Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/294

 250 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE than they did with other lords. Vassals were ever quarreling with their lords over the conditions of their vassalage and the services which they were bound to render. In many cases men were unwilling vassals whose fathers had been defeated in war and forced to acknowledge the victor as lord; such men naturally would revolt at the first good op- portunity. The whole situation was one of disorderly rivalry where every one was trying to increase his power at the expense of others. There were, however, some mitigating features about feudal warfare. We must remember for one thing that war had been incessant before feudalism and that it has not ceased yet. Then feudal warfare was in the main conducted on a small scale; it was local or neighborhood war and the numbers of men engaged were never very large nor the number killed very great. Their armor protected the knights fairly well, and they were more often captured, imprisoned, and ransomed than they were slain. One reads of bitter strife between lord and vassal or father and son drawn out over many years, and finds both contestants as hale and hearty at the end as they had been at the begin- ning. The peasants, whose crops were destroyed and homes burned, and who had neither armor nor the prospect of large ransom to protect their lives, were the ones to suffer most from these neighborhood wars and from the ravages of robber knights who got their living largely by plundering raids. A French bishop, intent upon reforming this evil of feu- dalism, proposed in 1023 that feudal nobles should take the The Truce following oath : " I will not take away ox nor cow nor any other beast of burden. I will not seize the peasant nor the peasant's wife nor the merchants. I will not take their money, nor will I force them to ransom themselves. I do not want them to lose their property through a war that their lord wages, and I won't whip them to get their nourishment away from them. From the first of March to All Saints' Day I will seize neither horse nor mare nor colt from the pasture. I will not destroy and burn houses; I will not uproot and devastate vineyards