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[JeanryChandler]

And as for rebellion, it should be noted that it was more or less continually attempted through the middle ages, sometimes with success, sometimes without, usually with tragedy as the only outcome. The desperation of the peasants had to be extreme to continue to make this attempt..

Hans Delbruck's Medieval Warfare is just one good cold military oriented account of the period I've read which documents scores of small uprisings, and dozens of outright wars between peasants of a given reigion, or burghers or a particular town, against their lord and / or bishop (often the same thing)

Plus you had numerous much more massive regional uprisings, some of them quite successful in the short term such as the Hussites, the Flemish at Courtrai, many others efficiently put down, the English Peasants rebellion of Wat Tyler, the German Peasants rebellion... the Jacquerie in France, etc. etc. etc..

Jeanry

[Casper Bradak]

I don't expect to win this little debate, but you can't say the system wasn't there hehe..

"1337 - In the year of our Lord 1337, King Edward crossed over to Flanders. Then he entered the city of Cologne where reconciliation took place between him and the Emperor of Bavaria, and he entered into alliance with the Brabantines and Flemings, at whose instigation he plunged into war with France. Then he wasted with fire and sword the North parts of France as far as Tournai. "


"1341 - In the year of our Lord 1341, the King of England, plundered, destroyed, and burnt 1705 villages in the Kingdom of France, each having a parish church, with the exception of the castles and manors of the great lords, and other fortresses. And he waited for Philip of Valois, King of the French, for two whole days, in the open field, but he was unwilling to come."

Invasions without intent to remain and raids are off the subject and do not apply.

[Casper Bradak]

Non medieval ones like Vegetius' manual were a staple throughout the middle ages, but unique medieval ones were written. A currently published example would be Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry by Christine de Pizan.
edit: A cool thing about many of the european manuals on the arts of war, are that they are not vague strategies and advice like Sun Tzu gives. They go into honourable methods of conflict and resolution, chain of command, equipment needed and logistics for specific situations, etc. etc.

[Casper Bradak]

King Henry going through wives....
Like he said, he had to trump up charges to justify it. Nasty, but he got away with it.

There are a couple of problems with this argument. First of all, in most of medieval Europe there was nothing like what we would consider a strong central government. Even in England, one of the more centralized of feudal states, the king's power still rested to a great extent on the cooperation of local vassals.

That was exactly my point to support my argument.
Again, it's probably just how you take it. I feel it's like taking the worst newspaper articles on murders or corrupt politicians to judge the US by. There are numerous examples of our politicians abusing their authority, and numerous examples of lack of compensation to the public, along with organized crime. But if those were the standard ways, the country wouldn't be very efficient and wouldn't last long.
The main recourses of peasants was not rebellion. Any rebellion, if researched well enough, will show numerous appeals to numerous lords through the chain of command and debates for resolution.
If these were not heeded satisfactorilly, that is when rebellions happen. So its frequency may go to show corrupt or leadership that didn't take it seriously, but it does show the system.

[Casper Bradak]

And as for rebellion, it should be noted that it was more or less continually attempted through the middle ages, sometimes with success, sometimes without, usually with tragedy as the only outcome. The desperation of the peasants had to be extreme to continue to make this attempt..

Over a period of a thousand years, and over a large geographical area it probably sounds like a lot, and there was probably always one going on somewhere, but by and large, they weren't happening far more than they were. Peasant uprisings are news, peasant normalcy isn't.
Not uncommonly the peasants had the support of their lords (civil war).
The point is, no one ever went from "This sucks!" directly to "Let's organise a revolt!" The issues resolved by appeal rarely made the 5 o'clock news, no different now. But it's not hard to assume that happened more often than revolt. A lord would hear the peoples appeals constantly, it was his job, and the vast majority of them were settled, major or minor, one way or another.

[Casper Bradak]

Here's a hypothetical example to illustrate

Hypothetical examples aren't fair, you can set it up. But chances are, in all but the smallest communities, you would not go to lord Casper but to his officials in charge of just such things. The outcome, who knows? You could be right. The smaller the community, the more easily you could approach a lord of a different one if yours was unapproachable.
If so, not to put a modern shady view on it, say your your kid was run over by the local mafi boss' limo. The mafia runs your shop. Is that a way for continued compliance and revenue and smooth business for the mafia, much less to ignore you afterwards? Either he compensates you or you go somewhere else for justice, or he kills you on trumped up charges or in secret, and hopes that goes well.
Your hypothetical example could very well be right, but chances are some other recourses would be explored first. If that lord were a sociopath, he'd try to run things smoothly. If he were just so hot blooded, he'd be drawing a lot of attention and unrest, and probably make bad decisions.

