The life of peasants in the Middle Ages was harsh, full of hardships and trials. Heavy taxes, devastating wars and crop failures often deprived the peasant of the most necessary things and forced him to think only about survival. Just 400 years ago, in the richest country in Europe - France - travelers came across villages whose inhabitants were dressed in dirty rags, lived in half-dugouts, holes dug in the ground, and were so wild that in response to questions they could not utter a single articulate word. It is not surprising that in the Middle Ages the view of the peasant as half-animal, half-devil was widespread; the words “villan”, “villania”, denoting rural residents, simultaneously meant “rudeness, ignorance, bestiality”.
There is no need to think that all peasants in medieval Europe were like devils or ragamuffins. No, many peasants had gold coins and elegant clothes hidden in their chests, which they wore on holidays; the peasants knew how to have fun at village weddings, when beer and wine flowed like a river and everyone was eaten up in a whole series of half-starved days. The peasants were shrewd and cunning, they clearly saw the advantages and disadvantages of those people whom they had to encounter in their simple lives: a knight, a merchant, a priest, a judge. If the feudal lords looked at the peasants as devils crawling out of hellish holes, then the peasants paid their lords in the same coin: a knight rushing through the sown fields with a pack of hunting dogs, shedding someone else’s blood and living off someone else’s labor, seemed to them not a person, but a demon.
It is generally accepted that it was the feudal lord who was the main enemy of the medieval peasant. The relationship between them was indeed complicated. The villagers more than once rose up to fight against their masters. They killed the lords, robbed and set fire to their castles, captured fields, forests and meadows. The largest of these uprisings were the Jacquerie (1358) in France, and the uprisings led by Wat Tyler (1381) and the Ket brothers (1549) in England. One of the most important events in the history of Germany was the Peasants' War of 1525.
3.1.The position of peasants in medieval society. The role of peasants in society was determined by the theory of three social groups, according to which society was compared to the human body. Since spirituality and moral principles are necessary in a person’s life, therefore priests pray to God for everyone. The rulers of the country and the nobility were compared to hands; they were warriors fighting for the interests of the entire society. And the peasants were compared to feet; they must feed and clothe their masters.
People were taught that as organs human body They complement each other, so priests, gentlemen and peasants need each other. Therefore, people were encouraged to live in harmony and friendship, because a person’s foot is not the enemy of his hand, but the hand is not his soul.
Unlike slaves, peasants took care of and improved their tools. The labor of a peasant was more productive than the labor of a slave, which led to the rise of the feudal economy.
3.2. Stratification of peasants. During the period of feudalism, peasants were divided into dependent and free. Dependent peasants were completely subordinate to the power of the feudal lords, who had the right to sell, exchange and give them, but did not have the right to kill. When a dependent peasant escaped, he was found and returned to his owner. Gradually they joined the ranks of dependent peasants. former slaves. Such peasants in France were called “serves”.
Free peasants in England were called "villans". They could freely dispose of their property and tools. Free peasants had the right to leave their land plots as an inheritance to their children.
3.3. Duties of peasants. For the use of land, peasants had to bear duties, the main of which were corvée and quitrent. Corvée was all the free work of peasants on the feudal lord’s farm, i.e. working off by labor. The peasants had to give the owner of the estate a quitrent - a share of the products of their farm.
At the same time, peasants were involved in “public works.” For example, once a year they had to take part in the construction of a bridge, road repair and other work for free. In favor of the church, peasants had to give church tithes - a tenth of the harvest and offspring of livestock.
3.4.Life of peasants. Life for medieval peasants was hard. Due to the poor development of production, all their household utensils were crude and primitive. The peasants made all the things they needed in everyday life themselves. Usually houses were built of wood and stone. The roof was covered with reeds or straw. Small holes were made instead of windows.
When heating the stove, smoke filled the entire room, since the houses did not have chimneys. In extreme cold, small livestock were kept right in the house. Clothes were made from homespun fabric, canvas, and roughly processed skins. Shoes were made from leather, plant stems, and tree bark.
3.5.The struggle of peasants against feudal lords. The peasants were not truly interested in increasing labor productivity, since the feudal lords and the king imposed excessive taxes and duties on them. With low harvests, the peasants were left with little surplus, which the feudal lords confiscated from them.
Medieval documents say that many feudal lords treated the peasants with disdain, considering them “lazy,” “ignorant,” and “rude.” In turn, the peasants called their feudal lords “stingy,” “cruel,” and “insatiable.”
When cruelty and injustice on the part of the masters overwhelmed the people's patience, the peasants rebelled and ruined the farms of the feudal lords. Peasant uprisings forced the feudal lords to reduce the amount of taxes and duties collected.
Medieval Europe was very different from modern civilization: its territory was covered with forests and swamps, and people settled in spaces where they could cut down trees, drain swamps and engage in agriculture. How did peasants live in the Middle Ages, what did they eat and do?
Middle Ages and the era of feudalism
The history of the Middle Ages covers the period from the 5th to the beginning of the 16th century, until the advent of the modern era, and refers mainly to the countries of Western Europe. This period is characterized by specific features of life: the feudal system of relationships between landowners and peasants, the existence of lords and vassals, the dominant role of the church in the life of the entire population.
One of the main features of the history of the Middle Ages in Europe is the existence of feudalism, a special socio-economic structure and method of production.
As a result internecine wars, crusades and other military actions, kings gave their vassals lands on which they built estates or castles for themselves. As a rule, the entire land was donated along with the people living on it.
Dependence of peasants on feudal lords
The rich lord received ownership of all the lands surrounding the castle, on which villages with peasants were located. Almost everything that peasants did in the Middle Ages was taxed. Poor people, cultivating their land and his, paid the lord not only tribute, but also for the use of various devices for processing the crop: ovens, mills, presses for crushing grapes. They paid the tax in natural products: grain, honey, wine.
All the peasants were in strong addiction from their feudal lord, they practically worked for him as slave labor, eating what was left after growing the crops, most of which was given to their master and the church.
Wars periodically occurred between the vassals, during which the peasants asked for the protection of their master, for which they were forced to give him their allotment, and in the future they became completely dependent on him.
Division of peasants into groups
To understand how peasants lived in the Middle Ages, you need to understand the relationship between the feudal lord and the poor residents who lived in villages in the areas adjacent to the castle and cultivated plots of land.
The tools of peasant labor in the fields in the Middle Ages were primitive. The poorest harrowed the ground with a log, others with a harrow. Later, scythes and pitchforks made of iron appeared, as well as shovels, axes and rakes. From the 9th century, heavy wheeled plows began to be used in the fields, and plows were used on light soils. Sickles and threshing chains were used for harvesting.
All tools of labor in the Middle Ages remained unchanged for many centuries, because the peasants did not have the money to purchase new ones, and their feudal lords were not interested in improving working conditions, they were only concerned about getting a large harvest with minimal costs.
Peasant discontent
The history of the Middle Ages is characterized by constant confrontation between large landowners, as well as feudal relations between rich lords and the impoverished peasantry. This situation was formed on the ruins of ancient society, in which slavery existed, which clearly manifested itself during the era of the Roman Empire.
Enough difficult conditions the way peasants lived in the Middle Ages, the deprivation of their land plots and property often caused protests, which were expressed in various forms. Some desperate ones fled from their owners, others staged mass riots. The rebellious peasants almost always suffered defeat due to disorganization and spontaneity. After such riots, the feudal lords sought to fix the size of duties in order to stop their endless growth and reduce the discontent of the poor people.
The end of the Middle Ages and the slave life of peasants
As the economy grew and manufacturing emerged towards the end of the Middle Ages, the industrial revolution occurred, and many village residents began to move to cities. Among the poor population and representatives of other classes, humanistic views began to prevail, which considered personal freedom for each person an important goal.
As you give up feudal system An era called the New Time arrived, in which there was no longer any place for outdated relationships between peasants and their lords.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Formation of the feudal dependent peasantry
§1. Seignoria and the system of exploitation of the peasantry in France X - XIII centuries
§ 2. Features of the patrimonial structure and the position of the peasantry in England in the 11th-12th centuries
§ 3. Seignoria. The situation of the German peasantry in the XII-XIII centuries
§ 2. The attitude of the state towards the peasants
Chapter IV. Class struggle peasantry
Conclusion
Introduction
The position of the peasantry in Europe during the Middle Ages remains one of the pressing topics in the study of the feudal era, because the peasantry then constituted the main productive class, the bulk of the population. Naturally, the fate of those millions of rural workers who cultivated fields, cleared forests for arable land, raised livestock, raised vegetables and fruits, and who at the same time spun and weaved, sewed clothes and shoes, is of paramount interest in the study historical science.
It is also interesting that throughout the entire Medieval period, in the struggle for freedom, the peasants experienced quite a few defeats in battle against the feudal lords, but despite this they still managed to achieve, albeit the smallest, results. This whole process provides enormous social experience to all humanity.
