INTRODUCTION 5 



without recalling some of the historical facts about 

 the feudal system, and the social organization fos- 

 tered by it during the Middle Ages, and the early 

 modern period. 



Under the feudal system each state was in the 

 tenure of a landlord who acknowledged his obedience 

 to the sovereign of the country. The landlord cul- 

 tivated part of his estate himself and rented the 

 balance out to tenants who paid their rents in serv- 

 ices in kind or in money. Each estate consisted 

 of arable land, meadow, woodland, and waste. The 

 peasant under the feudal system labored under many 

 handicaps. He was not permitted to migrate freely. 

 The services and custom dues expected of him were 

 often indeterminate. The landlord had judicial 

 powers over his tenants and often exercised these 

 powers in a very arbitrary way. It was possible for 

 a landlord to reduce a tenant's tillable land to such 

 an extent as to provide only a precarious existence. 



The intolerable conditions growing out of this 

 system have resulted in peasant uprisings in many 

 countries of Europe previous to the seventeenth 

 century. During the Hundred Years' War there 

 occurred the great peasant rebellion in France called 

 the Jacquerie. Important uprisings of peasants 

 occurred in Hungary, Germany, and Poland during 

 the sixteenth century, but in central European coun- 

 tries the peasant farmers lost ground throughout the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their free- 

 dom of action and standards of living were lower 



