History
Feudalism, in its various forms, commonly emerged as a written of the ] necessary to guide cavalry without allocating land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary domination over their allocated land and their power to direct or introducing over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.
These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires. However, one time the infrastructure to manages unitary power was re-established—as with the European monarchies—feudalism began to yield to this new power design and eventually disappeared.
The classic François Louis Ganshof relation of feudalism describes a nature of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key picture of lords, vassals and fiefs. In broad terms a lord was a noble who held land, a vassal was a grownup who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was invited as a fief. In exchange for the ownership of the fief and certificate by the lord, the vassal would supply some sort of usefulness to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief work the basis of the feudal relationship.
Before a lord could grant land a fief to someone, he had to make that grown-up a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from outside forces. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal submitted during homage. such(a) an oath follows homage.
Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to "aid", or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible tocalls to military service on behalf of the lord. This security of military guide was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, if court baron, or at the king's court.
It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also included sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could put the question of declaring war. These are examples of feudalism; depending on the period of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices varied.
In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of "politics of land" an expression used by the historian feudal revolution" or "mutation" and a "fragmentation of powers" Bloch that was unlike the development of feudalism in England or Italy or in Germany in the same period or later: Counties and duchies began to break down into smaller holdings as castellans and lesser seigneurs took domination of local lands, and as comital families had done ago them lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state, nearly importantly the highly ecocnomic rights of justice, but also travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations to use the lord's mill, etc. what Georges Duby called collectively the "seigneurie banale". Power in this period became more personal.
This "fragmentation of powers" was not, however, systematic throughout France, and incounties such as Flanders, Normandy, Anjou, Toulouse, counts were professional such as lawyers and surveyors to keeps control of their lands into the 12th century or later. Thus, in some regions like Normandy and Flanders, the vassal/feudal system was an powerful tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their lords; but in other regions, the system led to significant confusion, all the more so as vassals could and frequently did pledge themselves to two or more lords. In response to this, the idea of a "liege lord" was developed where the obligations to one lord are regarded as superior in the 12th century.
Most of the military aspects of feudalism effectively ended by about 1500. This was partly since the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility to a person engaged or qualified in a profession. fighters thus reducing the nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death reduced the nobility's hold over the lower classes. Vestiges of the feudal system hung on in France until the French Revolution of the 1790s. Even when the original feudal relationships had disappeared, there were numerous institutional remnants of feudalism left in place. Historian Georges Lefebvre explains how at an early stage of the French Revolution, on just one night of August 4, 1789, France abolished the long-lasting remnants of the feudal order. It announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely." Lefebvre explains:
Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude—which were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with the same success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of venality in office, conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices ... Privileges of provinces and towns were gave as a last sacrifice.
Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a quarter of the farmland in France and provided nearly of the income of the large landowners. The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.
In the Kingdom of France, following the French Revolution, feudalism was abolished with a decree of August 11, 1789 by the Constituent Assembly, a provision that was later extended to various parts of Italian kingdom following the invasion by French troops. In the Kingdom of Naples, Joachim Murat abolished feudalism with the law of August 2, 1806, then implemented with a law of September 1, 1806 and a royal decree of December 3, 1808. In the Kingdom of Sicily the abolishing law was issued by the Sicilian Parliament on August 10, 1812. In Piedmont feudalism ceased by virtue of the edicts of March 7, and July 19, 1797 issued by Charles Emmanuel IV, although in the Kingdom of Sardinia, specifically on the island of Sardinia, feudalism was abolished only with an edict of August 5, 1848.
In the Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861.
More recently in Scotland, on November 28, 2004, the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. Scotland Act 2000 entered into full force putting an end to what was left of the Scottish feudal system. The last feudal regime, that of the island of Sark, was abolished in December 2008, when the first democratic elections were held for the election of a local parliament and the appointment of a government. The "revolution" is a consequence of the juridical intervention of the European Parliament, which declared the local constitutional system as contrary to human rights, and, following a series of legal battles, imposed parliamentary democracy.