Which Of The Following Elements Best Describe The Makeup Of A Feudal Army?

This article deals with the feudal organisation of Medieval Europe, focussing on western Europe.

The term "feudal system" is used by historians to describe a social-political construction which was a key feature of medieval Europe. Its significance goes far across its role in a few centuries in the European Heart Ages, even so. It helped shape globe history equally a whole, by giving rise to early forms of representative government. It was on these foundations that modern democracy would be built.

Contents

Introduction

A pyramid of fiefs

How did the feudal arrangement arise?

Manorialism

Feudal complication

How did towns fit into the feudal system?

The ascension of representative assemblies

The pass up of feudalism

Farther study

Introduction

Not all historians like the term. They regard it as inadequate in describing an extraordinarily complex situation. Even so, the alternative is to get bogged downwardly in detailed descriptions and qualifications which risk overwhelming all but specialist medievalists. As a shorthand, feudalism will do as well as any other.

The give-and-take "feudal" derives from the give-and-take fief. In cursory, a fief was a piece of holding which a person was given on condition that he (and occasionally she) performed certain services to the one who gave it.

A person who received a fief was a vassal of the i who had given him the fief, who was his lord. In the agrestal lodge of medieval Europe, a fief was usually a specified parcel of land.

The services the vassal owed the lord commonly entailed military machine service for a set up amount of time each year (40 days was normal). This would depend on the amount of country involved, which was calculated in multiples of knight's fees. A knight'southward fee was normal the smallest fiefs, a sufficient amount of state to back up one knight – enough country, in other words, to support a warrior and his very expensive war-horses, armor and weapons, plus his family and servants (including at least i retainer to assist him while on entrada).

So, if a vassal had been granted a fief worth twoscore knight's fees (a very big fief), he would exist obliged to replenish his lord with 40 knights for 40 days a year. If he had only been given i knight's fee, he would either undertake the service himself or (if old or frail) transport a substitute.

A vassals was as well obliged to provide his lord with money from fourth dimension to fourth dimension – for case, when the lord's son came of age, or the lord's daughter got married, or if the lord was captured in battle and needed ransoming (quite a common occurrence – a soldier would far prefer to take an enemy prisoner than kill him, as a defeated opponent was worth a lot more alive than dead). He also had a duty to provide his lord with advice. This last was very important for what it led on to (run across below, Representative Regime).

In return for these services, the lord would promise to protect his vassal (a very valuable delivery in violent times); and to "give him justice" (that is, back up him in courtroom).

All these promises and counter-promises were accompanied past solemn oaths, so that the whole was underpinned by stiff religious sanctions – which, in a deeply religious age, counted for a great bargain.

Harold swearing oath on holy relics to William, Duke of Normandy.

A pyramid of fiefs

The term "feudal system" came into use to describe a hierarchy of relationships which embraced medieval Europe, involving fief-holders of unlike ranks.

A fief-holder was able to hive off role of his fief to course a smaller fief for a vassal of his own (in substitution for the traditional obligations, of form). So, a powerful vassal of a king, say, who had a fief worth 40 knight's fees, could grant his own vassals lesser fiefs of 5 knight's fees each from his own fief. They in turn could grant a fief of one knight's fee to vassals of their ain.

In this way, near fief-holders were both lords and vassals; and kingdoms came to resemble, from top to bottom, pyramids of greater and lesser fiefs. Those who held just one knight's fee were lords of the peasants who farmed the land in their pocket-sized fief. In feudal society everyone was supposed to take a lord – except the king at the peak, who had no lord (at least, not on Earth: he was regarded as God'due south vassal).

The different ranks of fief-holders formed the elite of medieval European club. A feudal kingdom was divided amidst several great "magnates" (leading nobles such as dukes and counts, who controlled large fiefs), who were the direct vassals of the king. These magnates had lesser barons as their vassals, and these in plow had the holders of individual knight's fees as their vassals. Until the ninth or 10th centuries, this fief-holding was in theory for ane lifetime only. It gradually became hereditary in do, and from about 1000 was hereditary in law as well: fiefs were granted to a vassal and his heirs later him.

Privatized power

The main implication for all this was that power was widely distributed. A king was regarded as owning all the land of his kingdom, and to command its entire armed forces and economic resource. However, he owned his land, and exercised his authority, through a large number of vassals.

