Feudal lord

“ The feudal lord usually felt some sort of concern for the welfare of his vassals, looked after their interests, when these interests were attacked by others, and in a general way afforded them protection to be found only in his wealth and power. ”

“ What hope for ordinary culprits when the proudest feudal nobles were executed or exiled, like common malefactors? Neither rank nor services could screen them from punishment. The great minister had no mercy and no delay even for the favorites of royalty. Nay, the King himself became his puppet, and was forced to part with his friends, his family, his mistresses, and his pleasures. Some of the prime ministers of kings have had as much power as Richelieu, but no minister, before or since, has ruled the monarch himself with such an iron sway. ”

“ The feudal lords, since they have lost their power, seek to make themselves amends in their enjoyments. Sovereigns themselves seemed to be, for the future, subjected to this law: the throne, with our liberal ideas, insensibly ceased to be a signory, and became purely a magistracy; the Prince having only a simple practical character to sustain, always sufficiently dull and tedious in the long run, must seek to withdraw from it, to come as a mere citizen, and take his share in the pleasures of society. ”

“ The kingdoms of Germany, Italy, France, Burgundy, Lorraine, Navarre, all date to his memorable reign." But these mediaeval kingdoms were feudal; the power of the kings was nominal. Government passed from imperialism into the hands of nobles. The government of Europe in the Middle Ages was a military aristocracy, only powerful as the interests of the people were considered. Kings and princes did not make much show, except in the trappings of royalty,—in gorgeous dresses of purple and gold, to suit a barbaric taste,—in the insignia of power without its reality. ”

“ The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne, the vassals using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices and fiefs, and to get possession of estates and of power. After Charles the Bald’s death royalty had only, so to speak, a shell—administrative officialdom. No longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy was helpless before local powers which confronted it, seized upon the land, and cut off connexion between throne and people. The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord without lands, a nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until starved out. ”

“ His duty was to aid his lord against enemies, yield him counsel and assistance in the judgment of causes, and pay money to ransom him from captivity, knight his eldest son, or portion his daughter. The ramifications of these feudal tenures and obligations extended, with all manner of complications, from king and duke down to such as held the meagre fief that barely kept man and war-horse from degrading labour. All these made up the feudal class whose members might expect to become knights on reaching manhood. ”

“ The retainers in the lowest rank rally around their respective lords, who, with their bands, gather about their lords, and so on up through the rising tiers of the system, until the immediate vassals of the suzerain, or chief lord, present themselves before him with their graduated trains of followers. The array constitutes a feudal army,—a splendidly organized body in theory, but in fact an extremely poor instrument for warfare. ”

“ Here for a moment we seem to have a fairly clear announcement of what we call the simple feudal principle, unadulterated by any element of personal rank; still our text supposes that the lord in question is a great man, he has no mere manor but an honour or several honours. On the whole, our law seems for the time to be taking the shape that French law took. ”

“ The lord lived in his castle, and the peasantry worked his land and supported him, fighting his battles if the need arose. This condition of society was known as feudalism, and the feudal relations of lord and vassal came to be the prevailing governmental organization of the period. ”

“ It was a fitting symbol for the siècle de fer, that century of moral and material disorder and disaster in which the country was now involved.
For France was now falling into the iron grip of feudalism. It is the age of castles. As the power of the central authority weakens, the power of the great vassals, dukes, counts, bishops and abbots becomes established as absolute in their fiefs. But during the period of disorder, from which the feudal régime emerged triumphant, the serf had waged with his{52} master the same struggle that the vassal was waging with his lords and the lord with the King. ”

“ FEUDAL GOVERNMENT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANARCHY It is clear that the feudal method of land tenure, coupled with the custom of vassalage, made in some degree for security and order. Each noble was attached to the lord above him by the bond of personal service and the oath of fidelity. ”

“ The nobles still continued to enjoy their social and political distinctions, the peasantry were ground down by unequal laws, and the nobles were as arrogant and quarrelsome as the people were oppressed by unjust distinctions. They were still followed by their armed retainers, and had almost unlimited jurisdiction in their respective governments. Even the higher clergy gloried in feudal inequalities, and were selected from the noble classes. ”

“ After the subversion of the Roman power, the northern sovereigns, who had become the barbarous and ignorant oppressors of our species, introduced and established, among other political regulations, the feudal system, as it was called, by which all property in land was held by certain fiefs, whereby the king, or, as termed, lord of the soil, let certain portions of the land to his nobles, military officers, and other great persons, generally often on condition of certain services required to be performed, called knights’ service, and other military tenures ”

“ Even boys were made bishops and abbots through the influence of their friends and relatives. Wealthy bishoprics and monasteries were considered by feudal lords an admirable means of support for their younger sons, since the eldest born usually inherited the fief. The life led by bishops and abbots was often merely that of a feudal prince. If a prelate had a taste for fighting, he organized military expeditions for conquest or to satisfy a grudge against a neighbor, exactly as if he belonged to the bellicose laity of the period. ”

“ The Third Crusade, and the most famous, which began in the year 1189, of which Philip Augustus of France, Richard Coeur de Lion of England, and Frederic Barbarossa of Germany were the leaders,--the three greatest monarchs of their age,--was also signally unsuccessful. Feudal armies seem to have learned nothing in one hundred years of foreign warfare ”

