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The Separation of Craft Industry from
Agriculture and the Rise of the Towns

p Although the production forces developed slowly in the early Middle Ages, nevertheless progress was steady and the first result of this process was a new social division of labour which facilitated further economic progress throughout Europe. Gradually a clear dividing line came to be drawn between industry and agriculture. More and more towns sprang up and started to’ grow in size, they developed as centres of industry and trade and a further result of this development was the emergence of commodity-money relations.

p The growing needs of mediaeval society from the eleventh century onwards compelled those peasants who plied trades in addition to their main agricultural work, setting themselves up as blacksmiths, weavers, tailors and cobblers, to spend more and more time at these subsidiary trades and less and less in the fields. These peasants often left the villages and set up house in places where it was easy to sell their wares and receive in exchange for them the farm produce which they needed to feed themselves and their families (at crossroads, on the banks of rivers, in places where they were afforded the protection of castles or monasteries).

p Merchants also gradually came to settle in such places and at last succeeded in re-establishing trade which had declined sharply since the fall of the Roman Empire.

p The first kind of trading to be re-established in Europe was trade in expensive and easily transportable goods from distant lands, in particular those of the East, such as cloth from Byzantium, ivory and gold from Asia Minor and India, and perfumes from Arabia. Gradually, however, the merchants who settled alongside the craftsmen started to sell the wares produced by 195 local craftsmen and in this way enabled the craftsmen to spread their wares beyond the confines of their immediate districts. Thus new European towns developed as centres of trade and industry.

p Initially these towns were little more than large villages, whose inhabitants engaged in agriculture as well as trades and had their pastures, arable land, woods and lakes or rivers. But gradually industry was to demand more and more of the time and effort of the working men in the towns and more often than not they were obliged to exchange their wares with peasants from the neighbouring villages so as to obtain their essential raw materials and the produce they needed to keep their families.

p Guilds had developed, whose members were small independent producers working on their own small premises and employing journeymen and apprentices, the number of which (just as the organisation of work and production as a whole) were subject to strict stipulations laid down in guild charters. The main purpose of these charters was to establish and preserve uniform living and working conditions for the full members of the guild, namely master-craftsmen, for journeymen were in reality hired workmen just as apprentices who paid for their instruction by their work.

The interests of the journeymen and apprentices were not compatible with those of their masters and the class struggle between 196 these two groups grew progressively more acute as the masters gradually came to constitute a privileged section of society and ceased to allow journeymen to encroach on their territory.

The Conflict Between the Towns
and the Landowners

p The population concentrated in the towns was far more closeknit than in the countryside, and was able to stand up to the landed nobility on whose lands the towns had been founded. Eventually, either via direct conflict or by purchasing various rights, many towns became self-governing communes, almost completely independent of the seigniors. The towns also gained the right to have their own town council, elect its officers, buy freedom from taxation, military and labour service and assure all inhabitants their personal freedom. It was not for nothing that the saying went in those days: "Town air makes a man free.”

The towns of Italy—in particular Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Naples, Palermo, Milan and Florence—were the first to expand and restore the trade links with the East, beginning from as early as the ninth and tenth centuries. The merchants of these towns prospered rapidly from trading in goods from the East and within a short space of time the towns not only gained the right of selfgovernment from the seigniors on whose lands they stood, whether bishops or landed nobles, but became independent republics in their own right. The towns of Flanders were extremely prosperous thanks to their textiles which were highly valued in Northern Europe, and in the twelfth century the towns of south-west Germany also started to gain prominence. Spectacular urban development began in England and France in the eleventh century, and trade and industry were flourishing in their towns by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Advanced Feudal Society

p The results of this urban development and the expansion of industry and trade were so great and diverse throughout Europe that the time of their emergence and subsequent development may well be regarded as the opening of the period of advanced feudalism, when the productive forces (i.e., agricultural and industrial techniques and working skills adopted by those participating in the small-scale production typical of feudal society) 197 had reached the highest level of development possible in smallscale feudal economy.

p Indeed, urban industry as it developed provided the agricultural labourers with sufficient iron implements, which were now to be found even on the smallest of peasant holdings. The growing needs of the townspeople for agricultural produce led the peasants to put more land under cultivation, and to the development of stockbreeding, ploughing techniques, market-gardening and the planting of orchards. While there were significant advances in agriculture, the most important improvements in techniques and skills were in urban industry, and consequently it was in the towns that the productive forces exhibited the most impressive development in the Middle Ages. Industrial centres grew up which exported their products throughout Europe (centres of the textile, wool, silk and later cotton and leather industries, metalwork, glass and pottery, etc.).

p The development of the European towns and the resulting advance of the productive forces also proved decisive factors in both social and political development. The towns which had become craft and trade centres were the places where the ruling class was able to gather in revenues, which sometimes exceeded those from the villages many times over. However, the artisans and the merchants stood together to defend their interests more than the peasants, and usually enjoyed personal freedom. From the very outset they stood up against the landed nobility and their decrees.

p This meant that the peasantry, if it did not actually win allies in the ranks of the townspeople, at least found sympathisers in its struggle against the landowners and was thus able at last to lighten its burden considerably.

