THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEUDAL STATE
(a) THE GENESIS OF LANDED PROPERTY
We now return, as stated above, to that point where the primitive
feudal State gave rise to the city State as an offshoot, to follow the
upward growth of the main branch. As the destiny of the city State was
determined by the agglomeration of that form of wealth about which
the State swung in its orbit, so the fate of the territorial State is
conditioned by that agglomeration of wealth which in turn controls its
orbit, the _ownership of landed property_.
In the preceding, we followed the economic differentiation in the
case of the shepherd tribes, and showed that even here the law of the
agglomeration about existing nuclei of wealth begins to assert its
efficacy, as soon as the political means comes into play, be it in the
form of wars for booty or still more in the form of slavery. We saw
that the tribe had differentiated nobles and common freemen, beneath
whom slaves, being without any political rights, are subordinated as
a third class. This differentiation of wealth is introduced into the
primitive state, and sharpens very markedly the contrast of social
rank. It becomes still more accentuated by settlement, whereby private
ownership in lands is created. Doubtless there existed even at the time
when the primitive feudal state came into being, great differences in
the amount of lands possessed by individuals, especially if within
the tribe of herdsmen the separation had been strongly marked between
the prince-like owners of large herds and many slaves, and the poorer
common freemen. These princes occupy more land than do the small
freemen.
At first, this happens quite harmlessly, and without a trace of any
consciousness of the fact that extended possession of land will become
the means of a considerable increase of social power and of wealth.
Of this, there is at this time no question, since at this stage the
common freemen would have been powerful enough to prevent the formation
of extended landed estates had they known that it would eventually do
them harm. But no one could have foreseen this possibility. Lands, in
the condition in which we are observing them, have no value. For that
reason the object and the spoils of the contest were not the possession
of _lands_, but of _the land and its peasants, the latter being bound
to the soil_ (_glebæ adscripti_ of our later law) as labor substrat and
labor motors, from the conjunction of which there grows the object of
the political means, viz., ground rent.
Every one is at liberty to take as much of _the uncultivated land_
existing in masses as he needs and will or can cultivate. It is quite
as unlikely that any one would care to measure off for another parts
of an apparently limitless supply, as that any one would apportion the
supply of atmospheric air.
The princes of the noble clans, probably from the start, pursuant to
the usage of the tribe of herdsmen, receive more “lands and peasants”
than do the common freemen. That is their right as princes, because
of their position as patriarchs, war lords, and captains maintaining
their warlike suites of half-free persons, of servants, of clients, or
of refugees. This probably amounts to a considerable difference in the
primitive amounts of land ownership. But this is not all. The princes
need a larger surface of the “_land without peasants_” than do the
common freemen, because they bring with them their servants and slaves.
These have, however, no standing at law, and are incapable, according
to the universal concepts of folk law, of acquiring title to landed
property. Since, however, they must have land in order to live, their
master takes it for them, so as to settle them thereon. In consequence
of this, the richer the prince of the nomad tribe the more powerful the
territorial magnate becomes.
But this means that wealth, and with it social rank, is consolidated
more firmly and more durably than in the stage of herdsman
ownership. For the greatest herds may be lost, but landed property
is indestructible; and men bound to labor, bringing forth rentals,
reproduce their kind even after the most terrible slaughter, even
should they not be obtainable full grown in slave hunts.
About this fixed nucleus of wealth, property begins to agglomerate
with increasing rapidity. Harmless as was the first occupation, men
must soon recognize the fact that rental increases with the number of
slaves one can settle on the unoccupied lands. Henceforth, the external
policy of the feudal state is no longer directed toward the acquisition
of land and peasants, but rather of peasants without land, to be
carried off home as serfs, and there to be colonized anew. When the
entire state carries on the war or the robbing expedition, the nobles
obtain the lion’s share. Very often, however, they go off on their own
account, followed only by their suites, and then the common freeman,
staying at home, receives no share in the loot. Thus the vicious circle
constantly tends rapidly to enlarge with the increasing wealth of the
lands owned by the nobles. The more slaves a noble has, the more rental
he can obtain. With this, in turn, he can maintain a warlike following,
composed of servants, of lazy freemen, and of refugees. With their
help, he can, in turn, drive in so many more slaves, to increase his
rentals.
This process takes place, even where some central power exists, which,
pursuant to the general law of the people, has the right to dispose of
uncultivated lands; while it is, in many cases, not only by sufferance,
but often by the express sanction of that authority. As long as the
feudal magnate remains the submissive vassal of the crown, it lies
in the king’s interest to make him as strong as possible. By this
means his military suite, to be placed at the disposal of the crown
in times of war, is correspondingly increased. We shall adduce only
one illustration to show that the necessary consequence in universal
history is not confined to the well-known effect in the feudal states
of Western Europe, but follows from these premises even under totally
different surroundings: “The principal service in Fiji consisted in
war duty; and if the outcome was successful it meant new grants of
lands, including therein the denizens, as slaves, and thus led to the
assumption of new obligations.”[91]
This accumulation of landed property in ever increasing quantity in
the hands of the landed nobility brings the primitive feudal state of
a higher stage to the “finished feudal state” with a complete scale of
feudal ranks.
Reference to a previous work by the author, based on a study of the
sources, will show the same causal connection for German lands;[92] and
in that publication it was pointed out that in all the instances noted
a process takes place, identical in its principal lines of development.
It is only on this line of reasoning that one can explain the fact,
to take Japan as an example, that its feudal system developed into
the precise details which are well known to the students of European
history, although Japan is inhabited by a race fundamentally different
from the Arians; and besides (a strong argument against giving too
great weight to the materialistic view of history) the process of
agriculture is on a totally different technical basis, since the
Japanese are not cultivators with the plow, but with the hoe.
