<P> Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a fourth of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners . The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled . Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church . </P> <P> The phrase "feudal society" as defined by Marc Bloch offers a wider definition than Ganshof's and includes within the feudal structure not only the warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage, but also the peasantry bound by manorialism, and the estates of the Church . Thus the feudal order embraces society from top to bottom, though the "powerful and well - differentiated social group of the urban classes" came to occupy a distinct position to some extent outside the classical feudal hierarchy . </P> <P> The idea of feudalism was unknown and the system it describes was not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the Medieval Period . This section describes the history of the idea of feudalism, how the concept originated among scholars and thinkers, how it changed over time, and modern debates about its use . </P> <P> The concept of a feudal state or period, in the sense of either a regime or a period dominated by lords who possess financial or social power and prestige, became widely held in the middle of the 18th century, as a result of works such as Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des Lois (1748; published in English as The Spirit of the Laws), and Henri de Boulainvilliers's Histoire des anciens Parlements de France (1737; published in English as An Historical Account of the Ancient Parliaments of France or States - General of the Kingdom, 1739). In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime, or French monarchy . This was the Age of Enlightenment when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the "Dark Ages". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as a means of political gain . For them "feudalism" meant seigneurial privileges and prerogatives . When the French Constituent Assembly abolished the "feudal regime" in August 1789 this is what was meant . </P>

Feudalism was a political system which developed in medieval europe in reaction to