Urban development also brought in its wake important changes in the political life of Europe at this period. The merchants and craftsmen were interested in expanding their markets and trade links in general and thus sought to avoid local feuds and wars and to ensure at least a minimum of law and order in the lands where they carried on their activity (first and foremost this implied the area in which men used mutually intelligible languages). For this reason towndwellers always supported centralised governments possessing the necessary authority to put an end to the arbitrary violence of the landed nobles, who even regarded highway robbery as a supreme expression of noble valour. Almost simultaneously with the wave of urban development there came into being spontaneous alliances between the European kings and their subjects in the towns. The towns helped the kings both by means of money and armed detachments to ensure the obedient submission of their vassals. This in its turn led to the 198 consolidation of a number of centralised European states, foierunners of the present-day majoi poweis, by the end of the fifteenth century.

The Causes for the Crusades

p The completion of the establishment of the feudal system in the eleventh century throughout almost the whole of Europe and the consolidation of more or less stable ordei led to a definite use in the productive forces, a revival of industry and trade, a clearer division between crafts and agriculture, the rise of towns as industrial and trade centres. The revival of foreign trade, first and foiemost with the more culturally advanced states of the East aroused new interest in these countnes among the peoples of Europe. This new interest led to expeditions of European armies to the East, known as the Crusades. Representatives of various classes and social strata, discontent with their lot at home, took part in these "Holy wars”. The backbone of the crusade armies was formed by the expanding lower echelons of the ruling class—knights, who were generally the younger sons of the landed nobility and who as a rule inherited no land from their fatheis, and also well-to-do peasants and even serfs, taken into the service of knights to administer their domains (ministerials). Since they were badly equipped, they indulged in highway robbery, plundering their own men and strangers and ready to risk any adventuie.

p At that time discontent was rife among the peasants who found it difficult to reconcile themselves to the exorbitant obligations demanded of them. There was a succession of bad harvests in the years 1095-1097 and the peasants were reduced to eating giass, bark and clay. There were even instances of cannibalism. Many peasants left the lands to which they were bound in seaich of a less burdensome existence. When armies were mustered for the Crusades, whole crowds of these peasants set off to the East.

p Many towns, in particular those of Italy, also took part in this movement hoping to expand their profitable trade in Eastein luxuries.

The Catholic Church also played an important part in rallying men to the banners of the Crusaders, calling on them to liberate Syria and Palestine from the Turks, the "Holy Land" where Christ had lived and where the Christian shrine of the Holy Sepulchre was situated. In actual practice the Church was puisuing two aims through this policy—firstly, it was expanding its power and influence, and secondly, it was temporarily removing from Europe large numbers of knights who weie prone to looting churches and monasteries.

199

Byzantium in the Seventh to Eleventh Centuries

p The Crusades were inevitably of immediate concern to Byzantium, which for centuries had been waging costly wars with her neighbours—Iran, the Arabs, the Bulgarians and the Seljuk Turks After a series of major military successes, in particular

The taking of Antioch by the Crusaders A 12th-century stained glass window in Saint-Denis Abbey (France)

during the reign of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), when the Bulgarians were defeated, parts of Syria, Armenia and Mesopotamia were reconquered from the Arabs and the alliance with Ancient Rus was consolidated, Byzantine power began rapidly to decline.

By the eleventh century the feudal system was well established: the free peasantry had disappeared, while there was an increase in the number of large estates in the hands of the nobility. The introduction of serfdom, more intense forms of exploitation and 200 heavier taxation gave rise on several occasions to popular revolts. The emergence of feudal production relations and intensified land division led to frequent feuds between the landed nobles. Rivalry for the throne amongst members of the ruling class also grew more intense. All these factors served to undermine the power of the Byzantine state and it became more and more difficult both to maintain internal order and to defend the frontiers. By the time a new dynasty came to power, the Comnenine dynasty, the position of the empire was critical. However, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) and his descendants succeeded in temporarily reconsolidating Byzantine power.

