The Social Order 351
centage in Russia, Spain, Poland, and
Hungary, which together probably
accounted for almost two-thirds of the
nobles in Europe. In Spain’s northern
provinces and in Poland, more than 10
percent of the male population held
noble titles. In Hungary, what may
have been the first accurate census in
European history in 1784 counted
more than 400,000 people claiming to
be nobles, about 5 percent of the pop
ulation. In France, by contrast, there
were only somewhere between 25,000
and 55,000 noble families.
The vast majority of nobles drew
their wealth and status from land they
owned but that other people worked
(“I am idle, therefore I am,” went a
Hungarian saying about Magyar
nobles, spoofing the words of the Hungarian noblemen in the eighteenth
French philosopher Descartes). Noble century
landlords owned between 15 and 40
percent of the land, depending on the country, and an even higher per
centage of productive land. In Prussia, only nobles could own land that
was exempt from taxes; in Poland, commoners could not own any land at
all. Russian commoners lost the right to own property to which serfs were
legally bound. Austrian nobles held half of the arable land in the Habsburg
domains, hiring agents to collect what peasants owed them. Nine thousand
nobles owned a third of all Swedish land. In the Italian states, the nobil
ity’s share of the wealth was even more than that of the Catholic Church.
Many continental nobles retained specific rights, often called seigneurial
rights, over the peasantry. Nobles drew income in rent (cash), kind (crops),
and dues (often labor) owed them by virtue of their social status and own
ership of land. Some dispensed justice in their own courts. Peasants were
obligated to pay to have their grain ground in the lord’s mill, to bake bread
in his oven, and to squeeze grapes in his press. The burden of seigneurial
dues and debts left peasants with little or sometimes nothing left to pay
state taxes and church taxes (tithes), or to feed their families, which might
well include parents and unmarried sisters, brothers, and children.
Nobles proved remarkably adept at maintaining their privileges while
adapting to the challenges and possibilities resulting from the growth of
the centralized state. Such privileges included being exempt from virtually
all taxation, as were nobles in Prussia, Poland, Hungary, and Russia, or
exempt from the direct tax on land. Other noble privileges included the
nobles’ right to bear a family coat of arms, to wear certain clothing and