Feudal System: Life In The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages was a very dark and difficult time for many people because of the creation of the dreaded feudal system. The feudal system was a system that divided people into different classes due to their wealth. Many people didn 't like how it worked except for the king because he was the highest person in the feudal pyramid. The feudal system started very small but after hundreds of years it had expanded into all of medieval Europe. The peasants, or poor people had to work long hours and had minimum wage and had not a lot of food. The upper class people didn 't have to work so they made the peasants their slaves. People thought this was very unfair but no one would want to challenge the powerful king. Overall, feudalism in the Middle

Life in the Middle Ages for peasants had many drawbacks that made their lives very difficult. The houses were said be be made of “logs, mud, and a thatched roof made of straw” (King 33). The houses were maintained very poorly and made very poorly and had many leaks in the roof because the roof was made of only straw, unlike the king’s and the lord’s castles that were made of cement and were very sturdy. The peasants were very, very poor and didn 't have much supplies for their house. In fact, the peasants had supplies such as “a plank table, and three-legged stools that they sat on. The women usually made the clothes and the bed was made out of straw and they usually wore a garment held together by a rope and walked barefoot” (33). They had little to no rights what so ever. Since they had to give away lots of the food that they hard farmed, they had little food. A usual meal consisted of any vegetables, and very little meat from ducks, a goose, or a chicken that they had raised on their own farm for a special occasion. They were extremely lucky to have very little meat for dinner because they only farmed crops and for free labor. They worked on the fields so they can have protection from the lords who they were turned into their “master”. Usually if you were a peasant your parents were probably peasants too. If you we a peasant it was because of upbringing. Typically “90% of the population of the common village was made up of serfs and peasants” due to the very popular

In the Middle Ages life for kings was spectacular because they barely had to do anything unlike the peasants who had to work all day. The king held all the power in the village and was the governor of the village. Since the king was the most powerful person in the village he was at the top of the feudal pyramid because he was the most important person and had the most power. The kings “were usually lords that leased the land because they were wealthy”(Medieval Life—Feudalism). The king also decided who and when he would lease the unused land to and the person or people had to be people that he could trust. This is why the king didn 't lease land to peasants because he couldn 't trust them and they didn 't have enough money to pay him for the taxes for the land that they work on. The king also “held all the power and owned all the land in the village”(Park 6). Every time someone wanted to buy land from the king they had to “say and oath to the king”(Medieval Life—Feudalism). Also the people that owned land in the village had to pay taxes to the king every once and awhile so they could stay on the land. The reason the feudal pyramid is thin at the top and big at the bottom is because since there were not a lot of Kings the Kings section was small but since 90% of the population was peasants it was bigger at the bottom. Almost always the Kings had a very powerful life but had some