The First Crusade

p In 1095 at the Council of Clermont (southern France) Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade, promising all those who took part absolution from their sins and rich booty. The first armies which started the Crusade were composed of the poor peasantry. Poorly armed crowds of peasant soldiers reached Constantinople, plundering and looting as they went. The Byzantine emperor hastily urged them to set out for Asian shores where they were soon routed by the Turks. Pathetic stragglers of the peasant detachments returned to Constantinople and started to wait for the main expeditionary force led by knights which set out from Europe in 1096 for Jerusalem. After a long and difficult journey this force finally reached Jerusalem in 1099. They took the city by storm and then instigated a brutal massacre of the Moslem population. A number of crusader states were set up in Syrian and Palestinian territory. They were ruled by powerful European nobles who headed a complex and strict hierarchy of lesser lords and knights. The European peasants, just like their local counterparts, found themselves in economic bondage and had thus achieved no easing of their lot. The local population revolted and in 1144 the Crusaders lost Edessa, one of their most important strongholds. A Second Crusade organised with the aim of recapturing the town was unsuccessful.

p In the middle of the twelfth century there emerged a new champion of the small Arab and Turkish states, Saladin, a talented commander who succeeded in uniting these small states and then defeating the Crusaders (1187) and capturing Jerusalem. The subsequent Crusades, of which there were five, organised on a large scale also proved unsuccessful. During the Fourth Crusade western knights plundered Constantinople (1204) thus exposing for all to see that the principal aim of the Crusades was not to rescue the Holy Sepulchre but to plunder and loot, since the 201 Byzantine capital was a Christian city. Soon afterwards the Turks drove the Crusaders out of Asia Minor. Their last stronghold in Palestine, the town of Acre, was taken by the Turks in 1291 and that year is regarded as marking the end of the Crusades.

Although the Crusades did not achieve the political objectives hoped for by the European knights, the movement had important consequences for European culture. The Europeans came into contact with the more advanced culture of the East, and adopted the more advanced forms of land cultivation and craft techniques already common practice in that part of the world. They brought back with them from the East many new and useful plants such as buckwheat, rice, citrus trees, sugar cane and apricots, not to mention such important discoveries as silk-making and glass-blowing.

England

p In the fifth century, this island inhabited by Celtic tribes was invaded by Germanic tribes—the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Thuringians. The latter set up seven barbarian kingdoms, which gradually united to form three kingdoms during the sixth and seventh centuries, and subsequently one Anglo-Saxon state under Egbert, King of Wessex, at the beginning of the ninth century (829). The emergence of feudal economic patterns in the AngloSaxon kingdom began at this period and by the latter half of the eleventh century, when the throne was seized by the Norman barons led by William of Normandy [to go down in history as William the Conqueror (1066)], the feudal system was already well established.

p The Norman barons who came to England with William and seized the Anglo-Saxon lands completed the process of feudalisation in their capacity as representatives of a more advanced feudal state. Since they found themselves among a local population hostile to the foreign conquerors it was imperative for them to stand together to defend their interests and maintain strict discipline. For this reason they supported the power and authority of the central rule of their Duke who had now become King of England. William, who was obliged to divide up the conquered lands among the barons who had accompanied him on this venture and also in the desire to clarify what revenue he would have at his disposal as king, arranged for a survey of the lands of his realm to be drawn up (detailing their extent, value, ownership and liabilities). This survey was drawn up on a basis of testimonies of the local inhabitants "which were given under oath, requiring the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as if they were standing 202 before Christ at the Last Judgement, on Doomsday, the end of the world. Thus the book recording all these statistical data and which has been preserved till the present day is known as the "Domesday Book".

p In this book the peasants, whose position was difficult to define, were often referred to as villeins, that is serfs, and in this respect the survey marked the completion of the establishment of the feudal system. Yet it is important to remember that part of the English peasantry retained its freedom. The Anglo-Saxon barons who were unwilling to come to terms with the new order were replaced by Norman barons. A considerable part of the English peasantry became bondmen.

p Only in one respect did the English feudal system differ from that of the continent: the power of the king in England, for the above-mentioned reasons, was sufficiently strong to compel all members of the ruling class, from the nobles to the poorest knights, to serve the crown loyally. The outward manifestation of this royal power was the requirement that all members of the ruling class should take an oath of allegiance to the king whoever their immediate liege-lords might be.

As a result, England was to be spared the difficult and tortuous road to unity which all the continental states had to traverse: English society suffered not so much from a lack of strong central power (which beset the other states of Europe, where the liberties the barons allowed themselves undermined both political administration and economic progress), as from too strong a central power which was often abused in the interests of the ruling class.

