FIGHTING

1
FIGHTING

• Fighting and warfare were the raison detre for
  feudal nobility
• Feudalism was fundamentally a military system and
  the men who made it up were fundamentally
  warriors
• Fighting was their primary duty and also their
  primary love
• All their values and their entire concept of
  honor revolved around this central fact
• It is all they really wanted to do
• Everything else bored them

2
ROVING WARRIORS

• In addition to fighting for their lords, many
  nobles wandered around Europe looking for battles
  to fight
• Caused problems for great lords sometimes because
  vassals were not around when they needed them
• Especially prevalent among French nobles
• Helped to reconquer Spain from Moslems, establish
  Norman kingdom in southern Italy, and always made
  up majority of warriors in the Crusades

3
PLUNDER

• Nobles also saw fighting as money-making
  opportunity
• Required bonuses and gifts to fight beyond time
  limit in feudal contract
• Later, as armies became larger and vassals did
  not meet manpower needs, lords hired extra
  knights
• Promised them share of plunder
• Common practice was to hold prisoners for ransom
• Plunder often degenerated into outright robbery

4
DEATH AND SUFFERING

• War defined nobles concept of honor and provided
  them with a livelihood
• But it also often prevented others from pursuing
  their livelihoods
• Caused hostility between nobles and non-nobles
• Nobles were proud of their courage and skill and
  despised those people who did not fight
• Non-nobles often saw everything they owned and
  held dear jeopardized by constantly fighting
  nobles

5
CASTLES

• Beginning in 12th century, castles were built of
  stone and became more complicated
• Elaborate gates, turrets, wide battlements,
  numerous towers, secret passages, spiral
  staircases, etc.
• But even though they were an improvement over
  wooden forts, they were still overcrowded dumps

6
INTERIOR

• Smalldue to limited resources, limited number of
  skilled craftsmen, and defensive reasons
• Central tower was center of life
• Top floor occupied by lookout
• Lower floors occupied by lord and his family
• Little privacy
• Horribly cramped, noisy, dirty, and chaotic

7
MORE CASTLES
8
HUNTING

• Since nobles refused to work in agriculture,
  estate management, administration of local
  government, they spent their spare time playing
• At games that reminded him of and prepared him
  for war
• Such as hunting
• Actually prohibited others from doing so
• Set aside huge tracts of land as hunting
  preserves
• Kicked peasants off their land to create these
  game parks

9
TOURNAMENTS

• Very old practice than became more organized and
  refined as time went on
• Evolved from bloody free-for-alls into carefully
  planned mock battles
• Only kings and great barons could afford to put
  them on
• Would attract nobles from hundreds of miles away
• Both rich and poor
• Grouped themselves into teams from particular
  geographic regions

10
FUN BUT DANGEROUS

• Combat usually performed by teams
• 5, 10, sometimes 100 nobles would fight on each
  side, using wooden swords and lances
• Winner would get horses and equipment of losers
• Easy to get seriously wounded and even killed
• Great lords began to prohibit games as a result
• Church also frowned on them because of their
  pagan origins
• Refused Church funerals to knights killed in
  tournaments
• Tournaments nonetheless continued throughout the
  Middle Ages

11
COURTESY

• As Middle Ages progressed, nobles devised a code
  of conduct that was unique to them and served to
  further separate them from the rest of society
• Courtesy (courtoisie)
• Born in France and always remained French in
  language and manners
• Exported to the rest of Europe

12
TREATMENT OF WOMEN

• Treatment of noblewomen
• In Early Middle Ages women were not treated well
• And women themselves were crude and brutal
• With advent of courtesy, nobles began to treat
  their women better
• No longer acceptable to abuse them
• Now treated with deference and respect
• Noblewomen also began to act worthy of this new
  treatment

13
DUBBING

• Widespread practice after 1100
• Ceremonial ritual with several parts
• Young man presents himself to older knight
• Older knight gives boy his knightly equipment
• All blessed by Church officials
• Older knight then hits boy
• To make impression
• Boy then officially becomes a knight
• Ceremony ends with athletic display by new knight

