Error converting content: marked is not a function
- hmm how did kings makes money? - i just believed they inherited or looted, lots of gold then tax on pupil - but if pupil could only be basic survivor then king cannot have richer kingdom? what were their views? did they incentivize productivity? - From Quora - https://www.quora.com/How-did-kings-in-the-Middle-Ages-make-money-to-continue-living-in-luxury-before-the-universal-tax-was-commonplace - The answer is that it was usually extremely difficult for kings to raise money. Living in luxury isn’t actually that expensive, you can only eat so much food and wear so many clothes. What actually costs money is raising armies and outfitting ships and construction projects. And kings in the middle ages had great difficulty raising the money do to all these things. - Only a very small fraction of the economy was based on money. The rich didn’t have vaults of gold coins, instead they had land. That land was worked by peasants. The peasants kicked up a portion of their agricultural output to their local overlords, who kicked up a portion to their regional overlords, who kicked up a portion to the king. This is the classic definition of feudalism. Except it turns out that the regional overlords didn’t want to kick up anything to the king, and when the king wanted money from his nobles, he often found himself getting stiffed. - And the overlords weren’t usually getting money, they were getting goods and services. So a knight who owned a manor didn’t have the peasants paying rent in gold coins. Instead they paid rent in sacks of wheat, and in work they were obligated to do for the manor rather than their personal holdings. That would be just enough to keep the knight eating, and afford his armor and sword and horse, and maybe a few men at arms. So he didn’t have much surplus to kick up to the Baron, and the Baron didn’t have much surplus to kick up to the Count, and the Count didn’t have much surplus to kick up to the king. - Instead the king’s daily finances were covered by his ownership of his own private estates. The king didn’t get his daily banquets paid for by taxing the barons, instead he had his own manor and his own peasants who kicked up their agricultural surplus directly to him. - And when it was time to go to war, the king didn’t have much in the way of money to pay the troops and arm them and feed them. Instead, his vassals were expected to arm themselves, and feed themselves, and pay the troops they brought themselves. You can see how this might cause some problems. - So the basic functions of government that we take for granted today were extraordinarily difficult to accomplish in the Middle Ages, and mostly didn’t get accomplished.