3

The Business of War in Europe,

1000–1600

In the year 1000 the part of Eu­

rope known as Latin Christendom was overwhelmingly rural. Nearly

everyone lived in villages where social roles were defined by a del­

icate interaction between tradition and the personal qualities of the

individuals filling each role. In an emergency, every able-bodied per­

son was expected to help with local defense—whether by carrying

valuables to some fortified spot for safekeeping or by some more

aggressive action against threatening outsiders. To be sure, with the

spread of knighthood from its place of origin between the Rhine and

the Seine rivers, a more effective defense against attack put most of

the responsibility for meeting and repelling would-be plunderers on

the shoulders of a small class of men who rode expensive war-horses

and were trained in the use of arms from childhood. Knights’ weapons

and armor were, of course, a product of specialized craftsmen, though

very little is known about the manufacture and distribution of the

arms and armor upon which the knights of Latin Christendom relied.^1

Ordinary villagers supported the new military experts with contri­

butions in kind. The quantity and character of such payments quickly

achieved a customary definition, stabilizing social relations around the

fundamental distinction between knights and commoners.

Priests and monks and bards fitted into this simple social hierarchy

with no difficulty, but the handful of merchants and itinerant peddlers

who also made a living in that rural society represented a potentially

disruptive element. Market behavior was deeply alien to the social

outlook of village life. Merchants or peddlers, coming as strangers into

an unsympathetic environment, had to attend to their own defense.

1. Cf. J. F. Fino, “Notes sur la production de fer et la fabrication des armes en
   France au moyen âge,” Gladius 3 (1964): 47–66.

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