The Beginnings of Parliament

p The existence of extremely firm central power in England led very soon to a number of attempts to limit royal power. In the reign of King John, nicknamed Lackland (1199-1216), the barons forced the king to sign the Magna Carta (1215), which limited his power to alter and modify the property rights and privileges of the barons. In 1265 the first parliament was convened. This institution of the thirteenth century had little in common with the English parliament of today, a bourgeois constitutional institution, although the latter traces its origins back to this first parliament and English historians and lawyers are prone to stress the long history of the English constitution. The English parliament from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was a Council of the three estates (Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commoners—representatives of the counties and cities), similar to those later to be set up in other states on the continent. However, England’s 203 rapid economic development, the growth of her towns and trading network soon made her ruling class and towns prosperous, so that the restriction of the king’s powers soon took firm root. As early as the fourteenth century the king was deprived of the right to institute new taxes and collect those already established without the consent of parliament. Parliament, in which both the ruling class and the cities and counties were represented, became an increasingly influential political institution.

p Urban expansion and the development of commodity-money relations led to consequences which were to become typical for the rest of Western Europe. They led to substantial changes in the structure of the basic administrative and economic unit of feudal society, the manorial estate. The barons started to demand money payment (commutation) from their peasants instead of payment in kind, now that the peasants were starting to sell their surplus produce at local markets and in neighbouring towns. Such commutation had become almost universal by the fourteenth century and had significant repercussions. The landowning nobles began to neglect the farms in their domains and hired out this land to the peasants in strips. Since their domains as such no longer existed, labour services were no longer required of the peasants and they were freed in return for redemption payments. Yet the landowners, being in need of money, proceeded to enclose communal lands so as to expand sheep-breeding, which brought in considerable revenue. The new “freedom” going hand in hand with increased economic independence led to a considerable deterioration in the peasants’ living conditions. This state of affairs was to appear throughout most of Europe and subsequently led to a number of large peasant uprisings—that led by Wat Tyler in England, Dolcino in Italy and the Jacquerie in France.

The direct cause of the Peasants’ Revolt in England (1381) was the introduction of a universal tax, known as the poll-tax, to bring in money for the war being fought against France (the Hundred Years’ War). The administrative officials who collected this tax resorted to many unjust and violent measures. The people rose up in protest and in a short time the uprising spread to a number of counties. The peasant army marched on London and the city’s poor opened the gates to them. One of the peasant detachments was led by a roofer, by the name of Wat Tyler. The insurgents put the following demands to the king: complete freedom lor all peasants; the substitution of labour services by small money dues; the granting to the peasants of the right to sell freely the produce from their holdings. In alarm the king and the barons at first promised concessions and some of the peasant detachments disperse’d and went home. However, at one of the confrontations with the king Wat Tyler was treacherously 204 murdered. Seriously alarmed by the turn events had taken, the barons mustered their troops and meted out cruel punishment to the rebellious peasants. However, fearing possible recurrences of such an uprising the landed nobles continued to grant more and more of their peasants their freedom and by the end of the fifteenth century there were no serfs left in England. However, the peasants, who still “held” their land from their liege-lords, were obliged to pay rent for it.

The Wars of the Roses

p Meanwhile the Hundred Years’ War with France continued. In the course of this war the kings of England relied in the main on mercenary soldiers, but side by side with the latter fought the English barons with their armed retainers, plundering French lands and growing rich in the process. Despite various victories, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English were eventually obliged to withdraw from France. After this the English 205 barons proceeded to wage leuds among themselves on English soil, plundering their native land. In the second half of the fifteenth century they joined forces in two alliances which rallied to the support of two noble iamilies, the houses of Lancaster and York, whose emblems were a red and white rose respectively, which vied with each other for the throne. In the course of this war, the class of powerful barons which had constituted the main bastion of opposition to political unity and centralised power, started to disintegrate as a close-knit group. The second half of the fifteenth century saw the downfall of both these houses and the emergence of a new royal dynasty, that of the Tudors, when Henry Tudor (Henry VII) came to the throne. All progressive lorces in the country—including the section of the nobility (the landed gentry) which had started to engage in large-scale sheepbreeding and was later to constitute the bourgeois class, and the existing bourgeoisie—willingly accorded their support to the strong centralised monarchy.

