314 Chapter 17
percent of the population compared with 1 percent in
France; this meant that the Polish aristocracy included
barefoot farmers who lived in simple homes with
earthen floors. Only 1 percent of Poles lived in towns
of ten thousand, compared with more than 15 percent
of England and Wales. Sometimes, as in Spain, peasants
lived in farming towns, but they were not part of an ur-
ban estate. But everywhere, peasants were the majority.
In England, 65 percent of the population lived by
farming; in France and Sweden, 75 percent of the popu-
lation were peasants; in Poland, 85 percent.
The rights and duties of people in each estate also
varied from country to country, with the most striking
differences evident between eastern and western Eu-
rope. Historians frequently express this division of Eu-
rope by an imaginary line called the Elbe-Trieste line,
running from the mouth of the Elbe River on the North
Sea to the Adriatic Sea at the city of Trieste (see map
17.1). West of the Elbe-Trieste line (including Scandi-
navia), peasants could own farm land. French peasants,
for example, owned between 30 percent and 40 percent
of the arable land, although it was frequently of the
poorest quality. East of the Elbe River, peasants lived in
a form of legal servitude called serfdom. Millions of
serfs were deprived of legal and civil rights, including
the right to own land. Even those states that permitted
peasant land ownership, however, saw little of it.
Swedish peasants accounted for 75 percent of the pop-
ulation but owned only 31 percent of the land; the king
and the aristocracy, less than 5 percent of the popula-
tion, owned 69 percent of the land in 1700. Sweden,
however, was far ahead of most of Europe in peasant
land ownership. In Bohemia, one of the richest
provinces of the Habsburg Empire, the monarch owned
5 percent of the land and the nobility owned 68.5 per-
cent, while peasants owned less than 1 percent.
The Aristocracy: Varieties of the Privileged Elite
The pinnacle of the social structure in rural communi-
ties was the aristocracy, who enjoyed a life of compara-
tive ease. In most countries, aristocrats formed a
separate legal caste, bound by different laws and tradi-
tions that gave them special privileges, such as tax ex-
emptions and the right to unpaid labor by the
peasantry. Nobility was considered a hereditary condi-
tion, which originated when a monarch granted noble
status to a family through a document called a patent of
nobility. In each generation, the eldest son would bear
the title of nobility (such as duke or count) and other
males in the family might bear lesser titles. Lesser aris-
tocratic status was typically shown by the aristocratic
particule within a family name; this was usually the
word of(dein French, diin Italian, vonin German). Pre-
tenders sometimes tried to copy this habit, but the no-
bility zealously guarded its privileged status. In Venice,
a Golden Book recorded the names of the nobility; in
the German states, an annual publication (the Almanac of
Gotha) kept watch on aristocratic pedigrees.
The aristocracy was a small class, but it was not ho-
mogeneous. Gradations of status depended upon the
length of time that a family had been noble, the means
by which it had acquired its title, and the wealth and
political influence that the family held. One of the dis-
tinctions frequently made in western Europe separated
a “nobility of the sword” composed of families enno-
bled for centuries as a result of military service to the
monarch from a “nobility of the robe” composed of
families more recently ennobled through service to the
government. In central and eastern Europe, important
distinctions rested upon the number of serfs an aristo-
crat owned. The aristocracy might include an elite of
less land and wealth, known as the gentry, although in
some countries, such as Britain, the landowning gentry
did not possess aristocratic titles. While the gentry en-
joyed a comfortable existence, it was far removed from
the wealth of great nobles (see table 17.3).
The highest nobles often emphasized the length of
time their family had been noble. British history pro-
vides a good example. The leading figure in early eigh-
teenth-century English politics, Sir Robert Walpole,
was not born to a noble title, but for his accomplish-
ments, he was ennobled as the first earl of Orford in- One of Walpole’s leading opponents, however,
was the fourth duke and eighth earl of Bedford, heir to
a pedigree nearly three hundred years old and a title
that originated with the third son of King Henry IV,
born in 1389. Thus, the earl of Bedford was unlikely to
consider the earl of Orford his equal. And both of them
yielded precedence to the earl of Norfolk, whose title
dated back to the year 1070, shortly after the Norman
conquest of England.
Many of the fine distinctions within the aristocracy
were simply matters of pride within a caste that paid
excruciating attention to comparative status. The aris-
tocratic competition for precedence, however, involved
real issues of power and wealth. Only the top 5 percent
(perhaps less) of the aristocracy could hope to be pre-
sented at court and meet the royal family; fewer still
were invited to live at the royal court, hunting with
King Louis XV of France in the royal forests, sharing
the evening tabagerie (a smoking and drinking session)
with King Frederick William I of Prussia, or enjoying