220 Chapter 12
government in the hands of such old aristocratic fami-
lies as the Orsini and the Colonna. Popular dissatisfac-
tion kept the city in turmoil for several years even after
Rienzi was forced into exile.
The revolt of the Florentine Ciompiin 1378 was the
culmination of thirty years of civic strife. The depres-
sion of 1343 had led the popolo grasso(literally, fat peo-
ple) to betray their city’s republican traditions by
introducing a despot who would, they hoped, control
the population. The subsequent revolt led to a govern-
ment dominated by the minor, craft-oriented guilds and
to the incorporation of the semiskilled woolcarders
(ciompi) into a guild of their own. In 1378 the Ciompi
seized control of the city and introduced a popular and
democratic form of government that lasted until the
great merchants of the city hired a mercenary army to
overthrow it in 1382.
Few of these rebellions, urban or rural, had clearly
developed aims, and none of them resulted in perma-
nent institutional changes beneficial to the rebels. For
the most part, the privileged classes found them easy to
suppress. The wealthy still possessed a near monopoly
of military force and had little difficulty in presenting a
united front. Their opponents, though numerous, were
poor and usually disorganized. Communication among
different groups of rebels was difficult, and outbreaks of
violence tended to be as isolated as they were brief.
These rebellions probably did not pose a fundamental
threat to the existing social order, but they inspired
fear. The chroniclers, who were by definition members
of an educated elite, described appalling scenes of mur-
der, rape, and cannibalism. They noted that women
sometimes played a part in the agitation, and they re-
garded this as a monstrous perversion of nature. True or
exaggerated, these accounts made it difficult for readers
to sympathize with the rebels. The restoration of order
was often followed by mass executions and sometimes
by new burdens on the peasantry as a whole.
In general, the social disorders of the fourteenth
century weakened whatever sense of mutual obligation
had been retained from the age of feudalism and proba-
bly hastened the trend toward private ownership of
land. Moreover they increased the fear and insecurity
of the elite, who reacted by developing an attitude of
increased social exclusivity. The division between pop-
ular and elite culture became dramatic at about this
time. The tendency was to ridicule and suppress cus-
toms that had once belonged to rich and poor alike but
were now regarded as loutish or wicked.
Meanwhile, an impulse that must have been largely
unconscious led the upper classes into new extravagance
and the elaboration of an extreme form of chivalric ex-
cess. The tournaments and banquets described in the
Chronicleof Jean Froissart (c. 1333–c. 1400) surpassed
anything that an earlier age could afford and were at
least partially inspired by the flowering of chivalric ro-
mance as a literary form. Ironically, this “indian summer”
of chivalry occurred not only amid social and economic
insecurity but at a time when the feudal aristocracy was
losing the remnants of its military function.The Transformation of Warfare:
The Emergence of the Soldier
Fourteenth-century Europe suffered not only from
famine and plague, but also from war. While the age
was probably not more violent than others before or
since, the scale and complexity of warfare was begin-
ning to increase in highly visible ways. By 1500 the evi-
dence was clear that the preceeding two hundred years
had witnessed a military revolution.
Long before the Black Death, the feudal system of
warfare had begun to break down. The warrior was be-
coming a soldier. The term soldieris used here in its
original meaning: a fighting man who receives a cash
payment or soldefor his efforts as opposed to one who
serves in return for land or in the discharge of some
nonmonetary obligation. This was an important devel-
opment, not only because it changed the way in which
wars were fought, but also because it altered the struc-
ture of western European society.
The increase in real wealth and in the circulation of
money between 1000 and 1250 allowed princes to alter
the basis of military service. Their own revenues, which
were based in part on import-export duties and occa-
sional levies on movable goods, were augmented by the
revival of trade. Beyond that the commutation of mili-
tary and other services for cash helped to create sub-
stantial war revenues exclusive of taxes. Scutage, the
payment of knight’s fees, and similar arrangements by
which even the feudal class could escape military ser-
vice in return for cash payments are first noted in the
mid-twelfth century. By 1250 they had become com-
monplace. In 1227 the emperor Frederick II demanded
eight ounces of gold from every fief in his realms, but
only one knight from every eight fiefs. A quarter-
century later, the pope declared his preference for
money over personal service from his vassals. The
money was used to hire mercenaries or to pay knights
to extend their service, often for an indefinite period.
The case of Edward I of England is typical. His attempts