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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5120858" data-attributes="member: 4937">I feel you have pretty much everything backwards.  For example, the fact that the majority of people's time was devoted to subsistence farming maintained the harsh conditions of serfdom.  As crop yields increased due to improved agricultural technology (deeper plowing, crop rotation, fallow fields, manure fertilization, more diverse crops, grain fed horses supplanting oxen as the primary till animals, improvements to yoke technology, watermills, etc.), peasants were able leverage this increased economic success into increasing political freedom, and in turn increased crop surpluses allowed nobles to began hiring large mercenary forces without fear of depleting the essential manpower needed for agricultural production.  Without the technical means of making Northern Europe support large populations, there was no way to make large professional armies cost effective.And the heavy cavalry existed because in the wake of the collapse of Rome, it was the most effective military force in the area.  The heavy cavalry created the Counts and Dukes and Barons.  The Counts and Dukes didn't become powerful in the absence of heavy cavalry, and then create it afterwards to maintain that power.  Military success led naturally to political power.  It was those tribes which were able to field heavy cavalry which conquered their neighbors and established hegemony over the region.  That led to the feudal heirarchy.  The feudal heirachy did  not lead to heavy cavalry.  Collapse of the power of professional heavy cavalry because of technological changes in turn led to the nation state, because the aristocratic heavy cavalry could no lorger demand the same political authority.  Had the castle and heavy cavalry not been eclipsed technologically, they likely wouldn't have been eclipsed politically and socially either and the outcome of the Hundred Years war would have been decidedly in favor of the continuance of the fuedal system rather than against it.And again, by the time that population density increased in Northern Europe to the point that it had real urbanization, not only did it have militias but the Vikings were no longer the threat that they once were.  When the point is protecting a loosely collected village of 80-200 subsistance farmers from a raid by 20-30 lightly armed and armored individuals, its not at all clear to me that a handful of locally maintained armored knights converging on the point of attack isn't the cost effective solution.I still disagree.However, not only are we now well off topic, but we are trending into a purely political discussion.</blockquote>

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