Bv the end of the fifteenth century England had become a strong centralised state with an active foreign policy, which she was able to pursue successfully, from the point of view of the interests of the ruling class, having the necessary means at her disposal. In the first place, the ruling class was better organised and more disciplined than those of the other European countries; secondly, representatives of the now free English peasantry willingly enlisted as bowmen in the army and fought bravely in the frequent battles of those times; thirdly, the English landed ruling class had vested interests in the expansion of trade which meant that there soon no longer existed insuperable barriers preventing the penetration of leading burghers into the ranks of the ruling class or the landed nobility turning their energies to the field of industry and trade. The landed nobles organised small-scale wool production on their own manorial estates and made large profits selling this wool in the markets of Flanders and even Italy. The English nobles soon developed a taste for large purses and profitable enterprises and in comparison with their French counterparts made efficient entrepreneurs: by the thirteenth century they already understood the advantages to be gained from successful trade policies pursued by their government, even if those policies involved the risk of war, temporary setbacks or financial ruin, particularly since they had at their disposal an industrious and, taken all in all, obedient peasantry, Last but not least, we must take into account the role of the overall economic base of political unity—the first stages of the formation of an economic network on the territory of a future politically’united state, or, in other words, .the emergence of a home market.

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France

p The unification of France was a more tortuous process. It was no mere coincidence that France is taken as the classic example of the feudal state. It was here that political subdivisions had taken particularly firm root. Each seigneury was an independent economic and political unit in its own right. The Carolingiart kings gradually lost more and more power and by the tenth century all that was left of that power was its illustrious name, which no longer had any real foundation.

p The first king of the new Capetian dynasty, Hugh Capet, waselected to the throne (987) only because he was weak and powerless to oppose the nobles, who chose to ignore royal authority. The new dynasty owned the small dukedom of the Ile-de-France in the centre of the country, where the Seine (flowing through Paris) and the Loire (flowing through Orleans) meet. However, its very geographical position at the confluence of two large rivers linking two large towns was soon to turn this dukedom into the economic centre of the country which was to accomplish the political unity of the whole of France, inhabited by people of French origin.

p The first kings of this dynasty were only primi inter pares in the true sense of the word, no stronger and often weaker than their vassals. All the nobles, both the greater and lesser among them, lived in stone castles built at high vantage points or onimpregnable rocks. From these strongholds they ordered the lives of their serfs and the defence of their fortresses and made constant war on each other bringing ruin on each other’s retainers. The peasant masses were subject to ever harsher exploitation. The peasants were obliged to pay for their land in the form of quit-rent and corvee. They were only allowed to mill their grain at their seigneur’s mill and for this they were obliged to pay him with part of their grain; they also had to bake their bread in his ovens and make their wine in his wine-press. In order to reach the town the peasants were obliged to pay road, bridge and market tolls, etc. The nobles acquired the right to pass judgement on their peasants and in general treat them as chattels. The peasants frequently rose up against their masters, but these uprisings were always suppressed.

p From the twelfth century onwards the French kings succeeded in gradually consolidating their power. The kings of the Capetian dynasty (987-1328) gradually asserted their authority, first over the landed nobles in their own dukedom and then outside their own lands. The Valois dynasty which followed (1328-1589) completed the task of uniting French lands under the crown. The reason lying behind the successful undertaking of these two 207 dynasties is to be found in France’s economic development and the changing needs of French society, various sectors and classes of which had by this stage begun to set store by their country’s political unity.

p The towns and townspeople played a decisive role in the consolidation of the king’s authority. The craftsmen and traders who sold their wares and the work they produced had a vested interest in the security of internal trade routes and the maintenance of law and order at home. They were prepared to support the king’s ascendant power against those landed nobles who undermined law and order by warring against their neighbours and sometimes by outright highway robbery. On the other hand, the kings of that period, in as far as they helped the townspeople in their conflict with the landed nobles, promoted trade and industry in the towns and thus furthered their country’s economic development.

The king thus stood for order amidst disorder and national unity as opposed to the disruptive separatism of his rebellious vassals, the landed nobles. All progressive elements which emerged during the feudal era gravitated towards royal power, and vice versa. The alliance between the king and the townspeople started to take shape as early as the tenth century. On various occasions it was disrupted by various kinds of conflict but always reasserted itself, growing gradually stronger until the kings finally emerged victorious in their struggle with the barons and succeeded in uniting the whole country under their real authority.

The Hundred Years’ War. Joan of Arc

p A feature of the unification of France was the fact that the French kings were obliged to carry on a grim struggle not only against their own vassals but also against enemies from abroad.

p These enemies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the English barons, who waged war against France over a period of more than a hundred years (1337-1453). In the course of this war, large-scale peasant uprisings broke out in both France and England which can both be traced to the same causes: the tremendous sacrifices demanded from the masses on account of the war.