14
OFFICIAL ENTRY

• Dubbing was a formal act which separated feudal
  class from common people
• Marked persons official entry into special class
• Knight was now considered a special person
• One from a noble family
• Who behaved according to the code of courtesy
• Who had been educated and trained in the values
  and skills of the nobility
• Dubbing marked official entry into this elite
  world

15
CHRISTIAN KNIGHTS

• Good knight also expected to be a good
  Christian
• Required to attend mass everyday, to fast every
  Friday, to observe Church holidays, and make
  frequent pilgrimages
• Church also tried to modify old noble credo of
  war for wars sake or war for selfish personal
  gain into war for the Church
• Nobles now expected to fight for Church and
  protect those the Church classified as special
• Widows, orphans, and the poor

16
A NOBILITY

• Development of code of courtesy and the idea of
  the knight as a soldier of God marked critical
  turning point in evolution of medieval
  civilization
• Established model of the good knight that all
  were expected to strive for
• Although few actually made it
• Restrained the bloodthirsty and violent
  tendencies of medieval warriors
• Also gave them special distinction
• Defined nobles as a special and elevated group
• A nobility in every sense of the term

17
PEASANTS

• Medieval society almost entirely rural and
  agricultural
• Trade and commerce limited, few real towns, and
  little money circulated
• Men lived mostly from the land
• And the people who worked that land were the
  peasants
• Small scale rural cultivators who lived from
  subsistance agriculture
• Small surplus they produced was expropriated to
  support the ruling class and Church

18
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

• Dispersed Settlements
• Where peasants lived in tiny hamlets or isolated
  family farms
• Clustered Villages
• Relatively small number of peasant families lived
  close together
• Easy to defend
• Settlement patterns corresponded to fertility of
  soil
• Fertile lands possessed clustered villages
• Regions with poor soil favored dispersed
  settlement

Clustered Village
19
INFIELD/OUTFIELD METHOD

• Prevalent in areas of dispersed settlement
• Each household had a small plot of land close to
  the house (infield)
• Fertilized with human and animal waste
• Used to grow vegetables
• Each household also had small field away from
  house (outfield)
• For grain cultivation
• Not fertilized
• When it wore out, peasant simply cleared new
  field
• Best suited for regions with low population
  density and poor soil

20
OPEN FIELD/NARROW STRIPS

• In region of clustered villages
• Prevalent in northern France, most of England and
  Germany
• Each village surrounded by large, unfenced field
  divided into two equal parts
• One part left fallow each year while the other
  was planted
• Would alternate each year
• Each part also divided into long, narrow strips
  and each house held scattered number of strips in
  each part

21
OPEN FIELD/SQUARE PLOTS

• Southern France and throughout Mediterranean
  Europe
• Each field surrounded by large field, divided
  into two equal parts
• One part left fallow and the other planted
• Rotated each year
• But instead of being divided into strips, land
  was divided into square plots
• Each house held several of these plots,
  scatttered throughout both parts of the field

22
FERTIZER SHORTAGE

• Serious shortage of fertilizer
• Didnt know about crop rotation that would
  restore nitrogen to soil
• Only fertilizer was animal manure
• And there was not enough of it to keep land
  productive
• Only viable method at time was to rest land every
  other year
• Reason was ½ of land lay fallow every year in
  open field systems

23
GRAIN VS HAY

• Low yields per acre and per bushel of seed
  planted
• By 1200, best peasant farmers only got ten
  bushels of wheat from two bushels of seed
• Only solution to low yields was to plant every
  available acre of land in grain
• But this caused shortage of acreage available for
  growing hay to feed livestock
• Grain and hay competed for the same land
• Grain usually won, resulting in a perpetual
  shortage of hay
• Which limited amount of livestock, thereby
  limiting amount of manure available
• Which limited productivity of soil

