another man in his place he could not have withstood them.
Government, in its beginning, was based upon the consent of the
governed. All men in the primitive tribe were equal in rank, except as
one was a better fighter than another, and the chief held the
leadership in war only because the members of his tribe allowed him to
keep it.

[Illustration: A Frankish Chief.]

It must be remembered that in these early days, the people had no
fixed place of abode. Their only homes were rude huts which they could
put up or tear down at very short notice; and so when they heard of
more fertile lands or a warmer climate across the mountains to the
south they used to pull up stakes and migrate in a body, never to
return. It was always the more savage and uncivilized peoples who were
most likely to migrate. The lands which they wished to seize they
generally found already settled by other tribes, more civilized and
hence more peaceful, occupied in trade and agriculture, having
gradually turned to these pursuits from their former habits of hunting
and fighting. Sometimes these more civilized and peace-loving people
were able, by their better weapons and superior knowledge of the art
of fortifying, to beat back the invasion of the immigrating
barbarians. Oftener, though, the rougher, ruder tribes were the
victors, and settled down among the people they had conquered, to rule
them, doing no work themselves, but forcing the conquered ones to feed
and clothe them.

[Illustration: Movable Huts of Early Germans]

History is full of instances of such conquests, and they were taking
place, no doubt, ages before the times from which our earliest records
date. The best examples, however, are to be found in the invasions of
the Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes to which we have referred
above. The country between the Rhine River and the Pyrenees Mountains,
which had been called Gaul when the Gauls lived there, became France
when the Franks conquered the Gauls and stayed to live a