Armed services power

For armed services purposes, the mechanism by which a feudal king could mobilize the military resources of his realm was to lodge his direct vassals, the magnates, to provide him with soldiers. The magnates in turn ordered their ain vassals (the lesser barons) to provide them with soldiers to fight for the rex. These barons and then ordered their vassals to go and bring together the lord's standard and fight for the king. All this gave the vassals and sub-vassals a great deal of power to raise troops, which they occasionally used against a king rather than on his behalf.

In battle, these diverse vassals would fight under their lords' command.

Justice and administration

In terms of exercising justice, making laws, and overseeing administrative matters, a similar situation prevailed. The king presided over his magnates in the royal council. The magnates oversaw justice and administration within their own fiefs, and lesser vassals did too within their sub-fiefs. At the bottom of the pyramid, the holder of a knight'due south fee presided over a manor courts, overseeing the diplomacy of the village. As lesser lords jealously guarded their legal jurisdictions confronting encroachment from above, feudal administration tended to be very fragmented and localized.

Private realms

From all this, it is clear that a fief was not just a piece of private property, in the sense that we would recognize today; information technology carried with it what we would at present regard as public responsibilities, which are normally exercised by such public bodies as cardinal government, local government, police force courts and so on. In medieval Europe these public responsibilities had been granted away to individuals, along with the country over which they were exercised. The stardom between private and public matters was blurred to the betoken of non-existence.

How did the feudal system arise?

With the peace and stability of the Roman Empire gone, the Germanic invaders established several kingdoms just struggled to impose club and organization on their territories. One of these kingdoms, that of the Franks, conquered most of the others to rule a large expanse of western Europe. The Frankish kings appointed dukes and counts to rule the various districts into which their realm was divided.

From the early 9th century onwards, the lands of western Europe came under renewed set on, at present from the Vikings in the north, the Arabs in the south, and the Magyars in the east. These invaders raided deep into the interior. Vikings sailed far up rivers to strike at unsuspecting towns, villages and monasteries, and bands of Magyars rode on their fast ponies on long raids from cardinal Europe equally far equally western France.

Disintegration

At the same fourth dimension, the Frankish realm was falling apart. Members of the regal family fought amidst themselves for territory, and the incessant ceremonious wars created a matted and fragmented gild. At the all-time of times the kings would have constitute it hard to provide effective protection confronting the Vikings raiders, given the archaic communications of the day. In the anarchic weather of the ninth and tenth centuries, they constitute information technology impossible.

In these circumstances the local dukes and counts (who we will telephone call "magnates", and who now routinely passed their offices on from father to son) filled the power vacuum and were able to organize resistance (or payment) to invaders. They built upwards local defenses around a growing network of castles – new defensive structures which give much-needed protection in a violent and disorderly club.

Within their territories, the magnates increasingly usurped the royal authority. Their own domains, however, were subject area to the same process of fragmentation. Command of a castle gives its local lord strong protection against strange raiders, confronting neighboring lords – and against his superior lord. Commanders of castles ("castellans") increasingly treated their castles and the land around them equally their own.

The result was that public authority at every level disintegrated, and the functions of government – military machine, judicial, administrative – became devolved and privatized in the easily of regional magnates and local lords. A kings' directly power was bars to his own semi-private territories (royal domains). In the wider realms, he could no longer effect orders to officials obedient to his control; instead he had to win the cooperation of the magnates through a process of negotiation. When a rex lost the support of his magnates, as happened on a regular basis, he lost control of his kingdom.

It is this devolution of ability from king to count, and from count to local lord, that gave rising to the social-political miracle we call the "feudal organization". It was based on personal loyalties and common obligations between kings, magnates, local lords and their followers. It was only through these ties that some kind of order was able to prevail throughout the medieval realms, and that kings were able to mobilize the military resource of their kingdoms.

As feudal relationships became more established, the Church was called upon to give them religious sanction in the ceremonies of investiture in which lords and vassals swore solemn oaths to sanctified the agreements between them. The Church and so played a major part in defining the ideal upstanding behavior of the feudal nobility, and thus helped to give rising to the chivalric code of knighthood.

Knights

It tin can be seen from the above that bullwork arose as a response to circumstances in which endemic warfare was the order of the day. The feudal social club was one organized for war; a central reason for its coming into being was the need for kings and great lords to call forth armies of mounted warriors. This is implicit in the fact that the entire fief-organization was based on multiples of knights' fees.

