Part 3 (1/2)
As they were of the defeated people, their rights to the land were not once considered. In many countries, the victors thought of them as part and parcel of the conquered territory. They ”went with” the land and were considered by the lord of the county as merely his servants.
When one lord turned over a farm to another, the farmers were part of the bargain. If any of them tried to run away, they were brought back and whipped. They tilled the land and raised live stock, giving a certain share of their yearly crop and a certain number of beeves, hogs, sheep, etc., to the lord, as rent for the land, much as the free farmers in other countries paid tribute to the robber chieftains. Thus the one cla.s.s of people who really earned their right to live, by producing wealth, were oppressed and robbed by all the others. Note this point, for there are wrongs existing today that are due to the fact that the feudal system is not wholly stamped out in some countries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Va.s.sal doing Homage to his Lord]
In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the direct master of all the people. Only the great lords had sworn homage to him. He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons. The less important barons swore homage to the great barons, and the knights, squires, retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the lesser barons. If a lesser baron had subdivided his fief among certain knights and squires, the peasants owed allegiance, not to him, but to the squire to whom they had been a.s.signed. Thus, if a ”man” rebelled against his lord, all of his knights, retainers, etc., must rebel also. If, for instance, a great duke refused to obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance, all his little barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather, must remain loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke, and not the king. History is full of such cases. In many instances, dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even terms with kings. The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the kings of France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland in 1403 raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of England; the Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the throne of England and became king in his place.
[Ill.u.s.tration: William the Conqueror]
A strange case arose when, in 1066, William, who as duke of Normandy had sworn homage to the king of France, became, through conquest, king of England. His sons, great-grandsons, and great-great-grandsons continued for one hundred and fifty years to be obliged to swear allegiance to the French kings in order to keep the duchy of Normandy.
It was as if the Governor of Texas had led an army into Mexico, conquered it, and become Emperor of that country, without resigning his governors.h.i.+p or giving up his American citizens.h.i.+p.
Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring more power to the common people were, first, the invention of gunpowder, and, second, the rise of towns. A man with a musket could bring down a knight in armor as easily as he could the most poorly armored peasant.
Kings, in fighting to control their great lords, gave more freedom to citizens of towns in return for their help. The king's armies came to be recruited largely from townspeople, who were made correspondingly free from the feudal lords.
The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain amount of military service to his ruler has lasted to the present day and is responsible for much of the misery that now exists. Kings went to war with each other simply to increase their territories. The more land a king had under his control, the more people who owed him taxes, and the greater number he could get into his army, the greater became his ambition to spread his kingdom still farther.
Questions for Review
1. How was it that the king of a tribe could claim to own all the land in the country which he had invaded?
2. Did the kings, lords, and fighting men contribute anything to the welfare of the working cla.s.ses?
3. Would the peasants have been better off if all the fighting men, lords, dukes, kings, etc., had suddenly been killed?
4. Can you see why in some countries in Europe a man who earns his living is looked down upon by the n.o.bles?
5. What is meant by saying that the feudal system turns society upside down?
6. Why did the farmers continue to feed the fighting men?
7. Explain how the use of gunpowder in warfare helped to break up the feudal system.
8. How did the rise of cities also help to do away with the feudal system?
CHAPTER V
A Babel of Tongues
The great family of languages.--Few languages in Europe not belonging to the family.--The dying Celtic languages.--The three branches of the Germanic family.--The influence of the Latin tongue on the south of Europe.--The many Slavic peoples.--The map as divided by kings without regard to peoples and languages.--The strange mixture in Austria-Hungary.--The southeast of Europe.--The Greeks and Dacians.--The Roman colonists.--The Slavs.--The Volgars.--The Skipetars.--A hopeless mixture.
In Chapter II it was pointed out that almost all the peoples of Europe were related, in one big family of tribes. It is likely that the forefathers of the Celts, the Latins, the Germans, the Greeks, and the Slavs belonged to one big tribe which had its home back in the highlands of Central Asia. As a general rule, the relations.h.i.+p of peoples to each other can be told by the languages which they speak.
If two tribes are related because their forefathers once belonged to the same tribe, it is almost certain that they will show this relations.h.i.+p in their languages.
The language of England a thousand years ago was very much like the language of the Germans, for the English were originally German tribes. Even today, it is easy to see that English is a Germanic language. Take the English words house, father, mother, brother, water, here, is, etc. The German words which mean the same are haus, vater, mutter, bruder, wa.s.ser, hier, ist. It is very plain that the two languages must have come from the same source.
There are professors in European colleges who have spent their whole lives studying this relations.h.i.+p of languages. These men have proved not only that almost all the languages of Europe are related, but that the language of the Persians, and that of some of the old tribes in Hindustan also belong to one great family of tongues. Let us take the word for mother. In one of the ancient languages of Hindustan it was matr; in the Greek, it was matar; in the Latin mater (matar); in the Bohemian matka; in the German mu̠tter; in the Spanish madre; in the Norwegian moder, etc. This great family of languages is called ”the Indo-European group,” because the tribes which spoke them, originally inhabitants of Asia, have scattered all over India and Europe. The only peoples in Europe whose languages do not belong to it are the Finns and Laplanders of the north, the Basques (Ba?sks) of the Pyrenees Mountains, the Hungarians, the Gypsies, and the Turks.
The descendants of the old Celtic peoples have not kept up the Celtic languages to any great extent. The reason for this is that first the Romans and then the Germanic tribes conquered most of the lands where the Celts lived. In this way, Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium now talk languages that have grown from the Latin, the language of Rome.
The Celts in the British Isles now all talk English, because the English, who were a Germanic people, conquered them and forced them to use their language. Patriotic Irishmen and Welshmen (who are descendants of the Celtic tribes) are trying to keep alive the Irish and Welsh languages, but all of the young people in the British Isles learn English, and they are generally content to talk only one language. The other Celtic languages which have existed within the last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, the Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the southwestern corner of England.
The Germanic languages (sometimes called Teutonic) are found in three parts of Europe today. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, belong to this family. Western Austria and Germany form, with Holland and Western Belgium, a second group of German-speaking nations. (The people of eastern Belgium are Celts and talk a kind of French.) The third part of Europe which uses a Germanic language is England.