Such outstanding Soviet scientists as S.D Skazkin, A.I. made an integral contribution to the study of the history of the peasantry in Europe during the period of feudalism. Neusykhin, Yu.L. Bessmertny, A.Ya. Gurevich and others. Their works present a clear picture of the situation of the peasantry in Europe during the period of the birth of feudalism, developed feudalism and its decomposition. These works have become a real asset to world science. Here you can observe and compare the peasantry of different peoples and countries, taken at the same stage of development, and comprehend pan-European patterns agrarian history.
Object this study is peasant society as the bulk of the population during the Middle Ages, the subject is the influence of feudal development on the position of peasants and the relationship of the represented classes at all three stages of their development.
In this work we used various methods scientific knowledge. Comparative method. When writing the work, we were guided by various sources and literature, compared and contrasted them in order to restore an objective picture historical reality. We used the typing method to identify similarities and differences between sources and literature for their further grouping. Sampling method. To explore this topic, it is necessary to select from a wide range of sources and literature exactly those that are included in the framework of the problem posed.
The problem we are considering does not make it possible to accurately determine the time period, since each of the three studied stages of the development of feudalism did not begin and end in different regions at the same time. The analysis showed that the formation of the peasantry begins in relation to some regions with very early periods- even before the beginning of our era, and ends in some countries only in the 19th century. As a result chronological framework in total span more than two millennia.
The purpose of this work is to study and analyze the situation of the European peasantry during the Middle Ages based on available sources and literature. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set:
.Consider First stage formation of a feudal dependent peasantry.
.Explore the relationship between land owners and peasants during the period of developed feudalism.
.Determine the situation of the peasantry as a whole
.Describe the consequences of the oppressed state of the peasantry.
Scientific novelty lies in the formulation of the problem, goals and objectives of the research. In this course work, an attempt is made to study and show the difficult, humiliating position of the peasantry during the Middle Ages.
The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that the results of this study can be used when participating in scientific conferences, seminars, and also in history lessons.
Work structure.
The work consists of an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion, a list of sources and literature used.
Chapter 1. Formation of a feudal dependent peasantry
§1. The crisis of the slave system and the emergence of elements of feudal relations in the Roman Empire
In the IV-V centuries. The Roman state was in a state of deep decline. Agriculture, which was the main branch of the economy, experienced stagnation and degraded in many respects: the level of agriculture decreased, and part of the previously cultivated land was empty. The number of slaveholding farms producing agricultural products for the market gradually decreased. At the same time, the number of large estates grew, the area of which was allocated to a large extent for extensive cattle breeding, which had little connection with the market. Trade was declining, crafts were declining, not finding sufficient sales for their products. Cities were losing their former importance. The center of gravity of public life moved from city to village. Economic ties between the provinces, which had never been strong enough, became increasingly weakened.
The gradual economic decline, especially noticeable in the western provinces of the empire, was due to the crisis of the slave-owning mode of production, which began in the Roman Empire at the end of the 2nd century AD. The crisis was caused by the internal contradictions of slave society; the possibilities for the development of production based on slave labor, on slave-owning relations, were increasingly exhausted. Slavery became a brake on the further development of productive forces. The lack of interest of slaves in the results of their labor prevented any serious technical progress.
The growth of large land ownership, characteristic of the entire period of the empire, led to a drop in the productivity of the already unproductive slave labor, since supervision over slaves on large estates inevitably weakened. The reproduction of labor power was also disrupted. The condition for the normal existence of the slave-owning economic system was the continuous replenishment of the internal market with slaves from the outside, mainly by force, by capturing and turning into slaves the population of countries conquered by Rome.
The position of slaves planted on the ground was ambiguous. On the one hand, they, like the future medieval serfs, managed their own households, had for their individual use equipment, livestock, and certain property (peculium). This created some interest in the slave's work and somewhat increased the productivity of his farm. On the other hand, the position of slaves planted on the land was precarious, since the master had ownership rights to the slaves themselves and to all their property.
The number of slaves being freed also increased. During late empire the practice of freeing slaves expanded significantly, and the state, which had previously limited the release of slaves, began to promote their liberation. Freedmen now usually became holders of lands on the estates of the emperor, land magnates, and the church. Slaves, when freed, in most cases remained under the patronage of their former masters. This meant that they were somewhat personally dependent on their patrons. The manumission of slaves, as well as the provision of plots of land to slaves (slaves planted on the land), was one of the attempts to increase the productivity of their labor. Especially great importance in the economy of the late Roman Empire acquired the colonate. Colons - in the first centuries of the empire, small holders of lands of large and medium-sized landowners - paid dues and sometimes bore some other in-kind duties in favor of the land owners, but remained full-fledged free people.
In the late Roman Empire, the columns represented the closest stratum of the agricultural population to the medieval serfs. They were, in the words of F. Engels, “the predecessors of the medieval serfs”
The formation of feudal relations, the formation of large feudal landownership, the transformation of free small producers material goods into feudal-dependent peasants, the emergence of political institutions and the ideology of feudal society - this is the process of formation of the feudal socio-economic formation in Western Europe.
§2. The main classes of feudal society. Dependent peasantry and their situation
feudal peasantry society patrimonial
In most countries of Western Europe by the 11th century. society was already breaking up into two antagonistic classes: the class of feudal landowners and the class of feudal-dependent peasants.
Serfs everywhere were in the most difficult situation; in some countries (for example, France) already in the 10th-11th centuries. made up the majority of the peasantry. They were dependent on their lord both personally and in terms of land, and since each of these types of dependence entailed numerous payments and duties, the serfs were subjected to especially severe exploitation. Such peasants could be alienated, but only together with the land on which they sat and of which they were the hereditary holders; they were constrained in the disposal of their movable property, since it was considered the property of the feudal lord, and bore a number of humiliating duties and payments that emphasized their personal dependence. Former slaves gradually joined the category of serfs. It is characteristic that in a number of countries this most dependent layer of the peasantry was called “servas” (from Latin word servus - slave), although they were already serfs, and not slaves in the ancient meaning of the word. Serfdom was the defining form of dependence during the period when the formation of feudal relations was completed, and later, at least until the end of the 12th century. when it increasingly gives way to milder forms of addiction.
The situation was somewhat easier for personally free peasants, the number of whom in some countries (England, Germany) by the middle of the 11th century. it was still quite large. They could dispose of movable property more freely, and in many cases enjoyed inheritance rights to their land allotment. However, being in judicial, and sometimes already in land dependence on their master - the feudal landowner, they were also subjected to exploitation and gradually lost their personal freedom.
Most of the French peasantry were in the 10th century. enslaved and subjected to severe feudal exploitation. The serf (serv) was in personal, land and judicial dependence on the lord, i.e. the owner of the seigneury (as a feudal estate was usually called in France) in which he lived. As a personally dependent person, the serf paid a head tax, the so-called marriage tax, in the event that he married a free person or with a serf of other lords, a posthumous tax, i.e. extortion from the inheritance, since his property was considered to belong to the lord. The peasant had to pay this fee if he wanted to inherit property. From the servo, the seigneur could demand unlimited duties and payments.
As a hereditary holder of a plot of land, the peasant had to work for the lord: serve field corvee, which was the main form of exploitation, perform construction, transport and other duties, pay taxes in kind and in cash, which were relatively small at that time.
As a judicially dependent peasant, he had to conduct his litigation and sue in the seigneur's curia, for which he was charged legal fees and fines. Then he paid the lord market, bridge, ferry, road and other duties and taxes. Since the lord had a monopoly on the mill, oven and grape press, the peasants had to grind grain in his mill, bake bread in his oven and press grapes on his press, paying for it in kind or money.
Some peasants retained personal freedom (villans), but were in land and sometimes judicial dependence on the feudal lord.
The final formalization of feudal relations was accompanied by an increase in exploitation. More and more new ones were added to the old duties in favor of the lords. The peasants paid an additional fee to the landowner for the use of forests, waters and meadows that previously belonged to peasant community, and in the X-XII centuries. were captured by feudal lords. The exactions of the feudal lords and the constant feudal warriors who ruined the economy made the life of the peasants extremely unsecured. Hunger strikes were common.
The ruin of the peasants was facilitated by the general living conditions of the early Middle Ages. The peasants were unable to resist the direct violence of large rural and church farmers and royal officials. The Church also had the opportunity to use its power over the consciousness of the masses of believers. This ideological influence was so powerful that the church was able to encourage farmers to sacrifice their material interests and the future of their offspring for the sake of “godly” deeds.