In this instance, as throughout this book, it is not the fortune of
a single people that is investigated; it is rather the object of the
author to narrate the typical development, the universal consequences,
of the same basic traits of mankind wherever they are placed.
Presupposing a knowledge of the two most magnificent examples of the
expanded feudal state, Western Europe and Japan, we shall, in general,
limit ourselves to cases less well known, and so far as possible give
the preference to material taken from ethnography, rather than from
history in its more restricted sense.
The process now to be narrated is a change, gradually consummated but
fundamentally revolutionary, of the political and social articulation
of the primitive feudal state: _the central authority loses its
political power to the territorial nobility, the common freeman sinks
from his status, while the “subject” mounts_.
(b) THE CENTRAL POWER IN THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL STATE
The patriarch of a tribe of herdsmen, though endowed with the authority
which flows from his war-lordship and sacerdotal functions, generally
has no despotic powers. The same may be said of the “king” of a small
settled community, where, generally speaking, he would exercise very
limited command. On the other hand, as soon as some military genius
manages to fuse together numerous tribes of herdsmen into one powerful
mass of warriors, despotic centralized power is the direct, inevitable
consequence.[93] As soon as war exists, the truth of the Homeric
οὐκ ἀγαθὴ πολυκοιρανιὴ εἶς κοίρανος ἔστω
εἶς βασιλεύς,[O]
is admitted by the most unruly tribes, and becomes a fact to be
acted on. The free primitive huntsmen render to their elected chief
unconditioned obedience, while on the war-path; the free Cossacks
of the Ukraine, recognizing no authority in times of peace, submit
to their _hetman’s_ power of life and death in times of war. This
obedience toward their war-lord is a trait common to every genuine
warrior psychology.
[O] “The rule of the many is not a good thing, over the many there
should be one king.”
The leaders of the great migrations of nomads are all powerful despots:
Attila, Omar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mosilikatse, Ketchwayo.
Similarly, we find that whenever a mighty territorial state has
come into being as the result of the welding together of a number
of primitive feudal states, there existed in the beginning a strong
central authority. Examples of this may be seen in the case of Sargon
Cyrus, Chlodowech, Charlemagne, Boleslaw the Red. Sometimes, especially
as long as the main state has not yet reached its geographical or
sociologic bounds, the centralized authority is maintained intact in
the hands of a series of strong monarchs, which degenerates, in some
instances, to the maddest despotism and insanity of some of the Cæsars:
especially do we find flagrant examples of this in Mesopotamia and
in Africa. We shall merely touch on this phase: the more so, as it
has little general effect on the final development of the forms of
government. This point should, however, be stated, that the development
of the form of government of a despotism depends in the main, on what
the _sacerdotal_ status of the rulers may be, in addition to their
position as war-lords, and whether or not they hold the monopoly of
trade as an additional regalian right.
The combination of Cæsar and Pope tends in all cases to develop the
extreme forms of despotism; while the partition of spiritual and
temporal functions brings it about that their exponents mutually check
and counterbalance one another. A characteristic example may be found
in the conditions prevailing among the Malay states of the East Indian
Archipelago, genuine “maritime states,” whose genesis is an exact
counterpart of that of the Greek maritime states. Generally speaking,
the prince has just as little power among these, as, shall we say, the
king at the opening of the history of the Attic states. The chieftains
of the clans (in Sulu the Dato, in Achin the Panglima), as in the case
of Athens, have the real power. But where, “as in Tobah, religious
motives endow the rulers with the position of a Pope in miniature, an
entirely different phase is found. The Panglima then depend entirely
on the Rajah, and are merely officials.”[94] To refer to a well-known
fact, when the aristocrats and chiefs of the clans in Athens and in
Rome abolished the kingdom, they preserved at least the old _title_,
and granted its use to a dignitary otherwise politically impotent,
in order that the gods might have their offerings presented in the
accustomed manner. For the same reason, in many cases, the descendant
of the former tribal king is preserved as a dignitary, otherwise
totally powerless, while the actual power of government has long since
been transferred to some war chief; as in the later Merovingian Empire,
the Carolingian Mayors of the palace (Majordomus) ruled alongside a
“long locked king,” _rex crinitus_, of the race of Merowech, so, in
Japan, the Shogun ruled beside the Mikado, and in the Empire of the
Incas, the commander of the Inca beside the Huillcauma, who had been
gradually limited to his sacerdotal functions.[P][95]
[P] In Egypt we find a similar state of affairs, beside the bigoted
Amenhotep IV., the Majordomus of the palace Haremheb, who “managed to
unite in his hands the highest military and administrative functions of
the empire, until he exercised the powers of a regent of the state.”
Schneider, _Civilization and Thought of the Ancient Egyptians_.
Leipzig, 1907, page 22.
In addition to the office of supreme pontiff, the power of the head of
the state is frequently increased enormously by the trading monopoly, a
function exercised by the primitive chieftains as a natural consequence
of the peaceful barter of guest-gifts. Such a trade monopoly, for
example, was exercised by King Solomon; and latterly by the Roman
Emperor Friedrich II.[Q][96]
[Q] Cf. _Acta Imperii_, or _Huillard-Breholles, H. D. Fred.
II._--_Translator._
As a rule, the negro chieftains are “monopolists of trading”;[97] as
is the King of Sulu.[98] Among the Galla, wherever the supremacy of a
head chief is acknowledged, he becomes “as a matter of course, the
tradesman for his tribe; since none of his subjects is allowed to trade
with strangers directly.”[99] Among the Barotse and Mabunda, the king
is “according to the strict interpretation of the law, the only trader
of his country.”[100]
Ratzel notes, in telling language, the importance of this factor:
“In addition to his witchcraft, the chief increases his power by a
_monopoly of trading_. Since the chief is the sole intermediary in
trade, everything desired by his subjects passes through his hands,
and he becomes the donor of all longed-for gifts, the fulfiller of the
fondest wishes. In such a system, there lie certainly the possibilities
of great power.”[101] If, in conquered districts, where the power of
government is apt to be more tensely exercised, there is added the
monopoly of trade, the royal power may become very great.
