Hence there are periods in which royalty alone is able to retard the dissolution of society, and also periods in which it alone can accelerate its formation. And in both cases it exercises this power over events, because it represents more vividly and energetically the sovereignty of right than any other form of government. 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.