The church also contributed in every possible way to feudalization. The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, which began at the end of the 6th century. (in 597) and which ended mainly only in the second half of the 7th century, met the interests of the ruling layer of Anglo-Saxon society, since it strengthened royal power and the landowning nobility grouped around it. Land grants granted by kings and nobles to bishops and the numerous monasteries that arose contributed to the growth of large church landownership. The Church, interested in land grants obtained through wills, donations and other forms of alienation of land, encouraged the development of private land ownership, which exposed the community, and in every possible way justified the enslavement of peasants. It is not surprising, therefore, that the spread of Christianity was met with stubborn and long-term resistance from the free Anglo-Saxon peasantry, who saw in their former pre-Christian cults the support of communal orders.
§ 3. Peasantry and the state
The forms of influence of the emerging feudal state on direct producers, the influence that contributed to their transformation into a class of dependent peasantry, were diverse. The most important of them included: the appropriation by the state of part or all of the surplus product of the farmer in the form of tributes, taxes and duties and the use of these incomes for the needs of the state itself and the emerging ruling class; assistance in the process of transformation of various layers of direct producers into feudal-dependent peasants and legal sanction of this transformation; providing large landowners political power over the peasants of their estates; regulation of relationships between large landowners and peasants, taking into account the interests of the emerging ruling class and the needs of the early feudal state; use of the state land fund to expand feudal exploitation of peasants; suppression of their protest against the establishment of feudal relations.
The social structures and political systems of different regions differed significantly from each other. The countries of early medieval Europe differed from each other in the degree of centralization of the state apparatus, and in the proportion of royal land ownership, and in other features government structure. All these differences influenced the forms and pace of feudalization and the formation of a dependent peasantry.
The emergence of a state is always accompanied by the appearance of taxes and duties necessary to maintain public authority. Among the ancient Germans, for example, people who led tribes received gifts from their own tribesmen, part of court fines, as well as tribute from defeated tribes.
However, already in initial period In the course of the existence of barbarian kingdoms, changes occur in the procedure for collecting this kind of levies: these levies acquire a permanent character. The amount of tribute paid by the population is regulated. From now on, it is collected not only by the kings themselves, but also by their agents, representatives of the serving nobility.
Later, villae regales appeared in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - points where royal clerks accepted in-kind taxes from the population. Their size is initially quite limited - this is food sufficient to feed the king and his retinue for 24 hours once a year. In Norway, the institution of feeding has been known since the 10th century. Usually the king visited each locality once every three years. In Sweden, the most ancient natural levies were attgold, which came from gifts that the heads of clan groups customarily brought to the king.
In some European countries in the early Middle Ages, state authorities, having adopted the Roman system of taxes and duties, also used methods of collecting revenues inherited from barbarian society. From the very beginning, the former Roman taxes and duties remained in effect here for local farmers, i.e. for the overwhelming majority of the population, and then, in full or limited form, extended to the barbarians. Although the tax system was somewhat simplified and the burden of taxes apparently decreased somewhat compared to Roman times, taxes still took away from local landowners not only surplus, but sometimes even part of the necessary product. This can be confirmed by reports of cases where land owners left their properties due to an unbearable tax burden, government threats to sell the lands of persons guilty of non-payment of taxes, forced periodic cancellation of arrears, tax riots, the requirement of royal laws that officials do not arbitrarily increase taxes and considered complaints from the population about this kind of abuse.
Special meaning The state tax system had to create a dependent peasantry in Byzantium. The transition from a slave society to a feudal one took a protracted form there and was carried out, unlike the countries of Western Europe, in such a way that the previous state apparatus was not broken.
By the 8th century the former Roman land-poll tax was replaced by many different levies and duties, levied in kind and in cash. The inability to pay taxes forced the peasants in Byzantium to leave their plots and flee to new lands, surrendering to the patrocy of the magnates.
A special form of state assistance in transforming direct producers into dependent peasants - even before state taxes and duties became a centralized form feudal rent, - there was a transfer of the right to collect them from the population to church corporations or individuals.
Already in the VI century. in the Frankish state, the king granted members of his house, church institutions and the nobility not only land along with the peasants, but also the right to income from villages and cities due to the treasury.
In the 10th century the state transferred to the monasteries the right to collect a precisely defined amount of state tax from the peasants of the free village. The latter was not considered the property of the monastery. But he became her patron. Sometimes monasteries or secular landowners were granted arithmos - the right to collect taxes from a certain number free peasants, mainly who lost their plots and became settlers.
Church tithes were among the most burdensome duties of peasants in early medieval Europe. Its collection by the church was impossible without assistance from the state.
In the Frankish kingdom, tithes were introduced under the Merovingians, but the church had to achieve only own funds(threat of excommunication). Tithes were levied on the harvest of grain, grapes, vegetable gardens and industrial crops. It also included livestock and livestock products. From church lands, which were given by the king to secular persons as benefices, it was necessary to pay tithes and nines, that is, in general, more than one fifth of the income.
Church taxes have been collected since the 7th century. and in pre-Norman England. Everyone paid it free people in accordance with the size of their land holdings. Evasion entailed a high fine and payment of a tax of 12 times the amount. For a long time (in the 8th - 9th centuries), the church, collecting tithes, did without the intervention of secular authorities. In the 10th century the situation changed dramatically. The state began to use harsh measures to force the population to pay tithes. If a peasant failed to pay, the officials of the king and the bishop, together with the priest, left him one tenth of his income, one tenth was given to the parish church, and the rest was divided between the glaford of that farmer and the bishop.
Thus, in various countries In Europe, the role of church tithes in the system of exploitation of the peasantry was unequal. Its significance depended on the church organization itself, the relationship between church and state, and the nature of the feudalization process. As a rule, church tithes were a particularly significant factor in the peasant policy of the state in Catholic countries, primarily where the process of feudalization unfolded with great intensity (the Frankish kingdom), as well as where the early feudal state conquered new territories, the population of which was more low stage of social development and where forced Christianization was carried out (Saxony, states Western Slavs)
The formation of a dependent peasantry was greatly influenced by the rulers' ownership of wastelands and the colonization of these lands. In the Frankish kingdom, the colonization of areas bordering Spain and Saxony was of great importance. The masses of free peasants who settled on these lands were initially in a position close to the status of small allodists, but gradually large secular magnates and church corporations, with the help of the state, turned them into dependent peasants.
Thus, slavery in the countries studied persisted throughout the early feudal period, although it underwent significant changes. Most of the serfs were now small land holders and enjoyed some economic independence. True, their defining feature legal status there remains unfreedom, i.e. the most severe form of personal addiction.
During the period of the emergence of the barbarian kingdoms, when the communal and late antique forms of ownership had not yet been supplanted by a new form of ownership, and the state had not yet taken shape, there was no feudal exploitation (neither in individual nor in centralized form). After the strengthening of the early feudal state and the emergence of a feudal economic structure, the situation changed. With the formation of feudal property, as well as classes of feudal lords and dependent peasants, the state became feudal, taxes acquired the character of feudal rent levied by the state.
The struggle for new territories was the most important goal of the foreign policy of the early feudal states. The fact that the conquered lands became the property of the crown, and not of the communities, as was the case earlier, during the barbarian conquests, meant that the royal nobility now carried out conquests primarily as a spokesman for the interests of the emerging class of feudal lords. Carrying out the colonization of conquered lands, the kings used their ownership of the acquired territory to grant land to the serving nobility and the church, thereby promoting the growth of feudal land ownership and the transformation of free farmers into dependent peasants.
Chapter 2. The peasantry of Europe during the period of developed feudalism
§ 1. Seignoria and the system of exploitation of the peasantry in France X - XIII centuries.
By the beginning of the period under review, three main types of seignories had emerged in France, differing in their system of exploitation of the peasantry. In the seigneuries of the first type - the so-called classical estates - the peasant holdings were very closely connected economically with the master's economy (the latter was very different here large sizes and covered up to half the total area of the seigneury); part of the domain was the master's plowing, which was processed primarily on the basis of the corvee of the peasant holders. Seigneuries of this type were often very large, although many medium-sized farms had a similar structure. The most common seigneury of the first type was in the center and north of the Paris Basin.
Estates of the second type, especially common in Central and Southern France, were distinguished by the fact that the domain in them was small: the basis of the system of exploitation of peasants was the collection of payments in kind and money from land holdings. In addition, in the seigneuries of this structure, the judicial and administrative income of patrimonial owners played a more prominent role, which in the seigneuries of the first type took a back seat compared to other items of seigneurial revenue. Among the estates of the second type there were holdings that were large, medium, and small in terms of the number of peasant holders. The third type of seigneury, most widespread in the South, was characterized by a complete absence of master's plowing, limited land dues and the dominant role of judicial and political exploitation of the peasants.
Since the early Middle Ages, small estates have also been preserved in certain areas, the main integral part of which there was a small domain, cultivated mainly by courtyard workers.
