4. Release of the Masses from Serfdom.--The masses, moreover, began to be released, to some extent, from the serfdom of former times, and to be given some share of civil and political freedom. This change was largely due to the breaking up of the old feudal system of land tenure and service. {207} According to feudal principles, all the land of a country belonged to the king, not as representing the community, but as sovereign feudal lord. Out of this land the king granted portions to his subjects, on condition of their paying him homage and fealty, and rendering him active military service a certain number of days in every year. The estates the king granted to his more immediate and distinguished followers, whom he called his barons, were styled baronies, and were of large extent; the barons in their turn made undergrants to their own retainers, on similar conditions to those imposed upon themselves by the king. The relation between landlord and tenant, though at first merely lifelong, soon came to be regarded as hereditary, the heir becoming entitled on the death of the tenant to occupy his land upon the same terms. [5] 5. This order of things established a powerful landed aristocracy on the one hand, and a peasant tenantry on the other, whose vassalage was but little removed from absolute slavery. The crusades and the development of a commercial class, living chiefly in the cities, in time wrought the destruction of feudalism. 6. The Crusades, their Influence on Feudalism and Liberty--The crusades were religious wars carried on in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, between the Christian nations of the West and the Mohammedans of the East. It had for ages been looked upon as an act of piety to make a pilgrimage to Palestine and visit the various places hallowed by the presence of Messiah during his earthly career, especially his sepulchre at Jerusalem. These Christian pilgrims had been respected by the Saracens for centuries; but when the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem, towards the close of the eleventh century, the Christians met with insult and cruelty. The western nations, under the fervent preaching of Peter the {208} Hermit, a native of France, who had witnessed the atrocities practiced upon Christians in the Holy Land, were lashed into a fury of resentment against the Turks. Pope Urban II took up the cause, and advocated wresting the Holy Land from the dominion of the infidels. Europe responded, "God wills it," and preparations were made for the holy war.