From the tenth century at the latest the central figure of medieval warfare was the mounted warrior. This figure is known by various names in different parts of Europe – chevalier in France, cavalier in Italia, caballero in Spain, ritter in Federal republic of germany and knight in England.

The innovation which gave mounted warriors a distinct advantage over soldiers fighting on pes seems to accept been the iron stirrup. This allowed them to put their whole weight behind their weapons – lances, battle axes, great swords – which combined with the peak the horse to give them a decisive military superiority.

These mounted soldiers began life as rough henchmen of the magnates and local lords. However, with the increasing expense of their equipment – horses, armor then on – lords found information technology more convenient to grant many of them their ain minor fiefs, so that they could pay their own expenses. This turned them into fully-fledged, albeit junior, members of the landed aristocracy. In most of Europe (the British Isles are the exemption hither, as in much else) this chivalry class gained all the legal privileges of the college dignity.

Manorialism

Manors were economical and political units – blocs of farm state which formed the base of operations on which the whole panoply of fief-holding was built. Fiefs consisted of one or more manors; and manors provided a fief-holder with income, status and power.

Manorialism had its origins in Roman times. The classical estates which had dominated the land-belongings patterns of Greek and Roman gild – big, slave-run farms surrounding villa complexes – evolved into proto-manors of the after Roman empire. This evolution took identify for a number of reasons: sources of cheap slaves became less reliable; heavy taxation impoverished the class of independent peasant farmers, who sought protection by selling their lands to local landowners; new laws bound peasants to their hereditary farms, thus starting them down on the road to serfdom; and many bottom landowners, similar the contained peasants, were crushed by the weight of taxation then were forced to sell to larger landowners. In this way estates grew larger, and gangs of slaves were succeeded by peasant masses tied to the estate on an hereditary basis.

These big estates of the late Roman empire were much more than economically cocky-sufficient than their predecessors had been. For example, workshops allowed the farming equipment to be maintained – and much of it probably fabricated – on site. More of the food produced was for dwelling house consumption. The estates became less tied into the urban marketplace economy, which was in any case shrinking drastically as trade routes were disrupted.

This self-sufficiency enabled these estates to survive much better than the towns during the anarchy of the years when the western Roman empire collapsed. In this menstruum they became the dominant social and economic unit of measurement, their owners – Roman landowning families alongside newly arrived German chieftains, with the two gradually intermarrying to course a single elite: the new landed nobility.

Miniature states

The flow of chaos must also have forced the estates to function equally so many little principalities, seeing to their own defence force and administering their own law and order. From being merely landowners, manor owners became local lords. The new German kings did non maintain large professional armies, equally the Romans had washed, but continued to use the tribal levies. Under this arrangement, German tribal nobles, who had been invested with some of these estates (theoretically a third of all land in conquered territories was given to the new German invaders), had to bring themselves and their warriors to the royal standard at the start of a campaign. For the residual of the time these followers lived in their lords' halls, provided for out of the proceeds of the estate.

In the new disorders of the 9th and 10th centuries, these primitive arrangements were modified past the emergence of formal feudal lord/vassal relationships. At the aforementioned fourth dimension the old tribal warrior, fighting on foot, became the mounted warrior, who was a much more than expensive military asset. This led to the sub-infeudation of the larger estates as these mounted warriors received grants of land from which to support themselves. The one-time estates became lordships consisting of several knight's fees, with much of their land at present parceled out as new manors of ane knight's fee each.

Characteristics of manors

Traditionally, manors were at least the equivalent of ane knight'due south fee. Originally they were formed of unmarried village communities, but over time, as pieces of country were given abroad here and acquired in that location, many manors came to be scattered through several neighboring villages; the corollary of this was that villages were often divided amid more than than ane estate. Alternatively they could be lumped together with other villages into a big manor (of several knight'southward fees).

The defining feature of a manor was that it was "held in the hand" (the word manor comes from the Latin for "hand") by a lord. This lord could be a secular lord like a knight or a baron, or an ecclesiastical lord like a bishop, church or monastery. Whoever or whatever the lord was, he or information technology had control over the country and people of the manor. This power involved economic, judicial/administrative and armed services power: the lord had a right to a share in his people's labor or income; the people of the manor were subject area to the manorial courtroom, presided over by the lord or his official, which ordered their lives; and the men of he manor were liable to exist called to follow their lord to war, fighting under his orders.

