Change, crisis and new monarchies

The first two orders saw society as fixed, but slow changes were transforming it.

Environment. From the fifth to the tenth centuries much of Europe was covered in forest, and a very cold spell gave long winters and short growing seasons. From the eleventh century, Europe entered a warm phase: the growing season lengthened, frost-free soil was easier to plough, and forests receded, so more land could be farmed.

New farming technology. At first peasants had only a wooden plough that scratched the surface, and a poor two-field rotation (one half sown, one half left fallow) that wore out the soil; famines were common. Peasants resisted lords' demands quietly, spending more time on their own fields and avoiding unpaid extra work. By the eleventh century came:

• heavy iron-tipped ploughs and mould-boards that dug deeper and turned the soil properly;
• the shoulder-harness in place of the neck-harness, letting animals pull harder, and iron horseshoes;
• more wind- and water-powered mills for grinding corn and pressing grapes;
• the three-field system: one field sown in autumn with wheat or rye, one in spring with peas, beans and lentils for people and oats and barley for horses, and one left fallow, rotating each year. Food availability doubled, and more peas and beans meant more protein for people and fodder for animals.
• Lords paid for costly mills; peasants extended farmland and set up village smithies to make ploughs and horseshoes cheaply. Farms shrank from about 100 acres to 20 to 30, but were worked more efficiently.

Money replaces services. From the eleventh century, the personal bonds of feudalism weakened as dealings became money-based: lords asked for rent in cash, and peasants sold crops to traders. In England, farm prices doubled between the 1270s and the 1320s.

A fourth order: towns. Europe's population grew from about 42 million (1000) to 62 million (1200) and 73 million (1300); people lived about ten years longer than in the eighth century. Towns revived around fairs, castles, bishops' estates and churches, with a square, a church, shops and a council office. Townspeople paid a tax to the landowning lord instead of services.

• 'Town air makes free': a serf who hid in a town for a year and a day without being found became free.
• Shopkeepers, merchants, and later bankers and lawyers lived there; bigger towns had about 30,000 people and formed a kind of 'fourth order'.
• Each craft was organised in a guild, which controlled the quality, price and sale of its products; the guild-hall was a feature of every town.
• Rich merchants gave money to build cathedrals from the twelfth century; towns grew around them, and their stained-glass windows told Bible stories in pictures that people who could not read could follow.

The fourteenth-century crisis came from several directions:

• Cold summers returned in northern Europe, shortening the growing season, and storms flooded farmland.
• Intensive ploughing without soil conservation had exhausted the soil; fewer pastures meant fewer cattle. Famine struck between 1315 and 1317, then cattle died in the 1320s.
• Silver mines in Austria and Serbia produced less, causing a shortage of metal money; governments mixed cheaper metals into coins.
• Worst of all, ships brought rats carrying bubonic plague, the Black Death, which hit western Europe in 1347 to 1350. About 20 per cent of Europe's people died, up to 40 per cent in some places; Europe's population fell from 73 million in 1300 to 45 million in 1400.

Social unrest. With so many dead, labour was scarce: farm prices fell and wages rose, in England by up to 250 per cent. Lords' incomes collapsed, so they tried to bring back labour services in place of money contracts. Peasants, especially the more prosperous, fought back in revolts in Flanders (1323), France (1358) and England (1381). The revolts were crushed, but the old feudal services could not be restored; the money economy had gone too far.

The new monarchs. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Louis XI of France, Maximilian of Austria, Henry VII of England and Isabelle and Ferdinand of Spain built standing armies, a permanent bureaucracy and national taxation. Their professional infantry with guns and artillery overpowered the nobles' private forces. Nobles resisted, mainly over taxes, but soon became loyal courtiers and officials; patronage could be bought, so merchants and bankers who lent kings money gained access to court too.

France and England took different paths. France's consultative assembly, the Estates-General, with three houses for the three orders, met in 1614 and then not again until 1789, because kings did not want to share power. In England, the old Great Council, which the king had to consult before taxing, became Parliament, with a House of Lords and a House of Commons. When Charles I ruled without it for 11 years and then had to call it for money, part of Parliament went to war against him and executed him. The monarchy was later restored, but only on condition that Parliament met regularly.