The Historians' History of the World 08

Everything belonged to the lord; but since there was no industry or commerce, no luxury by which one alone could consume in a few moments the fruit of the labour of many, the exactions of this lord were not at first oppressive, and for the villeins these exactions were as systematically determined as are to-day the rights of the landlord over his farmer-tenants. Only in the Middle Ages was there always the element of arbitrariness and violence which modern law does not allow. The villeins’ tax was paid either in natural produce, as provisions, corn, cattle, and fowl, products of the soil and the farm; or in work, or manual labour, as statute labour in the fields and vineyards of the lord, in the building of his castle, or digging ditches, in the repair of roads; or the making of furniture, utensils, horseshoes, ploughshares, carts, etc. In towns and wherever money was scarce, the lord did not make the mistake, it must be understood, of demanding his dues in coin, or of imposing arbitrary taxes. But let us go back to the times themselves and listen to the words of a scribe: “The lord who demands unjust rights of his villein, does so at the peril of his soul.” If the fear of heaven did not suffice, here were the commoners coming to the rescue, and the king’s officials were not far behind.

There were some strange compensations to enliven the sad life of the feudal lord, shut up the whole year within the sombre walls of his castle. At Bologna, in Italy, the tenantry of the Benedictines of St. Procule paid as a tax the steam from a boiled capon. Every year each man brought his capon between two plates to the abbot, uncovered it, and, the steam having all been given off, was quits, and took his capon back with him. Elsewhere the peasants brought solemnly before their lord, in a carriage drawn by four horses, a little bird, or perhaps a may-bush decorated with ribbons. The man who owned a monkey was quits, according to an ordinance of St. Louis, when he had caused the monkey to perform before the lord’s tax-gatherer; the jongleur had to pay with one song. The lords themselves did not refuse, sometimes, to play a rôle in these folk comedies. The markgraf of Jülich, whenever he made a solemn entry, was mounted on a one-eyed horse, with wooden saddle, and bridle of bark from the linden, and wearing two spires of hawthorn, and carrying a white stick. When the abbé of Figeac came into town the lord of Monbrun received him in a most grotesque costume with one leg bare.

Feudalism, bored with itself, laughed sometimes with the poor people, as did also the church when she authorised the celebration in the basilicas of the feast of the Asses. The powerful and the fortunate, in this age so sad and so stern, where misery was everywhere and security nowhere, owed much to their villeins and peasants for giving them some moments of forgetfulness and pleasure.

ANARCHY AND VIOLENCE; FRIGHTFUL CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS AND SOME HAPPY RESULTS THEREFROM

They were in truth hard times for the poor people, these Middle Ages, when in spite of all the formulæ and other conventions, the noble did not believe in anything but the right of the sword. In theory the principles of the feudal relation were very beautiful; in practise they nearly brought matters to a state of anarchy, for its judicial institutions were too defective to prevent the tie of vassalage from being constantly broken. Here lay the cause of the interminable wars which broke out in all parts of feudal Europe, and which were the great affliction of that epoch. Everyone could have recourse to his sword in a proven wrong or a sentence he deemed unjust, and a state of war was chronic in that society. Every hill became a fortress; every plain a field of battle.

Shut up in strong castles, covered with mail, and surrounded by armed men, the feudal lords, “the tyrants,” as a monk of the eleventh century calls them, lived but to fight, and knew no other mode of enrichment than pillage. There was no more commerce—the roads were no longer safe; no more industry, for the lords, masters of the towns, levied upon the burghers as soon as some little sign of wealth would appear. The most different customs were established everywhere, since there was no longer any general legislation, each noble having sole law-making power on his own fief.[83] Everywhere, likewise, there was the deepest ignorance except perhaps in the heart of some of the monasteries; and the clergy, guardians of moral law, were compelled not to forbid violence, but to regulate it by the “Truce of God” [Treuga Dei], which forbade killing and robbing from Wednesday evening to Monday morning.