Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/536

 CHAPTER XXXII GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I. LIFE OF THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN 691. Survivals of the Manorial System. If a peasant who had lived on a manor in the time of the Crusades had been able to return to earth and travel about Europe at the opening of the eighteenth century, he would have found much to remind him of the conditions under which, seven centuries earlier, he had extracted a scanty living from the soil. Although the gradual disappearance of serfdom in western Europe seems to have begun as early as the twelfth century, it proceeded at very different rates in different countries. In France the old type of serf had largely disappeared by the fourteenth century, and more completely in England a hundred years later. Even in France there were, however, still many annoying traces of the old system. The peasant was, it is true, no longer bound to a particular manor; he could buy or sell his land at will, could marry without consulting the lord, and could go and come as he pleased. But the lord might still require all those on his manor to grind their grain at his mill, bake their bread in his oven, and press their grapes in his wine press. The peasant might have to pay a toll to cross a bridge or ferry which was under the lord's control, or give a certain sum for driving his flock past the lord's mansion. He might also have to turn over to his lord a certain portion of his crops. 692. Condition of the Serfs in a Large Part of Europe. In Prussia, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Spain the medieval system still prevailed (406) ; the peasant lived and died upon the same manor, and worked for his lord in the same way that his ancestors had worked a thousand years before. Everywhere the 402