p The entire war was waged on French soil, and at first the French suffered one reverse after another. The armies led by the French knights suffered two routs at the hands of the English at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). At.the battle of Poitiers the flower of French chivalry was destroyed and King John the Good was taken prisoner by the English. Soldiers of both armies indulged in frequent lootings of the peasants in many parts of the country. The government, headed by Charles, the dauphin, demanded 208 high taxes for ransom money to free the king. All this gave rise to deep discontent among the masses. The northern towns led by Paris demanded that Charles should hand power over to the States-General  [208•*  and when he proceeded to dissolve the latter, an uprising broke out in Paris, which was led by the mayor of Paris Etienne Marcel, a rich cloth merchant. The revolt of the northern towns was followed by a peasants’ revolt (1358). This revolt was called the Jacquerie (the revolt of Jacques, the commoner) by the contemptuous nobility. It only lasted two weeks but spread over a sixth of the country. It was a spontaneous wave of hatred: embittered by the plunder and heavy taxation to which they had been subjected the peasants threatened to "wipe out all the nobles to a man”. They destroyed castles, burnt seigneurial estates to the ground and slew their inmates. The nobles soon recovered from their initial terror and suppressed the uprising. Nevertheless, this uprising was to produce appreciable results: by the end of the fifteenth century serfdom was virtually a thing of the past.

The French people which had suffered from plundering both at the hands of the English and from their own seigneurs rose up 209 against the foreign invaders. A peasant girl Joan of Arc convinced that God had called her to rescue her country and help the King, led the French army forward to free besieged Orleans and inflicted a number of defeats on the English. She then made ready to free the whole of the country from the English enemy but in the course of a battle she was taken prisoner by the Burgundians, allies of the English, and handed over to the invader. The English resorted to an accusation of communion with the devil in order to sentence Joan to death by burning at the stake (1431). Yet the French people succeeded in liberating the whole of their country by 1453 and quite soon afterwards, in the reign of Louis XI (1461-1483), the final political unification of the country was accomplished.

The Formation of Other European States

The fifteenth century also saw the political unification of a number of other European countries, large and small, made possible by gradual economic consolidation. A strong Spanish kingdom emerged in Western Europe; to the north three Scandinavian kingdoms, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and to the east a number of Slavonic states—Poland, Bohemia and the Grand Princedom of Muscovy—emerged. The South Slav countries which had taken shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ( Serbia and Bulgaria) were under Turkish domination from the end of the fifteenth century onwards.

Turkey

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century Turkey was one of the most powerful states of Europe and instilled terror in all neighbouring peoples. In the fourteenth century the Turks had conquered the Balkan peninsula and in 1453 they took Constantinople and subjugated all the lands of Byzantium. They compelled their subject peoples to pay them large tribute and laid waste whole towns and villages, taking the inhabitants captive and then selling them as slaves. Thus the Turks condemned their subject peoples to poverty, obstructing the natural course of their economic development.

Italian Political Disunity

p Interesting exceptions to the general European pattern are provided by two peoples, who not only failed to achieve political unity in the fifteenth century but were not to do so for several hundred years, the Italians and the Germans.

210

p The Italian people were descended from the Romans and the Germanic tribes which seized the Apennine peninsula in the fifth and sixth centuries: the Ostrogoths and in particular the Lombards. Making use of the old Roman trade routes, the Italians revived trade with the East as early as the tenth century and then started to set up a wide trade network with the rest of Europe making large profits from the sale of costly Eastern luxuries (gold, ivory, brocade, perfumes) to the rich nobles of Europe. As a result, a number of large trading cities grew up in Italy, which flourished not only by virtue of their role as a trade link between the Orient and the rest of Europe, but also because of the brisk trade carried on in Italian wares, glass and crystal from Venice, metalwork from Milan, wool and silk from Florence. The competent merchants of these cities soon turned to local industry in search of goods for barter and in doing so furthered its development. It was in fourteenth-century Italy that the first largescale capitalist enterprises were to appear.

p We have already seen how in countries such as England and still more so France, the townspeople, favouring national economic unity, were the kings’ most important allies since the latter sought to consolidate their countries as powerful centralised monarchies. It would have seemed natural for Italy, where large trade and industrial centres flourished, to have developed as a unified centralised state before the others. However this was not to be: once again the reason is to be found in the path of economic development followed by a particular country.

p Originally, the major Italian cities had risen to prominence as trading centres for the sale of costly Eastern goods to the West. In Italy herself meanwhile, the large peasant population led an impoverished existence and was thus not in any position to buy such wares, which were subsequently purchased by rich nobles from all over Europe. There was great rivalry between the Italian cities in the purchase of these goods in the East and their sale in Europe. They settled accounts on Italian soil: the northern cities ousted the southern cities from the market and almost put a complete stop to their activity. In the course of two whole centuries Venice vied with Genoa for monopoly of trade with the East, while somewhat later Florence was finally to overcome her great rival, Pisa. Any attempt by one city to subjugate another was regarded as a tyrannical adventure. There were no landed nobles in Italy who were in a position to promote the political unity of the country. The only mainland power in the peninsula was the city of Rome which belonged to the Pope, who feared only one thing: that one of the nobles would become too powerful and start giving orders to him. This meant that papal power constituted one of the most important obstacles to political unity 211 for hundreds of years. Italy was not to achieve unity until the nineteenth century.

