Tea at Trianon: The Hard and Dirty Life of a Medieval Peasant

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 24, 2022

The Hard and Dirty Life of a Medieval Peasant

From Ancient Origins:

At the bottom of the medieval peasant hierarchy were serfs or villeins. These peasants were tied to the land of the local lord they worked or labored for. To move or get married, they had to request the permission of the lord, and to obtain the land in the first place they had to swear an oath of obedience to the lord on the Bible. In turn for being tied to their lord and his land, serfs were allowed to farm a section of his land from which they were obliged to give him some of the produce every year. Effectively, they were owned by the lord for whom they worked. Not all medieval peasants were tied to the land or the local lord in this way, however. At the top of the peasant hierarchy were the freemen who owned their own land and could travel and marry freely. Despite their additional freedoms, they were not rich and would have often struggled alongside the serfs.

Peasants did not get this land for free, however, and were obliged to pay rent for their land and a tax to the church (a tithe). The tithe was 10% of the value of what their farmland produced every year, which was a considerable amount. This could be paid in kind (with produce from their farm) or in cash. Paying in kind could also include payment in seeds or in equipment.

As one can imagine, this tax was highly unpopular. It could make or break a family and determine how much they would have to suffer in the coming year. If they were unable to pay in cash and therefore had to rely on paying in kind, they were often forced to sacrifice things they relied on. For example, equipment. It was so common that the Church was given an overwhelming amount of produce that special barns called tithe-barns had to be built to store it all. For many medieval peasants, these tithe-barns simply acted as a visual reminder that their hard-earned farm work was going to waste. (Read more.)