In the X - XIII centuries. the structure of estates of all these types and the system of exploitation of the peasantry in them are experiencing important changes. The most important of them was the reduction of the master's plowing. This did not mean the complete disappearance of grain farming on the domain and a significant reduction in the domain economy as a whole: domain meadows, forests, and vineyards, as a rule, remained in the same volume or even expanded, and the scale of the master's livestock farming clearly increased. But the volume of corvee services required by the master's economy, which at one time provided, first of all, plowing and harvesting, has noticeably decreased: the remaining grain fields were now cultivated to a large extent by hired workers and under the leadership of specially designated ministries.
Of particular note is the relatively less variability in the seigneurial structure in Southern France. The southern French seigneury, which did not have any extensive lordly cultivation in the previous period, did not even at the time in question experience the breakdown that took place in Northern France. Exploitation in the South was based on the collection of quitrents, as well as various judicial and trade duties.
Different types jurisdiction and judicial fines, road and trade duties, legal rights to forests, wastelands and pastures, to tax markets, bridges, piers, extraordinary “help” (taglia) and many other rights opened up wide possibilities for lords of new exactions, and not only from holders of the patrimonial land, but from all those who lived, passed through and came to the territory subject to the given land owner. The volume of these extortions was large. Trade, road and bridge duties levied in dozens and hundreds of places were often twice or three times higher than the land fees that one or another lord received from his peasants. The seigneurial taglia provided huge incomes, even after its fiscation exceeding those in the 13th century. many other types of taxation. Revenues from forests and pastures were also extensive, the increase in taxation of which caused acute discontent among the peasantry. At the turn of the XI - XII centuries. seignorial rights grew even more due to the establishment of a monopoly of patrimonial owners on mills, bread ovens, winepresses, the right to hunt, the right to have breeding producers, the preemptive right to sell wine, etc.
A similar form of exploitation was represented by feudal hiring, i.e. forced labor for pay, refusal of which could result in being brought before the patrimonial court and punished. As for the landless serfs who worked on the domain before, during the period under review they almost everywhere acquired at least small plots of land and either “dissolved” among other peasant holders or participated in the master’s economy as hired workers.
An important change in the exploitation system was the widespread distribution in the new and in the domain of the so-called new holdings. Many of them were not passed on to the peasants hereditarily, but only short time: for nine years, three years, one year. When re-letting land, high entry fees were charged. General level taxes were higher here than on traditional plots and sometimes reached half the harvest. If the chinsha was not paid from the new holding, it was easier for the lord to take the land from the peasant. Despite the unfavorable conditions, peasants widely acquired new holdings. This was explained, firstly, by the growing shortage of land: average area the allotment shrank during the fragmentation of traditional holdings by approximately four times and did not exceed four to six hectares; this forced the land-poor poor to agree to any conditions. Secondly, the new powers were attracted by their greater freedom of legal status. The procedure for owning a new holding was usually stipulated by a special agreement (oral or written). The peasant could leave the new holding at any time and sell it to another peasant. The duties and rights of the peasant on the new holdings were precisely fixed. Disputes about many of them were subject to jurisdiction not by the seigneurial court, but by the count court. Closely connected with the monetary economy, the new holdings were thus an area where the process of adapting the feudal exploitation of the peasantry to commodity-money relations was especially noticeable.
In general, the structure of the seigneury and the system of exploitation of the peasantry in France in the 10th - 13th centuries. determined the fairly wide participation in commodity-money relations of both the peasants themselves and the lords. In agricultural production, the decisive role of the peasant economy in comparison with the master's became in the 10th - 13th centuries. even more noticeable than before. But in rural trade, the lords, who appropriated a considerable part of the products of the peasant economy, retained their dominance almost until the very end of the period under review. The part of the agricultural products sold by the peasants themselves was smaller in volume than the part of the products they produced that actually entered the cash flow. This reflected active use feudal lords of commodity-money relations in their own interests.
The significance of changes in the organization and functioning of the French seigneury in the X - XIII centuries. does not, as we see, raise any doubts. Nevertheless, these changes did not undermine, in our opinion, the continuity of the seigneury of the time under consideration with the Carolingian fiefdom: both of these forms ensured the exploitation of the small farmer independently managing his farm by the landowner, who acted as the latter’s personal master; both of them represented, therefore, forms of feudal exploitation of the peasantry. It is only necessary, to a greater extent than has been done so far, to take into account their stage differences, determined by the entry into the X - XI centuries. French society into a qualitatively new phase - the phase of developed feudalism.
§ 2. Features of the patrimonial structure and the position of the peasantry in England in the 11th-12th centuries.
The genesis of the feudal lordship in England was slow for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 11th century. the formation of feudal land ownership and, on this basis, the involvement of the predominant part of farmers in relations of seigneurial dependence, have already advanced quite far.
The center of feudal exploitation of the peasantry was the so-called manor. This term denoted at the same time both the lord's house and the territory subject to him. The manor could coincide with the boundaries of the village-villa (the inhabitants of the villa are subject to one lord), could include only part of the villa (in this case, subject to at least two lords), and finally could include parts of several villas or even a number of villages. Manors were thus of various sizes - large, medium and small.
The degree of manorialization of different areas of England was uneven. In the north-east of the country, individual manors were still surrounded by villages called in the inventory as juices, i.e. assigned to these manors by virtue of the rights of jurisdiction exercised in them by the lords of these manors. Neither in personal nor in land terms did the inhabitants of these sokas submit to the manor.
The incompleteness and unevenness of the process of feudal subordination of the peasantry by 1086 was reflected in the diversity of relations of feudal dependence of farmers. Its most common form was Villanship. According to the Book of the Last Judgment, there were 109 thousand villans in England, or 41% of all holders, and they owned 45% of the arable area. Villans were full-fledged, land-dependent peasants. The land-poor and landless strata, burdened with duties - bordarii and kotarii - accounted for 32% of the population (87 thousand), they accounted for only 5% of the arable area. 37 thousand free and Sokmen - 14% of the rural population - owned 20% of the area described in 1086.
The concept of peasant freedom and non-freedom in England in 1086 was graduated. If the standard of unfreedom was the position of a serf - a slave, who was a kind of movable property of the master, then the standard of freedom - a few freemen and sokmen, who, by the nature of their services, were close to knights and owners of allods - lands that did not yet know the power of lords. The villans occupied an intermediate position between these poles: on the one hand, their services and duties to the lords were “low”, since they included corvee and “servile” payments in nature, on the other hand, their representatives were still summoned to meetings of hundreds, they were subject to state taxes, from a public legal point of view, they were still personally free, although this freedom was already flawed. Such contradictory features in the position of this category of landowners obviously indicated that the historical fate of Villanship depended on the policy of the new authorities of England (since politically it was a centralized country), which, as one would expect, was not carried out in favor of the peasantry.
The immediate consequences of the Norman conquest turned out to be tragic for the mass of villans: some died, others were forced to flee, others were forcibly taken from their homes, and others lost their property. In many estates, the ownership status of the holders was belittled: instead of sokmen, villans appeared, instead of full-allotment courtyards, half-allotments or even holders of the smallest plots (cottarii and bordarii) appeared, and the “released” lands were used to form or expand the area of the domain.
As for long-term consequences of the Norman Conquest for the fate of the English peasantry, they consisted in the accelerated “subsuming” of the many-sided forms of connections between farmers and the patrimonial land (judicial, fiscal, personal commendation, etc.) under the universal title of seigneurial dependence. (The latter covered both private economic domination over the peasants and their judicial and political subordination to the lord.) The beginning of this process is reflected in the Book of the Last Judgment. As a result of its further development, the slave-free opposition lost its meaning: the number of slaves was constantly decreasing, at the same time, the public status of the villan was so diminished that in this opposition the serf increasingly took the place. This meant that instead of the public legal basis for this opposition, the seigneurial basis came to the fore.
Among the villans, a small wealthy elite stood out, growing rich in trade. Individual representatives of this group sometimes received the opportunity to buy their freedom. On the contrary, many middle and small peasants went bankrupt, unable to pay the increasing cash rent on time. Among the villans, the number of land-poor peasants-cotters, forced to work for hire from their own or other lords, grew.
The stratification of the free peasantry proceeded even faster: by the 13th century. sharply identified were the wealthy peasant elite, which in its social status adjoined the lower strata of the feudal class and was one of the reserves for its replenishment, and the bulk of small freeholders, often so poor that they could not enjoy the privileges of the free and in their social status approached the villans .
The heavy oppression that lay on the bulk of the English peasantry was deepened by the ongoing increase in state taxes, which were imposed on both free peasants and villans in England.
