CORVEE, in feudal law, the term used to designate the un paid labour due from tenants, whether free or unfree, to their lord ; hence any forced labour, especially that exacted by the State, the word being applied both to each particular service and to the system generally. Though the corvee formed a character istic feature of the feudal system, it was, as an institution, much older than feudalism, and was already developed in its main features under the Roman empire. Thus, under the Roman sys tem, personal services (operae) were due from certain classes of the population not only to the State but to private proprietors. Apart from the obligations (operae officiales) imposed on freedmen as a condition of their enfranchisement, which in the country usually took the form of unpaid work on the landlord's domain, the semi-servile coloni were bound, besides paying rent in money or kind, to do a certain number of days' unremunerated labour on that part of the estate reserved by the landed proprietor. The State also exacted personal labour (operae publicae), in lieu of taxes, from certain classes for such purposes as the upkeep of roads, bridges and dikes; while the inhabitants of the various regions were responsible for the maintenance of the posting sys tem (cursus publicus), for which horses, carts or labour would be requisitioned.
Under the Frankish kings, who in their administration followed the Roman tradition, this system was preserved. The economic revolution which between the 6th and loth centuries converted the Gallo-Roman estates into the feudal model, and the political conditions under which the officials of the Frankish empire de veloped into hereditary feudal nobles, who evolved the system of the corvee as it existed throughout the middle ages and, in some countries, survived far into the i9th century.
In his Manuel, P. 346, Luchaire divides all corvees into two broad categories, (I) corvees properly so called, (2) military services. The second of these, so far as the obligation to serve in the host (Hostis et equitatus) is concerned, was common to all classes of feudal society; though the obligation of villeins to keep watch and ward (gueta, warda) and to labour at the building or strengthening of fortifications (muragium, munitio castri) are special corvees. We are, however, mainly concerned with the first category, which may again be subdivided into two main groups, (I) personal service of men and women (manoperae, manuurn operae, Fr. manoeuvres, manual labour), (2) carriage (carroperae, carragia, carrata, etc., Fr. charrois), i.e., service rendered by means of carts, barrows or draught animals. These again were divided into fixed services (operae rigae) and excep tional services, demanded when the others proved insufficient. To these latter was given in the 8th century the name of operae corrogatae (i.e., requisitioned works, from rogare, to request) . From this term, corrupted to corvatae, curvadae, corveiae, etc., is derived the word corvee, which was gradually applied as a general term for all the various services.