It may be stated as a general rule, that even in the apparently most
extreme cases of _despotism_, no monarchical _absolutism_ exists. The
ruler may, undeterred by fear of punishment, rage against his subject
class; but he is checked in no small degree by his feudal followers.
Ratzel, in speaking of the subject generally, remarks: “The so-called
‘court assemblage’ of African or of ancient American chiefs is probably
always a council.... Although we meet with traces of absolutism with
all peoples on a low scale, even where the form of government is
republican, the cause of absolutism is not in the strength of either
the state or of the chieftain, but in the moral weakness of the
individual, who succumbs without any effective resistance to the powers
wielded over him.”[102] The kingdom of the Zulu is a limited despotism,
in which very powerful ministers of state (Induna) share the power;
with other Caffir tribes it is a council, sometimes dominating both
people and chieftains.[103] In spite of this control “under Tshaka
every sneezing or hawking in the presence of the tyrant, as well as
every lack of tears at the death of some royal kinsman, was punished
with death.”[104] The same limitation applies to the West African
kingdoms of Dahomy and Ashanti, notorious because of their frightful
barbarities. “In spite of the waste of human life, in war, slave trade,
and human sacrifices, there existed at no place absolute despotism....
Bowditch remarks on the similarity of the system prevailing in Ashanti,
with its ranks and orders, with the old Persian system as described by
Herodotus.”[105]
One must be very careful, and this may again be insisted upon, not
to confuse despotism with absolutism. Even in the feudal states of
Western Europe, the rulers exercised, in many cases, power of life and
death, free from the trammels of law; but nevertheless such a ruler was
impotent as against his “magnates.” So long as he does not interfere
with the privileges of the classes, he need not restrain his cruelty,
and he may even occasionally sacrifice one of the great men; but woe to
him were he to dare to touch the economic privileges of his magnates.
It is possible to study this very characteristic phase, completely
free, from the standpoint of law, and yet closely hemmed in by
political checks, in the great East African empires: “The government
of Waganda and Wanyoro is, in theory, based on the rule of the king
over the whole territory; but in reality this is only the semblance of
government, since, as a matter of fact, the lands belong to the supreme
chieftains of the empire. It was they who represented the popular
opposition to foreign influences, in the time of Mtesa; and Muanga did
not dare, for fear of them, to carry out any innovations. Although the
kingship is limited in reality, yet in form it occupies an imposing
position in unessentials. The ruler is absolute master over the lives
and limbs of his subjects, the mass of the people, and feels himself
restrained only in the narrowest circle of the chief courtiers.”[106]
Precisely the same statement applies to the inhabitants of Oceania, to
mention the last of the great societies that created states: “At no
place does one find an entire absence of a representative mediation
between prince and people.... The aristocratic principle corrects
the patriarchal. Therefore, the extremes of _despotism_ depend more
on class and caste pressure than on the overpowering will of any
individual.”[107]
(c) THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL
STATE
Space forbids our detailing the innumerable shadings under which the
patriarchal-aristocratic (in some cases plutocratic) mixture of form
of government in the primitive feudal state is shown in either an
ethnographic, historical or juristic survey. This is likewise of the
greatest importance for the subsequent development.
It is indifferent how much power the ruler may have had at the
beginning, an inevitable fate breaks down his power in a short while;
and does this, one may say, the faster, the greater that power was, i.
e., the larger the territory of the primitive feudal state of higher
grade.
Taking into account the process already set forth, which, through the
occupation and settlement of unused lands by means of newly acquired
slaves, made for the increase of power of the separate nobles, a
result came about which might prove uncomfortable for the central
power. Mommsen in speaking of the Celts says: “When in a clan numbering
about eighty thousand armed men, a single chieftain could appear at
convocation with ten thousand followers, exclusive of his serfs and
debtors, it becomes clear that such a noble was rather an independent
prince than a mere citizen of his clan.”[108] And the same may apply to
the “Heiu” of the Somali, where a great landed proprietor maintained
hundreds of families in dependence on his lands, “so that conditions
in Somaliland tend to recall those existing in mediæval Europe during
feudal times.”[109]
Although such a preponderance of isolated territorial magnates can come
about in the feudal state of low development, it nevertheless reaches
its culmination in the feudal state of higher grade, the great feudal
state; this happens by reason of the increased power given to the
landlords by the bestowal of _public official functions_.
The more the state expands, the more must official power be delegated
by the central government to its representatives on the borders and
marches, who are constantly threatened by wars and insurrectionary
outbreaks. In order to preserve his bailiwick in safety for the state,
such an official must be endowed with supreme military powers, joined
with the functions of the highest administrative officials. Even
should he not require a large number of civil employees, he still must
have a permanent military force. And how is he to pay these men? With
one possible exception, to be noted hereafter, there are no taxes
which flow into the treasury of the central government and then are
poured back again over the land, since these presuppose an economic
development existing only where money is employed. But in communities
having a system of payments in kind, such as these “territorial
states” all are, there are no taxes payable in money. For that reason,
the central government has no alternative but to turn over to the
counts, or border wardens, or satraps, the income of its territorial
jurisdiction. Such an official, then, receives the dues of the
subjects, determines when and where forced labor is to be rendered,
receives the deodands, fees and penalties payable in cattle, etc.; and
in consideration of these must maintain the armed force, place definite
numbers of armed men at the disposal of the central government, build
and maintain highways and bridges, feed and stable the ruler and his
following, or his “royal messengers,” and finally, furnish a definite
“Sergeantry” consisting of highly valuable goods, easily transported to
the court, such as horses, cattle, slaves, precious metals, wines, etc.
