In such a contest for the control of the executive there could be no final arbitrament save that of force; but Charles was only able to fight at all because parliament destroyed its own unanimity by attacking the church, and thus provided him with a party and an army. More than a temporary importance, however, attaches to the fact that the abeyance of monarchical power at once gave rise to permanent English parties; and it was natural that those parties should begin by fighting a civil war, for party is in the main an organ for the expression of combative instincts, and the metaphors of party warfare are still of a military character. Englishmen's combative instincts were formerly curbed by the crown; but since the decline of monarchy they have either been vented against other nations, or expressed in party conflicts. The instinct does not commonly require two forms of expression at once, and party strife subsides during a national war. Its methods of expression, too, have been slowly and partially civilized; and even a general election is more humane than a civil war. But the first attack of an epidemic is usually the most virulent, and party strife has not a second time attained the dimensions of civil war. One reason for this mitigation is that the questions at issue have been gradually narrowed down until, although they bulk large to heated imaginations, they really cover a very small area of political life, and the main lines continue the same whichever party triumphs. Another reason is that experience has proved the necessity of the submission of the minority to the majority. This is one of the greatest achievements of politics. In the thirteenth century Peter des Roches claimed exemption from the payment of a scutage on the ground that he had voted against it, and his claim was held to be valid. Such a contention means anarchy, and considerable progress had been made before the seventeenth century towards the constitutional doctrine that the vote of the majority binds the whole community. But the process was incomplete, and the causes of strife between Roundhead and Royalist were fundamental. A victory of the Royalists would have been carried to extremes, as the victory of the Roundheads was; and the result would almost certainly have been despotic government until a still more violent outbreak precipitated the country into a series of revolutions.