Questions: Feudal Decline and Late Medieval Centralization

Question 1

Why did cash armies gradually replace feudal military levies during the late medieval period, and what did this mean for royal power?

Model answer: Cash armies were more reliable, better trained, and under direct royal command rather than dependent on noble obligation. Kings who could tax or borrow to pay professional soldiers no longer needed lords as military intermediaries, reducing the leverage nobles had over the crown. This shifted the balance of power decisively toward centralized monarchy.

The connection between fiscal capacity and military independence is one of the key mechanisms of centralization. It shows how economic change (the revival of trade and money economies) enabled political transformation.

Question 2

Which of the following best explains why the Black Death contributed to feudal decline?

• A. It killed so many lords that peasants inherited their estates directly
• B. It reduced the agricultural workforce, empowering surviving laborers to demand better conditions and undermining the manorial economy
• C. It caused kings to seize noble lands to repopulate depopulated estates
• D. It destroyed the Church's authority, removing the spiritual legitimacy of feudal hierarchy

Answer: (B)

The Black Death's demographic shock disrupted the labor surplus that underpinned serfdom. Surviving peasants could demand higher wages or freedom of movement; lords who refused risked losing their workforce entirely. This weakened the economic foundation of feudal hierarchy without any direct political action.

Question 3

Centralization was opposed by nobles throughout the late medieval period. True or false: this opposition was simply selfish resistance to progress?

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

From nobles' perspectives, they were defending legitimate rights and the social order — their exercise of local justice, military leadership, and economic control was how society had functioned for centuries. Framing their resistance as mere selfishness misses that centralization was a contested political project, not an obvious improvement. Only in retrospect does the nation-state appear inevitable.