24
MANORS

• Medieval peasants were not free, independent
  small farmers
• Most peasant villages were subject to a lord
• They were his tenants who supported him in return
  for his protection
• Agricultural estates controlled by a lord were
  called manors
• Sometimes a manor and peasant village
  corresponded
• Sometimes a manor contained two or more manors

25
MANORIAL SYSTEM

• Arrangement by which a lord exploited his
  peasants was called the manorial or seigneurial
  system
• Not the feudal system
• Which described relationship between vassals and
  lords, not lords and peasants
• System gradually arose from a variety of causes
  but was firmly implanted throughout Western
  Europe by 1000

26
UNEQUAL DEAL

• Peasants supported their lord by working for him
  and paying him rents in kind
• Lord reserved 1/3 to ½ of arable manor land for
  himself (in the form of scattered strips)
• Called the demesne
• Peasants had to work this land for him
• Peasants also had to care for lords livestock
  and do additional maintenance and construction
  work for him
• Usually amounted to about three days a week of
  work
• Also paid rent for their strips
• Portion of harvest, cheese, bacon, fish, and so on

27
PERSONAL JURISDICTION

• Lord also gain part of his income from the fact
  that he controlled the persons of his peasants
• Peasants were, by year 1000, serfs (villeins)
• Lacked all rights we associate with free men
• Subject to the lords jurisdiction
• Gave him firm hold over them and permitted him to
  establish profitable monopolies
• Over grinding grain and baking bread

28
LIMITS

• Practical limit to power of lord over his serfs
• He had to leave them enough to stay alive and do
  their work
• Custom of the manor also tempered lords power
• Loose structure of community regulations handed
  down among peasants from generation to generation
• Always included protection of peasants
  hereditary right to hold his own land as long as
  he rendered his services to the lord
• Protected peasants from the more brutal and
  arbitrary actions of their lord

29
LOT OF A SERF

• Lot of serf was still not pleasant
• Barely had enough to eat in a good year
• Only knowledge of the world of ideas came from
  local priest
• Whose learning was often little better than his
  own
• Lord had power to whip or hang him virtually at
  will
• Still better than a slave
• Held his own land and could pass it on to his
  heirs
• Daily life was regulated by custom of the manor
• He was a person in the eyes of the Church, not a
  thing

30
THREE-FIELD SYSTEM

• In explaining the enormous increase in
  agricultural production during the 10th and 11th
  centuries, some historians have emphasized the
  gradual transition from the two-field to
  three-field system of agriculture
• In two-field system, one field lay fallow each
  year and the other was planted in grain in the
  fall and harvested in the summer
• In three-field system, one field lay fallow, on
  planted in grain in the fall, and one planted in
  another crop in the spring
• Only 1/3 of arable land was fallow each year

31
THE HORSE

• Methods of using draft animals in ancient world
  had been inefficient
• Did not use horseshoes
• Harnessing system was inept
• Horse collar
• Rests on animals shoulders so that entire body
  weight can be used to pull load
• Either invented in Europe in the 9th century or
  introduced by either Magyars or Avars
• Adopted in Europe from 10th century onwards
• Horseshoes and harnessing horses in tandem
  introduced around the same time

32
BETTER DIETS

• Before three-field system, only major crop had
  been grain
• Peasant diet was therefore mainly carbohydrates
  with a little occasional meat or cheese
• In 9th and 10th centuries, it became general
  practice to plant legumes in one field
• Added protein to peasant diet and made them
  healthier

33
POPULATION GROWTH

• Population grew in Europe because increased food
  production allowed people to live longer and
  allowed more children to survive infancy
• Growth started in 10th century and would continue
  for next 300 years
• Land under cultivation grew along with population
• Mainly due to land clearance

34
ASSARTING

• Beginning in 10th century, peasants began to
  clear forests and open up new land
• Called assarting
• Most important component of agricultural
  revolution of the time
• Changes in technology played big role but the
  extension of arable land at the expense of
  forest, marsh, and wasteland was the most
  important of all factors involved in increasing
  agricultural production during early Middle Ages