Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/338

 250 General History of Europe There was almost Ho opportunity to better their condition, and life must have gone on for generation after generation in a weary routine. Their existence was not merely monotonous, it was wretched. The food was coarse and there was little variety, as the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses usually had but one room, which was poorly lighted by a single little window and had no chimney. 408. Barter replaced by Money Transactions ; Decline of Serfdom. The increased use of money in the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry, tended to break up the manor. The habit of trading one thing for another without the employment of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the old system, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne. The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon found it more profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The landlords, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept money in place of the services of their tenants. With this money the landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields and could buy the luxuries which were brought to his notice as commerce increased. So it came about that the lords gradually gave up their control over the peasants. A serf might also gain his liberty by running away from his manor to a town. If he remained undiscovered, or was unclaimed by his lord for a year and a day, he became a freeman. 1 i The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun as early as the twelfth century. A very general emancipation had taken place in France by the end of the thirteenth century (and in England somewhat later), though there were still some serfs in France when the Revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more back- wird in this respect. Ve find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's time, and it was not until the nineteenth century that the serfs were freed in Prussia.