Feudal fragmentation. “States in the State”


The Middle Ages was for Europe the era of feudal fragmentation. Local rulers – dukes, counts and barons, that is vassals of the king – were grandees, poorly obeyed the monarch, their possessions were states in the state. The king often had to apply force against them.

XI-XII centuries. From the works of the medieval author Syuger “The Life of King Louis of Tolstoy”

Razbazarivaya property of the venerable church of Rheims and the adjacent temples, the powerful and extravagant Baron Ebl de Rusi and his son Guishar gave free rein to unbridled and disastrous tyranny. His diligence in military craft could be compared only with his excessive greed, pushing the baron on the path of looting, outrages and all sorts of atrocities…

I gathered… an army of about seven hundred knights – the most aristocratic and powerful French barons; At the head of this army he went to Rheims… For two months he punished the robbers who robbed the

church, ravaged the lands of this tyrant and his accomplices, burned them with fire and gave them to plunder…

This war was fought not only against Baron Eble, but against all the neighboring barons who, together with their relatives… were very numerous…

But before the political chaos in the medieval West, it did not come. The king did not become a pawn in the hands of his vassals, because even they, not to mention the simple people, did not want the destruction of the state.

What caused the weakness of royal power in medieval Europe and feudal disunity? First, the pernicious tradition of distributing state domains among all the sons of the monarch. Sons later fought for the parental inheritance and from time to time redraw the state borders. Secondly, the granting of land grants to his vassals by the king generated independent dignitaries from him. After all, a large landowner could build a castle, acquire his vassals, maintain his own army, that is, be independent of royal power. Their lives, these “koroloks” mostly spent in wars and entertainment.

Feudal fragmentation is the disintegration of the state into many independent or almost independent from the monarch feudal possessions.


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Feudal fragmentation. “States in the State”