In other words, he receives an immensely large fief for his services.
If previously he was not, he now becomes the greatest man in his
country, though before he probably was the most powerful landlord in
his official district. He will hereafter do exactly what his equals
in rank are doing, although they may not have his official position;
that is to say, he will, only on a larger scale, continue to settle
new lands with ever newly recruited serfs. By this he increases his
military strength; and this must be wished for and aided by the
central government. For it is the fate of these states, that they must
fatten those very local powers, that are to engulf them.
Conditions arise which enable the warden of the marches to impose the
terms of his military assistance, especially in the inevitable feuds
which arise over the right of succession to the central government.
Thereby he obtains further valuable concessions, especially the
formal acknowledgment of the heritability of his official fief, so
that office and lands come to be held by an identical tenure. By
this means, he gradually becomes almost independent of the central
authority, and the complaint of the Russian peasant, “The sky is high
up and the Tsar is far off,” tends to become of universal application.
Take this characteristic example from Africa: “The empire of Lunda
is an absolute feudal state. The chieftains (Muata, Mona, Muene) are
permitted independent action in all internal affairs, so long as it
pleases the Muata Jamvo. Usually, the great chieftains, living afar,
send their caravans with their tribute once a year to the Mussumba;
but _those living at too great a distance, sometimes for long periods
omit making any payments of their tribute_; while similar chiefs in the
neighborhood of the capital forward tribute many times a year.”[110]
Nothing can show more plainly than this report, how, because of
inadequate means of transportation, extent of distance becomes
politically effective in these states loosely held together and in a
state of payment in kind. One is tempted to say that the independence
of the feudal masters grows in proportion to the square of their
distance from the seat of the central authority. The crown must pay
more and more for their services, and must gradually confirm them in
all the sovereign powers of the state, or else permit their usurpation
of these powers after they have seized them one after the other. Such
are heritability of fiefs, tolls on highways and commerce, (in a later
stage the right of coinage), high and low justice, the right to exact
for private gain the public duties of repair of ways and bridges (the
old English _trinodis necessitas_) and the disposal of the military
services of the freemen of the country.
By these means, the powerful frontier wardens gradually attain an
ever greater, and finally a complete, _de facto_ independence, even
though the _formal_ bond of feudal suzerainty may for a long time
apparently keep together the newly developed principalities. The
reader, of course, recalls instances of these typical transitions;
all mediæval history is one chain of them; not only the Merovingian
and Carolingian Empires, not only Germany, but also France, Italy,
Spain, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, as well as Japan and China,[111]
have passed through this process of decomposition, not only once,
but repeatedly. And this is no less true of the feudal states of
Mesopotamia: great empires follow each other, acquire power, burst
asunder time after time, and again are re-united. In the case of
Persia, we are expressly told: “Separate states and provinces, by a
successful revolt, obtained freedom for a longer or shorter time, and
the ‘great king’ at Susa did not always have the power to force them
to return to their obedience; in other states, the satraps or warlike
chieftains ruled arbitrarily, carrying on the government faithlessly
and violently, either as independent rulers or tributary under-kings of
the king of kings. The Persian world-empire went to its disintegration
an agglomeration of states and lands, without any general law, without
ordered administration, without uniform judicial system, without order
and enforcement of law, and without possibility of help.”[112]
A similar fate overtook its neighbor in the valley of the Nile:
“Princes spring from the families of the usurpers, free landlords,
who pay land-taxes to nobody but to the king, and rule over certain
strips of land, or districts. These district princes govern a territory
specifically set apart as pertaining to their official position, and
separate from their family possessions.
“Later successful warlike operations, perhaps filling in the gap
between the Ancient and the Middle (Egyptian) Empire, _together with
the gathering in of captives of the wars, who could be utilized as
labor motors_, brought a more stringent exploitation of the subjects,
a definite determination of the tributes. During the Middle Empire,
the power of the princes of the clans rose to an enormous height,
they maintained great courts, imitating the splendor of the royal
establishment.”[113] “With the decline of the royal authority
during a period of decay, the higher officials use their power for
personal aims, in order to make their offices hereditary within their
families.”[R][114]
[R] Maspero says, _New Light on Ancient Egypt_, pp. 218-9: “Until
then, in fact, the high priest had been chosen and nominated by the
king; from the time of Rameses III. he was always chosen from the same
family, and the son succeeded his father on the pontifical throne. From
that time events marched quickly. The Theban mortmain was doubled with
a veritable seigniorial fief, which its masters increased by marriages
with the heirs of neighboring fiefs, by continual bequests from one
branch of the family to the other, and by _the placing of cadets of
each generation at the head of the clergy of certain secondary towns_.
The official protocol of the offices filled by their wives shows that a
century or a century and a half after Rameses III., almost the whole of
the Thebaid, about a third of the Egyptian territory was in the hands
of the High Priest of Ammon and of his family.”--_Translator’s Note
(and italics)._
But the operation of this historical law is not restricted to the
“historical” peoples. In speaking of the feudal states of India,
Ratzel states: “Even beyond Radshistan, the nobles often enjoyed a
great measure of independence, so that even in Haiderabad, after the
Nizam had acquired the sole rule over the country, the Umara or Nabobs
maintained troops of their own, independently of the army of the Nizam.
