Feudal fragmentation - the defining stage of European development

Feudal fragmentation is weakeningcentral government with the simultaneous strengthening of the peripheral regions of the country. The term applies exclusively to medieval Europe with its natural economy and system of vassal relations. Feudal fragmentation was caused by an increase

members of the royal dynasties, simultaneouslyclaimed the throne. Along with this factor, the relative military weakness of the medieval kings in front of the combined forces of their own vassals led to the fact that the previously vast states began to break up into numerous principalities, duchy and other self-governing powers. Fragmentation was, of course, generated by the objective evolution of the economic and social development of Europe, but the conditional moment of the beginning of feudal fragmentation called 843 year, when between the three grandchildren of Charlemagne the Verdun agreement was signed, which divided the state into three parts. It was from these rags of the empire of Charlemagne that France and Germany were subsequently born. The end of this period in European history belongs to the XVI century, the era of the strengthening of royal power - absolutism. Although the same German lands managed to unite into a single state only in 1871. And then, not counting the ethnically German Liechtenstein, Austria and parts of Switzerland.

Feudal fragmentation in Russia

Pan-European tendency of the X-XVI centuries has not bypassedside and domestic principalities. At the same time, the feudal fragmentation of the medieval Russian state had a number of features that distinguished its character from the Western version. The first bell to the disintegration of the integrity of the state was the death of Prince Svyatoslav in 972, after which the first internecine wars for the Kiev throne began between his sons. The last ruler of a single Kievan Rus is the son of Vladimir Monomakh, Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, who died in 1132. After his death, the state was finally divided into patrimonies by heirs and never again rebelled in its former form.

Of course it was

would be wrong to talk about simultaneous decayKiev possessions. Feudal fragmentation in Russia, as in Europe, was the result of objective processes of strengthening the local landed boyars. It became more profitable for the boyars, who had sufficiently strengthened and located extensive possessions, to support their own prince, relying on them and reckoning with their interests, and not remaining loyal to Kiev. It was this that allowed younger sons, brothers, nephews and other princely relatives to resist centralization.

As for the features of domestic decay,then it lies primarily in the so-called lästvichesky system, in which, after the death of the ruler, the throne passed to his younger brother, and not to his eldest son, as it was in Western Europe (Salic Law). This, however, became the cause of multiple internecine conflicts between the sons and nephews of the Russian dynasty of the XIII-XVI centuries. The Russian lands in the period of feudal fragmentation began to constitute a number of large independent principalities. The rise of local noble families and princely courtyards gave Rus the emergence of the Novgorod Republic, the rise of the Galitsko-Volyn and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities, the creation and elevation of Moscow. It was the Moscow princes that destroyed feudal fragmentation and created the Russian kingdom.