Chapter 4 — The Three Orders

The three orders are the clergy (those who pray), the nobility (those who fight), and the peasants (those who work). French priests believed people belonged to one of these categories depending on their work. The clergy formed the first order, the nobility the second, and the peasants the third.

Feudalism is derived from the German word 'feud', meaning a piece of land. It refers to the economic, legal, political, and social relationships that existed in medieval Europe. It first developed in medieval France, and later in England and southern Italy. As an established way of life it emerged in the eleventh century, though its roots have been traced to practices in the Roman Empire and the age of Charlemagne (742–814).

Charlemagne (742–814) was a Frankish king. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned him Holy Roman Emperor to ensure his support for the Church. He succeeded his father Pepin in 768. The roots of feudalism have been traced to practices during his reign.

Vassalage was the practice by which the big landowners (nobles) became vassals of the king, and peasants became vassals of the landowners. A nobleman accepted the king as his seigneur (senior) and they made a mutual promise: the lord would protect the vassal, who would be loyal to him. This relationship involved elaborate rituals and exchange of vows taken on the Bible in a church; at the ceremony the vassal received a written charter, a staff, or a clod of earth as a symbol of the land given to him.

A fief was a piece of land given by a lord to a knight. It extended to anything between 1,000 and 2,000 acres or more, including a house for the knight and his family, a church, other establishments for his dependants, a watermill, and a wine-press. In exchange, the knight paid his lord a regular fee and promised to fight for him in war. The fief could be inherited.

Serfs cultivated plots of land that belonged to the lord; much of the produce had to be given to the lord and they also had to work on the lord's land exclusively. They received no wages and could not leave the estate without the lord's permission. They were forced to use only their lord's mill to grind flour, his oven to bake bread, and his wine-presses. The lord could also decide whom a serf should marry, or give his blessing on payment of a fee.

The Catholic Church had its own laws, owned lands given to it by rulers, and could levy taxes, making it a powerful institution independent of the king. It was headed by the Pope in Rome. The Church was entitled to a tithe — a tenth share of whatever peasants produced from their land each year. Bishops were the religious nobility, held vast estates, and lived in grand palaces. Most villages had their own church where people assembled every Sunday.

Monasteries were religious communities where devout Christians lived in isolation, spending their time in prayer, study, and manual labour like farming. Unlike the priesthood, monastic life was open to both men and women (men became monks, women nuns). Two well-known monasteries were that of St Benedict established in Italy in 529 and of Cluny in Burgundy in 910. From small communities of 10 or 20, monasteries grew to several hundred members with large buildings, landed estates, and attached schools, colleges, and hospitals. From the thirteenth century, some monks called friars chose to move from place to place preaching and living on charity.

By the eleventh century, cultivators replaced wooden ploughs with heavy iron-tipped ploughs and mould-boards that could dig much deeper. The shoulder-harness replaced the neck-harness, enabling animals to exert greater power. Iron horseshoes prevented foot decay in horses. There was increased use of windmills and water-powered mills. The most revolutionary change was the switch from a two-field to a three-field system: one field was planted with wheat or rye in autumn, a second with peas, beans, lentils, oats, or barley in spring, and the third lay fallow. This rotation doubled food availability and shrank the average peasant farm from about 100 acres to 20–30 acres by the thirteenth century.

The Black Death was the bubonic plague carried by rats arriving on trade ships. It hit western Europe between 1347 and 1350. Modern estimates indicate that 20 per cent of the people of the whole of Europe died, with some places losing as much as 40 per cent of the population. Europe's population fell from 73 million in 1300 to 45 million in 1400. The plague caused severe labour shortages, wage rates in England rose by as much as 250 per cent in its aftermath, and agricultural prices dropped. It contributed to major social dislocation and peasant revolts.

After the Black Death, the income of lords declined as agricultural prices fell and wage demands rose. Lords tried to reimpose labour services they had earlier replaced with money-contracts, which was violently opposed by peasants, particularly the better-educated and more prosperous ones. Peasants revolted in Flanders in 1323, in France in 1358, and in England in 1381. Though ruthlessly crushed, these revolts were significant because they occurred in areas that had experienced earlier economic prosperity, and they ensured that old feudal privileges could not be fully reinstated.

The new monarchs were absolutist rulers who strengthened their military and financial power. They included Louis XI in France (1461–83), Maximilian in Austria, Henry VII in England, and Isabelle and Ferdinand in Spain. They replaced the feudal levy system with professionally trained infantry equipped with guns and siege artillery, organised standing armies, permanent bureaucracies, and national taxation. The resistance of the aristocracies crumbled before their firepower.

From the eleventh century, towns grew as surplus agricultural production created demand for markets. Towns offered paid work and freedom from the lord's control. 'Town air makes free' referred to the rule that if a serf could stay in a town for one year and one day without his lord discovering him, he would become a free man. The bigger towns had populations of about 30,000. Economic organisation in towns was based on guilds — associations controlling the quality, price, and sale of each craft or industry's products.

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) was one of the earliest French scholars to work on feudalism. He argued that history consisted of much more than political history, international relations, and the lives of great people, and emphasised the importance of geography in shaping human history. His work Feudal Society covers European — particularly French — society between 900 and 1300, describing in detail social relations and hierarchies, land management, and the popular culture of the period. His career was cut short when he was shot by the Nazis in the Second World War.

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