These smaller feudatories did not comply with the increased demands of
modern times as regards the administration of Indian states as often as
did the greater princes.”[115]
In Africa finally, great feudal states come and pass away, as do
bubbles arising and bursting from the stream of eternally similar
phenomena. The powerful Ashanti empire, within one and a half
centuries, has shriveled to less than one-fifth of its territory;[116]
and many of the empires that the Portuguese encountered have since
disappeared without leaving a trace of their existence. And yet these
were strong feudal powers: “Stately and cruel negro empires, such as
Benin, Dahomy or Ashanti, resemble in many respects ancient Peru or
Mexico, having in their vicinity politically disorganized tribes. The
hereditary nobility of the Mfumus, sharply separated from the rest of
the state, had mainly the administration of the districts, and together
with the more transitory nobility of service, formed in Loango strong
pillars of the ruler and his house.”[117]
But whenever such a state, once powerful, has split into a number of
territorial states either _de facto_ or juristically independent, the
former process begins anew. The great state gobbles up the smaller
ones, until a new empire has arisen. “The greatest territorial magnates
later become emperors,” says Meitzen laconically of Germany.[118] But
even this great demesne vanishes, split up by the need of equipping
warlike vassals with fiefs. “The Kings soon found that they had donated
away all their belongings; their great territorial possessions in the
Delta had melted away,” says Schneider (l. c. page 38) of the Pharaohs
of the sixth dynasty. The same causes brought about like effects in
the Frankish Empire among both Merovingians and Carolingians; and later
in Germany in the case of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen Emperors.[119]
Additional references are unnecessary, as every one is familiar with
these instances.
In a subsequent part of this treatise, we shall examine into the causes
that finally liberated the primitive feudal state from this witch’s
curse, this circling from agglomeration to disintegration without end.
Our present task is to take up the _social_ side of the process, as
we have already taken up the historical phase of it. It changes the
articulation of classes in the most decisive manner.
The common freemen, the lower strata of the dominating group, are
struck with overpowering force. They sink into bondsmenship. Their
decay must go along with that of the central power; since both, allied
one might say, by nature, are menaced simultaneously by the expanding
power of the great territorial lords. The crown controls the landed
magnate so long as the levy of the common freemen of the district is
a superior force to his guards, to his “following.” But a fatal need,
already set forth, impels the crown to deliver over the peasants to
the landed lordling, and from the moment when the county levy has
become weaker than his guards, the free peasants are lost. Where the
sovereign powers of the state are delegated to the territorial magnate,
i. e., where he has developed more or less into an independent lord of
the region, the overthrow of the liberties of the peasants is carried
out, at least in part, under the color of law, by forcing excessive
military services, which ruin the peasants, and which are required the
more often as the dynastic interests of the territorial lord require
new lands and new peasants, or by abusing the right to compulsory
labor, or by turning the administration of public justice into military
oppression.
The common freemen, however, receive the final blow either by the
formal delegation or by the usurpation of the most important powers
of the crown, the disposition of unoccupied lands or “commons.”
Originally, this land belonged to all the “folk” in common; i. e., to
the freemen for common use; but in accordance with an original custom,
probably universal, the patriarch enjoys disposal of it. This right of
disposition passes to the territorial magnate with the remaining royal
privileges--and thus he has obtained the power to strangle any few
remaining freemen. He now declares all unoccupied lands his property,
_and forbids their settlement by free peasants_, while those only are
permitted access who recognize his superior lordship; i. e., who have
commended themselves to him, or are his serfs.
That is the last nail in the coffin of the common freemen. Heretofore
their equality of possessions has been in some way guaranteed.
Even if a peasant had twelve sons, his patrimony was not split up,
because eleven of them broke new hides of land in the commons of the
community, or else in the general land not yet distributed to other
villages. That is henceforth impossible; hides tend to divide where
large families grow up, others are united when heir and heiress marry:
henceforth there come into existence “laborers,” recruited from the
owners of half, a quarter, or even an eighth of a hide who help work
a larger area. Thus the free peasantry splits into rich and poor;
this begins to loosen the bond which hitherto had made the bundle of
arrows unbreakable. When, therefore, some comrade is overwhelmed by the
exactions of the lord and has become his liegeman, or if bond peasants
are settled among the original owners, either to occupy some hide
vacated by the extinction of the family or fallen into the hands of the
lord because of the indebtedness of its occupant, then every social
cohesion is loosened; and the peasantry, split apart by class and by
economic contrasts, is handed over without power of resistance to the
magnate.
On the other hand, the result is the same where the magnate has no
usurped regalian powers of the state. In such cases, open force and
shameless violation of rights accomplish the same ends. The ruler,
far off and impotent, bound to rely on the good will and help of the
violators of law and order, has neither the power nor the opportunity
of interference.
There is hardly any need of adducing instances. The free peasantry
of Germany were put through the process of expropriation and
declassification at least three times. Once it happened in Celtic
times.[120] The second overthrow of the free peasants of the old German
Empire took place in the ninth and tenth centuries. The third tragedy
of the same form began with the fifteenth century, in the countries
formerly Slavic, which they had conquered and colonized.[121] The
peasants fared worse in those lands, in the “republics of nobles,”
where there was no monarchical central authority, whose community of
interests with their subjects tended to deprive oppression of its
worse features. The Celts in the Gaul of Cæsar’s time are one of the
earliest examples. Here “the great families exercised an economic,
military and political preponderance. They monopolized the leases of
the lucrative rights of the state. They forced the common freemen,
overwhelmed by the taxes which they had themselves imposed, to
borrow of them, and then, first as their debtors, afterward legally
as their serfs, to surrender their liberty. For their own advantage
they developed the system of followers: i. e., the privilege of the
nobility to have about them a mass of armed servants in their pay,
called _ambacti_, with whose aid they formed a state within a state.
