ABSTRACT
Side by side with the minority who owned the soil, millions of men were, indeed, deprived of all rights of property, and it was the immense mass of the rural populations of the West who found themselves in this condition. An almost impassable gulf separated them from the landowning class. The peasants were all more or less dependent (hörigen, as was said in Germany); all were considered merely as instruments for the exploitation of the domain (villa), whence their name of villeins; all were regarded as socially valueless and esteemed solely for the economic value which they represented.
