The next event which affected Nephite occupancy of the land north and south was one of their many robber wars. By the sixteenth year from the time the sign [18] of the birth of Christ [19] had been given (therefore 16 A.D.) wickedness had so far increased among the people of the western world, and there had been so many dissensions from those who once had favored law and order, that the robber bands which infested the country considered themselves so powerful that they called upon the Chief Judge of the land to abdicate government and accept the order of things that obtained in their societies. This demand led to a serious war between the supporters of the government on the one hand, and the outlaws on the other. The Nephite leaders gathered their people both from the north and the south into the central part of their country--into the land Bountiful, and the land Zarahemla; and the cities of these lands the Nephites and the Lamanites standing for law, order, and the maintenance of government, fortified and stocked with an abundance of provisions against the opening of the impending war. The war began in the year 18 A. D., and lasted for more than two years. In it the robber bands were not only defeated, but annihilated, by being destroyed in battle, executed under the provisions of the law, or by being compelled to enter into covenant to abandon their robberies and murders. This war, in some respects the most terrible in Nephite history, was followed by an era of prosperity. In the course of a few years the Nephites had moved back upon their lands whence they had been called by the exigencies of the recent war. "And it came to pass that there were many cities built anew, and there were many old cities repaired. And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made, which led from city to city, and from land to land." [20] No sooner were the terrors of war removed, however, than the people who had been so marvelously delivered from their enemies lapsed again into unrighteousness.