In earlier times, when feudal society was young, the nobility had performed a very real service as the defenders of the peasants against foreign enemies and likewise against marauders and bandits of whom the land had been full. Then fighting had been the profession of the nobility, And to enable them to possess the expensive accoutrements of fighting--horses, armor, swords, and lances--the kings and the peasants had assured them liberal incomes. Now, however, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the palmy days of feudalism were past and gone. Later generations of noblemen, although they continued by right of inheritance to enjoy the financial income and the social prestige which their forbears had earned, no longer served king, country, or common people in the traditional manner. At least in the national monarchies it was the king who now had undertaken the defense of the land and the preservation of peace; and the nobleman, deprived of his old occupation, had little else to do than to hunt, or quarrel with other noblemen, or engage in political intrigues. More and more the nobility, especially in France, were attracted to a life of amusement and luxury in the royal court. The nobility already had outlived its usefulness, yet it retained its old- time privileges. [Sidenote: The Peasantry] In striking contrast to the nobility--the small minority of land-owning aristocrats--were the peasantry--the mass of the people. They were the human beings who had to toil for their bread in the sweat of their brows and who were deemed of ignoble birth, as social inferiors, and as stupid and rude. Actual farm work was "servile labor," and between the man whose hands were stained by servile labor and the person of "gentle birth" a wide gulf was fixed. [Sidenote: Serfdom and the Manorial System] During the early middle ages most of the peasants throughout Europe were "serfs." For various reasons, which we shall explain presently, serfdom had tended gradually to and the die out in western Europe, but at the opening of the sixteenth century most of the agricultural laborers in eastern and central Europe, and even a considerable number in France, were still serfs, living and working on nobles' manors in accordance with ancient customs which can be described collectively as the "manorial system."