In the feudal ages, and over the whole Asiatic world at the present time, the contests of parties are carried on for _individuals_. No change of national policy, or of the system of internal government, is contemplated on either side. It is for one prince or another prince, for one sultaun or another sultaun, that men draw their swords. "Under which King, Bezonian?--speak or die!" is there the watch-word of all civil conflict. It was the same in this country during the feudal ages, and down to a very recent period. No man in the civil wars between Stephen and Henry II., or of the Plantagenet princes, or in the wars of the Roses, contemplated or desired any change of government or policy in the conflict in which they were engaged. The one party struck for the Red, the other for the White Rose. Great civil and social interests were at issue in the conflict; but the people cared little or nothing for these. The contest between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians was a great feud between two clans which divided the state; and the attachment to their chiefs was the blind devotion of the Highlanders to the Pretender. The Reformation, which first brought the dearest objects of thought and interest home to all classes, made a great change in this respect, and substituted in large proportion general questions for the adherence to particular men, or fidelity to particular families. Still, however, the old and natural instinct of the human race to attach themselves to men, not things, continued, in a great degree, to influence the minds of the people, and as many buckled on their armour for the man as the cause. The old Cavaliers, who periled life and lands in defence of Charles I., were as much influenced by attachment to the dignified monarch, who is immortalised in the canvass of Vandyke, as by the feelings of hereditary loyalty; and the iron bands which overthrew their ranks at Marston Moor, were as devoted to Cromwell as the tenth legion to Cæsar, or the Old Guard to Napoleon. In truth, such individual influences are so strongly founded in human nature, that they will continue to the end of the world, from whatever cause a contest may have arisen, as soon as it has continued for a certain time, and will always stand forth in prominent importance when a social has turned into a military conflict, and the perils and animosities of war have endeared their leaders to the soldiers on either side. The Vendeans soon became devoted to Henri Larochjaquelein, the Republicans to Napoleon; and in our own times, the great social conflict of the nineteenth century has been determined by the fidelity of the Austrian soldiers to Radetzky, of the French to Cavaignac, of the German to Windischgratz.