Relying on these, their own men-at-arms, they defied the lawful
authorities and the levies of the freemen, and thus were able to burst
asunder the commonwealth.... The only protection to be found was in
the relation of serfdom, where personal duty and interest required the
lord to protect his clients and to avenge any wrong to his men. Since
the state no longer had the power to protect the freemen, these in
growing numbers became the vassals of some powerful noble.”[122] We
find these identical conditions fifteen hundred years later in Kurland,
Livonia, in Swedish Pomerania, in Eastern Holstein, in Mecklenburg,
and especially in Poland. In the German territories the petty nobles
subjugated their peasantry, while in Poland their prey was the
formerly free and noble Schlachziz. “Universal history is monotonous,”
says Ratzel. The same procedure overthrew the peasantry of ancient
Egypt: “After a warlike _intermezzo_, there follows a period in the
history of the Middle Empire, which brings about a deterioration of
the position of the peasantry in Lower Egypt. The number of landlords
decreases, while their territorial growth and power increases. The
tribute of the peasants is hereafter determined by an exact assessment
on their estates, and definitely fixed by a sort of Doomsday Book.
Because of this pressure, many peasants soon enter the lord’s court or
the cities of the local rulers, and take employment there either as
servants, mechanics, or even as overseers in the economic organization
of these manors or courts. In common with any available captives, they
contribute to the extension of the prince’s estates, and to further the
general expulsion of the peasantry from their holdings.”[128]
The example of the Roman Empire shows, as nothing else can, how
inevitable this process becomes. When we first meet Rome in history
the conception of serfdom or bondage has already been forgotten. When
the “modern period” of Rome opens, only slavery is known. And yet,
within fifteen centuries, the free peasantry again sink into economic
dependence, after Rome has become an overextended, unwieldy empire,
whose border districts have more and more dissolved from the central
control. The great landed proprietors, having been endowed with the
lower justice and police administration on their own estates have
“reduced their servants, who may originally have been free proprietors
of the ‘_ager privatus vectigalis_’ to a state of servitude, and
have thus developed a sort of actual _glebæ adscriptus_, within the
boundaries of their ‘immunities.’”[124] The invading Germans found
this feudal order worked out in Gaul and the other provinces. At this
particular time, the immense difference formerly existing between
slaves and free settlers (_coloni_) had been completely obliterated,
first in their economic position, and then, naturally, in their
constitutional rights.
Wherever the common freemen sink into political and economic dependence
on the great territorial magnates, when, in other words, they become
bound either to the court or to the lands, the social group formerly
subject to them tend in a corresponding measure to improve their
status. Both layers tend to meet half-way, to approximate their
position, and finally to amalgamate. The observations just made
concerning the free settlers and the agricultural slaves of the later
Roman Empire hold true everywhere. Thus in Germany, freemen and serfs
together formed, when fused, the economic and legally unital group of
_Grundholde_, or men bound to the soil.[125]
The elevation of the former “subjects,” hereafter for the sake of
brevity to be called “plebs,” flows from the same source as the
debasement of the freeman, and arises by the same necessity from the
very foundations on which these states are themselves erected, viz.,
the agglomeration of the landed property in ever fewer hands.
The plebs are the natural opponents of the central government--since
that is their conqueror and tax imposer; while they naturally oppose
the common freemen, who despise them and oppress them politically,
besides crowding them back economically. The great magnate also is the
natural opponent of the central government--an impediment in his path
toward complete independence, and he is at the same time also a natural
enemy of the common freemen, who in turn not only support the central
government; but also block with their possessions his path toward
territorial dominion, while with their claims to equality of political
rights they annoy his princely pride. Since the political and social
interests of the territorial princes and of the plebs coincide, they
must become allies; the prince can attain complete independence only
if, in his fight for power against the crown and the common freemen,
he controls reliable warriors and acquiescent taxpayers; the plebs
can only then be freed from their pariah-like declassification, both
economically and socially, if the hated and proud common freemen are
brought down to their level.
This is the second time that we have noted the identity of interest
between the princes and their subjects. The first time we found a
weakly developed solidarity in our second stage of state formation.
This causes the semi-sovereign prince to treat his dependent tenants
as kindly as he ill-treats the free peasants of his territory; in
consequence, they will fight the more willingly for him and contribute
taxes, while the more readily will the oppressed freemen succumb to
the pressure, especially as their share of political power in the
state, coincident with the decline of the central power, has become
only a meaningless phrase. In some cases, as in Germany toward the
end of the tenth century, this was done with full consciousness of
its effects[126]--some prince exercises a particularly “mild” rule,
in order to draw the subjects of a neighboring potentate into his
lands, and thus to increase his own strength in war and taxation,
and to weaken his opponent’s. The plebs come to possess, both legally
and actually, constantly increasing rights, enlarged privileges of
the law of ownership, perhaps self-government in common affairs,
and their own administration of justice; thus they rise in the same
degree as the common freemen sink, until the two classes meet and they
are amalgamated into one body on approximately the same jural and
economic plane. Half serfs, half subjects of a state, they represent
a characteristic formation of the feudal state, which does not as
yet recognize any clear distinction between public and private law;
in its turn an immediate consequence of its own historical genesis,
_the dominion in the form of a state for the sake of economic private
rights_.
(d) THE ETHNIC AMALGAMATION
The juristic and social amalgamation of the degraded freemen and
the uplifted plebs henceforth inevitably tends toward ethnic
interpenetration. While at first the subject peoples were not allowed
either to intermarry or to have social intercourse with the freemen,
now no such obstacles can be maintained; in any single village the
social class is no longer determined by descent from the ruling race,
but rather by wealth. And the case may frequently arise where the
pure-blooded descendant of the warrior herdsman must earn his living
as a field hand in the hire of the equally pure-blooded descendant of
the former serfs. The social group of the subjects is now composed of a
part of the former ethnic master group and a part of the former subject
group.
We say from a part only, because the other part has by this time been
amalgamated with the other part of the old ethnic master group into a
unital social class. In other words, a part of the plebs has not only
attained the position to which the mass of the common freemen have
sunk, but has climbed far beyond it, in that it has been completely
received into the dominating group, which in the meantime, has not only
risen enormously, but has been as greatly diminished in numbers.
