The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe. Louis Paul Bénézet
larger, and more and more people came to be busied in agriculture, trade, and even, on a small scale, in manufacture, the warriors grew fewer in proportion, and people began to forget that the king was originally only a war leader, and that the office was created through military need. They came to regard the rule of the king as a matter of course and stopped thinking of themselves as having any right to say how they should be governed. Kings were quick to foster this feeling. For the purpose of making their own positions sure, they were in the habit of impressing it upon their people that the kingship was a divine institution. They proclaimed that the office of king was made by the gods, or in Christian nations, by God, and that it was the divine will that the people of the nations should be ruled by kings. The great Roman orator, Cicero (Sĭs′erō), in a speech delivered in the year 66 B.C., referring to people who lived in kingdoms, says that the name of king "seems to them a great and sacred thing." This same feeling has lasted through all the ages down to the present time, and the majority of the people in European kingdoms, even among the educated classes, still look upon a king as a superior being, and are made happy and proud if they ever have a chance to do him a service of any sort.
Questions for Review
1 Why was it that in barbarian tribes there was no private ownership of land?
2 What is meant by saying that government was based upon the consent of the governed?
3 Was there anything besides love of plunder that induced the German tribes to move southward?
4 Explain the beginnings of slavery.
5 Explain the value of armor in early times.
6 What is meant by the "Dark Ages"?
7 What is meant by saying that the fighting men were parasites?
8 When the first kings were chosen was it intended that they should be rulers for life?
9 Is it easy for a man in power to retain this power?
10 Why is it that most Europeans bow low before a king?
Chapter IV
Master and Man
The land is the king's.—He lends it to barons.—Barons lend it to knights and smaller barons.—Smaller barons collect rent for it from the peasants.—A father's lands are lent to his son.—Barons pay for the land by furnishing men for the king's wars.—No account is taken of the rights of the peasant.—The peasant, the only producer, is despised by the fighting men.—If a baron rebels, his men must rebel also.—Dukes against kings.—What killed the feudal system.—Feudal wrongs alive today.
When one great tribe or nation invaded and conquered a country, as the Ostrogoths came into Italy in the year 489 A.D., or as the Normans entered England in 1066, their king at once took it for granted that he owned all the conquered land. In some cases, he might divide the kingdom up among his chiefs, giving a county to each of forty or fifty leaders. These great leaders (dukes or barons, as they were called in the Norman-French language, or earls, as the English named them) would in turn each divide up his county among several less important chiefs, whom we may call lesser or little barons. Each little baron might have several knights and squires, who lived in or near his castle and had received from him tracts of land corresponding in size, perhaps, to the American township and who, therefore, fought under his banner in war.
Each baron had under him a strong body of fighting men, "men-at-arms," as they were called, or "retainers," who in return for their "keep," that is, their food and lodging, and a chance to share the plunder gained in war, swore to be faithful to him, became his men, and gave him the service called homage. (This word comes from hōmō, the Latin for "man.") The lesser baron, in turn, swore homage to, and was the "man" of the great baron or earl. Whenever the earl called on these lesser chiefs to gather their fighting men and report to him, they had to obey, serving him as unquestioningly as their squires and retainers obeyed them. The earl or duke swore homage to the king, from whom he had received his land.
This, then, was the feudal system (so named from the word feudum, which, in Latin, meant a piece of land the use of which was given to a man in return for his services in war), a system which reversed the natural laws of society, and stood it on its apex, like a cone balanced on its point. For instead of saying that the land was the property of the people of the tribe or nation, it started by taking for granted that the land all belonged to the king. The idea was that the king did not give the land, outright, to his dukes and earls, but that he gave them, in return for their faithful support and service in war, the use of the land during their lifetime, or so long as they remained true to him. In Macbeth, we read how, for his treason, the lands of the thane (earl) of Cawdor were taken from him by the Scottish king and given to the thane of Glamis. The lands thus lent were called fiefs. Upon the death of the tenant, they went back to the king or duke who had given them in the first place, and he at once gave them to some other one of his followers upon the same terms. It often happened that upon the death of an earl or baron his son was granted the lands which his father had held, Finally, in many counties, it grew into a custom, and the oldest son took possession of his father's fief, but not without first going to the king and swearing homage and fidelity to him.
Two things must be kept in mind if we are to understand the system fully. In the first place, in the division of the lands among the barons of the conquering nation, no account was taken of the peasants. As they were of the defeated people, their rights to the land were not once considered. In many countries, the victors thought of them as part and parcel of the conquered territory. They "went with" the land and were considered by the lord of the county as merely his servants. When one lord turned over a farm to another, the farmers were part of the bargain. If any of them tried to run away, they were brought back and whipped. They tilled the land and raised live stock, giving a certain share of their yearly crop and a certain number of beeves, hogs, sheep, etc., to the lord, as rent for the land, much as the free farmers in other countries paid tribute to the robber chieftains. Thus the one class of people who really earned their right to live, by producing wealth, were oppressed and robbed by all the others. Note this point, for there are wrongs existing today that are due to the fact that the feudal system is not wholly stamped out in some countries.
In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the direct master of all the people. Only the great lords had sworn homage to him. He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons. The less important barons swore homage to the great barons, and the knights, squires, retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the lesser barons. If a lesser baron had subdivided his fief among certain knights and squires, the peasants owed allegiance, not to him, but to the squire to whom they had been assigned. Thus, if a "man" rebelled against his lord, all of his knights, retainers, etc., must rebel also. If, for instance, a great duke refused to obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance, all his little barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather, must remain loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke, and not the king. History is full of such cases. In many instances, dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even terms with kings. The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the kings of France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland in 1403 raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of England; the Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the throne of England and became king in his place.
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