The peachy hall at Penshurst Place, Kent, built in the mid 14th century

 A estate unremarkably consisted of three parts:

i. demesne land, directly under the control of the lord and his officials, the purpose of which was to support him and his household;

2. dependent country, which carried obligations to the lord, usually mainly labor service simply frequently including contributions in kind, or fifty-fifty coin gifts – this land was farmed past serfs; and

three. complimentary lands, for which peasants paid money rent – this country was farmed past gratis peasants called  yeomen (in English).

Serfs

Dependent land was farmed by "serfs": peasants who were leap to the manor on an hereditary footing, and had hereditary obligations to the lord. These unremarkably involving working on his demesne land for a set number of days per week, and giving him gifts in kind or money on certain days. Serfs were not immune to exit the manor without the lord'due south permission. Nor were they immune to marry without his permission; they commonly had to pay a "fine" (or tax) for permission to marry. When a son inherited land from his father he too had to pay a fine, and about punishments in the manorial court were dealt out equally fines (hence our association of the word "fine" with punishment).

The balance between demesne, dependent and free state varied from manor to manor, and more so from region to region (for instance, in that location tended to be many more complimentary peasants in southern Europe, whereas information technology has been estimated that serfs made up xc% of the peasants in twelfth century England and northern French republic). It also varied over time, as a lord took more land into his demesne, or divided demesne land amongst his serfs and free peasants.

Besides every bit labor services and rents in kind or money, lords could usually excerpt fees for the apply of the estate'south mill, bakery or wine press.

Costumes of slaves or serfs, from the sixth to the twelfth centuries
collected by H. de Vielcastel from original documents in European libraries

Manors usually attempted to be every bit cocky-sufficient as possible. The work of making and repairing equipment, for example, was carried out as far as practicable inside the manor. Towns were few and far between, and transporting goods to and from them was slow and expensive, then self-sufficiency was a sensible aim.

Feudal complexity

Information technology is common in school text books for bullwork to be depicted as a pyramid – and we take done the same here. Still, it should exist borne in mind that bullwork could requite rising to fiendish complexity; spaghetti might correspond it better.

We have seen how the original manors covered singe villages, but often came later to be scattered over several. As in this instance, most complexities arose after fief-property had become hereditary.

For example, a vassal of one lord might marry the heiress of the vassal of another lord, thus acquiring obligations to a unlike lord. What happened if these lords became enemies? This was not an unusual situation. The most famous case is probably that of the dukes of Burgundy, who in the 15th century held lands from both the king of France and the emperor of Frg, who were hereditary rivals.

Things could become more than complicated still. The counts of Anjou, vassals of the king of French republic, acquired by wedlock, inheritance and a good bit of skulduggery several surrounding fiefs including of Aquitaine and Normandy. They thus came to rule more of France than his nominal superior, the king – and this was before he inherited the throne of England equally king Henry 2 (reigned 1153-89).

How did towns fit into the feudal system?

Fiefs and manors were essentially blocks of land from which income could be drawn, in the form of a share in the labor of the peasantry, or in the produce of the soil, or of money revenue from these. It was a organisation for a rural economic system.

This made sense when, in the centuries after the fall of Rome, towns were few and far between, and those which did still exist were tiny.

"Towns make free"

The inhabitants of towns did not fit neatly into the feudal scheme of things. Many early on towns were located in areas between manors. They formed no part of whatsoever fief and were accountable directly to the king. Other towns grew upwards within existing fiefs. In either case, it was quite impossible for a king to a corking lord to deal with each private within a town, so they dealt with towns as whole communities – which in exercise meant dealing with the leaders of the towns.

It followed from this that, in internal matters, towns were able to run their own affairs with a comparatively complimentary mitt, and that townsmen, as individuals, were free of feudal obligations. This was nearly clearly expressed in the medieval proverb that "towns make free". Famously, if a serf arrived in a boondocks and was able to stay there for a twelvemonth and a twenty-four hour period without being caught and sent back to his estate, he became a costless denizen of that town.

Wealthy towns and powerful cities

If the medieval economy expanded and towns became wealthier, their leaders were able to bargain with their superiors, whether king or lords, for more autonomy. Large towns and cities thus came to run their own affairs with minimal interference from kings and other rulers. The revenue they contributed to the imperial and feudal coffers effectively purchased their autonomy. In England and France, the key cities of London and Paris were treated with neat respect by their kings, while smaller cities enjoyed a loftier degree of freedom from imperial or feudal interference. The cities of Spain gained the right to govern themselves, and those of fundamental Italian republic which were function of the Papal States owed just loose obedience to the pope (a duty which they frequently ignored).

