THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM, Feudalism was in its very nature anarchic. The possession of mili tary power was an incitement to its use in the settlement of private feuds; the imperfect sub jection of vassals only slightly less powerful than their lords led to frequent resistance on their part ; the absence of a strong central government, resulting from the possession of sovereign rights by the nobles, diminished the salutary power of enforcing order from above. The feudal castle, fortified and guarded. held in the name of the ruler, but frequently used as a base of operations to despoil and tyrannize over the surrounding country, and to wage petty warfare with other feudal nobles, was as characteristic an element of feudalism as were the legal and economic fea tures which have been described above. During the latter part of the :Middle Ages, from the thir teenth century onward, other institutions were being developed which did not fit into the feudal system. Town life, trade, and commerce, a well to-do free middle class, and strong centralized monarchies grew up in the various Western coun tries, so that feudalism became restricted to a less and less extensive proportion of human interests. Even in those fields in which feudal
ism had been dominant, in landholding, personal relations, and the powers of government, funda mental changes were taking place. Land came to he generally held on condition of mere pecu niary payments, and became a subject of purchase, sale, and bequest. Contractual relations, and those of subject and sovereign, took the place of the personal bond of earlier times. Military pow ers, the right of taxation, the right of coinage. even the right of court jurisdiction were .with drawn by the national governments from the feudal barons. During the thirteenth century in England, the fourteenth in France, and the fif teenth in Germany, the kings were able to put an end to private warfare, and to reduce feudal ju risdiction to a definite inferiority to that of the King. Notwithstanding the decay of feudalism in these re!Teets, however, class distinctions based upon it, certain privileges of taxation, and peculiarities of landholding continued to exist until in France they were swept away by the Revolution, in 1739, while in Germany and Eng land traces of their influence may still he found.