The peasantry responded to increased exploitation with resistance. In the 13th century it was mainly local and often passive in nature. The villans, together with the free peasant poor, gathered in large groups - up to 100-200 people and often with weapons in their hands they destroyed the fences erected by the lords on the common lands, and drove the cattle into the areas of pastures and forests fenced by the lords. Entire villages refused to pay increased rents, especially from performing the hated additional corvee, tried to seek justice in the royal courts, and when they did not succeed due to the rule of excluding villanship that prevailed there, sometimes they offered armed resistance not only to their lord or his steward, but and to royal officials who tried to force them into submission. In all the speeches of the peasants big role played by the community, which remained almost everywhere in England in the form of a serf community.
The passive protest of the villans against feudal oppression in the 12th century was expressed in escapes to the cities, as well as to the forests, where free peasants often fled from the persecution of the feudal lords.
§ 3. Seignoria. The situation of the German peasantry in the XII-XIII centuries.
The change in the forms of feudal rent led to significant changes in the position of the German peasantry. The most severe forms of serfdom are disappearing, and many peasants have received personal freedom. On this basis, we can talk about a certain improvement in the situation of the German peasantry in the 12th - 12th centuries. But this improvement affected primarily legal status peasants and it cannot be exaggerated. Liberation from serfdom was often accompanied by the deprivation of peasants' lands. The spread of short-term rentals worsened the ownership rights of the peasants and led to a constant increase in peasant duties: with each successive renewal of the lease agreement, the feudal lord had the opportunity to increase the rent. In certain regions of Germany (in particular, in the north-west), secular and especially spiritual feudal lords seized communal lands and sometimes even drove peasants from their plots. Sources XII - XIII centuries. full of complaints from peasants about oppression and all kinds of abuses on the part of officials of the feudal estate (in church estates these are primarily complaints about the Vogts). Endless feudal strife placed a heavy burden on the peasant economy, often leading to its impoverishment and ruin, not to mention the frequent cases of its direct devastation and plunder by feudal squads. All these changes in the country's agrarian system caused significant differentiation of the peasantry. Wealthy peasants stood out, uniting in their hands several peasant plots(guf) or rented entire estates, which they cultivated with the hands of their impoverished fellow villagers. On the other hand, the number of land-poor peasants multiplied, owning only part of the normal land allotment. There are known cases when one gufa was split into 16 parts. A layer of landless peasants emerges. A new social type appears in the village - a day laborer, forced, in addition to performing ordinary seigneurial duties, to be hired by a feudal lord or a wealthy peasant for a special fee. How widespread this type became is evidenced by the fact that already in the middle of the 13th century. The maximum wage for agricultural workers begins to be established by law. The spread of day labor in the German village of the 13th century, of course, did not change its feudal nature. A day laborer is a feudal-dependent peasant who, as a rule, is obliged to his lord for various payments and duties; its exploitation was carried out by feudal methods and with the help of feudal means of coercion.
Until the 13th century. the fiefdom in Germany is experiencing its first - seignorial - stage. At this stage, the seigneury included, firstly, the lordly economy, i.e. the master's courtyard and domain lands and, secondly, peasant farms, the owners of which cultivated the master's lands and handed over taxes to the master's courtyard. The lord had power over people who were dependent on land and personally, and to exercise certain judicial rights in relation to them. The rural population at this time was still very diverse in its legal status. The courtyards were inhabited by courtyard servants, who sometimes owned small plots of land. The personal lack of freedom of these peasants was hereditary in nature. In contrast, peasant holders remained dependent on a given lord as long as they owned holdings from him.
In addition, there were categories of peasants who enjoyed certain additional rights and freedoms, which is why they were called “free” (for example, in North-West Germany there were “count free”, “imperial free”, “free colonists”, “free Hagers" (rooters) and free Flemings"). None of these categories of peasantry was actually completely free from feudal rule. They were distinguished, however, by greater freedom in the disposal of land. It was not, however, absolute freedom, since before alienating their allotment, the “count's freemen” had to inform the county court about this, and the “imperial freemen” had to invite the headman to the act of alienation and transfer the allotment only to their own kind; “free haegers”, when alienating an allotment, had to take into account the preferential right of the senior hager. Only “free Flemings” were formally guaranteed the right to freely alienate land; Over time, these rights also disappeared. General trend for the XI - XIII centuries. there was a leveling of all categories, which gradually merged into a single category of dependent peasants.
It is difficult to calculate the size of peasants' duties. Not a single document contains complete data on all types of cash and food dues, on the number and types of corvée labor and other levies and payments. As a rule, when entering into land dependence by inheritance or as a tenant, the peasant assumed all the obligations that were associated with hereditary holding or leased land. In addition, the master could impose new types of rents and extortions on him. In general, the following forms of peasant feudal obligations can be distinguished: 1) obligation towards a personal master; 2) land rent itself; 3) tithe; 4) legal and other payments to Vogt; 5) tax to the territorial prince; 6) trivial payments; 7) fees for the master’s preferential right when selling plots and property.
Despite the economic differentiation of the German peasantry, its layers were united in the main thing - they were all subjected to feudal exploitation. The main social contradiction remained the contradiction between the class of feudal lords and the single class of feudal-dependent and serf peasantry.
Summarizing the results of the research, we can identify the complex evolution experienced by the European peasantry during two main stages in the development of feudalism. During internal colonization, the entire main territory of European countries was brought under the rule of private lords or feudal sovereigns. Feudal land ownership became the absolutely dominant type. All spheres of life of the peasantry, all forms of functioning were now under the control of the feudal lords. peasant yard.
Chapter III. The peasantry of Europe during the period of the decomposition of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations
§ 1. Peasantry in the socio-political system of late feudalism
The third period of the history of the Middle Ages chronologically covers a century and a half - from the beginning of the 16th to the middle of the 17th centuries. In Europe at this time, the feudal system continued to dominate. In accordance with this, the feudal class maintained political dominance.
At the same time, the third period of the history of the Middle Ages is characterized by an ever-accelerating pace of development of productive forces, the emergence and gradual development of the capitalist structure in the bowels of a decaying feudal society.
“The economic structure of capitalist society,” wrote Marx, “grew from the economic structure of feudal society. The decomposition of the latter liberated the elements of the former."
Not all European countries were equally affected by these processes. In some of them capitalist development did not have noticeable successes, and the growth of commodity-money relations and foreign trade relations was used by the nobility to enrich themselves by returning to the crudest forms of feudal exploitation of the peasantry - corvée and serfdom.
The lack of privileges for the peasantry over other classes did not at all mean a lack of rights, although their scope is different areas and countries, as well as for different categories of the peasantry, was very different. As long as the peasant had his own farm, even if it was a serf peasant - a corvee worker, certain rights he still had (the right to participate in the village assembly, choose the community administration, etc.) The growing instability of the legal status of the peasants was characteristic feature the late feudal period, when the ruin of many peasants significantly increased the share in society of the “marginal layers” - paupers who lived on beggary, odd jobs, and even robbery. If the peasant was, although not full-fledged, but a necessary member of feudal society, then paupers found no place in him to such an extent that the very state of a “healthy beggar” begins to be equated to a criminal offense and is punished accordingly. The status of a hired worker, in comparison with the position of a direct pauper, gave only the “right” not to be considered a criminal, but deprived the former peasant of any rights to traditional corporate solidarity.
The relationship between feudal lords and serfs is in most cases characterized by the concept of “citizenship”. As long as we are not talking about exceptional everyday situations, about criminal crimes, an individual peasant is not a legal entity for the state. In normal circumstances, the feudal lord replaces the entire state for the serfs: he carries out trials and reprisals, collects taxes due to the state, organizes recruitment, and even deals with “legislation”, drawing up regulations for his estates. A large tycoon living far from his “subjects” already looks like a real sovereign in their eyes: walkers come to him with complaints about the managers, faith in the “good master” becomes the equivalent of monarchical illusions.
If we talk about the relationship between peasants and the church, then it should be noted that church feudal lords, just like secular ones, were the lords of their peasants in the West and their sovereign masters in the East of Europe. The church's landholdings were not only significant in size. Church institutions have long owned good lands; lordly cultivation, where it existed, occupied compact areas. Many peasants lived on church estates. Church land ownership differed from secular noble landownership only in that it was not private, but corporate and inalienable. The management of church lands was better organized than that of the nobility; lower personnel were more controlled by specially appointed persons from among the clergy, but the exploitation of the land fund was carried out more systematically.
The collection of tithes annually pitted peasants at harvest or with church collectors. Or with tax farmers. Tenth, and sometimes most of the harvest was taken from the field in front of the farmer’s eyes, which caused endless minor conflicts, often turning into lengthy trials, where the size of the tithe and all sorts of “innovations” were disputed, for example, the collection of it from new crops. The general hatred of tithes was also explained by the fact that they went “no one knows where,” i.e. outside the village - to a large church lord, city capital, etc. The village church parish existed on other incomes (rent, payment for services); in other words, the peasants also paid additionally for everything related to the church service.
