Feudalism was a system utilised by monarchs in Europe during the Middle Ages to control the peoples of their kingdoms or empires. The basis of feudalism was that those in a more powerful position offered the use of land to less powerful people in exchange for services. Feudal society was a hierarchy of power and was made up of a monarch, commonly a king, at the top, then barons, quite privileged and wealthy people under feudalism, followed by the king’s army, the knights, who were at their baron’s disposal and then, at the bottom, were the peasants, villeins and serfs. The people occupying the various levels of feudal society each had advantages, or rights and privileges, offset by disadvantages, or obligations and duties. Typically, people closer to the top, the more powerful, such as the barons and knights, had on balance more advantages than disadvantages than less powerful people, like peasants and serfs, closer to the bottom of feudal society.

Feudalism involved powerful or wealthier persons giving land, or the use of land, to poorer persons in exchange for services from those people. A “vassal” was a servant of a person of higher rank. The king’s vassals were the barons, who were the most powerful and wealthy noblemen. The king would give areas of land, or “fiefs”, to barons in return for their promise of service and a guarantee that they would supply him with trained knights if conflict arose. Having been given land by the king, the barons had to raise a number of knights who would serve him, for example by taking a number of knights into his household and feeding and providing for them, on the chance that they would be needed, but this was a costly way to secure their service. Given this, most barons would grant smaller fiefs to their vassal knights. On these fiefs, the knights could grow crops or support their families. In exchange the knights promised to be part of their baron’s military contribution to the king and part of the baron’s escort if he travelled. The knight’s vassal was the peasant, the poorest social class of medieval society. For labouring on the knight’s land, the peasant would be granted a small portion to work for himself. It was in this relationship to land that the positive and negative aspects for each of these groups in feudal society can be most clearly seen.

Those closer to the top of the feudal system had most advantages. For the king, there was the obvious advantage that he had an army ready to serve him the moment he required them, as well as a group of powerful men who supported him. Perhaps it was the barons, though, who gained most from the feudal system. They were given land, and frequently other gifts to encourage them to support the king. In return they had few arduous duties to perform. The knights were well off under the system as well, as they were given land, and occasionally food. The peasants also claimed advantages under the system as they were given land and if they were loyal their position was secure as there was always the need for people to work the land to produce food and other goods and services.

Balancing these advantages, there were obligations, or disadvantages, for the various groups of a feudalistic society. As a result of the king’s gifts to the barons, in many areas they would have had a higher profile than the monarch himself, and it was the baron that the common people would support. Convincing knights to serve him could be a difficult task, and yet that was what the barons must do if they wished to keep the king’s favour. The knights could at any time be called to battle. They were also bound in service to their baron if they wished to keep their land. The peasants were bound by service, relatively poor in that they had to give up most of their production, and sometimes badly treated and denied by birthright of advancing in the social status.

For society as a whole feudalism gave order to daily life, and kept society, or the kingdom, running smoothly. For the barons, their knights and the peasants the common advantage of feudal society was gaining the use of more land and the protection of a more powerful “lord”. The king, barons, and knights all gained by the service of their vassals (by those below them in power and status). For this they ‘suffered’ by giving up some of their own possessions, mainly land, in return for services. Though the peasants were the poorest people of the society, to some extent they held the balance of power in their hands. If the peasants discontinued their labour the country, or fiefdoms, would face a crisis as food production and other services ground to a halt, and the more powerful felt compelled to assert their authority, often harshly, to return their fiefdoms to a ‘normal’ state of affairs.