[David Craig]

That was exactly my point to support my argument.
Again, it's probably just how you take it. I feel it's like taking the worst newspaper articles on murders or corrupt politicians to judge the US by. There are numerous examples of our politicians abusing their authority, and numerous examples of lack of compensation to the public, along with organized crime. But if those were the standard ways, the country wouldn't be very efficient and wouldn't last long.
The main recourses of peasants was not rebellion. Any rebellion, if researched well enough, will show numerous appeals to numerous lords through the chain of command and debates for resolution.
If these were not heeded satisfactorilly, that is when rebellions happen. So its frequency may go to show corrupt or leadership that didn't take it seriously, but it does show the system.

This is an interesting argument, although to a large extent we are just speculating. But that's ok since I like speculating as much as the next person <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />. Caspar, if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that the fact that there wasn't unremitting chaos throughout the Middle Ages proves that the system functioned. And conversely, if the majority of lords had been regularly and massively abusing their power, the system would have broken down into constant anarchy. I believe you are correct in this line of thinking. But that is not the same thing as arguing that the average peasant had some sort effective legal recourse if he did suffer abuse. Yes, there are cases in which entire areas, suffering under abusive rule, appealed to higher authority. But those were collective actions that might have the support of some local nobility and the church. And ultimately, if no positive changes were forthcoming, rebellion was their ultimate protest.

But as far as the relationship between the individual peasant and his lord, most evidence points to a situation where the lord would be completely immune from any sort of punishment for crimes committed against the peasant. Killing the subject of another noble would of course be a different matter, should that lord choose to take offense. Then the abusive lord might find himself in one of those judicial duel situations that the fechtbuchs illustrate <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />.

David

[Casper Bradak]

I don't really disagree with you. I really started this debate leaning on legalities among equals. Peasant vs lord, it's a coin toss and very much depends on the specific situation and individuals. Commoner vs commoner, there was great effective legal recourse, performed by a lord or official, that often worked and covered things that now days we can only get pissed off about, like reputations and sexual harrasment on the street.
Among lords, it would more often be a matter of politics, money and combat.
But this whole debate has really been about lord vs commoner.

[David Craig]

Hypothetical examples aren't fair, you can set it up. But chances are, in all but the smallest communities, you would not go to lord Casper but to his officials in charge of just such things. The outcome, who knows? You could be right. The smaller the community, the more easily you could approach a lord of a different one if yours was unapproachable.
If so, not to put a modern shady view on it, say your your kid was run over by the local mafi boss' limo. The mafia runs your shop. Is that a way for continued compliance and revenue and smooth business for the mafia, much less to ignore you afterwards? Either he compensates you or you go somewhere else for justice, or he kills you on trumped up charges or in secret, and hopes that goes well.
Your hypothetical example could very well be right, but chances are some other recourses would be explored first. If that lord were a sociopath, he'd try to run things smoothly. If he were just so hot blooded, he'd be drawing a lot of attention and unrest, and probably make bad decisions.

True, hypotheticals are slanted, but they can be useful as far as seeing something from a certain perspective goes. Your hypothetical makes sense. It would definitely not be a good idea for a lord to severly abuse his own peasants. He'd be weakening his own support base, reducing his own revenue, and if he took it to extremes, he'd be setting himself up for rebellion/assassination.

The one point of yours that I don't accept, however, is that there could be an appeal to another lord -- unless that lord was his own lord's overlord, and even then that would be a real stretch. He couldn't simply go to the next village and protest to a different lord; that wasn't how the system worked. Why would lord B care about how lord A was treating his peasants? They weren't his subjects and he wasn't responsible for them. Not only that, but involving himself in the private affairs of his neighbor -- for the sake of some social inferior that had the nerve to approach him for a favor -- could cause him quite a bit of trouble.

