Master and Man
The land is the king’s.—He lends it to barons.—Barons lend it to
knights and smaller barons.—Smaller barons collect rent for it
from the peasants.—A father’s lands are lent to his son.—Barons
pay for the land by furnishing men for the king’s wars.—No
account is taken of the rights of the peasant.—The peasant, the
only producer, is despised by the fighting men.—If a baron
rebels, his men must rebel also.—Dukes against kings.—What killed
the feudal system.—Feudal wrongs alive today.
When one great tribe or nation invaded and conquered a country,
as the Ostrogoths came into Italy in the year 489 A.D., or as the
Normans entered England in 1066, their king at once took it for
granted that he owned all the conquered land. In some cases, he
might divide the kingdom up among his chiefs, giving a county to
each of forty or fifty leaders. These great leaders (dukes or
barons, as they were called in the Norman-French language, or
earls, as the English named them) would in turn each divide up
his county among several less important chiefs, whom we may call
lesser or little barons. Each little baron might have several
knights and squires, who lived in or near his castle and had
received from him tracts of land corresponding in size, perhaps,
to the American township and who, therefore, fought under his
banner in war.
[Illustration: A Norman Castle in England]
Each baron had under him a strong body of fighting men,
“men-at-arms,” as they were called, or “retainers,” who in return
for their “keep,” that is, their food and lodging, and a chance
to share the plunder gained in war, swore to be faithful to him,
became his men, and gave him the service called homage. (This
word comes from _hōmō_, the Latin for “man.”) The lesser baron,
in turn, swore homage to, and was the “man” of the great baron or
earl. Whenever the earl called on these lesser chiefs to gather
their fighting men and report to him, they had to obey, serving
him as unquestioningly as their squires and retainers obeyed
them. The earl or duke swore homage to the king, from whom he had
received his land.
This, then, was the feudal system (so named from the word
_feudum_, which, in Latin, meant a piece of land the use of which
was given to a man in return for his services in war), a system
which reversed the natural laws of society, and stood it on its
apex, like a cone balanced on its point. For instead of saying
that the land was the property of the people of the tribe or
nation, it started by taking for granted that the land all
belonged to the king. The idea was that the king did not give the
land, outright, to his dukes and earls, but that he gave them, in
return for their faithful support and service in war, the _use_
of the land during their lifetime, or so long as they remained
true to him. In _Macbeth_, we read how, for his treason, the
lands of the thane (earl) of Cawdor were taken from him by the
Scottish king and given to the thane of Glamis. The lands thus
lent were called fiefs. Upon the death of the tenant, they went
back to the king or duke who had given them in the first place,
and he at once gave them to some other one of his followers upon
the same terms. It often happened that upon the death of an earl
or baron his son was granted the lands which his father had held,
Finally, in many counties, it grew into a custom, and the oldest
son took possession of his father’s fief, but not without first
going to the king and swearing homage and fidelity to him.
Two things must be kept in mind if we are to understand the
system fully. In the first place, in the division of the lands
among the barons of the conquering nation, no account was taken
of the peasants. As they were of the defeated people, their
rights to the land were not once considered. In many countries,
the victors thought of them as part and parcel of the conquered
territory. They “went with” the land and were considered by the
lord of the county as merely his servants. When one lord turned
over a farm to another, the farmers were part of the bargain. If
any of them tried to run away, they were brought back and
whipped. They tilled the land and raised live stock, giving a
certain share of their yearly crop and a certain number of
beeves, hogs, sheep, etc., to the lord, as rent for the land,
much as the free farmers in other countries paid tribute to the
robber chieftains. Thus the one class of people who really earned
their right to live, by producing wealth, were oppressed and
robbed by all the others. Note this point, for there are wrongs
existing today that are due to the fact that the feudal system is
not wholly stamped out in some countries.
[Illustration: A Vassal doing Homage to his Lord]
In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the
direct master of all the people. Only the great lords had sworn
homage to him. He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons. The
less important barons swore homage to the great barons, and the
knights, squires, retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the
lesser barons. If a lesser baron had subdivided his fief among
certain knights and squires, the peasants owed allegiance, not to
him, but to the squire to whom they had been assigned. Thus, if a
“man” rebelled against his lord, all of his knights, retainers,
etc., must rebel also. If, for instance, a great duke refused to
obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance, all his little
barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather, must remain
loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke, and
not the king. History is full of such cases. In many instances,
dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even
terms with kings. The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the
kings of France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland
in 1403 raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of
England; the Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the
throne of England and became king in his place.
[Illustration: William the Conqueror]
A strange case arose when, in 1066, William, who as duke of
Normandy had sworn homage to the king of France, became, through
conquest, king of England. His sons, great-grandsons, and
great-great-grandsons continued for one hundred and fifty years
to be obliged to swear allegiance to the French kings in order to
keep the duchy of Normandy. It was as if the Governor of Texas
had led an army into Mexico, conquered it, and become Emperor of
that country, without resigning his governorship or giving up his
American citizenship.
Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring
more power to the common people were, first, the invention of
gunpowder, and, second, the rise of towns. A man with a musket
could bring down a knight in armor as easily as he could the most
poorly armored peasant. Kings, in fighting to control their great
lords, gave more freedom to citizens of towns in return for their
help. The king’s armies came to be recruited largely from
townspeople, who were made correspondingly free from the feudal
lords.
The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain
amount of military service to his ruler has lasted to the present
day and is responsible for much of the misery that now exists.
Kings went to war with each other simply to increase their
territories. The more land a king had under his control, the more
people who owed him taxes, and the greater number he could get
into his army, the greater became his ambition to spread his
kingdom still farther.
Questions for Review
How was it that the king of a tribe could claim to own all
the land in the country which he had invaded?
Did the kings, lords, and fighting men contribute anything to
the welfare of the working classes?
Would the peasants have been better off if all the fighting
men, lords, dukes, kings, etc., had suddenly been killed?
Can you see why in some countries in Europe a man who earns
his living is looked down upon by the nobles?
What is meant by saying that the feudal system turns society
upside down?
Why did the farmers continue to feed the fighting men?
Explain how the use of gunpowder in warfare helped to break
up the feudal system.
How did the rise of cities also help to do away with the
feudal system?