ABSTRACT
There is a powerful economic link tying the aristocracy to warfare: The nobility was a landowning class whose profession was war: its social vocation was not an external accretion but an intrinsic function of its economic position. Because aristocrats have been defined here as those who exploit peasants and occupy high governmental positions in aristocratic empires, at least the upper levels of the clergy must be included in the aristocracy. In feudal Europe, not only kings and emperors, but all aristocrats who were rulers of some territory, whether a barony, a county, a dukedom, or a principality, were also military men. Very commonly, rulers and military leaders are identical in aristocratic empires, men either having become rulers by virtue of their military leadership or serving as military leaders simply because they are rulers. In other aristocratic empires, it is the priesthood that is held as an occupation separate from that of ruler, bureaucrat, and military leader.