§ 2. The attitude of the state towards the peasants
In principle, only state peasants, who constituted a special class there, had the right to participate in class meetings. But even in this case, already within the framework of the estate assembly, the inferior position of the peasant chamber was often felt: for example, the peasant deputies of the Swedish Rikstag back in the 18th century. were not allowed in secret committee»meetings where the most important state affairs were decided. In the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, state peasants were not represented at all in class assemblies. The highest categories of privately dependent peasantry in Western Europe - wealthy English freeholders, French censitaries - had only a passive right to participate in the elections of estate-representative assemblies of their countries, but did not have their own chamber or their representatives there. Thus, in purely political terms, the position of privately dependent peasants was either completely powerless, or close to it.
Absolutism, gradually growing out of a class-representative monarchy, protects and illuminates both the old social system and, accordingly, class oppression and class inferiority of the peasantry. The means of protecting the old system are becoming incomparably more powerful and much better coordinated. The exorbitant increase in state taxes in many countries actually played the role of the most important instrument for the expropriation of peasants during primitive accumulation, although this was contrary to the interests of the fiscal itself. At the same time, with the growth of direct exploitation of peasants by the state, the possibility of conflicts between the state and individual feudal lords in disputes over the distribution of feudal rent increased; general conservative orientation social policy absolutism was contradictoryly combined with attempts to transition to more rational and uniform taxation, which undermined the fiscal privileges of the upper classes.
Absolutism defends the most general interest of the ruling feudal class - the interest in preserving the feudal system of exploitation and the privileged position of the feudal lords. He mercilessly suppresses popular movements, and when there is no immediate threat to the existing system, he sanctifies it with the authority of tradition and the expression of monarchical will. The feudal class was interested in changing the existing situation in its favor, in particular, in increasing the amount of feudal rent received from the peasants.
So, the policy of absolutism in relation to different classes of society was different and the position of the peasants in absolute monarchies different countries. What was common was the formational community, thanks to which absolutism in all its forms corresponded to the late stage of the feudal social system and protected it. It must also be borne in mind that, whatever the conditions for the formation of absolutism, in its further development, in connection with the maturation of bourgeois elements, the relationship of class forces everywhere tended to evolve towards the equilibrium formula of “classical” absolutism.
Absolutism not only claimed to be an arbiter in inter-class clashes, but was also a direct exploiter of the peasant masses. In this regard, the commonality of the oppressed position of peasants in different countries appears very clearly.
Due to its decisive numerical superiority, the peasantry was the main payer of direct taxes and, to a large extent, indirect taxes. It also supplied the main military contingents. Its “specialization” in these most important functions for the state originated before the 16th century, but began to fully manifest itself precisely during the time under study.
The appearance of state taxes was by no means something new. However, only now did a complex state machine begin to develop, carrying out the fiscal exploitation of the unprivileged population. The central government was able to exploit the entire mass of the population, especially the peasantry, only from the time of the emergence of class representation. Before this, she did not have direct access to them.
The peasant paid various indirect fees when purchasing urban handicrafts and manufactured goods. Thus, the purchase of metal parts for agricultural implements was a necessity, but many other things (fabrics, shoes, etc.) could be abandoned for a while. That is why peasant family, even a wealthy one, often supplied herself with homespun clothing, homemade rough leather and wooden shoes, and homemade hats. And this, in turn, could not but affect the development of handicraft and manufacturing production in the country as a whole.
The increase in taxation of the peasantry left a very noticeable imprint on the relations of peasants to other classes and estates and to the state. An increase in land tax with fixed feudal duties and stable land rent threatened the income of land owners. Hence their open resistance to the fiscal pressure on the peasants, manifested in collective protests of central and local estate bodies and other administrative and judicial institutions. The same considerations dictated the defense of their holders and tenants in the courts and even the support of peasant resistance to the fix.
Thus, the peasantry played a decisive role in both replenishing the treasury and recruiting the army, ensuring the functioning of two most important elements of the state organization. If we take into account, in addition, that, as shown above, the social relationships of the peasantry with other classes largely determined the uniqueness of a given country, then the exclusive role of this class in the socio-political system of late feudalism will become quite obvious.
Chapter III. Class struggle of the peasantry
§ 1. Peasant uprisings in England
The formation of a class of feudally dependent peasantry and fundamental changes in social relations took place in conditions of acute social struggle.
TO end of the 14th century V. The situation of the English peasantry becomes especially difficult. There was outrage at the new tax demands that came upon the country following the resumption of the Hundred Years' War under Richard II. In 1377, Parliament introduced a one-time poll tax, collected again in 1379 and tripled in 1380. This tax and the abuses in its collection were the immediate cause of the uprising. It broke out in the spring of 1381, the peasants drove out the tax collectors and killed some of them. The uprising, which began as a protest against heavy taxes, immediately took on a pronounced anti-feudal character. Their particular hatred was aroused by church feudal lords - bishops and abbots, as well as royal judges, lawyers, clerks and other representatives of the state apparatus; their peasants considered them the main accomplices of the feudal lords in the oppression of the people.
The main leader of the uprising was a village artisan, roofer Wat Tyler, by whose name the entire uprising is usually called. He was familiar with military affairs, showed the ability to be a good organizer and enjoyed great authority among the rebels.
The demand of the peasants was: the abolition of serfdom and corvee and the establishment of a uniform low cash rent, free trade in all cities and towns of England and an amnesty for the rebels. The program of demands reflected the interests of the more prosperous and moderate-minded part of the peasantry. She did not encroach on the feudal system as a whole, but had in mind only the elimination of corvée and serfdom. The king had to agree to these demands, and he ordered that certificates of confirmation be issued to the peasants. Some of the peasants believed the king's word, left London and went home. But many of the rebels, especially the poor of Kent, dissatisfied with these concessions, remained in London with Wat Tyler and John Ball. Meanwhile, the urban poor of London began to crack down on their offenders and oppressors. The London rich got scared and began to gather forces against the rebels.
The king was forced to appear again for a meeting with the peasants in Smithfield.
Now the peasants demanded from the king the abolition of “all laws,” meaning mainly “labor legislation,” the confiscation of lands from bishops, monasteries and priests and dividing them among the peasants, and insisted on returning the lands seized by the lords to the peasants. They put forward a demand for the abolition of all privileges of lords and the equalization of estates, as well as the abolition of serfdom. This program was directed against the main forms of feudal exploitation, serfdom and the class system.
But by the time of the Smidfield meeting, the feudal lords had already managed to prepare for resistance. Through deception and treachery they managed to cope with the uprising. During the king's negotiations with the peasants, the mayor of London treacherously killed Wat Tyler. They made all sorts of promises to the peasants and convinced them to go home. Deprived of their leader, the peasants allowed themselves to be deceived a second time. Their last troops left London. The knightly detachments, which by that time had gathered by order of the king in London, followed peasant detachments and defeated them. In all areas of the uprising, royal judges carried out brutal reprisals. The leaders of the uprising, including John Ball, were brutally executed. The king, having abandoned all his promises, sent out an order that the peasants unquestioningly fulfill all those duties in favor of the lords that they had before the uprising.
The uprising of 1381 was defeated, but still had a significant impact on the subsequent agrarian development of England. Despite the brutal massacre, peasant unrest continued in different parts of the country until the 90s. XIV century The villans stubbornly refused to serve corvée, pay increased rent, or consider themselves serfs. Under the pressure of these circumstances, the ruling class and the feudal state were forced to make concessions - to somewhat ease heavy taxes, to soften the ferocious “labor legislation”. The most significant result of the uprising was that it frightened the feudal lords and thereby accelerated the liberation of the peasantry from serfdom, which was already being prepared by the entire course of economic development of England in the 14th century.
Thus, Wat Tyler's rebellion dealt the final blow to the corvée system of farming. It put an end to the phenomena of seigneurial reaction and determined the victory of that more progressive path in the development of the English countryside, which led to the strengthening of small-scale peasant farming and the disintegration of the corvée serf manor.
English peasants in the 16th century. intensified the struggle against feudalism and the anti-peasant agrarian revolution of the nobles and bourgeoisie, for land, for the peasant “cleansing of the land” from feudal relations. In 1536 - 1537 in the northern counties of England there was a rebellion against the reformation, in which the main driving force there were peasants who fought against enclosures. In the summer of 1549, two major peasant uprisings broke out - one in South-West England, in the counties of Devonshire and Cornwall, the other in East Anglia, in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk The Rebellion of 1549 in Norfolk and Suffolk was the most significant peasant movement in England since Wat Tyler's Rebellion.