In parts of Europe, many cities became finer independent states in their own right. In Deutschland, even adequately minor towns gained a large measure of independence due to the problems the Holy Roman emperors had in imposing their will across their realms. In Flanders, the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres became self-governing city-states, only nominally subject field to the local count. In northern Italy, the wealth of leading towns such equally Venice, Genoa, Milan and Florence fabricated them amid some of the well-nigh powerful states in Europe.

The ascent of representative assemblies

It can be seen from this description of the feudal system that at middle of information technology was a organisation of relationships betwixt lords and their vassals, with rights and duties on both sides. It followed from this that medieval lords did non have dictatorial powers over their vassal. For example, a lord had no rights to help himself to his vassal'south property. Indeed, embedded in the system of western European feudalism was the principle that a lord could not tax his subjects without their consent.

The fundamental to rulers gaining the consent of their leading subjects was to seek their communication: to bring them in on his thinking, mind to their anxieties, and adapt his policies accordingly. Indeed, as we have seen, ane of the duties of a vassal to his lord was to provide him with counsel; and vassals regarded this duty as one of their nigh cherished privileges, that their lord should consult with them on important matters. Each lord had his council of vassals, which provided the forum for such consultation.

Over time, as towns and cities became wealthier, kings' "great councils" expanded to include not simply leading nobles and churchmen, only also representatives from the major towns. The great councils evolved into assemblies which represented the chief "estates" of the medieval realm: nobility, church and commoners (and in some cases, every bit in Sweden, peasants formed their own manor).

These assemblies went past different names: in Spain, they were theCortes; in France, theEstates-General; in Federal republic of germany, theLandtage, in Scandinavia theRigstag or Rikstag; and in England, Scotland, Republic of ireland, Sicily, the Papal States and the kingdom of Naples, they wereParliaments. They all had like origins, in rulers' obligations to consult with their leading vassals.

One of the key principles that underlay this development was the idea that one person could speak for many. This meant not only communicating their views but committing them to activeness (such as paying a tax). Given the responsibility of this role, information technology was important that the representative should exist someone who commanded the confidence of the majority of those whom he represented. The notion of electing representatives by majority vote thus took hold, and and so adult a practise which would prevarication at the eye of modern democracy.

The decline of feudalism

In the centuries later 1000, the economic system of western Europe expanded vastly, along with its population. Coinage increasingly came in to apportionment, and a money economy gained ground.

In these circumstances, the shortcomings of feudalism every bit a manner of raising troops became glaringly obvious. The expanding economies of their kingdoms enabled kings (often in consultation with representative assemblies) to enhance taxes and pay for armies of total-fourth dimension professional soldiers. This development of course increased the importance of representative assemblies; information technology besides struck at the very heart of feudalism, with nobles and knights becoming primarily landed gentry rather than serving warriors.

The onetime Feudal system is beginning to give way to early Modernistic Europe.

To a higher place all, these developments put much more power into the hands of monarchs and their officials. Gradually, these were able to wrest control of justice and administration from fief-holders, so that centralized states were able to sally.

In some places, such as England and Kingdom of the netherlands, the afterwards Middle Ages saw the manorial economy replaced by something new. The Blackness Expiry of the mid-14th century, forth with subsequent local outbreaks of plague which kept the population of western Europe in check, acquired a shortage of labor, which naturally increased its value. The labor services which serfs owed thus became less profitable to the lords, who came therefore to adopt money rents instead. Manors were increasingly divided upwardly into individual individual farms, each under its own tenant farmer. In these areas, serfdom had more or less vanished past the end of the Eye Ages.

In these ways, while elements of feudalism continued in many parts of western Europe right up to the 18th and 19th centuries, the feudal arrangement as a whole, with its hierarchy of fiefs and lords and vassals, had died out by the cease of the 16th century. In same places, where this procedure was most advanced, fiefs, whose lords enjoyed political, military, judicial and economic ability over them, had become simply landed estates, which were economic units only. In other places they remained units of localized power. Nowhere, however, were they the centers of military and lordly power which they had been in the loftier Middle Ages.

Farther study

An overview of Medieval European civilisation

The Medieval Church

Medieval European government and warfare

The Medieval European economy

As well:

Look at a sequence of maps showing an outline of medieval European history

Source: https://www.timemaps.com/encyclopedia/medieval-europe-feudalism/

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