The lords are divinely ordained or course. The lords pay tribute to the king in various ways. If the lord doesn’t fulfill his obligations to the king, the king might lend the land to someone else. Conflict with other lords wasn’t rare and required not only martial prowess, but good diplomacy and political maneuvering.
The peasants don’t pay taxes, they provide part of their harvest and labor to the lord. Typically one tenth of the harvest was taken from the peasants. A quite moderate tax rate, I would say. During times with low workload in agriculture peasants would work for the lord to do things like build and maintain infrastructure.
A lords couldn’t squeeze a lot of wealth from his peasants. The real money was in taxing trade and charging for crossing bridges. The really wealthy lords owned and operated mines for metal or salt. Working conditions were dangerous and life worse than as a peasant.
Feudalism was based pretty firmly on a secular hierarchy - the position of the Church was no more than that the structure was divinely ordained - the lords themselves were no one special by the estimation of the Church. Various medieval polities reacted to that in… various ways. But even where the Church and secular authorities were most integrated, in the Byzantine Empire, the aristocracy was not considered divinely ordained.
If the lord doesn’t fulfill his obligations to the king, the king might lend the land to someone else.
In theory, in extreme circumstances. In practice, even in extreme circumstances, that rarely happened. The core function of military service meant that any attempt to revoke land meant that the response was generally along the lines of “Come and take it.”
The peasants don’t pay taxes, they provide part of their harvest
Tax in-kind is the oldest form of taxation, and even highly monetized economies allow for it. Hell, we still allow for tax in-kind.
Typically one tenth of the harvest was taken from the peasants. A quite moderate tax rate, I would say.
10% for the Church. The amount of the harvest extracted by the secular authorities (which could also be the Church) was typically double or triple that. On top of that, fees were extracted by the local lord for everything from grinding your grain (and querns were, in many places, outlawed to force use of a mill for bread, unless you fancied nothing but porridge) and the bakery, to fishing and hunting rights, market rights, marriage rights, fees for dying, and then the monarch might impose an irregular fee on you before the 13th-14th century, just for funsies.
The ‘upside’ is that the lord was expected to ‘care’ for you in hard times - that is to say, some of that tax you might get some of back during hard years so you didn’t starve.
During times with low workload in agriculture peasants would work for the lord to do things like build and maintain infrastructure.
There’s not much low-workload times in subsistence farming other than winter, and labor in winter can be more trouble than its worth. Even in fairly well-regimented medieval polities like the Byzantine Empire, even keeping main highways open - not in good repair, but simply visible and not overgrown so as to facilitate the movement of armies - was an arduous task that was not always completed.
More often, the period of corvee - which could be a third of the days of the year for a peasant - was labor on their lord’s farmland to sow and harvest his crops for him - for which you would generally not be reimbursed.
The lords are divinely ordained or course. The lords pay tribute to the king in various ways. If the lord doesn’t fulfill his obligations to the king, the king might lend the land to someone else. Conflict with other lords wasn’t rare and required not only martial prowess, but good diplomacy and political maneuvering.
The peasants don’t pay taxes, they provide part of their harvest and labor to the lord. Typically one tenth of the harvest was taken from the peasants. A quite moderate tax rate, I would say. During times with low workload in agriculture peasants would work for the lord to do things like build and maintain infrastructure.
A lords couldn’t squeeze a lot of wealth from his peasants. The real money was in taxing trade and charging for crossing bridges. The really wealthy lords owned and operated mines for metal or salt. Working conditions were dangerous and life worse than as a peasant.
Feudalism was based pretty firmly on a secular hierarchy - the position of the Church was no more than that the structure was divinely ordained - the lords themselves were no one special by the estimation of the Church. Various medieval polities reacted to that in… various ways. But even where the Church and secular authorities were most integrated, in the Byzantine Empire, the aristocracy was not considered divinely ordained.
In theory, in extreme circumstances. In practice, even in extreme circumstances, that rarely happened. The core function of military service meant that any attempt to revoke land meant that the response was generally along the lines of “Come and take it.”
Tax in-kind is the oldest form of taxation, and even highly monetized economies allow for it. Hell, we still allow for tax in-kind.
10% for the Church. The amount of the harvest extracted by the secular authorities (which could also be the Church) was typically double or triple that. On top of that, fees were extracted by the local lord for everything from grinding your grain (and querns were, in many places, outlawed to force use of a mill for bread, unless you fancied nothing but porridge) and the bakery, to fishing and hunting rights, market rights, marriage rights, fees for dying, and then the monarch might impose an irregular fee on you before the 13th-14th century, just for funsies.
The ‘upside’ is that the lord was expected to ‘care’ for you in hard times - that is to say, some of that tax you might get some of back during hard years so you didn’t starve.
There’s not much low-workload times in subsistence farming other than winter, and labor in winter can be more trouble than its worth. Even in fairly well-regimented medieval polities like the Byzantine Empire, even keeping main highways open - not in good repair, but simply visible and not overgrown so as to facilitate the movement of armies - was an arduous task that was not always completed.
More often, the period of corvee - which could be a third of the days of the year for a peasant - was labor on their lord’s farmland to sow and harvest his crops for him - for which you would generally not be reimbursed.