Calgary, April 2025
This is a story which took place sometimes in the middle of the 15th century. It is a story about one villager, Patric, who returned home from a war.
“I brought you something,” said Patric when he appeared at the Thomase’s door. His friend greeted him with a big smile. “You came back. How was it?”
“It was brutal. We attacked the enemy castle, and they threw anything they had at us, but finally, our soldiers broke the fortification and killed everybody inside. Now our lord claims the castle for himself, but others do the same.”
“But you weren’t a soldier.”
“No. I was maintaining and repairing weapons, and I brought you one. It is called a crossbow, and it can kill a knight at a distance of 100 meters.”
“You mean, I can kill our lord with it and rescue Maria?”
Patrick just smiled. “We can do better than that. We can rescue ourselves. I can make several of those crossbows and train people to use them. Next time when our lord’s knights terrorize us again, we can kill some of them, and the peasants will join the revolt. After all, they hate our lord as much as we do.”
Perhaps I should introduce the characters of my story. Patrick was a blacksmith who maintained the weapons and the armour for the lord of the castle. It was an important position, and he was good at it, but the shop where he worked wasn’t his. It belonged to Sir Jacobs, the lord, and Patric was his serf. Anything he made was a property of the lord. But because of his job, Patric had access to weapons, and Sir Jacobs was afraid of him. Therefore, when the king asked for contributions to the war against another king, Sir Jacobs sent Patric, hoping he would be killed. But Patric survived.
His friend Thomas was in a similar position. He oversaw the largest field in the village and was required, like everybody else, to give a portion of the harvest to the lord of the castle. Thomas also liked Maria, the neighbour’s daughter, and wanted to marry her. This way he could join the neighbour’s field with his own, and, he hoped, get some concession from the lord. But Sir Jacobs’s knights kidnaped Maria, and she became his slave. Now Thomas was yearning for vengeance.
The crossbow which brought hope to Thomas also brought worries to Sir Jacobs.
"There are rumours that the blacksmith is making those weapons and arming the peasants. Is it true?” Sir Jacobs asked the head of the guards of the castle.
“All I know are the rumours. My spy who worked in Patric’s shop disappeared, and his body was found in the woods. Now nobody dears to spy for me anymore.”
That was serious. “We must do something. I want you to bring Patric to the castle and torture him until he reveals everything.”
“The servants overheard that the lord wants to bring you to the castle and torture you until you reveal everything,” a friend of Patric told him.
“Thanks, I will be ready,” and he placed several of his best shooters in strategic positions around his dwelling. “Don’t shoot until I tell you,” he ordered them.
Patric didn’t have to wait long. As the sun was setting, he saw a group of riders leaving the palace, heading towards his house. Patric waved his hand, several arrows flew from various directions, several riders fell off their horses, and the rest turned back towards the castle.
“It has started,” said Patric to Thomas as they were watching the retreat.
“It started, but how will it end?” thought Thomas, but didn’t say it.
When Sir Jacobs heard about the uprising, he was furious. He called his highest-ranking knight and shouted: “How do they dare?”
“Sir, right now there isn’t much we can do. As you know, we failed to arrest Patric, and this morning there was a peasant meeting at the village square. Patric instructed them not to deliver anything to the castle and promised to provide protection against you.”
“And how is he going to do that?”
“With the crossbows. Those are powerful weapons, and we don’t know how many of them they have.”
“Are you saying we are helpless against a bunch of peasants? Call the head of guards of the castle.”
“He got killed in the yesterday’s ride.”
Sir Jacobs didn’t know that, and he finally understood the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps he was indeed helpless against the bunch of peasants.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Patric is the head of the uprising and if we can get him, the uprising would collapse. Also, you have Maria, the woman of his friend Thomas, and perhaps you can use her as a bite. If you can lure Thomas into the castle and keep him hostage, Patrick might try to rescue him, making himself vulnerable.”
Consequently, the next day a soldier brought Maria to the top of the fortification for everybody to see her, put a sword to her neck and Sir Jacobs yelled down to the fields: “Thomas, come and rescue your woman. If not, she will die.”
When Thomas heard the news, he was ready to run to the castle, but Patric stopped him.
“Don’t go, it is a trap. Wait until I organize the villages.” Therefore, Thomas walked slowly towards the castle and called Sir Jacobs asking for some guarantees of his safety which he knew were meaningless. In the meantime, the villagers began to appear below the castle and soon there was a big crowd. Sir Jacobs hid his best longbow shooter at the top of the castle and ordered him to kill Patric as soon as he appears in the crowd. But there was no sign of him. Patric was hiding at the fortification entrance and signalled to Thomas to come. "Tell Sir Jacobs that you are going in," he told him. When the door opened, Patric jumped in, killed the guard and opened the door for the villagers to purred in. There was a short fight, but there were many more villagers than the guards of the castle. When Maria saw the chaos down below, she told the soldier guarding her: “If you kill me now, the villagers will get you and Thomas will personally torture you to death.” The soldier didn’t need any more threats, dropped his sword, hid in the remote corner of the castle, and Maria run down to the courtyard where Thomas was waiting. The crowd wanted to go inside to kill everybody, but Patric stopped them. “Stop,” he yelled. “If you do what you want to do, the king’s soldiers will come and kill us all. We want to take Sir Jacobs and his court hostage to negotiate with the king.” The villagers reluctantly obeyed, Patric selected a few of the peasants to follow him and asked the rest to go home.
Dealing with Sir Jacobs was simple. Patric told him that he and his court were hostages and they would be treated respectfully but must stay in their rooms until the negotiation with the king is completed. Then he put his own guards in various places of the castle and, with Thomas, composed a letter to the king informing him about the uprising:
Your Majesty,
Sir Jacob and his court are held hostage. We don't want to do them any harm, we only have the following demands: You replace Sir Jacobs with somebody less cruel and will give us freedom to sell our products at the open market. In exchange, we will serve our new lord as we have served Sir Jacobs.
Sign: Your humble subjects.
When the king read about the uprising, he wasn’t outraged. On the contrary, he smiled and called his main esquire.
“Our friend Sir Jacobs seems to have a problem. What do you suggest?”
“That uprising gives you a perfect opportunity to replace him with someone loyal to you. Also, if the peasants had more freedom, they wouldn't be so poor, and we could collect more taxes from them. I suggest you select a new lord of the castle and send him with a military escort to rescue Sir Jacobs. Then you bring Sir Jacobs here and make him a governor of the most remote and least important part of the kingdom. This is probably the easiest way to get rid of him.”
I can leave my story at that, but the uprisings in the Middle Ages seldom ended in a happy end. Sir Jacobs asked another king for help to regain the castle, there was more fighting, and I don’t know who won. But I do know that during the 14th and 15th centuries, stories like that were happening all over Europe. The original idea of feudalism, that peasants would be serfs of the lord, and the lord would protect them from bandits and from other lords, was breaking down. The crossbow allowed the peasants to protect themselves, and the power of lords was transferred to the king. A new class of traders and artisans, like Patric and Thomas of my story, emerged. The age of feudalism was coming to an end, and a new era of Renaissance begun.