I think we are arguing over matters of scale. Systematic and widespread of abuse of power forced responses from above, or caused protest then rebellion from below. But it is impossible to know how much sporadic and occasional abuse went on. I suspect quite a bit.

David

[Casper Bradak]

Not necessarily the next equal, who may have no concrete reason to care (other than maybe a good excuse to depose his neghbor and take his land), but the next guy up would. Say there's a knight abusing a village in his care, the knights charge is part of the barons territory. If the knight will not give audience to the commoners concerns, they will take them to the baron, who would set things straight with the knight in his best interests.
For example, in the 15th century, a genoese merchant ship was captured by english sailors justifying it as booty of war or genoese pirates or french or something. The ship was ported near london. The nearest place to appeal was the kings audience in london.
(Nobles caring for any amount of land had these audiences on a regular basis, if not an open door policy, for resolving issues, disputes and logistics.)
The king heard them, agreed and granted their ship back to them, overruling the local lord and captain of the english ship. This was just mentioned in passing in another chronicle because some spanish soldiers were just trying to take the genoese ship right after the english had given it back. Not exactly making the news, but no doubt a common occurence.

[Aaron Pynenberg]

Nice discussion guys I am learning a ton from you two-keep it up please!!!

[david welch]

Even if there was the occasional peasant uprising, the truth is that the nobility though of them as beasts of burden, and sub-human. Telling some sort of overlord that a knight killed some villagers would have been the same as telling that he went out and killing some oxen, although I suspect you would have had to have a better excuse for killing the oxen.

On revolts, and the opinion of the peasantry:

Philip Lindsay and Reg Groves, The Peasants' Revolt 1381 (London: Hutchinson &amp; Co., 1954) 90

"To them it would have appeared almost as incredible for the animal-people to turn on their masters as it would be for us to conceive our dogs banding together and hunting us down in packs. One dog might prove rebellious but we would never expect all the rebellious dogs to unite with horses and other beasts, as we are their divinely appointed masters."

[david welch]

And as for indescriminantly whacking the peasantry:

Burchard of Worms, "Lex familiae Wormatiensis ecclesiae", par. 30, ed. Ludwig Wieland (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges in Quart., i, Hanover, 1893), p. 643, trans. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal, A Source Book for Mediaeval History (New York, 1905), p. 559.

" Homicides take place almost daily among the family of St. Peter, as if they were wild beasts. The members of the family rage against each other as if they were insane and kill each other for nothing . . . In the course of one year thirty-five serfs of St. Peter belonging to the church of Worms have been murdered without provocation."

[Casper Bradak]

I'd like to say the nobilities opinions of the commoners can't be generalized, and that would be true to an extent, there are always exceptions, and it has to be taken individually to a point, but there's plenty of evidence, even in the fencing manuals not intended for the public, that they did indeed look down on them.
It goes natually with their divinely placed 3 tiered social order; those who pray, those who rule (and fight) and those who labour. This generally made them think themselves better, but no less essential (an equally important point), than the people, and no less in need of keeping things running as smoothly and efficiently (and therefore as profitably) as possible, after all, along with war, that was their job.
Also, their concern for the populace, aside from business sense, would depend on how closely each individual lord followed certain tenets of his religious and chivalric code, which many of them were sworn to uphold. If he followed the applicable tenets of it (which some did, some didn't) he may even feel close personal responsibility for those wronged or less fortunate.
Though the minority, it even happened on occasion that a worthy commoner rose in the ranks of the lords. There was a certain knight killed in a large peasant uprising in england, who through his own skills and personality rose to the title from the commoners. An animal-man could not have done that if those were the opinions of those over him.
It was also common practice for nobles and anyone with money to give alms and donations of food to the hungry peasants often, no doubt encouraged at their daily church goings, which also had to have reinforced decency in them, with a much stronger belief in religion and daily attendance than there is now, costing them donations and indulgences if they were naughty.
Wether a lord were a business man and thought of them as oxen, or otherwise and treated them more fairly, the knight that killed the villagers would be punished, probably financially, or even replaced with a non-hostile individual who could run things better without costing the lord $ and manpower and unwilling followers.

[Casper Bradak]

Heh, certainly sounds like a mess. Could you put a context to it? A family feud in St. Peter? Serfs killed in the fighting? Killed because they served the enemy? Who was that written to? Were they crazy?