The peasants' struggle against enclosures was a progressive struggle for a peasant agrarian revolution, a struggle to clear the way for the development of capitalism in England without nobles and noble land ownership, for free peasant farming. This, compared to landlordism under capitalist rent, would provide more fast development productive forces in the country and would create for the peasantry the most acceptable conditions of existence possible in a situation of commodity production. But the struggle of the English peasants against enclosure had features common to every peasant movement: spontaneity, lack of consciousness and organization, and the local nature of the actions. At the same time, the bourgeoisie supported the enclosures. In addition, among the peasantry in the 16th century. the process of property stratification intensified. Due to these circumstances, the struggle of English peasants against enclosure was defeated.
§ 2. Peasant movements in Germany
The peasants waged a daily struggle against feudal exploitation. In areas where short-term rentals were widespread, they fought to preserve the hereditary nature of the holdings. They stubbornly resisted encroachments on their land. Peasants everywhere opposed the violence of the lords against their ministers and sought a reduction in feudal duties and taxes.
The forms of peasant resistance were varied. Here there is refusal to fulfill duties, and deliberate careless performance of them, and causing damage to the buildings of the feudal lord and his household, and, finally, the murder of the most hated gentlemen and their officials. The flight of peasants became especially widespread, which during this period assumed such proportions that the feudal lords entered into an agreement among themselves on the extradition of fugitives, and tried to obtain from the cities an obligation not to accept into their walls peasants who did not have the appropriate permissions from their masters. They demanded that legislative measures be taken in this regard.
The class struggle of the German peasantry in the XII - XIII centuries. still had a deeply local character. Peasant uprisings almost did not cross the borders of a single village or a separate estate. Only at the end of the 13th century. more significant peasant uprisings occur, directed against unbridled noble robbery in the conditions of growth feudal fragmentation. One of them, led by Frederick the Wooden Shoe in 1285, supported by the townspeople, embraced large territory in northern Germany and was suppressed only by the combined efforts of the emperor and the princes.
In the 16th century the social movement reached its climax in the Peasants' War of 1524-1525.
Increasing extortions from peasants, expanding the "master's" rights over rural population, unfavorable changes in the general social conditions of peasant life that took place at the end of the 15th and early XVI centuries, the ferment of minds caused by the Reformation - these were the main reasons for the Peasant War. The demands of the peasants clearly appear in various programs that appeared in large numbers at that time - especially in the so-called “twelve articles” and in the Heilbronn project. The “Twelve Articles,” published in 1524, under the title: “Substantial and true main articles, in which all the villagers and rural workers of the spiritual and secular authorities consider themselves offended,” were, as it were, a peasant manifesto that united the demands of the vast majority. These demands were moderate and fair and were based solely on St. Scriptures. Without touching on issues of social structure at all, the “articles” sought only freedom of evangelical preaching, the abolition of serfdom, the elimination of the most burdensome feudal duties and the abolition of privileges that oppressed the mass of the people. The Heilbronn project was drawn up by a commission of insurgent deputies, under strong influence Wendel Hipler and Friedrich Weingand. The main idea of this project is the liberation of the peasants from the power of the nobles, with the latter being remunerated from church property, and the reform of the courts, based on the elective and social class principle.
The Great Peasants' War and the Reformation in Germany represent the first attempt at bourgeois revolution in Europe. These events showed that the main force in the fight against feudalism in Germany was the peasant-plebeian camp. Why did this powerful movement fail? Looting and violence alienated many of the sympathizers of the movement from the peasants. The complete fragmentation of the rebellious peasants, extremely poor weapons, unaccustomed to discipline and organization, as well as a lack of experienced and skillful leaders - all this hindered the success of the insurgents, especially after the Evangelical and Catholic rulers united to suppress the rebellion. Elector of Saxony John the Firm, in alliance with Philip of Hesse, Saxon dukes George and Henry, Count Albrecht of Mansfeld and other princes, inflicted a decisive defeat on the peasants at Frankenhausen. Münzer was captured and executed. The same fate befell the leaders of other peasant bands in the center. Germany, defeated and scattered by the allied princes. The extermination of the villagers under Zabern and Scheuweiler ended the peasant movement in Alsace. In Württemberg and Franconia, the commander-in-chief of the army of the Swabian League, Truchses von Waldburg, together with the Elector of the Palatinate, after several battles (at Bedlingen, Neckargartach, Konigshofen and Ingolstadt), completely suppressed the uprising. The pacification of the peasants was carried out everywhere with the greatest cruelty. The peasants held out somewhat longer in southern Swabia, the Archbishopric of Salzburg and Tyrol: in the last two regions, the rulers even had to make some concessions. In general, the peasant war worsened the situation of the peasants; since the embittered nobility with particular zeal began to impose taxes and duties on the peasants. The devastation of entire regions, the increasing disintegration of parts of the nation, the weakening of reform aspirations, the suppression of political life, the mutual distrust of the people and the government - these were the sad results of the failed movement.
The Great Peasants' War of 1524-1525, which was the highest point of the socio-political movement, was one of the most important events in the history of Germany. K. Marx named Peasant War"the most radical fact of German history." The revolutionary uprising of the broad masses of the peasantry and urban plebs against feudalism, which was of decisive importance for the further development of Germany and which, according to the definition of F. Engels and V. I. Lenin, was the first act of the European bourgeois revolution, was defeated in an environment of economic and political fragmentation, social Germany's economic immaturity. The problem of state unity in Germany, which was already the most important problem of its progressive historical development, remained unresolved, and the nascent national community was dealt a crushing blow, the consequences of which were only consolidated further events German history.
Peasant protests against feudal oppression, intertwined with the national liberation struggle, often had a significant impact on the positive outcome of the latter. Finally, the participation of the peasant masses in many socio-political movements almost always left an imprint on their course and results, forcing the fighting feudal groups to mutual compromises. We must also not forget that in the struggle against the feudal lords, the peasant masses accumulated certain organizational and political experience and received ideological training. Which contributed to the development of their social consciousness and class consciousness, in particular.
Conclusion
In the process of research, the author came to the conclusion that in all regions, in the formation of the class of feudal-dependent peasantry, the processes of formation of feudal property and feudal statehood were of fundamental importance. The course of these processes was manifested in the history of the peasantry, on the one hand, in a change in the nature of the land rights of direct producers, and on the other hand, in their personal subordination to large landowners. The forms of feudal exploitation of the peasantry were diverse: rent of products supplemented by individual corvee labor and small cash payments, taxes. Devastating warriors, crop failures, all this forced the peasants to think only about survival. Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages, the situation of the peasants only became more difficult each time, the exactions from the feudal lords only increased, and all this led to uprisings and peasant warriors, during which the peasants hoped for at least some concessions from both the owners of the land and the state.
All spheres of life of the peasantry, all forms of functioning of the courtyard were under the control of the feudal lords. Private seigneury began to be used more widely, in addition to private economic, judicial - political forms domination. Feudal exploitation from outside also became more intense. central authorities feudal states that strengthened their control over both economic activities and the internal life of state peasant communities.
It would seem how one could survive in such conditions and where to look for salvation, but the peasants found it in the Holy Scriptures - the Bible, because it was faith that gave them strength and promised rewards in “eternal life” for their patience. Church writers argued that peasants have the best chance of going to heaven: after all, they, fulfilling God’s commandments, earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, and endure humiliation in the hope of getting a better share.
List of sources and literature used
1. Sources
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Literature
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Peasants | Formation of the class of dependent peasants
During the era of the Great Migration of Peoples, when Germanic tribes settled over vast expanses of Europe, each of the free Germans was both a warrior and a tiller at the same time. However, gradually the most skilled warriors who made up the leader’s squad increasingly began to go on campaigns alone, without involving the entire tribe in military operations. And the remaining houses supplied food and everything necessary to those relatives who went on a campaign.
Since farmers faced many dangers in the turbulent era of the early Middle Ages, they sought to enlist the support of some powerful warrior, sometimes even their own tribesman. But in exchange for protection, the peasant had to renounce ownership of his plot of land and freedom in favor of his patron and recognize himself as dependent on him.
Sometimes they became dependent on the lord not of their own free will, but because of debts or some major offenses. The peasants did not always go under the protection of the warriors, who gradually received large plots of land and turned into feudal nobility.
Often peasants were taken under the patronage of a monastery, to which the king or other major lord gave lands so that the monks would pray for the salvation of his soul. By the X-XI centuries. There are almost no free peasants left in Western Europe.
Peasants | Categories of dependent peasantry
However, the level of unfreedom of peasants varied greatly. From some peasants the master demanded only a chicken for Christmas and a dozen eggs for Easter, but others had to work for him almost half of their time. The fact is that some peasants worked for the lord only because they had lost their own land and were forced to use the land provided by the lord and live under his protection. Such peasants were called land dependent. The size of their duties depended on how much land and what quality the lord provided them with. Much more difficult was the situation of those peasants who became personally dependent on the lord. These were usually debtors, criminals, captives or descendants of slaves.