“ The feudal relation between the king and the princes and between the princes and their vassals had become purely nominal. No real control was exerted by the Decay of feudal relations. crown over the heads of the various states, and, now that war was carried on mainly by mercenary troops, the mediate nobles did not hold their lands on condition of military service. The princes were sovereigns, not merely feudal lords; and by the institution of local diets in their territories an approach was made to modern conceptions of government. ”

“ The Emperor is above all the servant and protector of the Church. As the influence of the great feudal lords increased, they are magnified often at the expense of the monarchy; yet even when in high rebellion, they secretly feel the duty of loyalty. The recurring poetic epithet and phrase of formula found in the chansons de geste often indicate rather than veil a defect of imagination. ”

“ A second evil of the institution was its exclusiveness. It was, in theory, only the person of noble birth that could become the holder of a fief. The feudal lords constituted a proud and oppressive aristocracy. It was only as the lower classes in the different countries gradually wrested from the feudal nobility their special and unfair privileges, that a better form of society arose, and civilization began to make more rapid progress. ”

“ Nothing could have happened more effectually to loosen the rigors of the feudal system. It was the baron and the knight that marched to Palestine who suffered most in the curtailment of the privileges which they had abused,--even as it was the Southern planter of Carolina who lost the most heavily in the war which he provoked to defend his slave property. In both cases the fetters of the serfs and slaves were broken by their own masters,--not intentionally, of course, but really and effectually. How blind men are in their injustices! ”

“ Out of such a system, that a favoured vassal should be selected to assert the personal right of the monarch to his throne, will appear very natural: it is only surprising that the violence and constant habit of appealing to the sword, in which this with the other feudal claims originated, should have left it to flow on in such an uninterrupted course—a course of succession far more regular than the transmission of the crown it is supposed to defend. ”

“ If the usurpations of the crown threatened to alienate the nobles, they promised to conciliate the humbler classes.
On the other hand, every noble was a soldier. The wars in which the emperor was engaged, while they forced him occasionally to cultivate the good-will of the aristocracy, on which he was chiefly dependent for his military resources, fostered military habits of submission, and feelings of feudal allegiance to the sovereign. Military service was the road to distinction—military glory the ruling passion. The crown was the fountain of honour, to which all who sought it repaired. ”

“ The royal power, adorned with the seignorial prerogatives snatched from the subjugated barons, establishes itself amidst their ruined castles, beneath which lies buried the feudal system. Mercenary armies, now constantly maintained by the sovereign, render him independent of the military services of his subjects, and formidable alike to foreign foes and to turbulent nobles. ”

“ His was a feudalism which, while giving the lords great personal power and influence, retained them still as the servants of the king, and totally prevented them from using their strength against the throne. In this [Pg 59] respect the feudal system in England never resembled that of Germany and France, or even that which the Norman barons established in Scotland. The Conqueror had no intention of allowing the owners of territory to supersede his own authority, and to be beyond the sovereign’s control. ”

“ THE KINGS As a system of local government, feudalism tended to pass away when the rulers in England, France, and Spain, and later in Germany and Italy, became powerful enough to put down private warfare, execute justice, and maintain order everywhere in their dominions. The kings were always anti- feudal. ”

“ The lay nobles sought to make their ‘advocacy’ the pretext of a gradual extension of their power 26until the bishop or abbot became their mere dependant. But this course was not to the interest of the crown. If the domains of the crown were to be administered by the local magnates or to be alienated outright, if the jurisdiction of the crown was to be cut into by grants of immunities to feudal chieftains, it was much better that these should be put into spiritual rather than into secular hands. ”

“ In the struggle of classes, and in the misfortunes of nobles, monarchs had perceived the advantages they might gain, and fortunate circumstances enabled them to raise absolute thrones, and restore a central power, always so necessary to the cause of civilization. Influence of Feudalism. Feudalism had answered many useful ends in the dark ages. It had secured a reciprocity of duties between a lord and his vassal; it had restored loyalty, truth, and fidelity among semi-barbarians; it had favored the cultivation of the soil; it had raised up a hardy rural population ”

“ The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as fatal to feudalism as to world-empire and world-church. A series of wars occurring at this time were especially remarkable for the wholesale slaughter of the feudal nobility, whether on the field or under the headsman's axe. This was a conspicuous feature of the feuds of the Trastamare in Spain, of the English invasions of France, followed by the quarrel between Burgundians and Armagnacs, and of the great war of the Roses in England. ”

“ By permitting those dignities which had once been conferred as a reward for pre-eminent personal merit to become hereditary in certain families, the crown had laid the foundation of the feudal system; while, by neglecting to enforce its sovereign claims, it had enabled the great feudatories to make themselves princes independent in reality, if not in name. ”

“ The emperor assented—"but," said he, "let us study in the first place to be reconciled to God." They were then both confessed, and their contrition was perfect as sincere. Afterwards sending for the knight, they revealed, amid a flood of tears, their crime. "My lord," he replied, "that ye may be reconciled to God, hear what I counsel. As well for your own sins, as for the sins of your father, hasten to the Holy Land; and before you embark, call together the noblemen of the kingdom, and explain to them your intent. And because your sister is your only heir, charge them to be obedient to her. ”

“ The fiercest indignation burst out, which rose to fever heat when Cardinal Roland answered the objectors by inquiring, ‘From whom then does the Emperor hold the Empire if not from the Pope?’ In answer to the Pope’s implied claim of feudal supremacy, the Emperor circulated a declaration of his rights throughout the Empire. ‘The Empire is held by us,’ he declared, ‘through the election of the princes from God alone, who gave the world to be ruled by the two necessary swords, and taught through St. Peter that men should fear God and honour the king. ”