a large stone structure surrounded by walls and topped with towers. The castle might be built up on a hill so it could be defended easily, or it might be encircled with a wide ditch, called a moat, which had to be crossed to reach its gates.Such a structure was not a family home for the royals: it was a small village unto itself. A community which included the various crafts and skills needed to be relatively self-reliant and sometimes even isolated.
A castle was home to many people. Inside its walls, in a large central building made of stone, lived a noble, his family, and his knights. Servants and soldiers belonging to the noble lived outside in the courtyard or bailey, in a cluster of small wooden buildings. Here food was prepared, tools and arms were made and repaired. If the people who lived inside the castle walls wanted to go outside them, they crossed a drawbridge which was kept lowered by day, except in times of war.The legal concept of 'citizenship' as we now know it arose during this time, and the technical term for citizen literally meant "one who lived inside the walls of the castle" (Bürger). Some large castles would have well over a hundred permanent residents, and thus truly be societies unto themselves. This arrangement arose from the defensive needs immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire in the year 476. When the Middle Ages fully emerged, the actually need for this physical security diminished, but the castle remained as a symbol. Yet the society of those who lived in the village surrounded by the protective walls interacted with those who lived in the less secure world beyond:
Outside the castle walls lived peasants in their huts. If there was an attack, they protected themselves by fleeing over the drawbridge and inside. These peasants were known as serfs and they worked the noble's land.Indeed, the noble was obliged, by common law and by sacred oath, to offer protection to the serfs who lived outside the walls. Here we see a truly Medieval notion: the moral and legal duty to assist in the defense of others. Although this setup may seem strange or romantic to us, "such a way of life" was
the only sensible arrangement. It came about because of events that happened hundreds of years before, when the Roman Empire collapsed.Determined both to rescue themselves from the chaos of a power vacuum, and to build a more reasonable society than the Romans had, the people of central Europe observed first-hand the fall of the empire, and took from the old Roman structure the few ideas which were practical; abandoning other, less useful, Roman patterns, they fabricated the remainder of their new social order from their inherited Germanic traditions. (By way of explanation, most of the cultures of central and western Europe were Germanic, but not German: France is named after the Frankish dynasties, the Germanic royal families who ruled it; England's language and culture were nearly identical to those of central Europe until the invasions of 1066 A.D. and later.)
The northern tribes that settled on the Roman lands in Europe were bands of fighters who followed one leader in battle. In return, the leader or chief supported his fighting men with what he took from the people he conquered. This system of personal loyalty to a chief was the basis for a way of living called feudalism.Feudalism sometimes has a bad image in older history books: the word 'feudal' is even sometimes used in a negative sense. In reality, the feudal system offered a vast improvement over the political structures of the Roman empire. A centralized system, the old empire was unapproachable for those living out in the countryside; the emperor gave absolute commands, and no questioning or negotiating was possible. In feudalism, a de-centralized system, a local 'lord' was approachable - you could negotiate with him, and his authority was based on negotiation with those below him and those above him: a flexible system.
In this way, feudalism was also superior to the absolute monarchies which would follow it in later centuries. An autocrat like Louis XIV would not have been possible in a feudal system.
Feudalism, or the feudal system, as it was often called, grew gradually. In the very beginning, each lord had his vassals, or followers, who lived in his castle as a kind of personal bodyguard. Maintaining his vassals was very expensive for the lord. So when his vassals wanted lands and castles of their own, the lord was glad to assign holdings to them.In this way, the lord's vassals got their own estates, could support themselves, and so relieved the lord of significant expenses.