Many of the Italian cities were independent republics, whose nobles were petty rulers and whose citizens had not the slightest interest in the political unification of Italy. Quite naturally, as a result of this situation Italy was frequently to fall prey to more closely knit and thus more powerful neighbours. From the tenth century onwards she was exposed to frequent raids by German nobles, who were joined by the French from the thirteenth century onwards. In the sixteenth century Italy fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and then languished under Austrian yoke from the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Specific Features of German Social
and Economic Development in the Twelfth
to Fifteenth Centuries

p The lot of the German people was no lighter. In Germany, or the Holy Roman Empire as it was then known, no political centre took shape. Indeed the preconditions for such a process did not exist, although the economy of this backward land demanded it. The very structure of the empire made it impossible for it to become a unified whole. The population was extremely heterogeneous: Germans in the centre, French in the west, Italians in the south, various Slavonic peoples in the south-east and Lithuanians, Finns and Slavs to the north-east. The Germans themselves were divided between myriad princedoms, belonging to temporal and church grandees, united by no common interests but possessing a common aim, that of preventing any future consolidation of the central power. This central power was represented by the Emperor or Kaiser, who, behind the veil of his impressive title and endless claims to be greater than all kings, was in reality weak and powerless vis-a-vis his own vassals.

The German towns, which grew up more slowly than those of the rest of Europe and which were thus weaker, proved illequipped to play a role similar to that of the English or French towns. The German cities, in particular the large trading centres in the north and south-west, were, like the Italian cities, stepping stones in international trade routes.

The Hanseatic League

p The German towns situated along the coast of the Baltic and on the rivers flowing into it carried on a lively trade with the countries of Western and Eastern Europe. These towns united to form the Hanseatic League. Their fleets brought pelts, fur articles, linen and 212 213 flax seed from East to West, while from the West they brought wares from Flanders such as wool and other textiles. The towns maintained little contact with the rest of the country, their only fear being plundering raids instigated by the German landowners. It was this fear that led them to form the League and set up their own fleet and armies. The centre of the Hanseatic League was the town of Liibeck. The League was represented in every state by major trading centres stretching from London in the West to Novgorod in the East. At the peak of the League’s power, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was even prepared to contend with a whole country such as Denmark, a conflict from which the League was to emerge the victor. Indeed, the Danish kings could only be elected with the approval of the League.

p The large cities of south-west Germany, like those of the north, grew up mainly as trade links between East and West. Later in the fourteenth century they started to trade in wares produced locally. Like the northern towns, they were not in close contact with the economic life of the rest of the country and tried to preserve their liberty and independence of the local princes and nobles. In their struggle against the latter they also joined together in leagues, since they could count on no help from the emperor and the central power.

In no other country did the dominance and reckless liberties of the landed nobility gather such momentum as in Germany during the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. The constantly weakening central power was compelled to adopt policies in the interests of these “noble” robbers and organise aggressive expeditions to foreign countries so as to satisfy their hunger for plunder and loot.

The Italian Wars

From the tenth century onwards the German kings made frequent raids into Italy, which was far richer than their own lands, in order to force the Pope to confer on them the title and crown of Holy Roman Emperor. Systematic plundering of Italy brought revenue to the nobles’ coffers and made them more powerful opponents of the imperial power. When, from the twelfth century onwards, the cities of northern Italy grew stronger and were able to put up effective resistance, the German knights started to turn their attention eastwards.

Der Drang nach Osten

p The religious Order of the Teutonic Knights seized the lands of the Prussian tribes in Lithuania and almost wiped out the local population to a man; those that were left were taken into captivity 214 as slaves and then the army moved on eastwards and subjugated the population of the Eastern Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia. Their aggression was masked under the banner of propagating Christianity to the heathen (although the majority of those who fell captive to these plunderers were already adherents of the Christian faith) and they were distinguished for their unprecedented cruelty. Contemporary historians wrote of the laying waste of whole villages, the burning of crops and endless slaughter of adults, old people and children.

p There is no doubt that these bearers of "true Christian culture”, as they called themselves, would have moved further East and penetrated deep into Russia if they had not been halted in their tracks by Alexander Nevsky, suffering a crushing defeat at his hands on the ice of Lake Chudskoye (Lake Peipus) on April 5th, 1242. Two hundred years later, in 1410, the Poles and Lithuanians together with Russian forces from the Smolensk princedom incurred yet another defeat on the Teutonic Knights at Griinwald (in East Prussia) after which the Order ceased to exist as an independent Church power.