And that, too, is a universal process found in all history; because
everywhere it follows with equally compelling force from the very
premises of feudal dominion. The _primus inter pares_, whether the
holder of the central power or some local potentate, taking the rank
of a prince, requires more supple tools for his dominion than are to
be found among his “peers.” The latter represent a class whom he must
put down if he wants to rise--and that is and must be the aim of every
one, since in this stage aiming for power is identical with the aim of
self-preservation. In this effort he is opposed by his obnoxious and
stiff-necked cousins and by his petty nobles--and for this reason, we
find at every court, from that of the sovereign king of a mighty feudal
empire down to the lord of what is hardly more than a big estate,
men of insignificant descent as confidential officials alongside
representatives of the master group, who in many cases under the mask
of officials of the prince, as a matter of fact, are “ephors,” sharers
of the power of the prince as the plenipotentiaries of their group.
Let us but recall the Induna at the court of the Bantu kings. There
is no wonder, then, that the prince rather places confidence in his
own men than in these annoying and pretentious advisers, in men whose
position is indissolubly bound up with his own, and who would be ruined
by his fall.[S]
[S] One of the most notable instances may be found in the case of
Markward of Annweiler, Marquis of Ancona and Duke of Ravenna, seneschal
of Henry VI., who after the death of the Emperor Henry VI. disputed the
power of the Regent Constance acting for her son, Frederick II. (See
Boehmer-Ficker, _Regesta Imperii_, V, vol. 1, No. 511. v. ad. annum
1197.)--_Translator._
Here, too, historical references are nearly superfluous. Every one
is familiar with the fact that at the courts of the Western European
feudal kingdoms, besides the relatives of the king and some noble
vassals, there were also elements from the lower groups, occupying high
positions, clerics and great warriors of the plebeian class. Among the
immediate following of Charlemagne all the races and peoples of his
empire were represented. Also in the tales of Theodoric the Goth in
the Dietrich Saga of the _Niebelungen Lied_, this rise of brave sons
of the subject races finds its reflection. In addition to these, there
follow some less well-known instances.
In Egypt, as far back as the Old Empire, there is found alongside the
royal officials of the feudal nobility, who are the descendants of the
Shepherd conquerors, administering their districts as representatives
of the crown, with plenary powers as deputies, “_a mass of court
officials_ trusted with determined functions of government.” It
“originated with the _servants_ employed at the courts of the princes,
_such as prisoners of war, refugees etc._”[127] The fable of Joseph
shows a state of affairs known at that time to be a usual occurrence,
of the rise of a slave to the position of an all powerful minister
of state. At the present day such a career is within the realm of
possibility at any oriental court, such as Persia, Turkey, or Morocco,
etc. In the case of old Marshal Derflinger, in the time of Friedrich
Wilhelm I., the Great Elector, at a much later date, we have an
example from the transition of the developed feudal state to a more
modern form of the state, which might be multiplied by the examples of
innumerable other brave swordsmen.
Let us add a few instances from the peoples “disregarded by history.”
Ratzel tells of the realm of Bornu: “The freemen have not lost the
consciousness of their free descent, in contrast with the slaves of
the sheik; but the rulers place more confidence in their slaves than
in their own kinsmen and free associates of their tribe. They can
count on the devotion of the former. Not only positions at court, but
the defense of the country was from ancient times preferably confided
to slaves. The brothers of the prince, as well as the more ambitious
or more efficient sons, are objects of suspicion; and while the most
important places at court are in the hands of slaves, the princes are
put at posts far from the seat of government. Their salaries are paid
from the incomes of the offices and the taxes from the provinces.”[128]
Among the Fulbe “society is divided into princes, chieftains, commons
and slaves. The slaves of the king play a great rôle as soldiers and
officials, and may hope for the highest offices in the state.”[129]
This nobility of the court’s creation may, in certain cases, be
admitted to the great imperial offices, so that according to the method
stated above, it may achieve the sovereignty over a territory. In the
developed feudal state, it represents the high nobility; and usually
manages to preserve its rank, even when some more powerful neighbor
has mediatized it by incorporating the state. The Frankish higher
nobility certainly contains such elements from the original lower
group;[130] and since from its blood the entire upper nobility of the
European civilized states has been descended at least in direct line by
marriage, we find an ethnic amalgamation, both in the present day group
of subjects and in the highest order of the ruling class. And the same
applies to Egypt: “With the sinking of the royal authority in the time
of the decay, the higher officials abuse their power for personal ends,
to make their offices hereditary in their families, and thereby to call
into existence an official nobility not differentiated from the rest
of the population.”[131]
And finally, the same process, from the same causes, takes hold of
the present middle class, the lower stratum of the master class,
the officials and officers of the great feudatories. At first there
still exists a social difference between, on the one hand, the free
vassals, the subfeudatories of the great landlord, kinsmen, younger
sons of other noble families, impoverished associates from the same
district, in isolated cases freeborn sons of peasants, free refugees
and professional ruffians of free descent; and on the other, if the
term may be allowed, the subalterns of the guards of plebeian descent.
But lack of freedom advances, while freedom sinks in social value; and
here too the ruler places more reliance on his creatures than on his
peers. Here also, sooner or later, the process of amalgamation becomes
complete. In Germany, as late as 1085, the non-free nobility of the
court ranks between “_servi et litones_” while a century afterward
it is placed with the “_liberi et nobiles_.” In the course of the
thirteenth century, it has been completely absorbed, along with the
free vassals, into the nobility by chivalry. The two orders in the
meantime tend to become equal economically; both have subinfeudations,
fiefs on the obligation of service in warfare, and the service feuds of
the bondsmen; while all the fiefs of the “ministerials” or sergeants
have in the meantime become as heritable as are those of the free
vassals, as much so as are the patrimonies of the few surviving smaller
territorial lords belonging to the original nobility, who may still
have escaped the grasp of the great territorial principalities.