Thus, all peasants were divided into two groups: Peasants | Rights and obligations
General peasant duties.
The peasants' duties could consist of working on the master's field (corvée), paying quitrents in food or money. Many peasants were obliged to press wine only on the lord’s presses and grind flour only at his mill (of course, not for free), participate at their own expense in the transportation of goods, and in the repair of bridges and roads. The peasants had to obey the lord's court orders. A tenth of the harvest given to the church is church tithe.
Features of the duties of serfs.
By the 12th century there were almost no free peasants left in Western Europe. But they were all unfree in different ways. One worked as a corvee several days a year, and the other several days a week. One was limited to small offerings to the lord at Christmas and Easter, while the other gave away about half of the entire harvest. The most difficult situation was for the personally dependent (serv) peasants. They bore responsibilities not only for the land, but also for themselves personally. They were obliged to pay the lord for the right to marry or inherit the property of their deceased father.
Peasants' rights
Despite the abundance of duties, medieval peasants, unlike slaves of the ancient world or Russian serfs of the 16th-19th centuries, had certain rights. The Western European peasant was not excluded from the legal system. If he regularly fulfilled his duties, the master could not refuse him the use of the land plot on which generations of his ancestors worked. The life, health and personal property of the peasant were protected by law. The lord could not execute a peasant, sell or exchange him without land and separately from his family, or even arbitrarily increase peasant duties. With the development of centralization in the largest European countries, starting from the 12th-14th centuries, free peasants could personally appeal the lord’s court decision in the royal court.
Peasants | The number of peasants and their role in societyPeasants made up about 90% of the total population of medieval Europe. The social position of peasants, like representatives of other classes, is inherited: the son of a peasant is also destined to become a peasant, just as the son of a knight is to become a knight or, say, an abbot. Peasants occupied an ambiguous position among the medieval classes. On the one hand, this is the lower, third estate. The knights despised the peasants and laughed at the ignorant men. But, on the other hand, peasants are a necessary part of society. If in ancient Rome physical labor was treated with contempt, considered unworthy of a free person, then in the Middle Ages the one who is engaged in physical labor is a respected member of society, and his work is very commendable. According to medieval sages, each class is necessary for the rest: and if the clergy takes care of souls, chivalry protects the country, then the peasants feed everyone else, and this is their great merit to the whole society. Church writers even argued that peasants have the best chance of going to heaven: after all, fulfilling God’s commandments, they earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. Medieval philosophers compared society to human body: the soul of a person is those who pray, the hands are those who fight, and the legs are those who work. just as it is impossible to imagine that legs quarrel with arms, so in society all classes must fulfill their duty and support each other.
Peasants | Folk culture
Holidays. Many peasants had gold coins and elegant clothes hidden in their chests, which were worn on holidays; the peasants knew how to have fun at village weddings, when beer and wine flowed like a river and everyone was eaten up during a whole series of half-starved days. Customs. So that “the normal course of things in the world is not disrupted,” the peasants resorted to magic. Closer to the new moon, they organized rituals to “help the moon restore its radiance.” Of course, special actions were provided for in the event of drought, crop failure, prolonged rains, or storms. Here, priests often participated in magical rituals, sprinkling fields with holy water or using other means other than prayer, trying to influence higher powers. You can influence more than just the weather. Envy of a neighbor could give rise to a desire to harm him in every possible way, and a tender feeling for a neighbor could bewitch her unapproachable heart. The ancient Germans believed in sorcerers and sorceresses. And in the Middle Ages, in almost every village one could find a “specialist” in casting spells on people and livestock. But it was not uncommon for these people (elderly women) to be valued by their fellow villagers because they knew how to heal, knew all sorts of herbs, and abused their harmful abilities unnecessarily: Oral folk art. All kinds of evil spirits are often mentioned in fairy tales - one of the most common types of oral folk art(folklore). In addition to fairy tales, numerous songs (holiday, ritual, labor), fairy tales, and sayings were heard in the villages. The peasants probably also knew heroic songs. Many stories featured animals whose behavior was easily guessed human traits. Throughout Europe, stories were retold about the cunning fox Renan, the stupid wolf Isengrin and the powerful, capricious, but sometimes simple-minded king of animals - the lion Noble. In the 12th century, these stories were brought together and translated into poetry, the result was extensive poem- "Novel about the Fox." The peasants, tired from their work, loved to tell each other all sorts of stories about the fairyland. Features of peasant Christianity. Also in Western Europe, werewolves were feared (among Germanic peoples were called "werewolves" - man-wolves). The hands of the deceased saint were cut off to be used as separate relics. Peasants widely used all kinds of amulets. The amulets could be verbal, material, or represent a magical action. One of the most common “material amulets” in Europe to this day is a horseshoe attached at the entrance to a house. Christian relics, by all accounts, could also serve as talismans, heal from illnesses, and protect from damage.
Peasants | Life of peasants
Housing
On larger area In Europe, a peasant house was built of wood, but in the south, where this material was not enough, it was more often made of stone. Wooden houses were covered with straw, which was suitable for feeding livestock in hungry winters. The open hearth slowly gave way to a stove. Small windows were closed with wooden shutters and covered with bubble wrap or leather. Glass was used only in churches, among lords and the city's rich. Instead of a chimney, there was often a hole in the ceiling, and
When they were burning, smoke filled the room. During the cold season, often both the peasant’s family and his livestock lived nearby - in the same hut.
In villages people usually got married early: the marriageable age for girls was often considered 12 years old, for boys 14 - 15 years old. Many children were born, but even in wealthy families, not all lived to adulthood.
Nutrition
Crop failures and famine were constant companions of the Middle Ages. Therefore, the food of the medieval peasant was never plentiful. The usual was two meals a day - morning and evening. The daily food of the majority of the population was bread, cereals, boiled vegetables, grain and vegetable stews, seasoned with herbs, onions and garlic. In the south of Europe, olive oil was added to food, in the north - beef or pork fat, butter was known, but was used very rarely. People ate little meat, beef was very rare, pork was consumed more often, and in mountainous areas - lamb. Almost everywhere, but only on holidays, they ate chickens, ducks, and geese. They ate quite a lot of fish, because 166 days a year were during fasting, when eating meat was prohibited. Of the sweets, only honey was known; sugar appeared from the East in the 18th century, but was extremely expensive and was considered not only a rare delicacy, but also a medicine.
In medieval Europe they drank a lot, in the south - wine, in the north - mash until the 12th century, and later, after the use of the plant was discovered. hops - beer. It should be canceled that heavy alcohol consumption was explained not only by commitment to drunkenness, but also by necessity: ordinary water, which was not boiled, because pathogenic microbes were not known, caused stomach diseases. The alcohol became known around the year 1000, but was used only in medicine.
Constant malnutrition was compensated for by super-abundant treats on holidays, and the nature of the food practically did not change; they cooked the same thing as every day (maybe they just gave more meat), but in larger quantities.
Cloth
Until the XII - XIII centuries. the clothes were surprisingly monotonous. The clothes of commoners and nobles differed slightly in appearance and cut, even, to a certain extent, men's and women's, excluding, of course, the quality of fabrics and the presence of decorations. Both men and women wore long, knee-length shirts (such a shirt was called a kameez), and short pants - bra. On top of the kameez, another shirt made of thicker fabric was worn, which went down slightly below the waist - blio. In the XII - XIII centuries. long stockings - highways - are spreading. Men's blio sleeves were longer and wider than women's. Outerwear was a cloak - a simple piece of fabric draped over the shoulders, or penula - a cloak with a hood. Both men and women wore pointed ankle boots; curiously, they were not divided into left and right.
In the 12th century. changes in clothing are planned. Differences also appear in the clothing of the nobility, townspeople and peasants, which indicates the isolation of classes. The distinction is indicated primarily by color. The common people had to wear clothes of soft colors - gray, black, brown. The female blio reaches the floor and Bottom part it, from the hips, is made from a different fabric, i.e. something like a skirt appears. These skirts of peasant women, unlike those of the nobility, were never particularly long.
Throughout the Middle Ages, peasant clothing remained homespun.
In the 13th century The blio is replaced by tight-fitting woolen outerwear - cotta. With the spread of earthly values, interest in the beauty of the body appears, and new clothes emphasize the figure, especially of women. Then, in the 13th century. Lace spreads, including among the peasantry.
Tools
Agricultural tools were common among peasants. These are, first of all, a plow and a plow. The plow was more often used on light soils of the forest belt, where the developed root system did not allow deep turning of the soil. The plow with an iron share, on the contrary, was used on heavy soils with relatively smooth terrain. In addition, the peasant farm used various types of harrows, sickles for reaping grain and flails for threshing it. These tools remained virtually unchanged throughout the medieval era, as noble lords sought to receive income from peasant farms at minimal cost, and the peasants simply did not have the money to improve them.