However, the consequences of this marauding were disastrous for Germany. The systematic plunder of Italy and the ascendant power of the nobles in the East, in territory that was later to be known as East Prussia, undermined the power of the emperor and the central government still further. This continual aggression against neighbouring powers ruled out any hopes of political unity for Germany. Imperial power was soon to be nothing more than a symbol bereft of any real significance. Meanwhile the power of the individual nobles, the princes, waxed and they even tried to have their independence of the emperor legally ratified. In 1356 Charles IV’s Golden Bull recognised the political independence of the more powerful princes, their right to elect the emperor, and accorded them various privileges. Alliances between cities were forbidden, while wars between individual princes were not. Germany literally disintegrated into a host of petty princedoms and its nobles, brought up on century-old traditions of plunder and violent treatment of all alien peoples, were to sow the seeds of the subsequent Junker spirit and its particularly abhorrent manifestation, that of Prussian militarism.

Bohemia from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth
Century. The Hussite Wars

p The Holy Roman Empire included not only a large number of German states but also the state of Bohemia. As early as the eleventh century German emperors granted the Bohemian princes a roval title and gradually Bohemia became a virtually 215 independent country. It was the richest land in the empire, where industry and trade developed rapidly, many valuable minerals were mined and towns flourished. However, the towns did not yet play any important political role since it was the prelates and nobles who had the decisive voice in the Bohemian Diet. German influence made itself strongly felt throughout the country. Bohemia was little more than a German colony. After adopting the Christian religion, brought to those parts by the Germans, Bohemia placed large tracts of virgin land at the disposal of German monasteries, where German peasants were then settled. Bohemia was inundated with German monks, representatives of religious and chivalrous orders. The Germans—rich landowners, members of the clergy, mine-owners, town councillors—were mostly members of the ruling class. The zenith of Bohemia’s political sway was attained in the reign of Charles IV, who virtually made it the centre of his empire.

p By the end of the fourteenth century conflicting interests in Bohemia had reached the point of no return. The Czech burghers, knights and lesser nobles resisted the dominance of the German prelates and landowners. The main bastion of revolutionary opposition was the Czech peasantry which sought to free itself from feudal exploitation and the dominance of the Catholic Church. Thus social and national issues were interwoven and were soon to find expression in a religious movement. The large-scale revolutionary movement in fifteenth-century Bohemia was to go down in history as the Hussite Wars. They are named after a professor of Prague University, Jan Hus (1371-1415) who defied the papacy, demanded Church reforms and exposed the corruption of the Catholic clergy. In 1415, he was summoned to the Council of Constance (a Church Council). His imperial safe conduct, granted him by the Emperor Sigismund, was violated and he was burnt at the stake. Hus’ death was the signal for the outbreak of an uprising in Bohemia. The fiercest battles were those fought out in the south of the country, where there were mass uprisings. The centre of the radical wing of the Hussites was the city of Tabor. From 1419 to 1437 the revolutionary army of the Taborites resisted the imperial army and even gained a number of victories. However, a split within the Hussite movement led to the insurgents’ eventual defeat.

Nevertheless, the Hussite Wars were to be of immense significance in the history of the Czech people. They dealt a heavy blow to the papacy and the Catholic Church, anticipating the European Reformation. These wars also served to hasten the emergence of a Czech national consciousness and the development of Czech national culture.

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Summary of the Development of Feudal Society
Between the Twelfth and Fifteenth Centuries

p This second stage of the Middle Ages ushered in extremely important changes, paving the way for the transition to new production relations in both agriculture and industry.

The mining and fashioning of iron, which in the early Middle Ages had been more costly than gold, had by this time developed on a much wider scale: iron had become so much cheaper that iron ploughshares, hoe blades, harrow teeth, scythes, sickles and other agricultural implements had universally replaced wooden implements on peasant holdings. In the latter half of the twelfth century new lands were put to arable farming after being cleared of woods, which had once covered large expanses of Germany, Northern France and England. By this time manuring techniques had also improved, which significantly increased grain harvests. As more and more towns grew up and urban population expanded, so market-gardening and fruit orchards came to play an important role in agriculture. Although in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as a result of the Black Death (1348-1351) and major wars, there was a marked fall in the population of Europe and the shortage of labour was so serious that it even caused a crisis in agriculture (reflected in the fact that many of the lands newly cultivated in the thirteenth century were abandoned and as a result the supply of food was considerably reduced), this state of affairs was only temporary and by the second half of the fifteenth century further advances in agriculture were already to be observed. Industry advanced even more.