In ways quite analogous to this the development went on in all other
feudal states of Western Europe; while its exact counterpart is found
in the extremest Orient on the edge of the Eurasian continent, in
Japan. The daimio are the higher nobility; the samurai, the chivalry,
the nobility of the sword.
(e) THE DEVELOPED FEUDAL STATE
With this the feudal state has reached its pinnacle. It forms,
politically and socially, a hierarchy of numerous strata; of which, in
all cases, the lower is bound to render service to the next above it,
and the superior is bound to render protection to the one below. The
pyramid rests on the laboring population, of whom the major part are as
yet peasants; the surplus of their labor, the ground rental, the entire
“surplus value” of the economic means is used to support the upper
strata of society. This ground rent from the majority of estates is
turned over to the small holders of fiefs, except where these estates
are still in the immediate possession of the prince or of the crown and
have not as yet been granted as fiefs. The holders of them are bound in
return to provide the stipulated military service, and also, in certain
cases, to render labor of an economic value. The larger vassal is in
turn bound to serve the great tenants of the crown; who in their turn
are, at least at strict law, under similar obligation toward the bearer
of the central power; while emperor, king, sultan, shah, or Pharaoh
in their turn, are regarded as the vassals of the tribal god. Thus
there starts from the fields, whose peasantry support and nourish all,
and mounts up to the “king of heaven” an artificially graded order of
ranks, which constricts so absolutely all the life of the state, that
according to custom and law neither a bit of land nor a man can be
understood unless within its fold. Since all rights originally created
for the common freemen have either been resumed by the state, or else
have been distorted by the victorious princes of territories, it comes
about that a person not in some feudal relation to some superior must
in fact be “without the law,” be without claim for protection or
justice, i. e., be outside the scope of that power which alone affords
justice. Therefore the rule, _nulle terre sans seigneur_, appearing to
us at first blush as an ebullition of feudal arrogance, is as a matter
of fact the codification of an existing new state of law, or at the
very least the clearing away of some archaic remnants, no longer to be
tolerated, of the completely discarded _primitive_ feudal state.
Those philosophers of history who pretend to explain every historic
development from the quality of “races,” give as the center of their
strategic position the alleged fact, that only the Germans, thanks
to their superior “political capacity,” have managed to raise the
artistic edifice of the developed feudal state. Some of the vigor of
this argument has departed, since the conviction began to dawn on them
that in Japan, the Mongol race had accomplished this identical result.
No one can tell what the negro races might have done, had not the
irruption of stronger civilizations barred their way, and yet Uganda
does not differ very greatly from the empires of the Carolingians or of
Boleslaw the Red, except that men did not have in Uganda any “values of
tradition” of mediæval culture: and these values were not any merit of
the Germanic races, but a gift wherewith fortune endowed them.
Shifting the discussion from the negro to the “Semites,” we find the
charge made that this race has absolutely no capacity for the formation
of states. And yet we find, thousands of years ago, this same feudal
system developed, by Semites, if the founders of the Egyptian kingdom
were Semites. One would think the following description of Thurnwald
were taken from the period of the Hohenstaufen emperors: “Whoever
entered the following of some powerful one, was thereafter protected
by him as though he had been the head of the family. This relation ...
betokens a fiduciary relation similar to vassalage. This relation of
protection in return for allegiance tends to become the basis of the
organization of all Egyptian society. It is the basis of the relations
of the feudal lord to his sergeants and peasants, as it is that of the
Pharaoh to his officials. The cohesion of the individuals in groups
subject to common protecting lords, is founded on this view, even up to
the apex of the pyramid, to the king himself regarded as ‘the vicar of
his ancestors,’ as the vassal of the gods on earth.... Whosoever stands
without this social grasp, a ‘man without a master,’ is without the
pale of protection and therefore without the law.”[133]
The hypothesis of the endowment of any particular race has not been
used by us, and we have no need of it. As Herbert Spencer says, it is
the stupidest of all imaginable attempts to construct a philosophy of
history.
The first characteristic of the developed feudal state is the manifold
gradation of ranks built up into the one pyramid of mutual dependence.
Its second distinctive mark is the amalgamation of the ethnic groups,
originally separated.
The consciousness formerly existent of difference of _races_ has
disappeared completely. There remains only the _difference of classes_.
Henceforth we shall deal only with social classes, and no longer
with ethnic groups. The social contrast is the only ruling factor
in the life of the state. Consistently with this the ethnic group
consciousness changes to a class consciousness, the theories of the
group, to the theories of the class. Yet they do not thereby change in
the least their essence. The new dominating classes are just as full
of their divine right as was the former master group, and it soon is
seen that the new nobility of the sword manages to forget, quickly and
thoroughly, its descent from the vanquished group; while the former
freemen now declassed, or the former petty nobles sunk in the social
scale, henceforth swear just as firmly by “natural law” as did formerly
only the subjected tribes.
The developed feudal state is, in its essentials, exactly the same
thing as it was when yet in the second stage of state formation.
Its form is that of dominion, its reason for being, the political
exploitation of the economic means, limited by public law, which
compels the master class to give the correlative protection, and which
guarantees to the lower class the right of being protected, to the
extent that they are kept working and paying taxes, that they may
fulfil their duty to their masters. In its essentials government has
not changed, it has only been disposed in more grades; and the same
applies to the exploitation, or as the economic theory puts it, “the
distribution” of wealth.
Just as formerly, so now, the internal policy of these states swings in
that orbit prescribed by the parallelogram of the centrifugal thrust
of the former group contests, now class wars, counteracted by the
centripetal pull of the common interests. Just as formerly, so now, its
foreign policy is determined by the striving of its master class for
new lands and serfs, a thrust for extension caused at the same time by
the still existing need of self-preservation. Although differentiated
much more minutely, and integrated much more powerfully, the developed
feudal state is in the end nothing more than the primitive state
arrived at its maturity.